Kama

by Gurcharan Das

  I picked up the phone and asked my assistant to book train tickets to Delhi, and send a telegram to my mother giving the details of my arrival. She would assume that I would be coming to see someone in the government, which was a common feature of business life in those days when the socialist establishment saddled the private sector with the most intricate controls.

  I needed to see Avanti. I phoned her and asked her to join me for lunch at the Gymkhana. But when I got there, I found a message, saying that she had been held up in a meeting and would only join me after lunch. As I was reading her disappointing message, I heard a familiar voice.

  ‘Well, well, congratulations are in order, I think.’

  It was Anand. He came forward and put his arm around me with spontaneous warmth. I had not known that he was back. We were meeting after a fair interval, and despite our different lifestyles and temperaments, I was drawn to him, as old friends are who have known each other for a long time.

  ‘A . . . A . . . Avanti was meeting me for lunch,’ I said hesitantly. ‘I just got a message—she’s held up at work.’

  ‘In that case, let’s go in to lunch, and she can join us. Lots to catch up on.’

  I was wary. The incident in my flat six months ago had dampened things a bit. I was not jealous of him because I was more secure in my relationship with Avanti. Neither did I envy him—I was certain in my mind that I didn’t want to live the kind of life he did. Nor did I feel threatened because this was the way he was with all women. Yet I was guarded—I didn’t quite know how Avanti would respond to him. I was tempted to back out of his impulsive, friendly invitation but found myself being led into the dining room by his good-natured charm.

  ’I have been hoping to run into you, Amar. Why haven’t we seen you anywhere? Where have you been?’

  ‘How did you know about Avanti and me?’

  ‘Shh . . . dear boy! Bombay is a small town and news like this is on every paanwallahs lips within twelve hours; and in twenty-four, if it’s raining.’

  We sat down to lunch and he continued in his usual good-natured way. ‘I am very glad to finally see you after so long. You must tell me everything that has been going on. It seems the whole world was there at your Ramu Mama’s party.’

  ‘I don’t think Ramu Mama knows that you are back.’

  He spoke openly, without a hint of feeling slighted at not being invited. It was the same confident Anand, who didn’t let such things come in the way.

  ‘Yes, it’s true Avanti and I are planning to get married. It’s a rather sudden decision.’

  ‘When is the event?’

  ‘Well, we haven’t decided.’

  ‘Have you told your mother?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Hmm. You have your work cut out.’

  ‘She won’t like it, I know.’

  Anand had kept in touch with my parents over the years and he knew all about my mother’s ambition for a ‘brilliant match’ for me. She had, in fact, asked him and his mother on more than one occasion to recommend a girl ‘from the right family’.

  ‘When are you going to tell her?’

  ‘This weekend.’

  ‘It will not be easy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To “sell” good old Avanti.’

  ‘Any chance of your coming?’

  ‘You need help to sell her, eh?’ He smiled mischievously.

  ‘Frankly, yes!’ Anand was still a favourite of my mother’s and his word meant a lot to her.

  ‘I can’t, Amar. Not this weekend. I’m spending it with someone.’ He gave me a knowing look. ‘Tell you what—I will speak to your mother the following week when I have to be in Delhi on business. Then we’ll celebrate with a party.’ Suddenly, he stopped and frowned. ‘No, it wouldn’t work. I have this exquisite creature at home, but she is quite unsuitable for your crowd. Yes, it would be a disaster, I’m afraid.’

  As I listened to him carry on about his latest conquest, I was amused at the thought of how different our lives were. Yet, we remained friends. It seemed to both of us that the life we led was the only real one; the other one’s life was a mere illusion. While I envied his playful, light-hearted way with women, I could never be like him. And now that I was in love with Avanti, I was more than happy to sacrifice all other temptations. Anand could no longer hurt me as he had once with Isha.

  ‘How does it feel to be in love?’

  ‘Loving one woman, Anand, is like getting to know all women.’ I gazed into his eyes. ‘You’ve never loved, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  He got up to go. As he was leaving, he asked with a glitter in his eye, ‘And how is our dear Kamini Masi? She is still a beauty, isn’t she?’

  He is impossible, I thought, as I saw him walk out. The love that bound me to Avanti was so unlike Anand’s momentary infatuations. Although he was open and sincere in his attachments, he had perforce to play the game of love. And this inevitably meant having to lie, deceive, scheme and constantly think about the next conquest.

  After Anand left, I went to the veranda and ordered coffee. As I sat waiting for Avanti, I had a strange feeling. I remembered that this was where Isha had sat when I had run into her, soon after arriving in Bombay. She too had been waiting. For a few fleeting seconds, I relived the happy memories of those months with her before sad thoughts enveloped me.

  Before long, Avanti arrived in a bustle. Opening her handbag, she took out a letter. ‘Here!’ she announced proudly, handing it to me. ‘Read it,’ and rushed to the bathroom.

