Glaring Shadow A Stream Of Consciousness Novel

by BS Murthy

  waited to espy the new arrival, but then that's what he was, a fearless man till the very end. Well the way he faced premature death was bravado no less."

  "Isn't it illustrative that the dividing line between daring and risking is wafer-thin?"

  "Well, my father was innately bold," he continued. "Oh, the way he ventured out whenever there was a burglary alert in the neighborhood! Why with a stick in my hand, I too wasn't afraid to follow suit; it was his daring that might've percolated down into my childhood subconscious, enabling me to imbibe his credo in good measure. Although, he softened with age, he remained bold, and how tough he was with the in-laws of one of my sisters when they came up with their ludicrous postwedding demands. As a matter of principle he didn't want to yield and when they hinted at abandoning the bride then and there, he told them that he would ensure they took her along with them, and after that, it was left for them to harm her at their own peril. If anything, his stance then summed up the man in him, a la Alec Guinness in the Bridge on the River Kwai, and that called their bluff, and all was well in the end. If only the fathers of the afflicted brides can muster half of my dad's courage, I'm sure dowry-deaths, like sati, would be a thing of the past."

  "If only the media has a way of knowing such incidents."

  "Don't you think the media is manned by morons?" he said. "Oh, how they carpetcovered the newlywed Bachchans' temple trysts to save their marriage from the mangalik affect! What message did the media carry to our folks, bogged down by superstitions? Maybe, man was better off without the media and now worse off for the 24 x 7 non-stop humbugs; and what an opportunity the senior Bachchan lost to make a difference to the prejudiced heads by making a statement against the nonsense. Oh how small really the Big B is, and how big the media made Diana the small. It's incredible how her quest for lust was portrayed as her search for love! No faulting her taking a lover on the rebound as her man thrust a rival into her marital life but for the media to picture her bed hopping as her craving for love is galling indeed. Why in picturing Diana as the icon of love the media made lust a synonym of love and what's worse, it made a villain out of her man who embodies the best of love that is constancy."

  "Why hadn't anyone seen it that way?"

  "Can one grasp the realities of life in the glare of glamour?" he said. "What is media if it doesn't feed itself on sleaze and scandal with trivia thrown in between; why blame those who man it as all crave for such to gloss over the humdrum that is life of most. Even if you ever make the media privy to what all transpired between us, the meaningful part of it is bound to be blue-penciled. Whatever that's the enigma of the media, like it or not, there is no escaping from it but were you to novelize it, maybe, there could be a few takers for your endeavor."

  "Maybe so but as Hitler had discovered, most of us take the media's word as a Gospel truth."

  "Wasn't it the basis for Goebbels concept of propaganda?" he interjected. "Back to my dad; he was more like a mullah when it came to the segregation of sexes though it had nothing to do with his upbringing either for my grandfather didn't have a jaundiced eye on that count. I heard that my dad was opposed to his mother and sister resting for a while on the roadside verandah even when he was just twelve or so and that speaks for it. That's why it was no wonder that he turned out to be a possessive husband and a guard of a father, especially of his daughters. How I wish he

  had read a book or two on the psychology of sex, especially that of Havelock Ellis, well that could have spared me of that shock and one of my sisters of her bitterness."

  He paused for a while as though to recover from the shock of his recollection.

  "I told you that after the grief of the garden, for a hobby, I turned to the collection of cinema handbills distributed to announce new releases," he continued. "What a pleasure it was to gather more of the same on the sly and how we used to prize the booty though it was of poor quality with an occasional color pamphlet being a bonus; but that Bhookailash one on a craft paper was a dream come true. That Sunday, as my father was in siesta, I was at rejoicing my collection before I lost myself to the Bhookailash thing. Can you imagine what followed? I was rudely jolted when my father snatched it from me accusing me of a premature interest in the female form for he mistook that I was fantasizing about the heroine. Sharing his discovery with my mother, he tore it into pieces and began thrashing me as if to drive the devil of sex out of my head; well I was not even twelve then and apparently he had seen it all through his adult eyes. Whatever, I cried more for the pain of its ruin than the plight of my back that bore the brunt of his beatings; and with that loss, I lost interest in the rest, and gave up the hobby itself."

