Glaring Shadow A Stream Of Consciousness Novel

by BS Murthy

  "If I got it right, you made it seem that she had a great influence on you."

  "I'm glad you are observant and that portends well for my memoir," he said in some excitement. "You may know that in any relationship, it is the stronger willed that calls the shots. Won't in some ways it explains why some men are henpecked, well, some women too are cock-pecked, a rarer phenomenon at any rate. Whatever, how marriage gives a new dimension to man woman cohabitation; I felt a new sense of belonging for the woman whom I made my own for so long by then. M aybe for want of the cultural connect of marriage our live-in was bereft of a sense of spiritual union, which deprived us of the true sense of belonging in lovemaking without our knowing

  it. However, as we made conjugal love in our nuptial bed, from her spasms I could sense that she had experienced a rare kind of orgasm. Why, as I divined her visage in her ecstasy, her spiritual beauty that I espied gave me a premonition of her conception, that of a son. Never before or after that, with her or another, was it a like feeling."

  "Don't they say one is happiest in the newest love?"

  "No denying that but I loved to retain Rathi's affectionate memories even as I was obsessed at not losing Ruma's passionate love, and that should give you a measure of my weakness for Ruma, and the hold she came to have on my life."

  "You loved both of them and it's no dichotomy. Why, a man can love more than one woman at the same time, and its no less a psychological possibility with women either."

  "Is it not against the 'one life one love' poetic grain but life as you know is more prosaic that poetic," he said. "That day, as I returned home chastened from Raju's place, I could clearly discern the falsity of my life! Who outgrew whom, after all? What were the yardsticks by the way, if not material possessions then it must be mundane positions; but could they be life's quality indices in any way? Why without them, didn't Raju outgrow all? More so, he helped others to grow as well, though on a different plane. It was as if we were dwelling on two different planets, he, on the artistic, and I, on the counterfeit. How self-limiting are all the worldly attributes; can one grow, leave alone outgrow, with a narrow vision. Oh, the naivety of my vanity! Damn my inability to see beyond the self-built fagade of opacity. Even now I couldn't help but wonder what my life would've been like had Rathi not left me mid-course. It was as if such a thought process, after crossing the Rubicon would be inimical, the exigencies of office then put me on the beaten track of life. And that's life."

  Chapter 7

  Pangs of Remorse

  "Every life is unique but rarely one is exceptional," he continued after a long pause as if he was reminiscing about his own life, "and mine was rather unusual; oh, I had my first brush with intrigue when I was in class seven, then aged ten. Chandu and I were classmates besides being neighbors for our families were co-tenants. All children in our neighborhood used to flock to his place to play caroms on holidays and his mother was wont to serve us some snack or the other. Well I used to avoid those for they were invariably prepared with garlic that I had always found repugnant."

  "Isn't it said that one either loves garlic or hates it?"

  "There was a king in the Roman era who hated garlic so much so that he had banned it in his land. He could as well be the progenitor of our present-day rulers who ban smoking in all and sundry areas dubbed public places," he said. "Can you imagine us smoking in the cinema halls in our youth, why, the norm in those days was 'smoking is no disrespect', and now the coinage is 'desist passive smoking', my foot, as if the air we breathe is pristine pure. That the addicts no longer smoke in the railway coaches is because of the changed social mores and not owing to a newfound urge to obey the railway rules. Oh, how the poor smokers quarantine themselves in the toilets for a puff or two while the police on scent wait on the sly to harass them for bribe. Before I gave up smoking, what a pain it was in the smokeless pangs on the flights and in the trains alike."

  "The fate of a nation is the plight of its politics and the petty politician is the bane of the polity."

  "Beautifully put, for the fate of the peoples is governed by the whims of the powerful," he said, and resumed the saga of his childhood. "One Sunday afternoon, as was her wont, Chandu's mother served us all with some pakodas, and Shankar, younger brother of my friend Murali, wanted more of them. I felt that it was inappropriate and said so to him; looking back, it was an unsolicited advice, all childish, but then achild would only think like a child."

