PROGRESS OR RETREAT

By Vivina Murthy

Translated by Vallampati Venkata Subbaiah

²²²

Vani reached the apartment and changed into night clothes before Sarathi parked the car and joined her. The phone has been ringing for some time. Sarathi was slightly annoyed that she did not respond to the phone call.

He looked at his watch. It was 11:40.

The children were asleep. The babysitter, awakened by the ringing of the phone, came into the hall, looking at the “masters”, and went back, yawning.

The phone stopped ringing.

“Maybe it was daddy,” he said in English.

Vani opened the fridge, poured some drink into two glasses. She came back sipping her drink and placed the second glass in front of Sarathi.

He didn’t take it.

“Your behavior isn’t as it used to be,” he said.

She shrugged her shoulders, teasingly twisted them and put the half-empty glass on the coffee table, shaking her hair loose.

“How is this perfume?”

Sarathi looked at her blankly.

“You have no taste, you can’t tell one perfume from another. Do you know there is a perfume like this ?”

“I am Indian. I don’t care for trivial things,” he said, gulping his drink.

“I am glad you have conceded at least one fact”

“What is it supposed to mean?”

“That the Indians gather and the others enjoy.”

“That is insulting to me.”

The phone started ringing again. He lifted it, cutting the conversation short.

Vani settled down comfortably in the sofa. She was tasting her drink while enjoying the picture of Sarathi talking on the phone. She was reminded of a school kid obediently accepting punishment from his teacher. She wasn’t sure whether she liked the picture or not. But she would never miss to watch it.

Sarathi rinsed his mouth with the drink and gulped it in one gulp.

“It seems mother wants us to go over to her place.”

“Bangalore is horrible. It is an old man’s city. It smells old. It is run by the old for the old.”

“It’s a pity you were born there.”

“That isn’t a secret. Shall I tell you a real one? Destitutes and dimwits can’t perceive the difference between one city and another. Only enthusiasts and achievers have that knack. Look at our ever active city, Delhi. Here business is sandwitched between politics. Bombay is a heaven! There, politics marches on along with business. But Calcutta? There, business power and muscle power go hand in hand. You can gauge a city by its evenings. Evenings are their nerve centres. They tease people with brains, ease them and please them finally....”

He continued to talk.

Vani was slumped in the sofa carelessly toying with an idea—suppose we strip Sarathi naked and chase him through the street. He isn’t fat, but slightly overweight, with a thick crop of hair; has a degree in Engineering, did his M.B.A also. He is district general manager in R.K. Industries; is in the race to become the general manager. But where do his status and ambition show?

“Everyday daddy rings up. How can I go to Bangalore and stay there?”

Vani left Sarathi to himself, went into the bedroom and stretched on the bed. The dog snuggled close to her.

“Not able to sleep,” said Kameswari.

Ranganatham was immersed in a book in the dimlight of the reading lamp.

They lived in a fairly old house in Malleswaram area in Bangalore. The house has a large compound with a small garden in front. He instinctively responded to her feeble voice in the calmness of the night.

“Worried about Parthu?”

“Do you think he will come?”

“Yes, certainly. He is our son”.

“He needn’t come to light my pyre. I want him to spend some time with me when I am alive.”

“I know it Kamu. Try to sleep”.

She could not catch the slight irritation in his voice.

“Ranga, don’t you feel sleepy?”.

“No. You get tired if you talk.”

“Alright, I won’t talk. So, do you think I can survive, my dear dimwit?”

Ranganatham shut his eyes. A powerful shiver passed through his body from head to foot. ‘I know very well what happens to this dear dear creature after she died. She will be born again and again until her karma is exhausted. My mind refuses to accept that thought. Both my body and mind become enervated as the thought passed through me. The intensity of the shiver has been reduced a little, these days. But why this wetness in my eyes? And the vacuous feelings in my heart? Is it a sign of love or age?’ he thought.

“Try to sleep, Kamu,” he said.

“No, I can’t.”

The sound of the buzzing memories.... He came closer and sat in a chair next to the bed.

“What do you want to do, then?”

He leaned forward, with his chin in his palm.

