3
I have already said what I needed to propose about the origins of ‘A Biography’ and how a reader should approach it. But perhaps there is still more that remains to be said, since the reader will receive this introduction with only the first part of the biography, and what about the other two?
‘Shekhar: A Biography’ is divided into three parts.10 Even though all three parts are woven together with the same narrative threads, they remain complete works independent of each other. It could be said that the biography is really the sequence of three independent novels. But even if this weren’t the case, it would still be possible to publish them separately, but since it is the case, there is no need to offer a defence. It is not necessary for those who do not wish to read the second part after completing the first to believe that they have wasted their time on an unfinished story. They could consider the first part to be a complete novel, and they could justifiably base their judgement on the first part alone. I won’t complain about biases.
But it wouldn’t be a digression to offer a defence here to those readers who want to know why they should read the remaining parts while reading the first or want to know what assumptions they should make about the other parts. For those readers I want to say that if you look at the three parts of ‘Shekhar’ from the perspective of purpose—and if I can be so arrogant as to say from the perspective of meaning!—there is a singular solitariness; a monochromatic warp holds together and bears the fat and strong individual strands of yarn from a multihued weft to form a carpet, and similarly the multicoloured verses of the three parts of life form a single fibre of my desires and my words, which is singular, indivisible, and which to me is both a criticism and a worship of a life. In forging ‘A Life’ I have tried to forge a plot; as a result, no matter how it turns out I cannot approach the reader as a supplicant, but I will say this: if you have the daring to sit in judgement, at least have the decency to read the whole thing first.
Having introduced you to Shekhar, I now step away—then you can familiarize yourself with him directly. Shekhar is not an important man, nor is he a good man. But he is trying honestly to find himself in the light of humanity’s collective experience. He might not even be a good companion, but you won’t harbour him any ill will after walking with him to the end, I have full faith in that. And who knows, when we are all composite characters in the world today, then you might discover that somewhere within you, too, is a Shekhar, who is not important, nor good, but awake and independent and honest—deeply honest!
Prologue
The gallows!
The rareness of life—it can neither be reproduced by any of the forces in this world, our progress, our science, nor by any of the tools and techniques developed by our civilization—and yet a simple heartlessness is all it takes to snuff out that same life, to ensure its destruction—the gallows!
But why the gallows? To punish a criminal. But will this rehabilitate him? Will this erase the effects of his crimes? The indelible line which has been drawn by his hands—will that be erased when he is gone? The gallows: a lesson to teach others. But what kind of education is this supposed to be which orchestrates a display of cruel, heartless contempt towards life in order to teach respect for it? And has this ever taught anyone anything? The idea of the gallows has always gripped me strangely—it has something of the power of a cobra’s eyes: bone chilling and yet unfalteringly hypnotic . . . A hypnotizing summons that turns even this machinery of vengeance into something poetic, as the unfortunate—or should I say most fortunate!—person who is sacrificed on its altar is rewarded with one of life’s realizations, so his untimely end is simultaneously a kind of completion of his life . . .
The gallows!
The high tide of youth in a dried-up ocean. The tresses of darkness cascading, thick with shadows, over the dawn. A monstrous, dark raincloud athwart the beauty of the autumnal sky. Its realization is precisely in this opposition, in this sudden juxtaposition and in the implied, unprecedented poetry of terror that it produces . . .
What kind of realization—to what end? What will my death realize—and what realization did my life produce?
The curtain rises and falls. The scenes drop and are raised. But with the curtain’s every fall, and every transformation of the scene, transfixed even in death, another drop falls into the stream of the play; another drop which is nothing in itself but without which the stream lacks movement—without which it doesn’t even exist.
I am performing my life’s retrospective, I am living the life I have already lived a second time. I, who had always looked ahead, have come to the final stretch of my life’s journey and am now looking back to see where I came from and how I drifted, and the curious experiences that have brought me here. Which is why it seems to me that there had been a plan in my drifting, containing the germ of my ultimate objective. My psychological idiosyncrasies contained a unique hedonism that was turning into my guiding principle. And the mountains, valleys, rivers and streams, trees and forests, storms and rains that came across the path of my life all possessed for me and me alone a unity, whose purpose was to give the particular shape of my life completion at a specific time, in specific circumstances in a specific place, after specific preparations and means, in which it would find its own realization, its own fruition and its own coherence . . . as of now I am unfinished but I am not lacking; I am incomplete, but there are no more places to affix things that could complete me.
Except for this retrospective. Perhaps it is the provision for the final stretch of my life’s journey, because this, and only this, brings me contentment.
*
Before everyone else, I turn to you, Shashi.
Not because you came into my life first or because you are the freshest memory. But because the core of my being depends on you—exactly like the blade of a sword depends on the whetstone’s dream. You are the whetstone that has sharpened my life’s blade again and again, that has scraped and ground me and turned me into something that is not ashamed to stand exposed before the world—that knows no reason to feel ashamed.
You aren’t alive any more. You were broken along the way as I created Shekhar, perhaps you were even broken by Shekhar’s own hands. And I’ve been repeating it over and over in my mind—‘Shashi is gone, Shashi is dead, Shashi is gone’—but I still can’t fathom what has happened exactly. No one can accurately assess the damages he has caused, or feel it fully.