  "Don't we see even the grown-ups rendering unsolicited advice till the end, and more so towards their end? M aybe fate maps the course of life through an intellectual short-route from the cradle to the grave."

  "How do you like the Aviva ads of Rahul Dravid receiving cricketing advice from all and sundry," he said heartily. "Well with his captaincy gone, the ads were withdrawn and that's the way with the frills of life with which we tend to shroud its ethical core. But now, shorn of my aura, I see my life in the glaring shadow of its falsehood, and what I see but the derivatives of life within its voidness."

  "Won't that better the Shakespearean 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'?"

  "It's only proper that we remain humble before the master, who as Alexdandre Dumas Pere said, 'after God, he had created the most," he paused as if in reverence to his idol before he continued. "Back to my story, that very night, Chandu called me out and asked me to taste some garlic-less preparation that his mother made for me. As I had my dinner by then, I excused myself, but he virtually forced me to have a bite at least, and even before I had a spoonful of it, M urali and Shankar came out from their hiding to accuse me of double standards. While I protested that there was no parallel, a perplexed Chandu apologized that he was tricked into the act by them; the brothers had induced him to offer me their home-made stuff as if it was prepared by his mother. Well it was the first and the last time that I ever gave an unsolicited advice."

  "What cussedness even in childhood?"

  "What's so surprising about it; won't the plant of a kind grow into a tree of that kind," he said. "Any way, during the month of karthik, our family was privileged to cater to the sky-lamp of Brahmeswara temple of our village; and at dusk, it was my wont to carry from home the needed sesame oil there. How fascinating it was watching the pulley and rope in motion as the pujari pulled it down from atop the mast and put the lighted one back in its post. Once, lost in some sport, I didn't reach home in time, so my grandfather had substituted for me and what hell I raised for having been denied my due and how they tried to convince me that there was no way they could've waited for me as the lamp had to be lit up in time? But I had none of that, and insisted that the procedure be repeated, and as I stuck to my guns, my grandfather had to prevail upon the pujari to set a new precedent. I was still a kid when this happened."

  "Don't worry I am not going to give a superstitious twist to that childhood sacrilege for your latter-day travails."

  "It's sad that man has not benefited from the Shakespearean wisdom that superstition is the religion of the weak minds," he said. "Shortly after that episode of an ill-fated advice, I found myself in a much more awkward situation. I was friendly with a neighborhood girl who happened to be my classmate as well. I used to go to her place for the so-called combined studies, but that day, as I returned home, she came running after me to check up if I took her fountain pen, and I let her search my

  rack and she left finding none, only to return saying that her parents weren't convinced about that. And it was no Mont Blanc either, for it was a cheap Chinese 'Hero', whatever, is there a kid now, who experiences the joys of refilling a fountain pen. It's another story that when my father-in-law presented me a Mont Blanc, Rathi buggered it fiddling with its complex refilling mechanism. Well I went with that girl to her house to clear my name, and asserting my innocence, I goaded them to search for it in their own place. Oh, how fervently I prayed to Lord Chandramouli to help me locate it, and lo I found it, of all the places, beneath a jar of pickles? Maybe for that childhood devotion during the ka
rthik to Him, notwithstanding the sacrilege as you put it that God had saved me from the ignominy through that miracle of miracles. How ecstatically I ran to the temple for thanksgiving.'

  "Instead of running to the God had you been right up your street, maybe you would have ended up being a godman."

  "Why given the credulity of man, one can't rule out the possibility," he said. "But when I prayed for god's help then, I was blissfully unaware that Brahmeswara of our village and the Chandramouliswara of that town were different deities at all. But when I realized that it's the faith that makes man blind, I began to distance myself from the religion itself; why when one begins to believe that his religion is the best of all, I see the worst of ignorance in man.'

  "Sometime in future, when science would have scanned the entire universe only to find that there is no abode of the God, much less heaven and hell, maybe then, man might turn his back on his religion."