  "Some psychology of sex should help today's boys who become tomorrow's fathers."

  "You have a point there," he said. "Maybe sensing the propensity of my destiny, disappointment chose me to be its abiding partner. As life would have it, in time, one of my uncles came close to marrying the Bhookailash heroine, whom my dad thought I had been ogling that noon; could he have ever imagined such a turn of events then? It's another matter that my maternal grandfather's view that 'once an actress always an actress' made my uncle give up on her. Maybe, he was right that with an actress wife, as he felt, one would never know when she was genuinely affectionate or righteously indignant for she can affect either emotion with consummate ease. Better it's left for men who marry actresses, nay actors as is the norm, though without casting aspersions on their sexual straightness, to say whether life for them becomes make-believe or not."

  "If all carry their character to the office, may be the actors bring home their professional skills."

  "I would've known about it had not my uncle backtracked but to my dad's jaundiced eye, the genuineness of one my sisters seemed to him as a put on one occasion."

  Chapter 11

  M oments of Poignance

  "Oh, how it hurts to think that my dad could've behaved so badly with my sister I was rather fond of!" he resumed after a long pause. "I was away in Ranchi then and what I had heard of it hurts me to this day. One late evening she was lost in her thoughts, whatever they were, on the verandah, oblivious of the ogling ways of a roadside Romeo. My dad who happened to return home then got it all wrong, and paying a deaf ear to her professed innocence, like a man possessed he had beaten her black and blue, the poor thing. Well, she never forgave him for that, even after his death, and I don't fault her for that. But what an irony that it was on her account he once ventured across the Godavari in spate risking his and my life as well. Sure he came to soften up his stance on other issues but somehow he failed to shed his

  blinkers in sexual matters; and he was lucky that the inclinations of my sisters and the impediments of the times gave him no hiccups on their pre-marital front."

  "What a tragedy it is to hurt the loved ones owing to the debility of belief."

  "Well said, more so the religious belief; maybe towards the end one might be able to shelve self-indulgent biases but the faith-induced bigotry tends to grip one all the more." he said thoughtfully. "Saying 'sorry' would've helped, but he believed what he wanted to believe, and her denials seemed but self-serving arguments to his closed mind-set. Well he was rude with me too in my childhood that is; but in his deathbed gesture I came to see his way of saying sorry for his intemperate past. He gave me, and not my brother, his wrist-watch with his name embossed on it, which was a long service award from Upton. It was another matter that my brother loved him more than I ever did, and it appeared as if he bestowed it upon his first born, but I suppose it was not as simple as that. When I was ten, toying with his wrist-watch, I dropped it down to its doom inviting his wrath. Frustrated with the loss of his first acquisition, he roundly thrashed me even as my mother tried her best to put sense into his agitated head that it was after all an accident. Though resentful then, it was much later that I could understand his sense of loss; money being scarce, it was no easy task to replace it. Maybe laying on his deathbed, he recalled the episode while he recap
ped his life; he surely would've, for one of my uncles once told me that he would project the celluloid of his life on his mind-screen thrice a day. Why not, if youth is daydreaming about the future and the middle age the dilemma of the present, then old age makes a memoir of the past. Well, it could have been my father's sense of remorse that might've prompted him to make a present of that wrist-watch to me by way of his redemption. But by the time the possibility of that occurred to me, he was no more. If only I could've told him that I understood his constraints and never bore a grudge against him on that or any other count; oh, how that would've helped ease our consciences!"

  "What a poignant moment it could have been?"

  "Sadly it was not to be," he said. "I believe the hallmark of his life was his boldness in the face of death.

