Krishna Moorthy wondered whether his father knew that his end had come. If not, why would he have asked his friend to come, a friend he had not seen these forty years? True, now and then, he had remembered Nair. Whenever reports of Nair’s violent political activity appeared in newspapers, Acharya had expressed his disapproval of it to his son. For example, an incident that some five years ago headlined in the national newspapers. It seems Nair had gone to see a minister to discuss the payment of bonus to workers in a coffee plantation. According to the minister’s statement, word led to word and Nair took out of his bag an acid bomb and threw it at the minister. According to Nair’s statement in the court, his intention, of course, was to kill the minister but he had unfortunately missed his target. He had only succeeded in beating up the minister with his chappals. The minister, in his bid to escape, had fallen against a table and had suffered a head injury. Nair was sentenced to five years imprisonment. After his release he had issued a statement saying that his mission henceforth would be to eliminate corrupt men who were enemies of the people. Acharya had, then, immediately thought of writing to Nair, condemning his activities. He, however, had not. Perhaps because he did not know what or how to say anything to a friend of his youth, whose way of life had become so completely different from his own. Or, perhaps that may not have been the only reason. He was so engrossed in settling property disputes of the local rich, in drafting documents and in going up and down the steps of law courts pursuing his other cases, he, perhaps, did not have the patience to understand his old friend who was prepared to sacrifice his life for a cause. After this incident, an article had appeared in a weekly about Nair. Did his father, the son wondered, have the faintest idea that Nair—with whom he had joined the Railways in Delhi— would one day shape like this? They had, apparently, shared a room. Nair had taken Acharya into his confidence, and had told him all his secrets. Since Acharya was a brahmin he would do the cooking. Nair would do the shopping, cut vegetables, etc. When Acharya was busy preparing the dishes, Nair, smoking a beedi, would read aloud a story. The stories that were dear to both were ones by Goldsmith and Reynolds. So far as Acharya’s memory went, Nair was a man who loved his pleasures. Why did such a man set out to subvert a system which protected those very pleasures?
Acharya lost his job because he was found to be medically unfit; it was malarial fever and the consequent tumour in his tummy that had cost him his job. Later he became an accounts clerk and worked on a part-time basis in several shops. He did this for two years and then got fed up. Added to this, remembrances of his young wife who had not yet come of age, his father, his father’s job in the town temple made him leave Delhi.
Nair also lost his job. But that was for participating in a strike. And that was again in post-independent India. Nair went back to Kerala, his home state, began to work with the peasants and became a Communist. To him the Congress party was a party of treacherous men. When his party began to work with the Congress under orders from Russia he resigned his membership and became a loner, but still continued to be a Communist. The weekly had picturesquely presented his life: ‘At night, he sleeps on the verandah of someone’s house. Wakes up. Washes his clothes in well-water, has a wash himself and then leaves. He collects wrappers of bound notebooks from schoolchildren, makes fans out of these wrappers. He takes the paper-fans to the hospital, enquires about the patients and leaves the fans with them. In the afternoon, he sits in the hotel at the town’s centre. He does odd jobs for the workers and peasants and eats whatever they give him. Drinks the tea, smokes his beedi and walks the town streets. He visits ration-depots, public-offices, police stations, argues, quarrels with officials on behalf of the poor and the ignorant, gets their job done. Again, in the evening, sits in the hotel, drafts petitions for them, eats whatever they buy him and spends the night on somebody else’s verandah. He never keeps a paisa in his pocket for the next morning. And while working for the poor he educates them on Exploitation, Revolution, the New Society, etc. This is his daily routine. This was not the first time that he had beaten people’s enemies with his chappals. But because the person who got beaten this time was a minister, it had hit the headlines. That was all.
‘Dressed in a white dhoti and a shirt, and with a pencil stub in his hairy ears and paper-fans in his hands, he walks the town streets and people know him by one name, “Master”.’
