S.’
And beneath her name she had blackened the paper with the collyrium of her eyes, and stuck a kunkum mark from her forehead. What sentimental people we Indians are!
Of course, there was a charger waiting for me. It would not take me to the Turks. Its name would be Kanthaka, and I would change my royal garments by the Ganges, admonish him to return and let the people of Kapilavastu know that he, Kanthaka, was a noble steed that had led Gautama the Sakyan to the banks of the Ganges, and thus started him on the pilgrimage from which there is no returning. There was no need to go to the banks of the Niranjana for the Bodhi tree; there were many by the lake in Kodai. They seemed so ancient, ocelous, and protective. But I was not ripe yet — I, the real betrayer. Savithri’s letter, so true and limpid, luminous like the ancient castor-oil lamp with five petals she was writing by, needed the wisdom and the courage of evening. In between day and night is the space of dusk, that beat of an eyelash which is the light of Brahman. ‘Jyothir méka Parabrahman,’ Little Mother always chanted at home, as soon as the lights were lit. ‘Light alone is the Supreme Brahman.’
You can marry when you are One. That is, you can marry when there is no one to marry another. The real marriage is like 00, not like 010. When the ego is dead is marriage true. Who would remove my ego? ‘Lord, my guru!’ I cried in the rift of the night. And looking at the town of Kodai reflected in the lake, with what breath and earnestness I chanted Sankara:
‘Vishwam in darpanadrishya mānanagariï
Like a city seen in a mirror is the universe,
Seen within oneself but seemingly of Maya born,
As in sleep;
Yet is it really in the inner Self
Of Him who sees at the Point of
Light Within Himself, unique, immutable—
To Him incarnate as the holy Guru,
To Sri Dakshinamurti be my salutation.’
I composed several letters to Savithri. What could I tell her? ‘To him,’ says the Upanishads, ‘who is earnest, to the Atman comes the Atman.’ It was not land and rivers that separated us, it was Time itself. It was myself. When the becoming was stopped I would wed Savithri. If the becoming stopped would there be a wedding? Where would the pandal be, where Uncle Seetharamu and the elephant?
‘All brides be Benares born, my love, my Lakshmi,’ I wrote. I knew she would understand.
Dr Ruppart was satisfied with my X-ray. ‘You are an ideal patient. You are so obedient,’ he remarked, patting me on the back.
‘You must be so easy to live with — an ideal husband,’ Frau Ruppart added, looking at her husband.
‘All husbands are ideal when they are not yours,’ chuckled Dr Ruppart in Saxon gaiety.
I visited Madurai, worshipping She-of-the-Fish-Eyes, beautiful, bejewelled, compassionate, and serene — I paid three rupees for a puja in the name of Savithri — then I went to Hyderabad. Little Mother was very happy to see me looking round and healthy again. ‘There’s been no blood since Bangalore,’ I told her. I visited the new minister of education — an old student of Father’s — and promised to finish my thesis in a year. I would come back.
‘Come back by the time Sukumari gets married,’ remarked Little Mother.
‘Oh, Little Mother,’ cried Sukumari, ‘you want to tie me to a quern-handle and get rid of me too. Let me study my Medicine oh, please, Brother?’
‘For a Shiva’s lip4 of the courtyard,’ quoted Little Mother— another of her proverbs—’Shiva’s head is the Kailas. And for a woman the sacred feet of her husband be paradise.’ You cannot argue against a proverb.
I spent a week in Bombay. Not that there was anything important to do. But I smelt something, as it were, among the stars. I wanted to be far from home — far from Madeleine, far from everyone. Captain Sham Sunder offered me hospitality. I had met him in London: ‘When you come to Bombay, do not forget me,’ he had said. His Colaba flat was just by the sea. He had two very clever children and his wife, Lakshmi, was a fine-looking woman — somewhat round, but kind, sad, and entertaining. Captain Sham Sunder, I think, had other interests; he came home from his club late at night, and every day of the week it was so. Once he said to me, laughing, ‘Since my return from Europe I prefer white skin to brown.’ What a very clever remark to make!
I took the children and his wife to visit the Gateway of India, or the Malabar Hill. Lakshmi had such a heavy sadness, like a sari she had wetted and pressed under her feet, and forgotten in the corner of the courtyard to rot. She was indeed not particularly clean in her habits, but she was a good Hindu wife. She despised man, however, and there was no reason why she should think any better of me.
‘You like white skin perhaps, as my husband does,’ she said.
‘That is why I married one,’ I replied.
But she cooked nice meals for me and begged me to take her to cinemas. Once or twice she came near me, but I moved away, almost afraid of her physical importance. One felt she had the power to pluck the manhood out of anyone and throw it into the sea, murmuring maledictions after it. But I was tired of the struggle, the endless roads, hotels, aircraft, sisters, marriages, X-rays; besides, I had never really known an Indian woman. I was perhaps eaten by my haemoglobules as well, and did not wish my manhood to turn dehydrate. There was not going to be Savithri anyway. I slipped slowly and deliberately into Lakshmi’s bed.
She was happy with me, I think. Her children were happy to see their mother happy with me. Nothing very much happened, in fact. She did not want me; she just wanted to feel that I was like all men. She made me speak of Savithri. I gladly did, for there was no one else I could speak to. She felt prouder after that. ‘Men are worthless,’ she remarked often. ‘They are simpler than children. Any patch of flesh will do for them — the fairer the better.’
Rumour of Savithri’s marriage reached my ears through people coming from the north: there was Captain Sham Sunder himself, to whom the news of my ‘flame’, as Lakshmi called her, was duly carried; and there were anyway so many people at the Cricket Club who came and went between Bombay and Delhi and always had something to say about the great gods up in the capital. So that when the news really came — first in the papers — I was not surprised, and then there was a line from Savithri herself. It ran: ‘Surajpur Palace. This evening, at four forty-seven, entered into the state of matrimony. I married Pratap at last. I shall be a good wife to him. Bless me.’
In a day or two Lakshmi yielded to me. I thought to myself it was like eating a pickle. My days and nights would be spent in luxurious enjoyment. I put off my trip by another week. Captain Sunder himself seemed happy — for he knew what it was all about! How splendid Lakshmi looked now! When once in a while I coughed, she was ever so tender to me, sitting by my side and fanning me, pressing my legs, my arms. She began to have some respect for me. She found me straightforward and simple, and not like those manly men — unclean, she said, so unclean— who were about the place. ‘I would not touch them with my left foot, those fat, moustached fools, those friends of Sham’s. They prefer fair skins. Let them.’ She asked me questions on Hindu sacred texts, started reading the Mahabharata and the Gita regularly. She wished to visit Europe with me. She discussed the education of her children. Often lying by her I wondered whether I was Rama, Saroja’s loved brother, Little Mother’s stepson?
Then one day I remembered the damsels with wide- opened mouths, lying naked and full in Kapilavastu. ‘There were palaces of silver for Summer,’ ran the story, ‘and palaces of sandal for Winter, and palaces of gold when the Young Spring came. Musicians, too, there were and diverse. So that when the Raja Sudhodhana saw the Bodhisattva playing among them, he thought Gautama will be crowned my heir, the king. And never shall he leave the palace, nor know the cry of sickness, the sorrow of death, the totter of old age, the misery of want. The palaces were well guarded, and not a girl of the kingdom was there that could not accomplish the joy of youth.’