Jewel Less Crown: Saga Of Life

by BS Murthy

  'Wonder how greed makes man mad indeed,' contemplated Suresh, 'and how he turns blind to the consequences of crime! After all, Parikshit had time to understand where all that would lead him to. Leave alone the cruelty of the crime, didn't it reflect the stupidity of man! And what do those murders of sexual jealousy tell but the tale of man's idiocy? Oh, on the pretext of patching up, how easily the husband or the paramour would lure the other into a death trap! What a wonder is it that one comes to trust someone with a motive to harm one! Oh, if only the intended victim had known an iota of the human psychology! Would then there be the death of one and the jailing of the other?'

  There were those rustic folks from Rohilkhand, who always huddled together. The Tiharians promptly named them the Dirty Dozen. They were under trial for taking the

  law into their own hands for dispensing their own brand of caste justice. The trigger was the inter-caste marriage amidst the separatist mindset of the village folks. When the couple was caught red-handed, amidst sweet nothings, all hell broke loose in the village. Apprehended on the spot, the couple was dragged all the way to the village square to face a kangaroo trial at the caste panchayat.

  Even as the panchayat began the session, the errant couple turned out to be the red herring for those gathered there. As if to incense all further with a sense of outrage, and not to let any lose the focus on the social trespass, the conjugated were tied together to demonstrate the magnitude of their crime. As the guardians of the caste chastity brayed for the polluted blood, the transgressors' parents were pushed into a corner to extricate from which they unequivocally condemned the crime. However, they pleaded for mercy and averred that their separation followed by a few lashes would drive home the point.

  Though living on either side of the caste divide, the gathering ironically got united to uphold the separation of the deviants. Wanting a deterrent punishment to guard against future transgressions, they all pressed the panchayat to make an example of the errant couple. As the condemned were too terrified to speak, someone who came on a visit from the nearby town raised the lone voice of objection to the manner of their detention. Having condemned him roundly for his corrupt thinking, the panchayat pitched in for a harsh sentence for the violators of the caste boundaries. And sensing the public mood, the detractors demanded punishment to the fathers as well for their failure to rein in their children.

  In that senseless tension brought about by the anger of the ignorant mob and the temptation of some amongst them to settle old scores, the panchayat decreed that their respective fathers hang the culprits at that very moment. In a cynical exhibition of human meekness, the hapless were executed with the very hands that had tended them to their youth. What was shocking more than their heinous deed was their collective belief of its righteousness, that was, in spite of the subsequent public outcry.

  Yet, the redeeming feature of that sordid episode was that the fathers of the victims felt emboldened to defy the Dirty Dozen at the Tihar. Ironically thus, they experienced a sense freedom in their confinement. For once, Suresh felt that his crimes, though abominable, paled into insignificance compared to the panchayat's collective cruelty.

  A corner in the cemetery was all that man needed in the end but could he do without some land of his own before that? The compulsion of Hussain and the dilemma of Ram Dev illustrated the reality of land in the impoverished rural north that led them both to the Tihar. While cooling their heels as lifers there, both of them took it all stoically, perceiving themselves as the martyrs of a cause.

  Hussain staked his life to protect his land and ended up killing Rashid, his cousin. He told Suresh that those in the towns failed to appreciate the factors that shape the rural life. The social reality in the village centered on land, and land alone. Thus, life in the countryside could be worse than death without some land to till on. As the head of his family, didn't he owe it to his posterity to preserve the property? Why should one blame him, when it was Rashid's avarice that took him to his grave?

  Whichever way the law might look at it, Rashid asked for it. Had Rashid had his way, what would have happened to his own family? The hardships of life for his kith and kin would have far outweighed his plight in the prison. Didn't he derive the satisfaction that he had averted a mishap to his family? Why, life seemed to have unique ways to link the fates of the mortals and to de-link their destinies at its whims and fancies!