She turned her head to face him with an enormous effort.

“I can do two things. Guess what they are”.

“I can’t, dear.”

“Imagine, you block-head.”

“No, I can’t,” he said in a tone of conceding defeat.

“To talk or not to talk. But I don’t know for how long.” Tears welled up in her eyes and choked her voice.

Ranganatham patted her hair. Kameswari tried to touch him stretching her right hand painfully. He gave his hand for her to hold. Making a great effort, she closed her weak and dry fingers around his hand.

“Nothing else except talking is left between us, Ranga. Maybe, my silence is my greatest service to you”.

Her voice had lost its natural clarity and slurred.

“How is it a service?”

“Maybe your mind is on the book you are reading. Don’t you think leaving you to your book is a service?”.

“Don’t think like that, Kamu. Let me have the fortune of listening to you as long as possible. Talk about everything you want to.”

She started talking about Parthu.

Her mind is still in an excellent condition. She remembered everything, including the dates. She can describe the past incidents with the minutest detail. She can quote from the books she has read long time ago. But nothing else in her body is working. She can’t shake off an ant creeping on her body. She tries to use her hand to communicate her feelings.

Parthu comes very frequently, meets doctors but never sits by his mother’s bed even for a short while.

While he is here, the phone never stops ringing. He has different kind of friends and circles. Speed is a way of life for him.

She and Ranganatham had jobs too. But their pace of life was slower. She sensed this speed long before it actually came. She brought up her son, teaching him how to cope with it and withstand it.

Now that speeding has to be stopped for an hour; one night, if possible. He has to stay here for her sake. She has to stop him with the hand she can’t move. He has to stop for her sake ...

“Don’t find fault with him, Kamu.”

“Me, finding fault with an individual?”

Ranganatham looked at her calmly.

“I am a non-believer, Ranga. You are a believer who believes in the divinity of even snakes and stones,” she said again.

“So, you think that believers alone find fault with others,” he wanted to argue, but didn’t.

As a typical mother she refuses to find fault with Parthu. But his way of thinking is quite different. If a son cannot devote some time to his dying mother, he is certainly wrong. Butthen, why try to convince her and hurt her?

“Don’t bother Kamu, we disagree in our views.”

“But you married a widow like me, made a mother of me and said ‘I’ll give you the freedom to think the way you want to think’. And you did it. We have been poles apart in our ways of thinking. But we have lived together marvelously, haven’t we?.”

“Certainly, we have, Kamu”.

“Atma ... Paramatma ... heaven ... hell ... birth ..rebirth.. you believed in all of them. I didn’t, not even in one. But who deserves to be given the credit for the glorious success of our family life? I think you do, and the spirit behind it is the forward-looking society. But you agree with neither opinion. You think that both should go to God.”

Ranganatham listened to her, receding gradually into himself.

How freely Kameswari talks! Often it looks as though she is losing control over her mind. Then she talks almost deliriously. Even then there are no traces of repentance in her. She never agrees that all this suffering is due to the“sin” that “happened” in her life.

The present state of Kameswari forces him to ask the question ‘What is basic—belief or disbelief?’

That horrible experience! He wriggles with pain when the memory of that experience came to his mind. It leads him to thinking that her present pain is a punishment for the past sin. How wonderful it would have been if man didn’t have any knowledge of sin. Then, maybe, he would have been less distressed about Kameshwari’s pain, Ranganatham thought.

Kameswari fell asleep quietly. Ranganatham rearranged the bed sheets, increased the speed of the fan and looked out through the window curtains.

An auto-rickshaw went tearing through the street. Moonlight was slanting on the flowers outside. Dogs were barking somewhere.

Ranganatham sat in the easy chair, shut his eyes. Memories of the past came rushing to under his eyelids...

Kameswari was patting three-year old Parthu to sleep. Ranganatham was reading some book of philosophy. It was ten at night.

“Ranga!”

“Yes.”

“I want to tell you something”

“You have always been telling and me listening, your Majesty!”

“Ranga, please be serious”

“O.K. I’m ready”

“Don’t you observe any change in me?”

“Tremendous change! You are becoming more and more beautiful”.

