“Today I’m not in a position to use my chants. A close relative died, and I’m in a period of pollution yet,” he said, happy at the right answer occurring to him. He drank the milk and returned the cup, tied up the fruit in his cloth and stood up.
“If you walk this way about ten miles, you’ll come to a place called Melige. A car-festival is on at the temple today, tomorrow and the day after. If you go there, you’ll really get a good collection,” said the villager and walked on, chewing his betel and driving his buffaloes on.
As he faded out of sight, Praneshacharya entered the forest again, and walked along the footpath. He was worried that his problem had become more critical. “I’d never experienced such dread before. A fear of being discovered, of being caught. A fear that I may not be able to keep a secret from others’ eyes. I lost my original fearlessness. How, why? I couldn’t return to the agrahara because of fear, the fear of not being able to live in full view, in front of those brahmins. O the anxiety, I couldn’t live with a lie knotted in my lap.”
As the forest silence deepened, his heart began to clear. He dragged his feet slowly as he peeled the plantains and ate them. Since he saw the villager, the problem had touched deeper. One must hold it by its tuft of hair, look at it face to face. The origin of it all was a thing that had to be burned. That thing was Naranappa, who had lived kicking away at brahminism. Waiting to be burned; among all things that had to be burned some day, it stood out as a problem. Thinking that the problem belonged to the realm of the Law of Dharma, he had run to the ancient Law Books; he had run to God; but at last in the forest, in the dark. . . .
He stopped. To know fully and exactly, he waited balancing his heart.
When one tries to recreate what exactly happened and how, one has the feeling of pursuing a dream.
“I was roused by the unexpected touch of her breasts, I ate the plantains she took out of the end of her sari. Hunger, weariness, and the disappointment that Lord Maruti gave no answer. That was the reason why. Undesired, as if it were God’s will, the moment had arrived—that was the reason why. It was a sacred moment. Nothing before it, nothing after it. That moment brought into being what never was and then itself went out of being. Formless before, formless after. In between, the embodiment, the moment. Which means I’m absolutely not responsible for making love to her. Not responsible for that moment. But the moment altered me—why? I’m responsible now for someone who’s changed—that’s the present distress. Has that experience become a mere memory? And as memory is roused, I begin to desire it again. Once again I press forward to embrace Chandri.”
As desire stirred in it, the Acharya’s body craved for touch. His eyes grew dim. He thought of going to Kundapura and searching out Chandri. The usually undisturbed logic of his self-examining seemed disturbed. The waves were broken. “If I went now in search of her and enjoyed her, I would be fully responsible for my act, wouldn’t I? At least then I might be released from this agony, this awareness that I turned over suddenly, unbidden. This is me, this, this is the new truth I create, the new person I make. So I can look God squarely in the eye. Now my person has lost form, has found no new form, it is like a demoniac premature foetus taken hastily out of the womb. I must examine unafraid even my belief that the moment occurred suddenly by itself, without my stir, in the darkness of the forest. It’s true it occurred suddenly; I didn’t go after it and get it. The outstretched hands touched the breasts—desire was born—there, there’s the secret. That was the moment that decided which way to turn, No, a moment when I could have decided which way to turn. The answer is not that my body accepted it, but in the darkness my hands fumbled urgently, searched for Chandri’s thighs and buttocks as I had never searched any dharma. In that moment, decisive of which way I should turn, the decision was taken to take Chandri. Even if I lost control, the responsibility to decide was still mine. Man’s decision is valid only because it’s possible to lose control, not because it’s easy. We shape ourselves through our choices, bring form and line to this thing we call our person. Naranappa became the person he chose to be. I chose to be something else and lived by it. But suddenly I turned at some turning. I’m not free till I realize that the turning is also my act, I’m to answer for it. What happened at that turning? Dualities, conflict, rushed into my life. I hung suspended between two truths, like Trishanku. How did the ancient sages face such experiences? Without dualities, conflict? One wonders. The great sage who impregnated Matsyagandhi the fisher-woman in the boat and fathered Vyasa—did he agonize over it like me? Did Vishvamitra suffer, when he lost all the merits