Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘No, I cannot. I must go back. I must go back to Pratap.’

I pressed her against me ever more tenderly. ‘Come, I’ll take you,’ I persisted.

‘To God,’ she said and fell into my lap. I touched her lips as though they were made with light, with honey, with the space between words of poetry, of song. London was no longer a city for me, it was myself: the world was no longer space for me, it was a moment of time, it was now.

At Barbirolli’s I ordered a Chianti, and said, as though it had some meaning, ‘And now you must learn Italian.’

‘Io ritornai dalla santissima onda

rifatto si come piante novelle

renovellate di novella fronda

Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle.’

I recited. ‘You must learn Italian, for God has texture in that language. God is rich and Tuscan, and the Arno has a bridge made for marriage processions.’

‘So has Allahabad,’ she added, somewhat sadly. ‘And appropriately it is called the Hunter Bridge.’

‘May I go on with my Superman?’ I begged.

‘The biological sense of warmth having come back to me— and how nice this Chianti is—’ she raised her glass, ‘I can now follow any intricacy of thought. I like to play chess with you in history.’

‘The minister is the Superman,’ I started.

‘And the king?’

‘The sage. The Vedantin, himself beyond duality, is in himself, through duality and non-duality.’

‘That’s too difficult with Chianti. I wish, Rama — shall I call you that from now? — I wish you could sing me a song, and I would lie on your lap, far away where there is no land or road, no river or people, no father, fiancé, filligree, palace, or elephants — perhaps just a mother — and on some mountain…’

‘In Kailas…’ I said.

‘You would sit in meditation.’

‘And you?’

‘Pray, that you might awaken, and not burn the world with that third eye — that eye which plays with history, ‘she laughed.

‘And parrots would sing, and the mango leaf be tender, be like copper with morning sunshine.’

‘And I would go round you three times, once, twice, thrice, and fall at your ash-coloured feet, begging that the Lord might absorb me unto himself… I am a woman,’ she added hesitantly, ‘a Hindu woman.

Mérétho Giridhara Gopāla…

Mine the mountain-bearing, Krishna,

My Lord none else than He.’

History, Stalin, and the Superman had vanished. Trying to solve the puzzle of history, like some hero in a fable, I had won a bride. A princess had come out of the budumékaye, but the moment I had entered the world of the seven sisters the prime minister’s son had led a revolution in the palace, had imprisoned the other six, and put us two under arrest. King Mark of Tintagel awaited his Isolde. I would have to give her to him, but having drunk the Potion of Granval I would meet her by brooks and forests; I would be torn by dragons, but some day we would lie in the forest, the sword between us. Some day love would be strong enough to shatter the rock to fragments, and we should be free to wander where we would, build an empire if we cared.

‘And we shall have a bambino,’ she said, and laughed as though she had caught my thought.

‘Two,’ I added. ‘One is Ganesha and the other Kumara.’

‘And we shall throw colours on each other at Holi under the mountain moon. Our Indian Eros shoots with a flower, so why burn him?’

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘The third eye opens when the attraction has ended. I hope you are not attracted by me?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘If I were attracted by attraction, there would be no one like Hussain. He looks like someone from a Moghul painting, lovely with a long curve of eyebrow, a thin waist, very long gentle hands — and inside here,’ she pointed to her head, ‘all empty. His heart is filled with popped rice, curly and white and isolated. Muslims know how to please a woman,’ she finished, rather sadly.

‘And a Hindu?’

‘A Hindu woman knows how to worship her Krishna, her Lord. When the moon shines over the Jumna and lights are lit in the households, and the cows are milked, then it is Janaki’s son plays on the banks of the Yamuna in Brindavan. The cattle tear their ropes away, the deer leave the forests and come leaping to the groves, and with the peacocks seated on the branches of the asoka, Krishna dances on the red earth. What Gopi, my Lord, would not go to this festival of love? Women lose their shame and men lose their anger, for in Brindavan Krishna the Lord dances. We women are bidden to that feast. Come,’ she said, as though it was too much emotion to bear.

As we wandered down the streets, Piccadilly with its manycoloured lights, the Tube entrances and the bus queues gave us a sense of reality. Finally I took her to some woman’s hostel off Gower Street — where she always had rooms reserved for her and where she was looked after by her friend Gauri from Hyderabad, round as Savithri herself, but loquacious, big and protective. I was always so afraid of Savithri getting lost. It was not only a matter of bringing back her glasses or pen, but one always felt one had to bring Savithri back to Savithri.

‘Ah, I am very real,’ she protested. ‘And tomorrow you will see how clever I am at taking buses. I’ll jump into a 14 at Tottenham Court Road and be in Kensington at ten precise,’ she promised as I left her. I knew that at ten she would still be talking away to Gauri about some blouse-pattern or somebody’s marriage in Delhi. I knew I would have to telephone and ask her if she knew the time. ‘I promise you, you need not telephone. Tomorrow I will be punctual as Big Ben.’ With Savithri the profound and the banal lived so easily side by side.

I touched her hand at the door, to know I could touch her, and carried the feel of it home. It was like touching a thought, not just a thought of jug or water, or a pillow or a horse, but a thought as it leaps, as it were, in that instant where the thought lights itself, as the meteor its own tail. I felt it was of the substance of milk, of truth, of joy seen as myself.

Next day, when I was washed and dressed and had meditated and rested — I was in a muslin dhoti and kudtha — there was still no sign of Savithri at ten or at ten past ten. Not long after, she entered in a south Indian sari of a colour we in Mysore call ‘colour of the sky’, with a peacock-gold choli, and a large kunkum on her forehead. She looked awed with herself, and full of reverence. As I went to touch her I refrained — something in her walk was strange.

‘I have been praying.’

‘To whom?’

‘To Shiva,’ she whispered. Then she opened her bag and took out a sandal stick. Her movements were made of erudite silences. ‘Please light this for me,’ she begged.

By the time I had lit the sandal stick in the bathroom and come out she had spread her articles of worship about her. There was a small silver censer, with the camphor. There was a silver kunkum-box. She had a few roses, too, fresh and dripping with water.

‘Bring me some Ganges-water in this.’

I put some plain water in her silver plate. She put some kunkum into the water.

‘Will you permit me?’ she asked, ‘Permit this, a woman’s business?’

‘Oh, no!’ I protested.

‘But it was you who told me — at home a man obeys a woman, that it’s Hindu dharma.’

‘I obey,’ I said.

Then she knelt before me, removed one by one my slippers and my stockings, and put them aside gently — distantly. She took flower and kunkum, and mumbling some song to herself, anointed my feet with them. Now she lit a camphor and placing the censer in the middle of the kunkum-water she waved the flame before my face, once, twice, and three times in arathi. After this she touched my feet with the water, and made aspersions of it over her head. Kneeling again and placing her head on my feet, she stayed there long, very long, with her breath breaking into gentle sobs. Then she gently held herself up. Taking the kunkum from the box I placed it on her brow, at the parting of her hair, and there where her bosom heaved, the abode of love. I could not touch her any more, nor could she touch me, and we stood for an isolate while. Then suddenly I remembered my mother’s toe-rings.