She looked up, patting her son.

He is forty, good complexion, strong; a healthy physique; and an ever-smiling face.

“I have a lot of confidence in you, Ranga. So you can understand me. I must tell you something important.”

“Why all this beating around the bush. Say it directly.”

She stopped patting Parthu, went to his chair, and sat in it. Ranganatham started patting Parthu when he moved in his sleep.

After a while Kameswari started talking, “I knew Natarajan even before we got married. We had been working in the same company. The every day experience of a working woman in regard to my male colleagues is that they are vulgar and fickle. But in Natarajan I found none of these qualities, not even a trace of them. I had a sort of respect for him.

“Our jobs required us to do a lot of traveling together. When we were returning from the recent official trip we were caught in a cyclonic storm. They said they could not run the train any further. I was worried thinking about you having a terrible time with Parthu at home.

“Understanding my plight, Natarajan tried to cheer me up. Luckily we got a taxi. We sat in it huddled up, four in the back seat. The rain water was seeping through and we got wet. Observing his discomfort, I asked him to sit freely. Our rickety car broke down near a small town around midnight. The driver, after making some effort to move it, finally, said that it wouldn’t and nothing could be done until the next morning.

“When the rain gave a brief let up, we got out of the car. There was a newly married couple in our group. They were gleefully twittering away taking it for granted that none of us understood Malayalam. Their enjoyment looked rather disgusting in the situation we were in. We had idlies and tea in a shanty hotel. The hotel manger said there was a lodginghouse nearby.

“Only two rooms were available in the lodge. The newly-wed Malayali couple was delighted, but I felt depressed. The weather was eerie outside.

The lodge-owner said that the Malayali couple could have a room and Natarajan and I could use the other. Natarajan looked into my eyes.

“Any objection?” he asked.

“Yes,” I wanted to say. But the ideas I had valued for a long time stopped me.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. In fact, I expected him to know that I had an objection. Suppose he had an objection, what would have been my reaction?

There were two cots, a table and two chairs in the room. The room was smelling rotten. The bed and the pillows were smelling bad too. There was no power supply for two days. Luckily there was a hurricane lantern and a few candles.

Natarajan moved the cots apart and spread the sheets. I sat on a chair and watched him do it. Involuntarily I drew the table drawer and felt revolted by the packet I found in it. I shut the drawer with a bang. I felt a bad taste in my mouth when I realized who came to that lodge and why.

“What is that?” Natarajan asked, surprised by the sound.

“Nothing,” I said hastily.

“Ranga, from now on, it is hard to describe my feelings. The first necessity for conjugal amity is trust in each other and also in oneself. I don’t think we’re lacking in that. You know I am not interested in extra-marital relationships. But certainly I want freedom. I always support the desire for freedom. But I never considered extra-marital relationships a symbol of freedom.

Natarajan, maybe out of confusion or curiosity, came to the table, drew the drawer and shut it immediately. I couldn’t gauge his feelings.

‘Behave normally. The question of escaping from him arises only when he misbehaves. ‘Don’t you have confidence in yourself? Why should you hurt him without a reason? What right you have to do it?’ My ideas flowed like this.

We lay down on our beds. My sari was wet and heavy. I wanted to change it. If I wanted to do it, I’ll have to ask him to go out of the room.... If you were in his place? Your mischievous deeds and your ability to make me happy...

I looked at him involuntarily.

He appeared restless. Why?

Is he thinking like me? If he is, will he cause trouble? Is he able to read my feelings? What feelings do I have for him to read? I don’t have any. It is unnatural for him not to have any feelings, though his sophistications may hide them. Perhaps, I am not sufficiently attractive to tempt him. I am going on thirty-seven. My body still excites Ranga. Is Ranga’s excitement about me a mere pretension? Doesn’t Ranga get anything from me? Is there nothing in me to give him?

Ranga, how fascinating is the mind! How powerful are some of the unexpected happenings! Look, how the mind can create a powerful logic to satisfy the needs of the body!

Natarajan sat up on the bed and lit a cigarette.

I leaned on my elbow and tapered the lantern.

