Bhava Read online

  ‘One morning, Dinakar's mother went to bathe in the river Ganga, and she never came back. They found her corpse some distance away. People said she could have slipped into the river. But everyone in Tripathi's house wondered why she had put the amulet around her son's neck just before she went to bathe. Why did she wake her son so early that day, and give him milk to drink?’

  Sitamma had begun to cry. Dinakar guessed whose story she was telling. Shastri, sitting with closed eyes, counted his beads.

  ‘As soon as I saw the amulet, I knew that it contained a Sri Chakra and was from our parts. From which house is this boy, who is his father, why did his mother leave home with a little child? Shastri-gale, you may recite from the Purana, but only Veda Vyas could have written a story like Dinakar's. The whole country thinks this child has grown into a very intelligent man, but this man doesn't even know who is his mother, who is his father, which is his town, so perhaps he wants to believe that God himself is his mother and father and that is why he wears these kinds of clothes and goes wandering here and there.’

  Then Sitamma looked over at Shastri and became alarmed.

  ‘What is it? What is wrong?’ she said, and quickly brought him water to drink.

  5

  * * *

  As he listened to Sitamma's words, Shastri felt as if two pairs of red eyes were staring at each other furiously in his head. At times his second wife, Mahadevi, had looked at him silently with just such hatred. And at times he had looked at her in the same way. Later, he would feel puzzled, wondering why such fury burned in him without any reason.

  His daughter had looked at him with that kind of hatred when she left home. When he had heard that she was in love with somebody in college, he had felt that burning fury and had said words that should never have been spoken. She too had spoken terrible words to her father. ‘Can I be the same person,’ he had asked himself in wonder, ‘who in reciting a Purana can describe Prahlad or Dhruva with such moving tenderness?’

  He wanted to know, yet he felt as if he was always running away from himself. Would the amulet around Dinakar's neck stop this running away? Seeing it had somehow brought him face to face with the my sterious rage inside him. Suddenly realizing that both pairs of furious staring eyes were his own, he felt fresh terror and again tried to turn his mind somewhere else.

  Then he said, ‘Sitamma, keep Dinakar in your house for two days. When I come back I will take him to my house in the jungle. He has agreed to stay with me for a couple of days before going to Kerala. I will go now, I won't eat anyway, because it is Ekadashi.’ Although urged not to leave, Shastri went, hired a taxi from the stand, directed it away from the proper road, and entered a forest in which was the ruined temple of a goddess whom he had chosen for special devotion. The taxi had to travel on a path fit only for bullock-carts. ‘I'll give you twice the fare,’ he had said in the tone of the local landlords, and so the driver agreed to venture on the narrow bullock-cart roads. Shastri stopped the taxi in a thick jungle. He told the driver, ‘Wait for half an hour,’ then he pushed his way through bushes, making a path for himself until he stood before the ruined shrine of Bhagavati.

  Shastri had been paying two hundred and fifty rupees each month to a poor brahmin from a nearby village to come daily and light a lamp for Bhagavati. At one time he thought of building her a new temple, but had held back from doing so because he feared that the aura of the Devi would suffer if he interfered with the existing shrine. He believed this in spite of knowing that the Shastras allowed the rebuilding of a shrine once the proper rituals were performed. He believed that this very Bhagavati was the fierce goddess who presided over the eyes that were burning in his head.

  About a year earlier, unable to stand the daily quarrels with his wife, he had made a vow to Bhagavati and then brought Mahadevi to this place. She had stood before Bhagavati and begun to stare as if in a trance. Then she gave such an intense shriek that it slashed the silence of the forest. Looking at Shastri with her piercing eyes, she started to babble. Her accusations terrified him. How could she know that he had killed his first wife by smashing her head with a wooden lid? Mahadevi roared that she had become the ghost of that wife, and would go on haunting him.

  Mahadevi became Saroja herself. ‘Oh butcher brahmin, you killed me by beating me on my head! And were you not about to kill your daughter by your second wife?’