Acharya read the article, sat with a pinch of snuff between his fingers and thought deeply. Like him, Nair too lived for others; but how differently. He made his son too read the article, began to say something but stopped halfway, abruptly. All this took on a mysterious meaning for Krishna Moorthy after his father’s death.
As soon as he fell ill Acharya had written to Nair, the man without a postal address—that was the title of the article in the weekly—and had asked him to come. He had written to Gangubai too, but had not asked her—as he had asked his son and Nair—to come. But since Nair was involved in a plantation workers’ strike, he could come only a day previous to Acharya’s death.
It was Krishna Moorthy’s firm belief that his father’s name defied all abbreviations. But he was surprised when Nair walked in, put down the sling-bag which contained everything that could be called his possessions on the floor, sat on the bed, and said with spontaneous affection, ‘Jaya.’ Nair took a look at the medicines Acharya was taking, felt and pressed his swollen feet as if he had left Acharya only the previous day. Was he not from Kerala? Like Acharya, he too was an admirer of Ayurveda. He felt Acharya’s pulse, made him open his mouth, looked at his tongue, pulled his eyelids down and peered into the eyes, sighed, took some powder from his bag, mixed it with honey and made him eat it. While attending to the sick man, he spoke rapidly and said how allopathy had destroyed the native medical system, how this was inevitable in the neo-colonial set-up and how, from this point of view alone, Nehru was a traitor. As he was speaking, he took out a pamphlet he had written and published and gave it to Acharya—as if somehow Nehru was the cause of his illness. When he heard that Krishna Moorthy was working at the Delhi School of Economics, he laughed a sad laugh and said, ‘You are all slaves either of Russia or of the States; there is not a single patriot left among our educated young men.’
At the beginning, Nair’s total absorption in the thing he was doing looked a little ridiculous to Krishna Moorthy; but gradually it began to worry him. Consoling and gently stroking the brow of the sick man whose body was all swollen, Nair looked so feminine and gentle; and at the same time he was shredding to pieces the entire sociopolitical set-up so savagely. Krishna Moorthy did not know how to understand such a man. Should he not, for the sake of courtesy, ask father what he had been doing these forty years? Father did not say, because he was not well. Anyway he could not make out what father wanted to say or hear from Nair. Then why had he got him here? And, did Nair know that father would not survive and was that why he asked him to eat whatever he liked? Father said he had lost all taste for food. When Nair, recalling the forty-year-old memory of their Delhi days, said ‘Well, you were always dying to eat mango chutney,’ father had smiled. Krishna Moorthy had rarely seen his father smile like that and he had certainly not seen father smile after he had fallen ill. He would spend much of his time either staring vacantly at the roof-beam or studying the almanac or the ashtanga hridaya. To father’s question, ‘Doesn’t mango chutney cause acidity?’ Nair said, ‘I have an antidote, don’t worry.’
Then Nair sat beside father and read the pamphlet he had written. He seemed to read without any expectation of a response. When it was night Gangubai helped Acharya sit up. His daughter brought him rice and mango chutney. He ate a morsel or two, said he had no taste for any dish and then lay down. He turned towards Nair and said ‘Now what next?’ The way he said it and the way Nair took it, was significant to Krishna Moorthy as the whole thing occurred the night previous to his father’s death. Nair struck a match, lighted a beedi, and spoke in a quiet tone.
‘You mean what I intend doing?
Well, I am like the seed which hopes for and wishes to fall into fertile soil. Look, what I wrote in my diary just before I came here.’ He opened his diary and read. ‘The coffee plantation workers were with me. They used to listen to me but now they have become greedy and have deserted me. They were duped by the greatest scoundrel of Kerala politics, M.V. Wariyar. One of these days I want to stop him on the main thoroughfare and put a knife into his heart.’ Shutting the diary and putting it back into his bag he said as if they were going to be his last words—‘See I have put it all down here, and I go tomorrow.’