  It was a flattering letter from her company appreciating her services in Bangalore. The last paragraph informed her that she was being promoted to assistant editor and being transferred back to Bombay. I was delighted. I was dreaming of our life together after marriage when I noticed a scruffy paper on the floor with Avanti’s distinctive handwriting. It must have dropped when she pulled out the letter from her bag. I picked it up, and as I was putting it safely in my pocket to hand it back, I saw two rows of neatly written notes. They were headed, ‘Pros’ and ‘Cons’ and I quickly grasped that she had been debating whether to marry or not:

  Pros

  (1) Love

  (2) Children and family life

  (3) Lifelong companionship

  (4) Solitary life is horrid, esp. in old age

  Cons

  (1) Loss of freedom, to do what I want, esp to pursue my meditation and reading

  (2) Time-wasting quarrelling

  (3) Having to visit relatives—I esp fear A’s mother

  Underneath the two rows, there was a conclusion: ‘4 vs 3. Ergo, marry A. QED!’

  I smiled with pleasure. Here was someone who had remembered from her schooldays that mathematical proofs ended with the Latin initials QED, quod erat demonstrandum, ‘thus it has been demonstrated’; this was how Avanti had proved to herself that marrying me was the logical answer.

  When Avanti returned, I gave her a big hug, congratulating her on her promotion.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful, silly boy! I shall be working here again.’

  We plunged quickly into what needed to be done. I told her that I planned to spend the weekend with my parents to gain their consent.

  ‘Your mother won’t approve,’ she said with a frown.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to work hard.’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  ‘My father will have a problem.’

  ‘Because I am not a Brahmin?’

  ‘Yes, but he’ll come around.’ She stopped herself. ‘What am I saying? They’ll be so relieved—they are convinced that I am going to die a spinster.’ She stopped again and scowled. ‘Amar, I am afraid of your mother. She doesn’t like me.’

  ‘It’s not you. It’s about her . . . her dreams of a grand alliance for her son. Anand and I were just saying . . .’

  ‘You met Anand?’

  ‘Yes, we had lunch together.’

  ‘Anand!’

 
‘When you didn’t show up, I met Anand and we decided to have lunch together. In fact, we hoped you’d join us—he wanted to congratulate you.’

  ‘And you told him about us?’

  ‘He already knew and he was happy. In fact, I asked him to come with me to Delhi to help me persuade Mother.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He couldn’t come. He’s involved with someone and couldn’t leave her alone.’

  There was a pause. She grew pensive. I explained to her that she shouldn’t hold what had happened against him. ‘He tries it on every woman. It’s a game and he just has to play it.’

  ‘I don’t understand you. He took Isha away from you . . . not once but twice. How can you behave as though nothing happened?’

  ‘He didn’t steal her. Isha left me.’

  Avanti realized that she had touched a raw nerve. I was hurt and she could tell. She came up to me and put her arm around me.

  ‘Well, I am glad she did, silly boy. You are now mine. You have such generosity of spirit—no wonder I want to marry you.’

  Both of us smiled.

  ‘Perhaps you are right. What happened that day was about me almost succumbing to his game.’

  ‘He is an ally now,’ I reassured her. ‘He has a hold on my mother, and if anyone can persuade her about our marriage, it is he.’

  Avanti suddenly realized that she too ought to go home this weekend so that we could announce a wedding date soon. Getting up with a start, she declared that if she was going home, she had better go and look for wedding saris for her family and relatives. Fortunately, she had got some money from her company—arrears for the months she had been away in Bangalore. As she was leaving, I handed her the paper with her scribbles.

  ‘It must have fallen out of your bag,’ I said casually.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said, turning red.

  ‘It was on the floor and I picked it up.’

  ‘Did you read it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I agree with your QED.’

  She was embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean for you to see it.’ There was an uneasy pause. ‘I am dead scared of this marriage business, Amar. You know how I have avoided it all my life . . . all the minefields laid by my parents. I still worry. Seriously, do you think it will?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Work out.’

  I looked puzzled.

  ‘Our marriage? Will I still be able to meditate and all?

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And visit my guru on the weekends?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh!’ she remembered suddenly. ‘I must go and get the guru’s blessings.’

  ‘You mean he has to approve?’

  ‘No. I just want his blessings . . . for our marriage, I mean.’ There was another uncomfortable pause. ‘Amar, please, let’s never interfere with each other’s interests. If I go away to some place where I want to be myself, you mustn’t worry; you mustn’t ask.’

  ‘What’s the use of falling in love if we both remain the same? I mean, isn’t love supposed to change us? Break our solitude, transform us?’

  We continued thus, speaking about the difficult balance between intimacy and independence. She felt strongly that the solidity of togetherness should not be taken to such an extreme as to render love fragile. When lovers are expected to fuse together, it should not lead to a paralysing dependence that will not allow them to continue to grow. She insisted that love should leave their individual integrities in place.

  ‘Isn’t it the best kind of love when we become what we love and yet remain ourselves?’ she said.