“ Not able to sleep?”

I was trying to answer. He got up and came closer.

“The sari is wet, change it. I’ll go out”

I was trying to read beyond his normal, but insulting words. There is nothing in you; you are like spring gone by...you are a withering flower... you can’t smell seductive..

I didn’t know whether my mind was guiding the body or the body was driving the mind. Some unknown feeling was challenging me.

I caught hold of his hand.

It was hot, like an answer to my challenge. I knew as a woman that it was not weather that has made his body hot.”

Ranganatham was stunned and forgot to pat his son, Parthu. He felt that the world had come to a grinding halt.

“How did people behave in situations like this?”

They killed themselves or killed the others.

“Situation like what?”

“A situation in which the husband comes to know that his wife strayed away from him. What a tremendous volume of literature has been written on “this situation”! How many books have been produced by great thinkers! How many sermons have been delivered! What is the use? No one, with his intellect, has been able to solve the problems of the other. All these ideals and sermons have failed to stem the tide of sin. Though God has given the same parts to all human beings, he has created an infinite variety in them. Different human beings respond differently to the same situation. What is the source of this variety, these different emotional responses? Everything about the human being, his ideas, emotions, responses, are individual. Human relations are a myth. Everyone builds his own nest and is scared of it. Nevertheless he tries to protect it. Marriage, family, society and government are its external symbols. God, religion and psyche are its invisible foundations. She obeyed her emotions and I’ll obey my thoughts.. We are poles apart. I’ll not live with her, sleep with her and I’ll kill her when the right opportunity comes. I’ll kill her for sure, no going back. But her death shouldn’t result in my death, Parthu shouldn’t become an orphan, so her death has to be a secret.

The phone started ringing.

Ranganatham withdrew his thoughts and lifted the phone.

“Daddy,” Parthu’s voice from Delhi.

“Parthu and children are coming, Kamu.”

“.......”

‘Ranganatham went to Kameswari’s bed and looked at her carefully. She was breathing. He heaved a sigh of relief.

“Let her sleep.”

He gently placed his palm on her forehead and felt tiny beads of sweat. He increased the speed of the fan. She needs the fan even in biting cold. He has always been scared of cold like a street dog. He sleeps curls up into a ball when the fan is on. When he woke up he would turn the fan on for her, and when she woke up she turn it off for him.

Ranganatham stood there one long moment looking at her.

She should feel very happy because Parthu is coming. How happy he would be if she is happy!

He was thinking about the greatest crisis in his life only a short while ago. The thoughts that troubled his mind appear now like dead people in old photographs. The present emotions being totally different, the past emotions are unreachable. Inability to feel emotional when necessary and getting emotionally worked up about trifles are, perhaps, natural signs of old age.

Parthasarathi, along with Vani and children, came that evening. Children were on vacation, they said. Parthasarathi was talking repeatedly about the heat in Delhi. They had decided to leave the children here for vacation. Kameshwari’s face was glowing with delight. Vani was carefully observing everything Sarathi talked or did. The grandchildren gathered around Ranganatham for gossip. But Ranganatham could see that something was wrong with the way Sarathi and Vani were acting.

Impulsively Sarathi made a phone call and went out waving at them.

Vani spent a long time with the mother-in-law. She made the cook prepare what they liked to eat. The children, tired by the long journey, went to bed after watching the video for a short while. Ranganatham and Vani had dinner together.

After Vani went to her room, Ranganatham sat close to Kameswari’s bed. Kameswari was visibly happy.

“Parthu,Vani and the children—everybody is with me, if I were dead now …”

Ranganatham slowly touched her lips with his finger.

“You should not talk like that.”

“You dimwit, do you think it will happen simply because I wished for it?”

“But you have promised that you will never talk about this.”

“My daughter-in-law spent a lot of time with me,” Kameswari said.

“Yes, she applied oil to your hair also,” Ranganatham added mentally.

While talking about Vani, Kameswari fell asleep like a child.

Ranganatham sat beside the bed, reading a book.

Sarathi came home after midnight. Ranganatham told him that his mother was very happy at the affectionate attention she had received from Vani.