of penance for a woman? Could they have lived, seeing life itself as renunciation, staying with God, going beyond conflicts and opposites by living through them, taking on every changing shape that earth carves and offers, flowing finally into formlessness in the ocean like a river? As for me, God never became such an immediate urgency. If it had for anyone, it might have for my friend Mahabala. Among all my childhood friends, only for him was God a hunger. We went together to Kashi. He had a superb brain. He was tall, slim, fair-skinned. There wasn’t a thing beyond his grasp. He guessed the next step even while the guru was explaining this one. Only for him did I have a terrible jealousy, a terrible love. The deeper friendship was not hindered in any way because I was a Madhva and he a Smarta. While I was busy establishing the Madhva view, only the experience of God was important to him, nothing else was. I argued, ‘Don’t you need a path to the experience of God? It’s through dualism of God and soul you reach him.’ He would say, ‘What do you mean by a path? Is God’s heaven a city or a village so you can find it on a road? One should reach it from where one stands.’ He loved music more than logic or philosophy. When he sang poet Jayadeva’s song about Krishna, one was transported to Krishna’s garden. ‘Southern breezes from sandal-wood mountains caress delicate vines of clove’—the verse sprang within him. Praneshacharya’s voice choked on the memory of his dear friend. “I’ve never experienced such love of God. What happened to Mahabala? When we were in Kashi he gradually withdrew and became distant. I didn’t understand why. I fell into great grief. My studies didn’t touch me. The fellow who was once always with me, now evaded me and roamed about. Never quite knew why. I never longed for anyone as I longed then for Mahabala. I was infatuated. Some days, his sad reddish face with a black mole on his left cheek would haunt my eyes and I’d long for his friendship. But if I went near he would elude me on some pretext or other. One day he suddenly vanished, stopped coming for the lessons. I roamed the streets of Kashi looking for him. I was distraught with the thought someone might have killed him for a human sacrifice somewhere. One day he was sitting on the front verandah of a house. I was amazed. He sat there alone, smoking a hubble-bubble. Unable to bear it, I ran to him, I pulled him by the hand. Lifting his heavy eyes, he said, ‘Pranesha, go your way.’ That’s all. I pulled at him. In a fit of anger he stood up and said, ‘You want the truth, don’t you? I’ve given up studies. Do you know for what I live now? Come in, I’ll show you.’ He dragged me inside and pointed to a young woman sleeping on a mattress after her lunch. She lay there, her arms spread out. From her clothes and cosmetics I could see she was a prostitute. I was startled. I shivered in fear. Mahabala said, ‘Now you know, Pranesha. Don’t worry about me, go now.’ I walked away in a daze, not knowing what to say. Then my heart hardened to stone. I came away with a vow: I will not go the way of the fallen Mahabala, I’ll be his opposite. And came away. Whenever I see Naranappa I remember Mahabala, even though the two are as different as goat and elephant, worlds apart.
“Now I feel like seeing Mahabala again and asking him: ‘Did you change your course on your own? What experience, what need, what craving moved you this way? What would you advise me now? Did woman and pleasure bring you every satisfaction? Could that aristocratic spirit of yours be satisfied by a mere woman?’
“Aha, now I know.” Praneshacharya rose to his feet and started walking. “Yes, that’s the root of it. My disappointment with Maha
bala remained with me. Unawares, I have seen Mahabala in Naranappa. To make up for my defeat there, I tried to win a victory here over Naranappa. But I was defeated, defeated—fell flat on my face. Whatever it was I fought all along, I turned into it myself. Why? Where, how, did I lose? In this search, everything gets tangled up again.
“Look at it, one is twined with the other. From Mahabala to Naranappa, from Naranappa to my wilfulness, the holy legends I recite, their effects, finally the way I lusted for Belli’s breasts myself. The form I’m getting now was being forged all along, obliquely, unknown to me. I doubt now if even the moment I united with Chandri came unbidden. It must have been the moment for everything within to come out of hiding—like the rats leaping out of the storeroom. The agrahara comes to mind again and revives the nausea. The agrahara stands there, explicit form for what I’m facing within, an entire chapter on the verse that’s me. The only thing clear to me is that I should run. Maybe go to where Chandri is. Become like Mahabala. Like him, find a clear-cut way for oneself. Escape this ambiguous Trishanku state. I must go away now, undetected, unseen by any familiar eye.”
