Kama

by Gurcharan Das

  ‘A woman loses her lover as soon as she makes him a husband,’ said the psychologist, sounding like an oracle. He diagnosed my nagging discontent as a universal dilemma. I had fallen into the ‘romantic trap’ that creates an illusion that love will last forever. Of course, one knows in one’s rational mind that love is not supposed to endure or even to be exclusive, but the immediate rush of desire makes one believe that love for this one person will last forever. I agreed with him instinctively. This is how I had felt in the early years of our married life when Avanti and I couldn’t get enough of each other and I felt our desire for each other would never die. But sooner or later, we did get enough of each other. Avanti, more than I, no longer felt the same physical craving. It was possibly the result of lazy access. The availability of each other’s bodies is too easy in a marriage.

  ‘Yes, sexual desire gives way over time, especially with the coming of children,’ he said. ‘It’s something else . . . another sentiment, another kind of love that is more mature, longer-lasting, almost maternal, akin to a tender companionship, but it is love, nevertheless.’ He suggested counselling, jointly for Avanti and me. ‘Where they love, they have no desire, and where they desire, they cannot love,’ said the oracle, quoting Freud, who had observed this problem in many of his patients.

  I was puzzled. ‘You mean because Avanti and I love each other, our desire has waned?’

  The mundane reality of everydayness takes its toll, he explained. You are presented daily the physical, moral and personal defects of each other, plus the tiresome work of raising children; all these contribute to the decline of passion. The more common problem he had encountered was the opposite one—how to maintain male potency in a long-term relationship. ‘After years of monogamy,’ he said, ‘it is not uncommon for men to develop acute sexual disinterest, even secondary impotence.’

  When I broached the idea of counselling, Avanti laughed. She dismissed it as something ‘high-fangled for immature people’. It was not a serious problem, merely a phase in our lives, and I was making too much of it—it would go away, she said. I let it be and never mentioned it again. But it didn’t go away. My feelings of resentment gave way to resignation and sadness. I concluded melancholically that desire must fade inevitably in middle age. Isn’t this what happens to every romance? Even the great love between Anna Karenina and Vronsky faded in the end and then . . . and then, I didn’t dare to think any more of the consequences.

  Avanti’s answer to my gloomy restlessness was not to take passion too seriously. A bit like my mother, she had decided that one ought not to base something as significant as marriage and children purely on ephemeral emotions. Although we didn’t dwell on it, I was convinced that in Avanti’s eyes, marriage ought to be sustained by shared values, common interests and doing things together. She was wise in believing that romance and marriage did not always have to go together. If a marriage evolved after a dozen years into a companionship of friendship, it would be trusting, intimate and grounded in honesty with a commitment to the well-being of the children. ‘If only men and women could be equals and genuine friends in marriage!’ she had once exclaimed when we were discussing the marital problems of another couple we knew. This was true to character; Avanti had always believed in genuine Aristotelian philia, ‘friendship’, where love consists in giving and wishing the good of the other. Meanwhile, I remained vulnerable.

  ~

  Amaya and I were not supposed to meet but we did. Both of us were travelling on the Deccan Queen bound for Pune where I had planned to attend the memorial service of a childhood friend. Avanti didn’t know him well and didn’t feel like accompanying me. And frankly, I was happy to have some time to myself. As Amaya got on the train, I noticed her striking face. She vaguely resembled Catherine Deneuve—fragile and melancholic with her lustrous hair framing a face of dignified wilfulness. We exchanged a few awkward words when she was trying unsuccessfully to locate her seat. Although we were seated near each other in the chair car, we did not make eye contact after she sat down; but we did cast furtive glances at each other. Towards the end of the journey, she suddenly broke the ice. She asked if I knew where the National Film Institute was located.

  I told her that it was in the Deccan Gymkhana area. After a few seconds, I added that it was on my way, and since I had a car meeting me, I would happily drop her. If she preferred otherwise, I would find her a taxi. She was grateful for the offer of a lift.

  ‘Ah, you are a film-maker?’ I asked.

  ‘No, a historian.’

  ‘What is a historian doing at the film institute?’

  ’I am a historian of cinema and I’m giving a lecture. It’s part of a festival of Satyajit Ray’s films.’

  ‘Hmm . . . my favourite is Charulata.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a lovely film!’ After a pause, she said, ‘But I love the Apu trilogy the best.’

  She was beautiful with sad, brown eyes and at least ten years younger than me. She didn’t ask about me—what I did or where I came from. Anything I said would have been inadequate.

  Soon the train arrived at the station in Pune. As Amaya got up and began to collect her things, I repeated my offer to drop her en route. She smiled gratefully and followed me. We made small, impersonal talk on the way to her lecture. When she got off, we said goodbye with warmth and propriety, without exchanging phone numbers or addresses. We didn’t even know each other’s names. If she thought any further about my gesture, she would probably put it down to the kindness of a stranger whom she would never see again.