  While his cousin's greed for his land led to Hussain's crime, his own sibling's intent to have his share the property prompted Ram Dev to kill! Well, he was born into that

  community, which, over the time, had evolved the custom that would ensure that the family land was not split up amongst its heirs. What if the males of the clan were to partition the family land from generation to generation? In time, no one would be able to inherit any more than bits and pieces. And wouldn't that make the holding unviable for agriculture, so reckoned the clansmen of yore. Were it to happen, their seers had foreseen, its members would dispose their paltry share and all turn into landless laborers.

  Sensing how that would impoverish the community further, and to forestall that fate, they evolved a bizarre custom but of practical wisdom. It was ruled that only the eldest son would marry for his wife to be of service to him and his brothers as well in the bed and all. So, the land needed no partition to set up nucleus families which effectually denied the right of the brothers to have a wife of their own. But, Nam Dev, the youngest brother of Ram Dev, failed to develop neither a taste for the custom nor an appetite for the elderly sister-in-law on offer. Thus, when the junior Dev wanted to break from the tradition and itched for his wedding, the senior Dev made way for his funeral.

  'How man resorts to murder to protect his interest or avenge an insult!' contemplated Suresh. 'Well, power too augments man's caprice to kill. But man seems to be innately cruel. What a shame the rule of yore winked at the rich abusing the poor. Well, now even the high and mighty men are made to pay for their crimes. Are we not living in the best of just times? Yet, the ignorant eulogize the times gone by.'

  Passion of the heart and the greed of the mind make the theme of crime. And on occasion, a black comedy even. He understood that while the crimes of passion were hard to avert, the misdeeds of ignorance could be greatly reduced. He realized that the criminals and their victims suffered alike by the after-effects of the crime. Feeling sad, he vowed to make it his mission to help the victims of crime, nay ignorance. Seeing the families of the Tiharians suffer in myriad ways, he made his first moves in the philanthropic direction at the Tihar itself.

  But he thought that the remarkable feature about the petty thieves was that they were all unremarkable. Within or without Tihar, they seemed an unobtrusive lot to him. The jail food seemed to address the very need that drove them into thieving. It was as though the consequential loss of freedom was indeed a temporary relief from their existential anxiety. Besides, the triviality of their offence made them feel nonchalant about the outcome of the trial and the sentence as well. Indeed for them, the stint at the gaol appeared a welcome change from their wretched routine.

  Impressed with his zeal to examine life, Tiwari granted Suresh a free rein at Tihar except for interaction with the Punjabi terrorists rotting in their solitary confinement. All the same, Suresh had avoided Charles Sobhraj, the notorious prisoner of the bikini murders. When he saw that Sobhraj's jailors were at his disposal, he thought he was his own man in incarceration. Seeing the way he lorded over the warders, he could see the abuse of money to defeat the purpose of the sentence. And that made Suresh think Sobhraj was the Beelzebub of Tihar. But, when it came to the terrorists, he felt that having been indoctrinated by others for a cause there never was, they were not their own men even when they were free.

  Exposed as he was to the life and times of the convicted, Suresh, in time, firmed up his mind about what he should do and what he should not, as and when he would be free again.

  Episode 3

  Domain of the Devil

>   When at length, Suresh was finding his moorings at Tihar; Subba Rau was brought in to a near stampede there. Why not, the whole nation knew him by then as the man who had pricked at the Premier's face. When Suresh enquired what the fuss was all about, Rau said it was but a 'literary coup'. Probed by Suresh for an account, Rau unfolded the story of his life and times as an unpublished writer.

  In his mid-forties, Rau was seized with an urge to bring himself onto the fictional stage. So to lend scope for his boundless creativity, he chose the vastness of the 'novel' as the setting. And for the medium of expression, he bypassed his mother tongue, Telugu, the Italian of the East. Instead, he chose English not only for its ability to nuance the complexities of life but also for the flair of expression he had in it. Drawing from his examined life, he set out to portray a young woman's life on the male canvas of India.