He walked on and as he walked he sensed someone coming behind him in the forest. He felt a pair of eyes riveted on his back. He straightened up and strode on. He wanted to turn and see who it was, but he was afraid. He heard a noise, he turned. At a distance, he could see a young man taking quick steps toward him. Praneshacharya too quickened his step. Every time he turned, he found the young man quickening his. He walked faster. But the young man didn’t seem to give up. Being younger he gained on him. What’ll happen if he is no stranger? The young man got closer and closer. Praneshacharya’s legs ached, and he had to slow down. The young man joined him. Panting for breath, he started walking alongside. Praneshacharya looked at him, curious. No one he knew.
“I am Putta, of the Maleras. Going for the car-festival at Melige. How about you?” the stranger asked, beginning the conversation himself.
Praneshacharya didn’t wish to talk. Not knowing what to say, he looked into the young man’s face—dark and a little withered, with beads of sweat. A very long nose gave the face the look of a strong-willed man. His close-set eyes sharpened his gaze and made one squirm under it. He had cropped his hair, wore a shirt over his dhoti. Obviously a young fellow from the town.
“I saw you from behind and thought you were someone I knew from your gait. Now I look at your face, you do look familiar. . . .”
Though Putta spoke the usual words of any villager opening a conversation, Praneshacharya squirmed.
“I came from down the valley. Going for my collections,” he said, trying to close the conversation.
“Oh—oh—I know people from down the valley. Actually my father-in-law lives there. I go there often. Where exactly down the mountain?”
“Kundapura.”
“Oh—oh. Kundapura, really? Do you know Shinappayya there?”
“No,” said Praneshacharya and walked faster. But Putta, eager for talk, didn’t seem to be contented with little.
“You know, Shinappayya is close to us. Good friend of my father-in-law’s. He arranged for his second son to marry my wife’s younger sister. . . .”
“Hm . . . Hm . . .” grunted Praneshacharya as he walked on. But this creature next to him didn’t give up easily. Thinking he might move on, minding his own business, Praneshacharya sat down under a tree as if utterly tired. Putta seemed quite pleased, he too sat down with a loud sigh. He took out matches and bidis from his pocket and offered a bidi to him. Praneshacharya said, “No.” Putta lit his bidi. Praneshacharya, pretending that he was less tired already, rose to his feet and started walking again. Putta too got up and started walking. “You know if you’ve someone to talk to, on the road, you forget the road. I, for one, always need someone to talk to,” said Putta, all smiles, eyeing Praneshacharya inquisitively.
II
Within a couple of hours after his wife’s death-rite, and the Acharya’s decision to go where his legs took him, the people of Parijatapura came to know everything—everything except that actually a Muslim cremated Naranappa’s body. The young fellows of Parijatapura who had, in a brief moment of heroism, meant to perform their friend Naranappa’s final rites, but had fled for their dear lives—they had sealed their lips, unable to speak of what they had seen. The thing that had disturbed Rich Manjayya was really the series of deaths occurring one after another. Naranappa first, then Dasacharya, then Praneshacharya’s wife. It meant only one thing, an epidemic. Experienced in affairs as he was, in the exchanges, the markets, the law courts and offices of Shivamogge, he’d just laughed at the other brahmins’ explanations. They all believed that these disasters were due to Naranappa’s untimely death and the brahmins’ dereliction of duty in not performing his final rites. Of course Manjayya had said unhappily, “How awful! Dasacharya is dead! He came and ate uppittu here only the day before yesterday.” But he was fearful inside that he’d let that brahmin into his house. He’d had his suspicions already when they came to tell him that Naranappa died of fever and a bubo, after a trip to Shivamogge. And now he was afraid even to name the dread disease. Why overreach oneself, he felt. But when he heard that rats had been running out of the agrahara and falling dead, and carrion birds had arrived to eat them, his suspicions became certainties. His guess was correct, as surely as there are sixteen annas to a rupee. The Tayinadu newspaper that came yesterday, though a week old, had printed the news in a corner: “Plague in Shivamogge.” Naranappa did bring the plague into the agrahara, and plague spreads like wildfire. Being inert all this while, bound to some blind belief and not doing the dead man’s last rites— was like drawing a slab of stone over one’s own head. Fools. Even he had been an idiot. Standing in the front yard, he suddenly called out, “Fix the carts, at once! Can’t waste a minute. The plague will cross the river and come to our agrahara. It’s enough if a crow or vulture brings in its beak a single plague rat and drops it—everything will be finished here.” He stood outside his house and announced in a shouting voice so that everyone could hear: “Till I return from the city no one should go near Durvasapura.” As the leader of the agrahara, he didn’t have the heart to scare them with his suspicions of plague. The bullock cart was ready. He sat against the pillow inside the curved wagon, and ordered the cartman to drive to Tirthahalli. In his very practical brain, the decisions were well-formed already: one, to tell the municipality and get the dead body removed; two, to call in doctors and get everybody inoculated; three, to get rat exterminators and pumps, fill the ratholes with poison gas and stop them up; four, if necessary, to evacuate the people from the agrahara. For quite some time he muttered to himself like a chant—“The idiots, the idiots!”—between words of encouragement to the cartman to twist the bullocks’ tails and drive the cart faster. The cart soon got on to the Tirthahalli road and moved swiftly on it.