Why? Why . . . how does a sharp sword know that the whetstone is broken as long as the sword isn’t dull or doesn’t break? And I’m still alive. I’m still burning, still ‘am’.
But then why do I say that you don’t exist any more? The whetstone that sharpens a sword doesn’t break until the sword breaks. I have to die, swinging from the gallows, but for now I’m still alive.
Give me permission to remember you. To speak of you and use the word ‘memory’ is to desecrate a prayer, but I’ll still ask it of you. Give me this right. You’ve died, you’ve become the essential ‘nothing’. Let me explain this to myself, but in order to do that, I have to bring forth a thing which is ‘something’ for me—your shadows, which I used to believe were real . . .
No, it’s not the one where I was scared and so I asked you, ‘What happens, Shashi?’ And you replied hoarsely, drifting off into unconsciousness, ‘Happiness, Shekhar. Happiness . . .’ I don’t have the strength to bear that moment for anything more than an instant.
I can remember how we used to meet and talk effortlessly. We felt affection; we felt attraction; but not the kind of affection that flows by holding on to hardship, not the kind of attraction that builds its home only on a foundation of pain . . .
This realization hit me hard when I got out of jail and saw you for the first time. That’s why I said, ‘I’ve lost so much now that I’m out. While I was in jail I thought you and I were one, but now it seems that I have to learn who you are all over again.’ You cried . . .
Suddenly, you said, ‘Won’t you
come and see my home?’ Because you were married now, you had a home . . .
I saw your home and the man who was the reason that the house was now your home. And it seemed to me that you were content and your life had now been set firmly on its tracks and there was no one else anywhere near those tracks. So I became even more afraid that I had to learn who you were all over again—because you weren’t familiar any more . . .
I said, ‘Shashi, sing something for me.’
‘I don’t do that sort of thing any more.’
‘Why, are you too old now?’
You laughed. And as a result of the sound of your laughter I had a vision, the kind that only seldom occurs. I saw unwaveringly and with perfect clarity, the cloud-capped sky, the dimmed twilight, the settled winds, the invisible lightning and a solitary bird falling helplessly as its wings suddenly broke in mid-flight, which while it was falling tried to find its flight, find its place by writhing in pain, writhing in pain . . .
Then I suddenly knew who you were . . . and I couldn’t bear to be there any longer. I asked for your leave and left.
You came to the door to see me off.
‘Got a good look at my house?’
‘Yes, I saw. I saw quite a bit,’ I said and left hurriedly, and you stood there encircled by the perimeter of your home.
The ruins of the buildings that were built at the time of Banda Veer1 and others built around that time, and some more recent than those, but still very old buildings. Shekhar sits in one such building. He’s sitting in his ‘room’, but in reality it’s just the sill of an old-fashioned window on one side of the granary. Wide and misshapen, blackened with antiquity, but functional. He’s sitting on that sill, his arms hanging to his side and his head is bent to his right, leaning out.
There are several bullet holes on the walls of the room and on the window. There are a few emplacements in the walls that were designed for returning fire from the inside. The bullet holes and the emplacements comprised a chapter in the history of that house that no one reads any more. He’s sitting there, in the window, and also not noticing them, nor can he see anything beyond the scene that is before his eyes.
A small courtyard enclosed by falling walls. In one corner, a small jujube tree casting a shadow over a dilapidated, dried-up well. A pile of old-fashioned bricks next to the well, and some yellowed, wind-scattered, peepul leaves on the right side of the courtyard. Outside the walls, a peepul tree and a cow that is tied to it, the vaulted rooftop of a tiny little temple nearby and the drooping pods of a tamarind tree complete the tableau. And all of this in the tranquil quiet of the afternoon.
That’s what he’s looking at as he sits. Shashi’s father lies ill with a heart condition, and so the whole family is anxiously expecting a calamity. A dark shadow hovers over the house, and it seems as if the silences of the rooms in the house are whispering to each other in muffled voices.
It’s to escape from that strange, pulsating silence that he comes to sit here, and tries to forget the smell of the air in that house by watching this scene instead. Because he loves each member of that family but can’t bear that taunting muteness.
Shashi is the queen of that household, and his sister. It’s on account of Shashi that he abandons the vital and unfettered atmosphere of college and comes here, finding consolation even in these shadows.
She’s not really his sister. But in that context, even if he feels a difference, it’s not of distance, but of deep closeness, of an unobstructed friendship. A feeling like the early morning sun in autumn that not only lays to rest the shadows of that house but dissolves the shades of his differences, too.
She’s not a relative. That’s why Shekhar doesn’t ‘remember’ her, doesn’t ‘look in’ on her. He hasn’t earned the right. He’s only been allowed to worship. He sits there and dreams, dreams in which Shashi does not appear like a portrait but like the light which illuminates the portrait—a feeling remains rather than a thought.