“Why haven’t you gone to bed, daddy ? Vani will take care of mother. You go to bed.”

Sarathi went into his room.

Ranganatham stared blankly at him and sighed. He turned off the light and settled down on his easychair. He hadn’t slept at nights since Kameswari fell sick.

Vani was still awake when Sarathi entered the room.

“You are really a nice girl” Sarathi said changing into a nightgown.

“How did you discover my goodness so suddenly ?”

“It seems you looked after mother carefully. Daddy is very happy.”

“It was done to a patient, not to your mother.”

“I am not ready for an argument. Goodbye,” he said, covering himself with a blanket.

“Look here. I am not waiting here to see your sleeping beauty. I want to know why you are avoiding me.”

“Don’t talk rubbish”.

“May I know how you get your things done if you don’t have a beautiful wife like me?”

“You are exceeding limits.”

“Limits between you and me! It is really funny that you talk about limits. Anyway, how long do you intend to hide me like this in Bangalore and why?”

Sarathi covered himself with a blanket, refusing to answer.

Vani switched off the light.

“I am ringing up Delhi.”

“Whom?”

“I needn’t tell you.”

“Why?” he shouted getting up.

“Because, you know.”

“You bitch.”

“Shut up. If I am a bitch, you are a pimp.”

“Vani, we have to live together, you must co-operate.”

“You have taken a lot of cooperation from me for your promotion.”

“Was it only for my sake?”

“No, it was for my sake!”

He was silent for a few moments.

“I asked you to be a little ‘civilized’ and move with him as a society lady does. But I didn’t want you to sleep with him.”

“But you never objected to my sleeping with him.”

“You can never understand me. Am I not telling you now to keep yourself within reasonable limits?”

“Look Sarathi, I am not your pet dog to wag my tail when you throw a biscuit at me,” she cut in.

“Maybe you trust him. He is a true businessman. He will put you up for sale.”

“I know that much. You rented me out to him. He will sublet me to someone else.”

Sarathi fell silent once again.

“Why do you think I brought you here from Delhi? How can you invite that fellow to this place and make an ass of me? Let us go back to Delhi tomorrow.”

“Let me think about it. You go to sleep.”

While getting ready to go to bed, Sarathi noticed that the door was left open.

“Why didn’t you shut the door?” he asked.

“It is you who did not have the patience to do it.”

He got up and saw that his father was sitting in the easychair. He shut the door and stood there for sometime thinking.

He felt weak and shaky. He felt as if he came face to face with a still-born child, a child of his own mind. To get rid of the apparition he moved towards the bed slowly, lay down and shut his eyes.

“Do you think daddy heard our conversation?” he asked.

The whole world suddenly became dark. He didn’t know where he stood in that darkness. He didn’t know whether he was moving or standing still. Is someone moving him or trying to stop him from moving forward? Was he under the illusion of moving forward when everyone was moving backward? Did his journey depend upon his choice? Anyway, what was his destination?

The questions were very unsatisfactory! Ranganatham was trying to answer them.

He sat in his easychair, glued to it. The incident had shaken him to the roots of his existence.

They’ve had different world views ever since.

When the present was pressing down on his consciousness Ranganatham was trying to take shelter in rethinking and revaluing the past.

That day, Ranganatham walked out of the house. Three months passed.

It was half past seven in the morning. Kameswari was getting ready to go to office, packing her lunch-box. She heard Parthu crying and come out of the kitchen.

Ranganatham was standing there with a three month old beard and emotions wrestling with one another in his eyes.

Kameswari stood motionless and was shocked.

He came closer, took her hand into his hands.

She was thrilled.

She did not ask him where he had gone to.

Neither did he ask her how she had been.

There were neither questions nor answers.

She behaved as though he had returned from a routine journey. He too responded the same way as she did.

He played with Parthu, ate and slept.

The next day also Kameswari did not go to office.

That night, Parthu was sleeping. The world was getting ready for the night. Like shepherd boys the stars were gathering in the sky for gossip. Human minds that control bodies started dozing off. The bodies that are still awake sang songs of welcome to their companions as the starry night and cool breeze acted as mediators.