  "I doubt still, for man might believe that God keeps himself away from the intruding man," he said wryly before getting back to his recap, "The obduracy in a child could be the perseverance in its nascence or who knows pigheadedness in the making. Once, a relative, who was a school teacher, came to our place, and as is the wont of those in the teaching line, he tried to gauge my depth in depth. How his verdict that besides native intelligence I was blessed with innate logical abilities gladdened my grandfather I still recall; well I was not even school going then. It was another thing that the distractions of youth ruined my potential to excel at studies, and by the time I had that low-grade engineering degree on hand, my grandfather was no more. But the pain my poor scores caused my father hurts me still; oh how his tone conveyed his agony as he said, 'so with these marks you expect a job'. After all, he had endured so much hardship to make me an engineer as by then my grandfather had turned our lands into promissory notes without any noteworthy promise to note. But later, when my brother passed out with distinction, I felt lighter, and thanked him for reengineering our father's dreams. But still, as his words haunt me, I could never forgive myself for having let him down so badly. How I used to feel that if only I could go back in time and come out with flying colors! It could be this subconscious guilt that was behind that dream that too in my early fifties in which I was at the B.l.T all again. As if to prove that dreams don't reflect the realities of life, how confused I looked in my Alma M ater in that familiar dream setting. M aybe, it was this psyche of failure that subconsciously fuelled my later-day urge for success."

  "Luckily for you, your guilt didn't bog you down."

  "All the same, the glow of youth failed to illuminate the perilous path of my adult life," he said ruefully. "You know, my life began in the dimness of the kerosene lamp by which I lived the first ten years of it till my father's love for me gave him the vision of my education in a town. I can say with hindsight that it was the kerosene lamp that illuminated my path to adulthood, whose fluorescent bulb had cast a shadow on the

  way to my manhood when I began lusting for wealth to my hurt. Well that was after the quirk of fate had placed the wheel of fortune in my hands as till then I craved for love to the neglect of my studies and at the cost of my career. While the ennobling love of my youth seemed a hackneyed expression not backed by money, all my midlife wealth was of no avail for its fulfillment as by then lusting for sex, I lost the capacity to love. M aybe the singular focus on one aspect of life makes man lose sight of the other possibilities of it to his detriment."

  "It's the human frailties that make a saga of life and but for them your story would have been a mere statistic of success."

  "Why you make me think all again," he said and closed his eyes as if to shut out any present influences from interfering with his contemplation.

  Chapter 8

  Villainy of Innocence

  "Wonder how social mores affect the course of life," he had resumed his discourse at length "Won't the American way of life that lets the teens to be on their own serve as an example? While the economy is structured for their economic independence, the society is not shaped to cope up with their youthful distractions that hamper their academic progress. That's why the U.S has been perennially short of professionals and so looks eastwards to make up for the shortfall; but what if Parkinson's theory about the alternate ascendancy of the East and the West comes true? What charms the sheen-less new world could hold then to the youth of the old world for their immigration? Maybe then as a Confucius and an Aryabhata gave way to a Socrates and a Plato in times of yore, the Newtons and the Edisons of our times might give way to some M engs and M athurs in the eras to come. But for that to happen, maybe it's an idea that we have a five year teenage study break for the adolescents to grapple with their youth before they could pursue their studies without distraction, and I can tell you, then the toppers would not be the bookworms. But on the flip side, the U.S practice frees parents from the burden of their children's upbringing allowing them in time to wine and din; but the Asian penchant for supporting their progeny to the hilt puts paid to the recreational activities of the parents. A via media like requiring the children to work part-time to part-finance their higher studies may be an ideal model for the world at large but man either remains slavish to his habitual ways or disowns them altogether; seldom has he updated them in tune with the changing times."

  "Why didn't the hippies of the last sixties give a jolt the cultures of the time?"