  After she left, I realized I was drawn powerfully to this obviously attractive but serious woman. I told myself it was silly of me to make anything of it. I had just met her on the train and I knew nothing about her. I was not looking for love; yet, I was vulnerable. I had never been unfaithful to Avanti in the dozen years we had been married. As the car sped towards the memorial meeting, I kept thinking of Amaya. Soon, however, I got distracted and my mind became occupied thinking about the people I was going to meet. I had known some of them from my schooldays. I thought about my friend who had died, but for some reason, I did not grieve for him. He had been a happy man. Unlike me, he was forever joking and laughing. Memories of my childhood came rushing back, and they seemed to settle, as they always did, on the same recollection: I am feeling cold and isolated on a winter morning in Lahore; I jump into my mother’s bed; soon I begin to hear my mother’s heartbeat and feel her warmth.

  ~

  When I think back to my first meeting with Amaya, it is a verse from a medieval female poet, Bhavaka, that reminds me how vulnerable I was. Although the Sanskrit poet is referring to a wife’s boredom at the disappearance of passion after marriage, it could just as well have been describing my own discontent at Avanti’s flagging desire:

  Where the moon is not inveighed against

  and no sweet words of the messenger are heard;

  where speech is not choked with tears

  and the body grows not thin;

  but where one sleeps in one’s own house

  with he who owns, subservient to one’s wish;

  can this routine of household sex,

  this wretched thing, deserve the name of love?

  The poet has underlined in this verse what Socrates tells Agathon: ‘one does not desire what one does not lack.’ Unlike the differences between Avanti and me, this verse seems to reflect the sameness between men and women. But folk wisdom tells us the opposite—men seek novelty and get bored with monogamy while women want long-term security and are happier with habituation; unlike men, they prefer commitment and are more likely to experience sexual pleasure and fulfilment in a long-lasting relationship. If this is true, then how can relationships between men and women ever be successful? There is an inherent contradiction between what men and women want. Monogamy is antagonistic to male sexuality but it is apparently necessary for female sexual fulfilment. If such wisdom is correct, there can never be equilibrium between men’s and women’s need
s, and heterosexual love is doomed to failure and unhappiness.

  Proust also raises the same question about the boredom and repetitiveness of daily life, and how long the average human being expects to be treasured. When Marcel was a young boy, he longed to be friends with the beautiful and vivacious Gilberte, whom he met when he used to play on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Eventually, his wish came true. Gilberte gradually grew fond of him and invited him regularly to tea at her house, where she served him lavishly with cakes and sandwiches. He was happy at first but after a while he began to take it for granted. What was an impossible dream had now become routine. Desire is about anticipation laced with the uncertainty of fulfilment, and the problem lay in Proust’s old enemy—habit. We become contemptuous of what is familiar and tend to prefer the novel, which reinforces the folk wisdom that a long acquaintance with a loved person and knowing a person too well breeds boredom. This is especially true of a married couple.

  Another tenet of folk wisdom is that men care mainly for physical beauty and I wondered if this was true about my instant attraction to Amaya. However, I discovered that evolutionary biology bears this out. Studies show that beauty is not only in the eyes of the beholder. Symmetrical faces with sharp lines and high brows, like Amaya’s, win out in job interviews, in finding mates, and even in the care that mothers give to their babies. They have a biological advantage in the Darwinian natural selection process. Folk wisdom also believes that men love egocentrically, even selfishly, demanding the continual satisfaction of their own desires; and are notoriously disloyal and non-exclusive. Women, on the other hand, are supposed to be more concerned with character and mental beauty; they tend to love unconditionally; they value love for its own sake; they give far more and their love is constant and exclusive; they define themselves as moral agents in their capacity to care. But this wisdom is contradicted by studies on women which show consistently that women pick men on the basis of wealth, power, prestige, industriousness, reliability and intelligence.

  Poets also seem to agree with the ‘folk’ that there are genuine differences between men and women. They too believe that men are more concerned with worldly pursuits whereas a woman’s whole identity depends on love. The English poet George Byron wrote famously:

  Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

  ‘Tis woman’s whole existence.

  Neither the poets nor the folk have got the story quite right. Many biologists and anthropologists have claimed that there aren’t sharp differences between men and women. The biologist Mary Jane Sherfey believes that women by nature have sexually insatiable appetites—something that Manu had also claimed in his dharma text. She says that left to their own devices, unimpeded by the imposition of cultural norms of proper behaviour, women would enjoy having multiple sexual partners probably even more than men do. The anthropologist Meredith Small also thinks that neither men nor women are ‘naturally monogamous’. So far, at least, I haven’t found a definitive answer to the question of gender differences in love and sexuality. And if there are differences, are they natural in origin or largely the result of culture? Whatever the facts, it needed the wonderful ancient Greek female poet Sappho to remind us that not only is love more important to a woman but it represents a superior way of life—grander, for example, than military or commercial success:

  There are those who say an array of horsemen,

  and others of marching men,

  and others of ships,

  is the most beautiful thing on the dark earth.

  But I say it is whatever one loves.

  ~

  The following day I arrived early at the Pune station for the journey back to Bombay. Since I had time to kill, I got myself chai from a stall on the platform, found an empty bench, and began to go over the events of the previous night in my mind. I had dined with old friends and they had complimented me on my speech at the memorial service. One of them had quipped that the best part of my speech was its brevity. Another had inquired about Avanti and why she hadn’t come. I had been evasive. My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a vaguely familiar voice.