  Shastri closed his eyes before Bhagavati and said, ‘Bhagavati, did you make Mahadevi say a lie? Why did you have me believe until now that I was a murderer? Is Dinakar my son or is he the son of that Malayali pundit? Give me a sign so that I may know the truth. Don't make me keep wandering like a wraith.’

  But Shastri did not receive any sign, and the blood-red eyes in his head kept on staring in fury.

  ∗

  He made his way out of Bhagavati's forest to where he had left the taxi. Then he directed the driver to take him to another village, some ten miles from Udupi.

  In that village, there was only one big house, the one that Shastri had got built. When Shastri was in this house, the burning eyes in his head got cooled. It was the house of his mistress, Radha.

  ∗

  In Shastri's family, his elder brother had hated him, and Shastri hated him too. That brother suffered from asthma, didn't have any children, and his wife had died.

  Shastri's elder brother never married again. He begged Shastri to marry and save the family, but Shastri would not agree. He did not like living in a jungle, cultivating the garden, eating—all throughout the rainy season—jackfruit palya, or sambar made with cucumber. And he did not want to live under his miserly brother's control, every day hearing that asthmatic breathing. So, fifty years ago, he had taken his share of the property and gone to Bombay, where he began squandering money. He also opened a hotel, the Bhagavati Krupa. But although he owned the hotel, he had somebody else sitting at the cash counter. Shastri had no care for what he earned or what he spent.

  Nobody who had known him in his Bombay days would now say, ‘This is the same Shastri.’ In Bombay he had taken to wearing pyjamas and a shirt, and with a cap on his head seemed transformed into a Sindhi or a Marwari, even though he hadn't had enough courage to cut off his brahmin tuft.

  It was also in Bombay that Shastri developed a taste for women. Pimps became his friends. He got into the habit of playing cards the whole day. His eyes were always red from going without sleep. Constant smoking had given him a cough, and he began to worry that, like his brother, he would get asthma.

  ∗

  One day, in a rich prostitute's house, Shastri saw a young girl. She spoke both Kannada and Tulu, and was seventeen or eighteen years old. Shastri was twenty-five. A pimp dressed in silk dhotra, trying to look like a respectable householder, had recommended ‘a fresh high-school girl of your own side,’ and taken him to look her over.

  Shastri learned that the girl had been enticed away from a poor family in a village not far from Shimoga.

  He was surprised at the compassion he felt for her, although he was a libertine and full of crude sexual desires for women. The madam who had bought the girl could not be won over by three of the four upayas—sama, bheda, danda—so Shastri then used the fourth upaya—dana—and gave the madam four times the money that she had paid. He also gave the name Radha to the grateful girl, and took her to the Bhagavati Krupa, where he kept her in one of his rooms as his woman. He gave up cards and gambling and instead began to keep an eye on her.

  When a telegram came saying that his brother was not keeping well, Shastri took Radha with him. He left her in a Mangalore hotel with someone he trusted, and went to the village. By then his relatives were waiting for him to do the funeral rites.

  The mouth of his asthmatic brother, which had always been open for breathing, was now closed. There were flies around his short pointed nose, that nose he had often felt like smashing. Even seeing his brother's corpse did not bring tears to his eyes. They had spoken such cruel words to each other. Now, remembering thi
s, it seemed to him that they were a cursed family. He had never enjoyed his mother's love, she had died giving birth to him. His father, in old age, had married another woman. This stepmother thought that she was cursed, being the wife of an old man, and she made it her aim in life to give pain to everyone. Finally, she died after getting bitten by a snake in the garden. The father died of dog-bite, and Shastri's brother's wife of pneumonia. Shastri's brother then lived alone, a miser who dug up every corner of the house searching for gold which might have been buried there by ancestors.

  There was already a lot of wealth which had been bequeathed to them—a trunk full of gold which must have been looted by some ancestor during the fall of the Vijayanagar Empire. The brother, looking for more, first dug up the whole house, then began digging in the garden. One day while digging, he died.