  "Cultures my foot," he scowled. "At their core all cultures are cultureless and our age-old one bear witness to it. If someone were to breathe his last at home, it's deemed inauspicious to live in there, at least for a year; and what was the norm to avert such a thing from ever happening? The dying was laid by the roadside for him to seek his salvation unmindful of the humiliation, and if the sick were to show signs of recovery, they were taken in only to be dragged out at the slightest hint of a relapse. What can be worse for any to be abandoned by the very family by which he or she might have sworn all life; but the dying were unmindful of the ill-treatment for they were conditioned by the culture into believing it was better that way for their loved ones. Well, it's the altered lifestyle that forced us to abandon that abominable practice but still wasn't Goebbels justified in saying that he would reach for the gun whenever he heard the word culture."

  "Whatever, all tend to swear by their respective cultures."

  "The notion that culture was shaped by the wisdom of yore is rooted in the cerebral puniness of the day," he said. "It's this self diminution of the men of our clan that proved to be a double jeopardy for the widows for so long; were a woman to lose her man, won't she be needing succor from her kith and kin; but our custom used to quarantine her for full three days, and what's worse, subjected her to many a humiliating ritual thereafter. Well, as I was away when my grandfathers died, I was not aware of what my grandmothers had endured, and so I had no idea of what was in the offing for my mother when my father died; and being unprepared, I failed to prevent all those travails forced upon her in the name of our tradition. Oh, how I wish I had put my foot down on all that humiliating crap, and why this gloating over cultures that are connotations of insensitivities."

  "That they've stopped tonsuring widows; won't it show the change in attitudes?"

  "That is owing to the vanity of the children, more so sons, than out of any concern for the woman," he said. "Which son would like to flaunt his tonsured mother to his embarrassment; well only when it hurts men collectively that they turn against the self-embarrassing customs. But why anyone should bother about, say, the farce of a sakunam as it is inimical to only a few, who are supposed to bring bad omens. There was a guy in our village considered a bad sakunam by one and all, and setting out on an errand, all used to pray that the fellow shouldn't cross their paths. If only they happened to come across him, its mission abandoned for the day that is not before venting their ire on the hapless chap with abuses galore. Where in all this was the thought of the hurt to his self-worth; the problem with the half-wits is that they
validate from small samples; well, any writing on the absurdities in cultures would make a couple of volumes or more for each of them, and yet all lament about our cultural decline. Is there any custom that is even remotely rational in its conception; it's the small minds that lay great store on these for they can't think out of the box into which their upbringing pushes them."

  "But then counter-cultures fared no better and more over won't a culture-less society bring in anarchy?"

  "It's a case of switching over from one defective gear to another," he said. "Why life is bound to be imperfect in any conceivable social arrangement but the peril lies in abandoning what is natural to the upbringing. It's sad to see urban parents putting the fear of a cat or a mouse into their kids' impressionable heads in our land named after Bharat, who as toddler, touted to have tamed lions in their dens. But in our days there was no escaping from scorpions, so children were taught how to handle them; and caught by us unawares, even as they tried to escape, we used to shout kodi, kodi and wonder why they staid put at that. Well, the rest was child's play with a chappal found nearby; but then, whoever escaped a scorpion sting or two in any village, one fell straight on my thigh from the high ceiling when I was fast asleep, and what a hell it was with my fingers swollen like cucumbers. But how many of them I had battered to death later I lost count, and there is no way I can comprehend if it was out of vengeance. Whatever, it's also a common knowledge to the village kids that leeches were better dealt with by salt water; how we used to play with their lives with fistfuls of salt smuggled out of the kitchens; wonder why we didn't suffer any qualms seeing them disintegrate to death. M aybe because we were hateful of them, or was it a case of villainy of innocence, I would never know, but my playful hurting of a green hopper was on a different footing altogether; while it was seized by pangs of death, I put some sugar on it like our elders did when we hurt ourselves. But then I was too tender to know about life and death and all that I was capable of experiencing were the emotions of pleasures and pains."