  The moment we stepped into that cancer hospital, seeing some patients carrying their urine bags, he said he would rather die than live with one such. Seeing scores of patients there prolonging their senseless life in a pitiable manner, I realized that there was also this greed to be alive that my father was not afflicted with. But awaiting his inevitable death in his home that he made the centre of his life, when he sent word for me, all knew that he believed his end was at hand. As I reached him, he lost no time in wanting a private chat with my mother and me; he took both our hands into his, and asked me to take care of her, adding, 'I scolded her, I did even beat her up but I always respected her'. We his children always knew how much he loved our mother but at that juncture I realized that he chose to be a one-woman man all his life out of respect for her. I always wondered why he wanted to confess to my mother in my presence; maybe, he might've felt that being the firstborn, I was the first witness of his love for her in all its intimacy. But sadly for me, I failed to keep the word I gave him to take care of her; it's true she is not in want of any, thanks to my brother, and no less to my sister-in-law, who doesn't grumble on that score. How I hope that life gives me the chance to redeem myself!"

  "Your brother seems to be your conscience saver."

  "In a way he is," he said. "But I don't know why it didn't occur to me to thank my dad for what all he had done for me for all my infirmities that bothered him no end. If

  only I had said sorry, wouldn't have the troubles he had taken for me seem pastime for him then? But it was not to be as I left him after the memorable meeting to fend for myself in the city I lived. But even when his final call came, I was nowhere near him; oh, had I reached him in time as he breathed his last, maybe I would've been inspired to make a clean breast of myself. But as luck would have it, some jamboree came to a close the previous day in the city and the revelers blocked all entrances of the trains that day, making it no entry for others. Oh how I begged to be let in, but none had obliged."

  "W hat to make out of the muteness of the masses?"

  "As individuals most of them would have obliged but collectively all became callous," he said. "Even sensible people lose their sensitivity in collectivity, which I call the camaraderie syndrome; won't a group of six, in a train compartment of eight, collude to shoo away whoever nears them. Showcasing the insensitivity of another kind are those who never let others occupy the next seat in the long-distance buses, supposedly reserved by their never-to-arrive friends. See how their attitude unfairly affects the fellow travelers; while the early birds bear the back seats, the latecomers become the frontbenchers. Well, when I finally reached home, I was late by an hour to have a word with him; maybe he breathed his last lighter for his confessions but I'm left to live carrying the cross of my omissions."

  As his demeanor suggested that burdened by his guilt he was sinking into a state of depression; alarmed, I goaded him to tell more about his father.

  "What a connoisseur of food he was!" he began enthusiastically. "Be it grains, cereals or vegetables, he bought the choicest, which were transformed into the best of meals by my mother's recipes. When it came to fruits, he was a man of all seasons, and I wonder if there ever was a more ardent lover of mangos than him. Why he was wont to partake three apiece with each meal and that counted up to six a day in summer days, and what were they, not the grossly overrated alphonso but the peerless kothapalli kobbari besides panchdara kalisa, peddarasam, chinnarasam, cherukurasam, juice fruits all available only in the coastal Andhra. I can't help but pity those who pay a ridiculously high price for alphonsos, just a notch up the much cheaper bangenapallis. Whatever, it was as if the flavors of 'fruits of the season' vied with the aroma of my mother's exquisite preparations to satiate our palates but then don't mistake us for a family of gluttons for we were frugal eaters all. But as people are taking to junk food these days it won't be long before we may lose the cooking skills developed over generations; sadly that takes man back to his roots literally that is."

  "By the way, what were his last words for you?"

  "Be careful with your money for none would spare you a penny in your hour of need, that's what he said," he said and then added, "and I may say, why should any for all that; should you become the subject of charity would you remain an object of equality?"

  Chapter 12

  Enigma of Being

  "What would've been my life like had my dad succumbed to that heart attack when he was barely forty-two," he resumed his tale. "My third-rate degree was just on hand then and there was nothing else for us to fall back upon in such an eventuality; maybe, it was his will-power to avert our downslide that kept him alive.

