Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘Rama, the evening has now fallen. Will you stand with me as the arathi is being performed in the temple across the lake? I can see the torches being lit, I can hear the music sound, and then there is the vast ingurgitating silence of the weir-waters. If you stood by me there is a grave question I would ask of you: if I asked you, would you really marry me? Will you? Father may object and say you are just a professor. But Mother, whose values are more right, would say, “Oh, a Brahmin!” She would think your presence amidst us august, holy. But I am too poor, too wretched a creature. No woman who’s a woman can choose her destiny. Men make her destiny. For a woman to choose is to betray her biology. Tell me, Rama, tell me truly and as before God, “Come”, and I’ll come. The night is so auspicious, and tomorrow is Gokulashthami, when Lord Krishna will be born. We shall fast, and we shall worship, and I shall think of you, my Lord.

‘Did I tell you that in Surajpur the whole palace rings with the little bells on my toes. I said to Mother it was the gift of a south Indian Brahmin. Mother was so pleased. She said, “We don’t make such lovely things any more here. How beautiful they’ll be, when you marry, my child.”

‘When the Muslims came, Rama, shouting and leaping on horseback across the deserts, and vowing vengeance on the Rajput; when they encircled our fortresses, bribed Brahmin ministers and tried to get in; when they cut off supplies of water and made us shout to the very skies with thirst; the men jumped on their horses and bid adieu to their wives, their daughters, the tilak of our blood on their foreheads; the gates were suddenly thrown open and the men charged the enemy, while the women read the Mahabharata and leapt into the flames inside. No Hindu woman would wed a Turk. I feel besieged — the Turk is at the door. Help me to jump into the pyre, Lord, my Master, of this life and of all the lives to come. Help me.

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 lip 4of 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.’