That feeling arises sometimes in a terrible shudder. Shashi sings. Her voice lacks sophistication, she lacks the nuance of a trained artist and the attraction that radiates, but it has a stormy brilliance, the sweet warmth of fire in autumn. Her voice has the richness of a violin, the taut pain of a lute playing on some distant mountain at sunrise, the precise urgency of a flute heard in a pitch-black night of the monsoon, and on top of all of that, the marvellous daring of a voice, with the depth of youth, which pushes itself to the limits of breaking but doesn’t break.
And she sings—what? A song that Shekhar has heard several times, from many different voices, several times from thousands of individuals singing collectively, but whose meaning, whose rising flame he has never felt.
What was it that awoke within me when I heard that song? Love, or anguish, or aggression, or all three? Whatever it was it came over me like a trance and showed me wild dreams of heroism and battlefields, where I could clearly hear myself telling the story of my own strength, my own sacrifices, my own fire-smelted soul—a story whose premise, whose internal force was Shashi. And it would awaken in me the awareness of a very sacred object, for which I was ready to go on jihad, and it would overpower me, this enigmatic feeling.
This call of Shashi’s personality, this ‘appeal’,2 was for the part of my mind that spills over from the ferment of life’s activities, the part that is a rebel. But there was another part of my mind that could only reflect the beauty of creation, which really is my brain’s heart, and therefore is a poet, and that part would wake at the sound of Shashi’s laughter. There was something in that laughter that thrilled, but would steal the power of speech from you. It was a laugh beyond poetry; you would have to fall silent when you heard it. My imagination could show me visions of rivers, of waterfalls, of moonrises, of oceans, the Milky Way, but then quietly it would return to recall the sound of that laughter.
The cloud-capped sky, the lightless evening, the settled winds, the invisible lightning, and today there is no solitary bird falling helplessly as its wings suddenly break in mid-flight, who while it was falling tried to find its flight, find its place by at least writhing in pain, at least writhing in pain . . .
In this tiny hell, the voice of an ascetic points me to a sacred hermitage and reduces my vast delusion by an iota, forgetting that it in no way was appropriate in this situation, and with a godly sympathy, says, ‘O Sheldrake bride, bid your mate farewell. The night is come!’3
Oh night!
I can no longer recall from which faraway land we departed and arrived here! Our houseboat has only taken us a mile away from Srinagar yet, but it seems as if it has taken ages, as if it has been going for countless years and will go on for countless more, as if the travellers have been stricken with Narad’s curse and can never stop anywhere.4
The houseboat has passed through the Jhelum canal and is now entering Manasbal Lake. It has already crossed the filthy waters of the Jhelum, and it has long since passed the dense shade of the chinar trees. Now the lake’s limpid waters reflect the sky’s cloudlessness, and the long grasses that undulate in the lake, reflecting the brilliance of the sun, sparkling and prismatic—sometimes golden, red, sometimes taking on a dazzling green. And sometimes a ray of light will cut through their tangles and make glisten a rock lying at the bottom.
The houseboat isn’t moving quickly. It’s drifting. The current is so weak that it’s as if the power which set it in motion gave it a push and then exhausted itself, and the boat is pulling along in the stupor of that single push it hasn’t been able to stop yet. Its other bow—it’s as if it has just awoken from a nap, seen the lattice of light dancing before it and is extending its still-drowsy arm to catch it.
Two people sit on its stern. The boy is wearing knickers, but the rest of his body is naked, his hair scattered and tousled, and he holds a long staff that he’s turned into a fishing pole by attaching a hook to one end. He plucks white lotus blossoms from the lake and drops them into a pile in front him, but he’s not satisfied. He’s only
plucking the half-opened blossoms; for some reason, the fully opened ones don’t interest him.
A girl sits nearby. But mentally, she is hundreds of thousands of miles away. She has several landscape paintings of Kashmir made by an English painter, and in her lap, she has a book—Kalidasa’s Raghuvansha. But she isn’t looking at the paintings, nor is she reading the book. She’s looking at the boy blankly, humming something to herself. Who knows what she’s thinking.
The boy is about eight years old, the girl about thirteen. The boy is me and the girl is my sister.
There are other people on the houseboat. But in the world of this afternoon there are no others deriving pleasure from the sun of this affection. They are separate, lost. And the houseboat is advancing patiently, chasing their dreams.
The boy exhausts himself plucking flowers and now there are no more bunches of flowers; and now it’s only after a long stretch that he finds the occasional flower. And now they’re reaching the deep parts of the lake. The boy tears the long stems of the flowers into pieces and makes a garland out of them. The stems are torn in half to make a link, and at the bottom of each chain dangles a flowery pendant. He goes on making garlands and each time he finishes one he sneaks over to his sister and gently puts it around her neck. She sits unfazed. Each time she smiles a dreamy smile at him and then drifts away. Her brother has piled her up with flowers, but he’s not satisfied, and she doesn’t stop him either.
The flowers are almost gone—the few that remain have broken petals. The boy thinks that these might not be suitable for garlands. But at the same time, he realizes that there aren’t enough garlands—there is still room for many more . . . but then, perplexed, he goes to his sister and says guiltily, ‘The rest weren’t any good.’
Shekhar Page 2