Ranganatham wiped the sweat from Kameswari’s forehead and kissed her. She nuzzled closer.

“My belief has saved you,” Ranganatham said.

Kameswari lifted her head slowly from her reverie of happiness and said, “Not me, its our marriage, our family.”

The voice is familiar to him. But he was disappointed by something undefinable. He looked at Kameswari who was looking at him probingly and said, “Yes, my belief saved our marriage and also our love; it’s the bedrock.”

She continued to look at him.

“I went to several places, prayed to umpteen gods, bathed in sacred rivers and listened to saints. But questions continued to haunt me.

‘Did Kameswari do any thing wrong, or did the circumstances forced her to do wrong?’

‘What place does the intention have in a wrong deed? Isn’t a wrong deed “wrong” when it is forced on the doer?

“These questions plagued me for a very long time. I was away from my people and the places familiar to me. But not from my own self. I came to the conclusion that wrong certainly exists and so does sin.

Punishment follows sin as a rule even if one doesn’t believe in the either of them. But she confessed her sin. ‘Do I have a right to punish her because I believe punishment follows sin?’

Saints listened to my questions and I, to their answers. I realized that they didn’t really understand my questions. Only God can answer it. My search for the answer ended in the Jagannath Temple in Puri.

The mighty sea, the wind and the temple helped me to question myself. Subhadra’s desire and thoughts on her own brother Jagannatha answered my question. Who can succeed where gods have failed? “Nothinghappens withoutmy intervention. I am present even in the most unbearable thing that happen to you,”he said. If a wrong thing has happened with HIS knowledge and intervention, whether to punish the doer or not is only HIS problem. If the doer feels he is responsible for his wrong deed, to punish himself or not is his own problem.

“An individual like me has no right to punish another. This is how I reconciled with myself. My God and my belief in Him helped me to make peace with myself. They got me out of the thoughts of murder, suicide and desertion. They gave me the strength to pardon and accept you, you who have done “wrong”. They saved you, Parthu and me. If you can see it, they saved our love too.”

Ranganatham said everything he could.

After carefully listening to everything he has said, Kameswari sat for some time, looking at him, with probing looks.

“Your words have brought back hope to me. I feel like talking.”

“Talk,” Ranganatham said.

She brought her diary and gave it to him.

Ranganatham hesitated.

“I am giving it, read.”

He started reading from the page she had asked him to begin with:

“Ranga, where have you gone, you fellow! My whole being is thirsting for your sympathy, you seem to be upset because my body is tainted. What is tainting, anyway? You seem to be unhappy because I cheated you. The truth is I have disgraced myself. This is my personal defeat. I am both the cheater and the cheated. I see the two as different from the two you imagine. My cheating and my failure have taken away the right to live from me.

Death?

I consider the idea of uniting with you after death in the other world. The idea is a stupid one. The two parts I see in myself also will perish after my death. Then how is death justifiable?

Death demands a lot of courage and also cowardice.

I have the former but not the latter.

I know that I can’t change, with my death, what has happened

My death starts a chain of events. After my death what happens to my dear Ranga, who is a believer. Belief begins with cowardice. He is too weak to bear the burden of his life in my absence. He may foolishly commit suicide with a mad desire to join me. Then Parthu becomes an orphan!

What is to be done?

Ranga is a rationalist, although a believer. He can understand my personal agony. But he may think that I have committed “sin”. He believes that “sin” can be washed away with “repentance”. If he suggests any act of retribution, I am prepared to do it.

But personally I believe neither in sin nor in retribution.

In that case, what effect will my retribution have on him?

It satisfies him but not me.

Isn’t it—trying to pretend that I believe in what he believes—also cheating him?

Isn’t it cheating myself too—doing what I don’t believe in?

I’ll tell him everything that is on my mind. He will offer his sympathy and show me a way-out.”

After reading it completely, Ranganatham thumbed through the empty pages and looked at Kameswari. She was watching him. He sighed imperceptibly and asked, “Didn’t you feel any fear or any hesitation?”

She said, “No,” shaking her head from side to side.