What kind of a person was this who brought in the entire nation in his answer to a personal query? Father didn’t say anything. Why? Perhaps he could not grasp. Or, was he too tired? It was hard to guess what transpired in the silence of his mind. Father did not survive to see Nair translating his words into action. He did what he had said he would. In the main thoroughfare, in the presence of a large number of people, he stopped Wariyar, pulled out a knife, and proclaimed his intention loudly and clearly. Anybody could have guessed the outcome. Wariyar fell back and then ran. Nair pursued him. People gave chase, caught hold of Nair and took away his knife; later he was arrested on a charge of attempted murder.
Did Nair who was sixty years old really think that he would succeed in killing Wariyar who was younger by twenty years? How serious was he in his life’s mission? Was not the whole thing a bit too melodramatic? Such thoughts often passed through Krishna Moorthy’s mind. This was because Nair had, in fact, become a challenge to Krishna Moorthy’s way of life.
Nair left the moment father died and said while going, ‘Your father lived and died a foolish man. You too seem to be treading his path.’ Krishna Moorthy could not speak, but managed to mumble haltingly, ‘What about the last rites?’ True, the violence in Nair’s words was not seen in his eyes and yet the harsh words had shaken Krishna Moorthy. ‘Nothing much left now. Bury him, he will make good manure. But you are brahmins. You cremate. Because it was a friend I came, leaving aside all my work. But now I don’t have any more time to waste. And you must pay my expenses. A day’s food and the bus fare come to twenty- five rupees.’ He had felt like giving him a little more than twenty-five but had become afraid. The minute Nair left, Krishna Moorthy’s wife, Meera, who had intensely disliked him for his bushy eyebrows, hairy ears, the pencil stub behind them, etc., grumbled loud enough for him to hear, ‘What an indecent fellow! Should one sit beside a dying man and make street-corner speeches? And should one, while leaving, speak such words?’ Nair’s behaviour had irked Krishna Moorthy also but he snubbed his wife, ‘Don’t talk of things you don’t understand.’
Why did father wish to see a man like Nair after these forty years? Krishna Moorthy often worried himself over the strange friendship between his father and Nair and over the last, puzzling meeting between the two. And more so when he got tired of Delhi, of his wife and of his futile research on ‘Five Year Plan and Land Reforms Act’.
Perhaps an incident which took place much before father’s death made him feel this way. He had of course been surprised by the fact that father, a much respected man of the town, did not show any sign of embarrassment at Gangubai’s presence. What had, however, equally surprised him was the contempt with which father had treated Vishnu Moorthy—the rich landlord who had been father’s benefactor. These two incidents, he felt needed to be understood to know his father’s mind in its last dying moments.
It was Acharya who had practically conducted the cases connected with the adoption of Vishnu Moorthy by Narasimha Bhatta. After the death of Narasimha Bhatta it was his wife who had brought up Vishnu Moorthy. She had a brother who was dear to her. When a son was born to him her affection flowed towards her nephew. Vishnu Moorthy was no longer a minor. And his parents advised him to be careful regarding the family property and the gold kept in an iron safe. Vishnu Moorthy had another lock put on the safe. With it started the legal disputes. Vishnu Moorthy beat up his foster-mother and drove her out. She filed a suit stating that Vishnu Moorthy was not her adopted son, that the records pertaining to the adoption were all fabricated and that she was the legal owner of all the family property. She, with her brother and her relatives, tried to force her way into the house. But in the meanwhile Vishnu Moorthy broke open the lock she had put on the safe, collected all the gold, put it in a trunk and, left it in the safe custody of Jayatheertha Acharya. Acharya got him an advocate and advised him at every step. After that Vishnu Moorthy regularly carted rice to the Acharya’s household every year.