  Ironically, it was his love for language that impeded the start, but soon enough he got his poetic prose right for the narrative in mind. With his creativity in command over the unique plot he conceived, he wrote with gusto and had his dream novel for his debut in nine months flat. After toiling for a while, for that 'apart title', he pitched in for 'Tangent of Fate'. Then, with a top-of-the-world feeling, he dispatched the manuscript to a leading publisher in New Delhi. While he took the publisher for granted, he received his manuscript post-haste. And that made him see the irony of the title he had chosen for his novel!

  This bolt from the blue shook Rau to the core, and he came to doubt his abilities as a novelist. Thus, holding the manuscript, as one would his dead child, he had a last look at it, as the father would, before the burial. But seeing it as crisp on its return as it was when he had posted it, he felt cheated. As he realized that none at the publisher's end had an open mind, he saw the rejection letter all again. He felt sad at the ungracious averment of unsuitability on the designer letterhead.

  Impulsively, he felt like resubmitting the manuscript with a rejoinder that the concerned editor could take her own time to read and reject it, if it were a must. But, on second thoughts, he realized that it would be treated as sour grapes, and thus kept his own counsel. Anyway, he tried his luck with other Delhi publishers, this time, all at a time. To his distress, it was like the quote of a cartel: Read your manuscript with interest but found it unsuitable for our publication.

  As a last resort, in what was a reverse phenomenon, he looked Westward for salvation, only to be informed that unsolicited souls wouldn't be baptized there. Though he felt it was cruel, he thought it was an honest averment nevertheless. Could it be the unstated policy of the Delhi operatives as well, he suspected, but, couched by the pretentious unsuitability labels!

  To get a feel of the publishing scene back home, he pored over the periodicals and the newspaper supplements in right earnest. What amused as well as frustrated him was that while some publicized the published titles to the hilt, the others debunked them as junk in the reviews. Taking the reviewers seriously, he forwarded his manuscript to them, indicating that it had all the ingredients they believed a novel should have in it. And as none of them responded, he wondered whether the critics were more interested in condemning a work than commending any.

  And, to find the pulse of the Indian writing in English, he picked up some of the wellhyped novels. As he scanned through them one by one, he was amused to find the two basic features of the published kind: if it was not a case of the Western characters on

  the Indian stage, then it must be the Indian Diaspora in the Western setting. It appeared to him as though writing about the Indians in India was passe forthe publishing world.

  In that he saw a literary conspiracy — inducing Indian writers in English into churning out self-deprecating stuff to cater to the prejudices of the Western readers. Well, the aspiring authors too went along to provide vicarious pleasure to the Western readers by negating India. That was why, realized Rau, the tent of the Indian novel in English laid with the worn-out Western pegs in the loose native soil came flat at the whimper of a scrutiny. When it came to the Diaspora produce, it was the wont of the Western media to launch it in India in the haze of publicity to dazzle one and all. Well, but, for a novel to impact its readers, it must be the soulful tale of a people steeped in their native soil, isn't it?

  But then, why the guys should go to such lengths after all? Well, wouldn't have they sensed the potential of the myriad hues of Indian life to shape fascinating pictures of fictional world? What if, in time, some Mahabharata-like creativity resurged in Indian writing in English? Would not the emerging Indian enterprise commercialize it by inundating Western markets? If that were to happen, wouldn't the public there lap up the same and give up on the Western pulp fiction?

  So, reckoned Rau, the Western publishers had set up shop here to avert that eventuality. And the tactic employed by them was to encourage hybrid fiction through publication and dissuade the genuine novel by its rejection. Understandably, Indian writers fell into the trap and began inking hotchpotch on the Western dotted lines. M oreover, to ensure that none deviated from the set course, the publishers had seen to it that the shape they gave it became the norm of the Indian novel. This they could achieve by picturing in the local media that the Indian writing in English was making waves everywhere in the West. Yet, taking no chances, they would keep the bait dangling by doling out hefty advance, on and off, to an odd insider to keep up the farce. It was thus that, the vested interests of the West managed to nip in the bud the genuine Indian novel in English, and averted its challenge to their commercial writing.