•
Leaving the monastery in disappointment, Garudacharya, Lakshmanacharya and others came to the agrahara, chanting “Hari Hari.” Padmanabhacharya lay in a high fever. When they arrived, he was in a coma. One of them had gone to the sick man’s in-laws in another village to inform his wife of his condition. Another ran to the city to get a doctor. Garudacharya was scared. In the monastery, Gundacharya took to bed with a fever; in Kaimara Dasacharya was sick. Here Padmanabhacharya’s tongue was hanging out. The agrahara was in some kind of danger. In front of everyone, Lakshmana abused Garuda for preventing Naranappa’s funeral rites. But no one cared, this was no time for abuse, it was better to hurry and finish the rites and offer to God the whole property as penalty. Reluctantly they left the sick Padmanabhacharya behind, and started out. Garuda folded his hands to the others and pleaded, “Please take the monastery doctor with you and get some medicine for Gundacharya lying there.” On the way, no one had the courage to utter a word. A dullness fell on them like a pall. Garuda prayed inside himself to Maruti, “I’ll pay the penalty, please forgive me.” They walked with a heavy heart to Kaimara, and wh
at did they find? Dasacharya’s cremated ashes, the news of the death of Praneshacharya’s wife. They were bewildered. Their familiar world was in a confusion. They felt they’d seen demons in the dark. Like children they leaned on walls, tears flowing from their eyes. The elder, Subbannacharya, tried to console and hearten them. Garuda, after sitting dully for a long time, said in a faint voice: “Are the rats still dying?” Subbannacharya asked, “What do you mean?” “Nothing, vultures were sitting on our roofs,” said Garudacharya. The elder answered, “Finish the rites, everything will turn out well.” “I won’t go back to the agrahara,” said Garudacharya. The other brahmins also murmured, “How can we do rites to a body already decomposed? Even four cartloads of firewood may not burn it down.” Lakshmanacharya said, “Let’s get going.” Garudacharya said, “I’m tired; one of you must do it.” Subbannacharya said, “If grown-up people like you get scared and confused, what about the rest?” “I just can’t,” said Garudacharya. “Get up, get up,” urged Lakshmanacharya. “There’s no one in the agrahara. What’ll happen to the cows, the calves? No one’s there to herd them to the shed or milk them.” “Yes, yes, true,” agreed the others. Muttering God’s name, “Hari, Hari,” they started out. All along the way they chanted the praise of Raghavendra.
•
Belli’s people sacrificed a cock to the demon and vowed they would sacrifice a sheep at the next new moon; yet both Belli’s parents died the same night. Praneshacharya’s wife passed away. Hearing Belli’s screams the neighbouring outcastes came and joined her. Near-naked black bodies sat around the hut silently and wept in the dark for half an hour. Then the dry palm-leaf-thatched hut was set on fire. In a minute the fire burned high and licked up the bodies of Belli’s father and mother. Belli, who was standing there frightened, ran out of the village in the dark, thinking nothing of directions, like the rats themselves.
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