  Or it could be the destiny of my own siblings that intervened with his fate to keep him going as their interests wouldn't have been as well served by my life, and I too couldn't have been as carefree as I was in my youth, which had been the crux of my life. But before that when my grandfather passed away, given our attachment, my father was worried to death that it would upset me no end, and so he asked his cousin to break the news only after preparing me for that. Oh, how my poor grandfather used to insist on knowing my exam schedule for him to do the Sundara Kanda parayanam for good tidings at my exam time, and it takes some eight hours or more to recite the epic even for a regular that he was; if only I had put in my studies half of his efforts to invoke the divine grace upon me; how some of the experiences of life seem sweeter in recollection!"

  "Don't they say man loves his grandchildren more than he ever loved his own offspring?"

  "Surely, you would have a grasp of it when you reach that station of life," he said as his eyes turned moist. "How I regret that I'd never paid heed to his letters for they were all carbon copies; what was worse, I never wrote home, aware though I was how eagerly my grandfather - not to speak of my father - looked forward to my missives; the errand boy at my father's office once told me that it was his daily chore to check up for my letters at the head post office. Well that was the eagerness with which my father awaited my letters that shamefully I never wrote; but still, I didn't mend my ways for I was lost in my own wayward ways. It was another story that my grandmother's villainy saw my father's hand behind my indifference to my grandpa's missives to grind her inheritance axe, whatever, as and when I was short of money, the requisition and the compliance were both telegraphed. I learnt from my mother much later, how anxious my dad was to see that I was not inconvenienced even for a day, and if only I knew what a hassle it was for him to arrange the money for me, I wouldn't have been the spendthrift I turned out to be. Oh, why didn't he tell me how hard up he was; would I have been so insensitive as not to have tightened my belt? When my father wrote to me that his errand boy died in a road mishap not on his routine postal trip but on some official duty, as if to spare him the pangs of guilt, I could picture the sentimental side of him that I had never seen till then; but as my eyes welled up with tears, it struck me that I wasn't in tears when I learnt about my grandfather's death in spite of our attachment. Maybe it had all to do with the fact that he died at a ripe old age or it could be that I was subconsciously reconciled to his end."

  "However close you might be to one, you'll never really know about one."
r />   "That's true but still we appraise others without getting into their shoes that we won't be able to do any way,' he said. 'God knows why, but my grandmother became inimical to my father, not to speak of my mother. When she couldn't bear it any longer, my mother told my father that she would have no more of the old tyrant and he might set her up separately for she knew he owed it to his mother to take care of her and that she was prepared to manage the house with the rest of his salary; well fairness to all has been the hallmark of my mother's character. But my grandmother any way preferred to stay with her daughter."

  "Isn't it strange that women tend to be partial towards their daughters all the while craving for a son, while men, who seem to think that daughters don't confer parentage, and yet cling on to them?"

  "Looks like women always feel vulnerable in this man's world," he said. "Didn't the psychologists theorize that woman sees her son as her proxy to get even with it, but

  when he gets married, she perceives his wife as the usurper of her assumed power to dare the world? M aybe the feeling of being back to square one tends her closer to her daughters with the accompanying sense of alienation towards her daughter-in-law; but for man, while his proclivity is to beget a female, his craving for a male in the lineage could be owing to our culture conditioned by religion, and that's the irony of the sexes. Shortly before my grandmother was gravely ill, I gave her a piece of my mind as to how inimical she had been towards her own son and his family, and when her health deteriorated, she insisted on living her last days at her son's place; maybe in the course of life our sensibilities are blunted while the scent of death stirs our sensitivities to its subtleties. Well, she did breathe her last in my father's arms and who said death separates; but sadly as if history tends to repeat itself, even in the family setting, my mother, when widowed, became inimical to the idea of my brother's marriage so as to sponge on his bachelorhood earnings till her end. It's the tragedy of my life that I had to be equally harsh with her, and I only know how painful it was; ironically it was no less satisfying for me that my grandmother's change of heart let her die in peace and my mother's change of mind enabled her to rein in her vested interest before it was too late for my brother; oh, gripped by the devil of insecurity how wretched she used to be, and when exorcized of it, how joyous she became after my brother's marriage."