Everybody knew that Vishnu was a smooth man. Dressed in a silk shirt, a gabardine jacket and white mull-dhoti, he always looked elegant. Whenever he visited Acharya’s house Rukminiyamma was most deferential. Wasn’t he the man who was feeding them all? Of course, Acharya was not unaware of Vishnu Moorthy’s selfish and violent nature. He knew how Vishnu Moorthy had driven out his foster-mother. But since Acharya had seen a point of law in favour of Vishnu Moorthy and had also known the foster-mother’s deceit it looked legally all right to Acharya. Father used to understand all moral values within the legal framework. But an act of Vishnu Moorthy put him in a painful dilemma. There was, in Vishnu’s household, a servant by name Venkappa Naika. He was muscularly built and dark-skinned. Since he was also rather close to Vishnu, there were few family secrets he did not know. It was he who drove the master’s covered bullock cart. Vishnu himself was very proud of the pair of bullocks he owned. They were so tall and handsome. Vishnu had left two acres of paddy-field on lease to his trusted servant.
There aren’t any survivors left now who can say whether it was Venkappa who took a liking for Vishnu’s widowed sister-in-law or whether it was the well-formed girl herself who fell for him. Be that as it may, the young widow became pregnant. Venkappa Naika was murdered. The widow underwent an abortion and kept her mouth shut. This was how he was murdered. There was a cousin of Venkappa Naika who had been his sworn enemy. The cousin murdered him and buried the body in the forest. Someone filed a suit. Vishnu had also become a suspect. He ran to Acharya and fell at his feet. By now, the news had reached Acharya. It certainly caused him much moral anguish; and yet he did not insist he should be told the truth. On the other hand, he came to willingly believe in Vishnu who declared that he did not know anything, that he was innocent, that it was Venkappa Naika who had first assaulted his cousin, that there were marks of injury on his body and that the cousin had killed Venkappa Naika purely in self-defence. Not only did he believe in Vishnu, he had enough evidence manufactured to convince others too that there was bad blood between the cousins from the beginning. He engaged the best criminal lawyer, got Vishnu Moorthy released on bail and ultimately won the case. Vishnu was declared innocent. After all this was over, Acharya told his son in confidence, ‘Kittu, if there is what they call hell-fire, this Vishnu will surely roast in it. A beast of a man, that’s what he is.’
‘But you got him out.’
‘No, it was the law. And, the law would rather let go ten guilty men than punish an innocent individual. The police case was rather weak. That’s how Vishnu escaped.’
Father’s sincerely spoken words and the importance law had gained within his framework of reference had surprised Krishna Moorthy. Was the legal system, to him, a diamond-hard breastplate invulnerable to all moral questions till the moment of death? Perhaps it was. Nair’s words about his work in the Delhi School of Economics were in a similar vein. Krishna Moorthy was quite aware of arguments like ‘social science research cannot be free of values, etc.’ But they frightened him, especially when he remembered father who died slaving for the rich.
Do we give up such consolations when death suddenly confronts us? Recalling the way father, in his dying moment, had treated Vishnu, Krishna Moorthy began to doubt the strength of beliefs and convictions. The adoption case had not yet been decided; it was still before the High Court. Added to this, there were fresh legal complications because of the new Land Reform Act. Vishnu’s uncle had taken on lease a f
ertile piece of garden land which he was trying in vain to get back from him. The uncle was a much bigger rowdy than Vishnu. And it had also been said that Vishnu had kept gold and jewellery worth over a lakh of rupees with Acharya. As soon as he came to know of Acharya’s illness, he must have got worried. Father did not even look at Vishnu who had come dressed in a silk shirt and white mull-dhoti. Displaying his gold teeth, he had enquired after Acharya’s health. Father in reply had merely said ah, yes, no, yes, etc. Rukminiyamma made coffee specially for him and brought it in a silver tumbler. Vishnu, sipping the hot coffee, had said, ‘Acharyare, shall I get you a doctor from Shimoga? If there are any drugs you need, I shall get them. Please, don’t stand on any formality with me.’ Father perhaps knew that this was only a prologue, a prefatory speech.
The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories Page 6