  ~

  Before she had reached QED, Avanti’s analysis of the pros and cons of marriage had revealed a passionate concern for her freedom. She was seeking the right balance between togetherness and individuality. No one, I think, has expressed this better than the Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran in his masterpiece, The Prophet. In these lines, he gives advice on the secret of a loving and lasting marriage:

  Let there be spaces in your togetherness,

  And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

  Love one another but make not a bond of love:

  Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

  Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

  Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

  Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

  Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music . . .

  Virginia Woolf, the English novelist, had similar doubts as Avanti about marriage. She was anxious about her freedom, especially her ability to work. In her first novel, The Voyage Out, one of her characters says, ‘I worship you, but I loathe marriage. I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise and the thought of you interfering with my work, hindering me. What would you answer?’

  Avanti worried that our intimacy might transform her sense of time and space. Indeed, intimacy can easily become oppressive when there is a constant demand for emotional closeness. In these circumstances, the rational course is for the two persons to negotiate their personal ties, somewhat in the way politicians negotiate their ties with voters in a democracy. In marriage, open and free communication presumes open and free communication between the two. It also needs a degree of equality and respect for the other’s capabilities. This is often not the case.

  Fourteen years into her extraordinary marriage to Leonard, Virginia Woolf wrote about a related problem—her horror of the ‘dailiness’ of marriage:

  . . . the horror of marriage lies in its ‘dailiness’. All acuteness of a relationship is rubbed away by this. The truth is more like this: life—say 4 days out of 7—becomes automatic; but on the 5th day a bead of sensation (between husband and wife) forms which is all the fuller and more sensitive because of the automatic customary unconscious days on either side. That is to say the year is marked by moments of great intensity . . . Hardy’s ‘moments of vision’. How can a relationship endure for any length of time except under these conditions?

  It is only these occasional ‘moments of vision’ that make a marriage last. Otherwise, one might as well accept that marriage is ‘sex for money’, which Woolf compared to writing: ‘Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.’

  Behind Avanti’s and Virginia Woolf’s concerns about marriage is the burden of centuries of mythology about romantic love, which encumbers couples with unrealistic expectations. These hopes are more acute in the West, but even in India, the middle class had begun to carry them soon after Independence, thanks largely to Bollywood. Choosing a man or a woman for the rest of one’s life is to gamble. This is why older friends and relatives urge the young couple ‘to think it over’ before taking the decisive step. They foster the illusion that the choice of a wife or husband is governed by a certain number of accurately weighable pros and cons of the sort that Avanti had written down on the piece of paper which she did not want me to see that afternoon at the Bombay Gymkhana.

  Avanti’s was a natural delusion of common sense. The truth is that no matter how hard you may try to anticipate the future, weighing carefully the probabilities of success and failure, you will never be able to foresee how the two of you are going to develop in the future. The factors involved are too many. Just imagine, nature has needed hundreds of thousands of years to select a species which seems now to be adapted to its surroundings. And yet, we nurse the presumption that we can, during one lifetime, resolve the problems of two highly complex physical and moral beings to adapt to one another. This is what unsatisfactorily married persons suppose after having convinced themselves that a second or third trial is going to yield a closer approximation to ‘happiness’.

  It seems to me that it would be far more appropriate for young people to learn that their choice must always have an arbitrary eleme
nt, of which they are undertaking to bear the consequences. To choose a woman for a wife is to say to ‘your’ Avanti: ‘I want to live with you just as you are.’ For, this really means: ‘It is you I choose to share my life with, and that is the only evidence I have that I love you. It is the only honest way for two human beings to give themselves the right to use the word “love”.’

  ~

  As the train pulled into the New Delhi railway station, I saw the slim, awkward figure of my father on the platform. He threw up an arm in a clumsy gesture of pleasure as I stepped out of the train. I touched his feet and we embraced with feeling. His eyes were the same—innocent, sincere and remote. There was an embarrassed shyness between father and son as we walked out of the station into the waiting car.

  ‘Your telegram got your mother worried. But telegrams always worry her.’

  ‘There wasn’t enough time for a letter.’

  ‘That’s what I told her.’

  ‘How does she like the new house?’

  ‘It is bigger and the grass and the garden have come up. She stays busy with the flowers.’

  Their new home was not far from the station and before long we entered the expansive government bungalow, which came with his recent promotion. We walked out into the garden at the back, where my mother sat in the winter sun, waiting for us. I touched her feet and we embraced with trembling tenderness. My father looked on with a smile at the reunion of mother and son.

  ‘Amar!’ is all she uttered.

  Still holding hands, we sat down. My father poured us a glass of buttermilk. The earlier awkwardness between father and son had vanished. My mother spoke enthusiastically about my father’s recent elevation to the head of the medical department, which she termed ‘a fitting reward’ after twenty years of service. There were many perquisites that went with the position which enchanted her—a retinue of office staff, a big house with a garden, and servants to look after it, an office car with a chauffeur. These were symbols of power and summed up what she found thoroughly delightful about her new life. No longer was she a ‘nobody’; she was a ‘somebody’ with prestige and status. Suddenly, she was surrounded by sycophants; even though she could see through their flattery, she enjoyed it. She was now in demand socially and a feeling of gaiety entered her life. Having waited for so long, she was determined to make the most of it.