  ‘Hello stranger, is this seat taken?’

  I got up with a start. Seeing Amaya’s lovely face, I burst into a smile and made place for her on the bench.

  ‘Are you like me,’ she asked with a nervous laugh, ‘always afraid of missing trains and always showing up too early?’

  ‘No, I think I got the departure time wrong.’

  ‘I saw you from a distance, and thought I’d thank you once again for the lift. It was kind of you.’

  ‘But it was on my way.’

  ‘People don’t do these things any more, not unless they have a motive.’

  ‘I had none.’

  ‘I know, you didn’t even ask my name.’

  ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.’

  ‘I am not disturbing you, am I?’

  ‘How was your lecture?’

  ‘I think I may have bored them.’

  ‘What were you speaking on?’

  ‘On Ray’s use of music in his films.’

  It began to drizzle. Although there was an awning above us, I noticed that raindrops were falling on her silk sari. I took out a wrap from my handbag and gave it to her. She protested but then accepted it with a smile. We chatted on and the time passed quickly and soon we were boarding the train. We managed to get a kind passenger to exchange seats with us and were able to sit together on the way back. She was still shy and our conversation remained intermittent and impersonal. Gradually, she opened up.

  ‘You were despondent yesterday?’ she asked.

  ‘Was I?‘

  ‘Yes, you have such a transparent face.’

  ‘It was nothing really.’

  ‘I thought perhaps you were grieving for your friend.’

  I looked puzzled.

  ‘Oh, the one who, you know . . . whose memorial service you attended.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes.’

  We began to talk more freely and there sprang an easy understanding, the sort of trust that exists among old friends. She told me that she lived in Baroda with her husband in a spacious house near the campus. Both taught at the university.

  ‘Have you ever visited Baroda?’

  ‘Yes, you have a good school of fine arts, and I have a few friends there. ‘

  ’Time passes quickly in Baroda because you are forever visiting each other. It’s boring. You know exactly what someone is going to say before they say it. How I wish I could live in a big, anonymous city! A city like Bombay, where people value their time . . . and privacy. Plus, of course, the museums, galleries, film premieres—the latest in everything! The only excitement in Baroda is when your friends quarrel.’

  Amaya had just had a quarrel the previous week with her husband because she wanted to look after her ageing parents. She had suggested bringing them to live with her but he had refused.

  ‘Well, I think he is probably right.’

  ‘But we have so much space!’

  ‘Still, it’s his privacy.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And here I was just speaking about privacy . . .’

  She suddenly stopped and pointed excitedly at the strange light outside.

  ‘Yes, pink and grey, the signature of a monsoon sky!’

  We looked at the sky and continued our light banter and gradually the masks began to fall. I reciprocated her confidences and gave her a brief outline of my life—how I grew up in Delhi, got a job in Bombay, married Avanti and had two children.

  ‘You have such a wonderful comforting manner,’ she said, peering into my eyes. ‘I feel I have known you forever.’

  I couldn’t contain my feelings of discontent for too long. ‘Of all ridiculous things, Amaya, the most ridiculous seems to me to want to be constantly busy. Ever since I can remember, I have made “to-do” lists. All day I keep hurrying at work from one thing to another. Then I just crumble into bed at night feeling totally incomplete.’

 
; Amaya was surprised at the sudden change in our conversation. She appeared eager to hear more. ‘I seem to live out my days in a dull, loveless stupor, while there is a whole life that remains unlived. This hurry-hurry of life has become my enemy. Where is the joy?’ Even while having fun, I told her, I feel I have ‘to do’ something and the rush continues. ‘I don’t have the courage to miss the opening of an exhibition or the premiere of a film. I cannot stop myself from reading the latest book that everyone is talking about. Even keeping up with the news in the daily paper is a burden.’

  ‘So, how would you want to live?’ she asked.

  ‘I think I should like to go to a museum and spend an hour in front of a single masterpiece; or read just one book and take six months over it. And read it slowly, again and again.’ After a pause, I added, ‘You must think I am crazy.’

  ‘I think you are lucky. At least you know what you want.’

  We continued to talk in an easy, fluent way, about light and serious matters, and the time passed quickly. We hardly noticed that the sky outside had turned cloudy and dark. Soon it began to rain. Our conversation too seemed to become more intimate. Before long we were exchanging confidences, the sort that lovers save for one another.

  ‘I think I could fall in love with you,’ I said.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘How did we get from there to here?’

  ‘I don’t know but I am happy we did.’

  ‘So, you think we’ll meet again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘It’s fated.’

  Between pauses we were stealing burrowing stares of longing, and by the time we reached Bombay, it was clear to both of us that we were profoundly attracted to each other. We had moved into a dangerous zone and were completely vulnerable. As we parted at the station, I placed my hand affectionately on her shoulder and she quickly reciprocated by gripping my hands tightly. There were enough reasons to believe that our brief encounter on the train might become a full-blown affair.