“I wouldn’t have known about it if you had not told me. Ours was a smooth marriage. Didn’t you see that you could throw a twist into it with your confession”?

“You never put such fear in me”.

“If I had been different, would you have experienced such fear?”

“That is your characteristic quality. Questions. Questions. Questions! you always ask questions. Maybe you have your own answers for them. But you have the grace to bear with my answers although they are different from yours. Maybe people like you are responsible for humanity discarding old opinions and acquiring new ones”.

“You are evading my question.”

Kameswari was silent.

“You are scared now”.

“No, I am not. This experience has helped me transcend trivial fears about you and our marriage.”

“But you have not answered my question.”

“I am trying to think about the usefulness of my answer to you and to our marriage,” she smiled at him and looked longingly.

“The progress of the human race lies in knowing and making other people know. I must tell you, continue to tell you as long as I exist and we are together. You should also tell me. Secrecy prevents progress.”

“You have not answered ...”

“If you had been frightening, I would have been frightened. ‘You’ are responsible for the development of my individuality.”

Ranganatham patted her hair and asked, “Didn’t you feel like committing suicide after I had left?”

“Of course, I did. Why not?”

“Then how did you resist it?”

“My ideas helped me because I was an unbeliever.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Suppose you’ve returned home after my death; can you bear it after returning so full of hope. Thoughts like those prevented me from committing suicide initially. You didn’t write to me. No information from you; perhaps you were dead. This thought was trying to enter my mind, driving all the other thoughts out. Suppose I prayed to God to save you, God in whose existence you believed and of whose existence I knew nothing about! This idea led to a chain of thoughts, which filled my mind. Your behavior, my sensations and our passion—aren’t they real? Haven’t we created the love and passion that we shared? What is God’s creation or the creation of God? Is it born out of fear or an unrealistic desire? What can my worshipping of God give me? Can it bring you back to life if you were dead? It can’t. Maybe it can give me a little consolation. Where does that illusory consolation lead me to? Man has been questioning himself even while going through this illusion. His ability to ask questions has brought him to the present state. Knowing all this, why should I fall into this trap? Is it because I have lost the ability to ask questions? Then I started thinking about your death and its consequences. Your absence has created a great void. But there are men and women in this world who have lived closer to each other than we have. What happened when they lost their partners? They grieved or became closer to some one else. If you’d died, you and your lack of imagination are to be blamed. You have merely repeated what a few others have done in circumstances similar to ours. You showed no realistic thinking. Your ignorance is the cause of your death. Ranga, after that I erased the thought of death from my mind. And it is the change in your thinking that has helped you to survive and made our reconciliation possible! Belief unites our mind and body. It never helps us to progress forward.”

Ranganatham listened to her carefully.

He took her into his arms.

“Look Kamu, the confidence you have in you and your thinking is also a belief. Belief and unbelief are the twin plants that sprout from the soil of doubt. But actually they are two kinds of belief. The best belief is the one which helps the individual to control himself .”

Kameswari kept thinking.

A few days rolled by. Kameswari continued in the same job.

“Why don’t you change your job?”

“Why another job? Do you think I’ll run away?”

“Then give it up. My salary is sufficient for us, isn’t it?”

“I too used to think like that. I realised how important a job was for a woman like me when you went away.”

After a few days Ranganatham asked, “Can’t we get united?”

“I am trying my best.”

After some time, he said, “Being so far from each other while living under the same roof and sharing the same bed has become unbearable for me, Kamu.”

“My dear nut, we are not distanced from each other. You won’t have peace until you get rid of that idea,” she said and embraced him. He twisted himself around her.

“Ranga, what happened in our life is closely connected with the times we live in and the thoughts we inherit. Man-Woman relationship is changing because the world is changing. The Man has no right to say that the woman should not seek employment because incidents like the one happened in our lives are likely to happen anytime. It is no answer at all. Only if you can realise that everything that is happening is a step towards progress, you will get new solutions.”

They were united.

Several times he thought carefully about the opinion that the universal values that have come down from the ancient times are gradually eroding and the world is destined for destruction.

They have lived supplementing each other. Today what is it that is happening between his son and daughter-in-law? Isn’t it a fall?