  However, raising Rau's hopes, as some literary luminaries projected themselves as M an Fridays of the budding authors; he became expectant and felt the world of writing was not all that rough. But when they too cold-shouldered him, he realized that they were only at self-image building, knowing fully well that someone calling their bluff was remote enough. Thus, he realized that the media was but a manifestation of the makebelieve at its best. Nevertheless, he philosophized that all could be expected to be busy, getting on with their lives, besides pursuing their own interests. He felt at length that it would be a futile exercise on his part to seek help from any quarter.

  Just the same, the irony of the writers' plight pained him. While the 'hard to please' editors reduced the aspirants to the ranks of unpublished writers, the 'harder to amuse' reviewers seemed to wait in the wings to turn the published ones into failed authors! Anyway, while tending to debunk the book on hand, Rau had observed that most of the reviewers aired their grandiose views on the book's topic or tried to exhibit their profound scholarship and/or both. It was as if the book under review provided a stage for their literary exhibitionism!

  What distressed Rau most about the reviewers though was the tendency of some to wonder why the book was written at all! And it was in the advice of the reviewers that the author should cease writing that he saw the hand of cruelty in the world of letters. He wondered why they wouldn't realize that their advice was inimical to their own interests, for without books, where would be the need for reviewers? Wasn't there a felt need for the prevention of cruelty towards the writers? Above all, the publishers

  and the reviewers alike appeared unconcerned about the hapless readers for whose sake the show was supposedly run.

  It was then that he turned to God in desperation. As though addressing his prayers, He appeared in his dream and expressed His helplessness. God said that as publishing was in the devil's domain, there was nothing that He could do to help his cause. Thus, abandoning his further forays into the publishing world, he decided that if he were ever to write again, it would only be for the pleasure of writing, nevermind the publishing.

  When he could put his bitterness behind, his muse moved him all again. Weaving a story in an intricate plot, he completed his second novel in double quick time. It was as if his bottled up creativity was too eager to find its way out. Naming it as the 'Consigned Conscience', he nevertheless sent the manuscript to all the Delhi-wallahs at one go, though wi
th a sense of resignation. And as another subject with a new dimension infused his urge to write, he plunged himself into his third novel.

  As he was in the thick of action by the time the expected rejections arrived, they failed to dampen his spirit. And, one publisher's missive that the theme was interesting but they wouldn't be interested in publishing the same amused him as well. And that made him wonder as to how to write a theme-less wonder for their approval, that was, if they were serious!

  When in time, he completed his third novel; he realized that he was back to the reality of life. By then, however, he realized that to be published, one needed either a reference or a recognizable name. As he knew none who ever stepped into the corridors of a publishing house, he thought, before submitting his fresh manuscript, it was an idea to make a name for himself.

  Realizing that in the media world, the divider between notoriety and fame was rather thin, he wanted to turn notorious to help the cause of his writing. So he came to New Delhi, to be a part of the crowd that greeted the Prime M inister on his birthday. With a rose with thorns in his hand, he had no problem with the security personnel there. It was thus, he found himself in the queue and waited for his moment. And when the Prime M inister came near him, he pricked at his face with that rose of thorns. When the security detained him for wrongful assault, the media picked up the story to splash it on the front pages.

  And that gave him the much-wanted name, didn't it? Even before he could grasp the import of his notoriety, every publisher in Delhi approached him to commission him into writing 'Why I pricked at the PM's face!' Though vindicated, he experienced the problems of plenty as all pressurized him to sign for them. But, for sentimental reasons, he opted to write for that book house, reading whose publications helped him mature into a writer. Though he wrote his three novels at breakneck speed for they carried conviction, he found himself struggling to put a sentence in place for the commissioned work.