Confused by his thoughts, Ranganatham approached Kameswari’s bed and sat down in the chair. “How do you interpret it, Kamu?” he asked.

“My son is selling his wife for his career. She obeys him either for luxury or lust. What is happening between them? I consider it a great sin for a woman to sell her body even for food. But it is only you who made me understand what a terrible thing hunger was. You wanted me to understand the incident that took place in your life in the right perspective and share your distress. You said that the industrial civilization has brought about new situations and conflicts between man and woman. Though I had serious doubts about your theory, I could respect the spirit behind it. Look at our children—the generation next to ours. How should we understand it—the generation that wants to buy everything by selling anything? Looking at their colossal sin, I am forced to look back on our own past. I can’t but think that ours was also a fall and what is happening today is nothing but a continuation of that. With your argumentative ability you convinced me that the world is moving towards progress You made me change my opinion that once dharma was walking on all its four legs and now limping on one leg. You showed me how opinions like mine originate and in whom and made me think seriously.”

“No, Kamu, I can’t agree with you on that. Humanity is certainly running towards a total disaster. Now there are husbands who sell their wives and wives who are willing to be sold.

What do you think they want? It’s horrible. How do you support their behavior? Analyse them?

Ranganatham, overcome by emotion, closed his eyes .

“Mamayya”!

Ranganatham opened his eyes.

Vani!

He turned his head toward her.

“I know you loathe me. But I loathe myself more vehemently than you ever can. But I have to answer myself.”

He hated listening to her. Vani continued, “I agree with you that your son is after career and I am after luxuries. I am an escapist. But what am I trying to escape or from whom? If I start to think about me, I always land on the thoughts of the world and the power and people running it.

“Who created careers and the instruments of luxury? Who has forced himself into our personal lives and vitiated our relationships? Who is tempting us with more and more wealth and comfort? Who is showing us the carrot and making us run for it? Who is driving us in the name of education, jobs, positions, assets, comforts and rewards? They are those who are shouting from roof tops that this mad chasing is democracy and human liberty. With the help of propaganda they are trying to convince everybody and also compelling us to believe it. They are creating divisions between races, religions and nations. Shamelessly they make use of everything possible to achieve it. They take care to see that one human being doesn’t agree with the other. What do they want to achieve?”

Ranganadham couldn’t control himself. He looked at her. He was reminded of Vemana, the saint who lived in lust and, after a while left it, and started preaching on code of conduct.

“They want Free Market. They want to make a commodity of everything that belongs to man. Man has become commodity and a consumer too. Here you get sold and there you buy. The creators and preachers of this system are also not an exception. Their vanity and mental fragility make them what they are!”

“But the seed of its destruction is within the system itself. Free Market makes man desperate. The desperate man doesn’t hesitate to sell himself or kill the other for his benefit. But can this system satisfy all his needs? If these people, who’ve gotten accustomed to this adventure, realize that Free Market can’t fulfill all their needs, they can destroy it in no time.”

Ranganatham looked at Vani, stunned.

“You know so much. Yet...”

Vani shook her head side to side, “The idea that people who ‘know’ live with a sense of justice is an old superstition. These people who ‘know’ organize their game with better skill and taste. They create their own rules. The real commodities and consumers are those who ‘know’ what they really are. When the people who do not ‘know’ can control the people who ‘know’, then the situation will be different.”

Ranganatham suddenly turned to Kameswari and asked, “Kamu, what do you say to her?”

There was no movement in Kameswari.

Ranganatham, shaking, touched her hand, put his finger near her nostril to check whether she was breathing or not, examined her sides and then felt her pulse.

Kameswari was no more.

He knew that this moment would come, but the shock is inevitable, the feeling that a part of his existence has been taken away. He was dazed. His motive force is gone! But when? Was it after she listened to him or Vani? Was it with a feeling of defeat or satisfaction? Is this progress or retreat? Torn between sorrow and doubt Ranganatham sat there motionless.

Vani approached him.

***

(The Telugu original was entitled “payanam-palayanam” and was published in Pratibha India. Permission from the author and translator gratefully acknowledged.)