  Shastri now owned the entire property. After his brother's funeral rites he took out the trunk from the iron safe to satisfy himself that his brother had not squandered the gold, and he felt relieved. Then he brought his ‘dear parrot’ Radha from the hotel and had a small cottage built for her on the bank of a river near an arecanut garden. Then, considering who could look after her safety, he remembered Radha saying that she had an aunt in Shimoga. This aunt's husband was a tailor. Radha's mother—who had been mistress to a rich man in Chennagiri—had grown old and unwanted, so Shastri brought the mother as well. He bought a tiled house for Radha's family, and set up a cloth shop in the town for the tailor.

  Shastri had no neighbours of his own caste near his house and gardens in the forest. His relatives who lived at a distance acted distant as well. They would have to come when there was a funeral rite in the house. Apart from this, nobody wanted to be anywhere near his place, and so Shastri could carry on his relationship with Radha fearlessly and unabashedly. He also bought a cloth-topped Ford car and took to wearing a draped dhoti with a shirt over it, and pump shoes; he drove his car on the cart tracks. All these things separated him still more from his relatives.

  Two years went by in this way. Radha began to tell him, ‘I am anyhow your mistress, but you must also marry.’ He had no child by Radha, and this worried him. ‘Am I cursed to be without issue in this house as well?’ he thought.

  ‘It may be my fate to be without a child,’ Radha had said. ‘You should marry and see.’ In this way she kept after him.

  Shastri had never in his life met another spirit like Radha. It was not that she was without desires, but that all her desires were contained within the limits of family life. If she could get coconut milk for her gruel and, on top of that, mango pickle, this was what made her happy. And Shastri, who went around burning in anger, would always soften before Radha, enchanted by the charming words which came from her sweet mouth. Unable to say no to her, and also curious to know whether he could father a child, he went in search of a bride.

  Nobody in those parts would give a girl to this wealthy, cursed house. They would raise some objection about the household and then refuse. There was no family elder with whom Shastri was close, someone who could go about arranging his marriage. And who respects a man who goes on his own to ask for a girl? But at last, Shastri came to know of a girl in a poor family near Chikmagalur. Wearing a gold-bordered shawl and draped in a dhoti, with a turban on his head like a Mysorean and kumkum on his forehead to make him look like a proper, traditional person, Shastri went to ask for a bride.

  Having produced eight daughters and desiring to get at least the first one married, the parents—noting the prospective son-in-law's wealth, lineage, his family, his horoscope—and showing no desire to know any other detail about him, agreed to give their daughter Saroja in marriage.

  Saroja was a beautiful, classically-featured girl. With her large, heavenly, indifferent eyes, Saroja got married without ever saying what she wanted. In the beginning, it had made Shastri proud that she liked reading books, that she was good at reciting the Mahabharata. Radha too was pleased that the girl was educated.

  Radha even attended the wedding. Dressed like goddess Gauri, she came in splendour, the only loving member of the bridegroom's party. Radha's relationship with the wealthy Shastri wasn't unknown to Saroja's parents, but they acted as if they didn't know. Their only concern was where to seat Radha for the wedding dinner. Radha, using all the savings from the garden Shastri had given her, had bought gifts for the bride: a sari, and coral-studded gold bangles made by the famous craftsmen of Mangalore. No one else on Shastri's side had taken such delight in this marriage. No one else had given a present. Saroja's father and mother, worn out by being parents to eight girls, were comforted by Radha's affectionate nature, by her wealth and her expensive gifts, and felt that their daughter didn't have to worry.

  To all their close relations they could boast, ‘My son-in-law has a car, and he has a hotel in Bombay. Someone looks after it and sends him cash every month. He owns hundreds of acres of areca-nut garden. What's best, my daughter has neither a mother-in-law nor a father-in-law. She can manage things exactly as she pleases'

  The house-entering ceremony was over, the bride's party went back. Shastri remembers clearly even now that his beautiful wife never lifted her face and looked at him. He came to understand this was not shyness but contempt. If he took her hand playfully, she would stand like a statue of stone. In his memory, her eyes never met his eyes but passed over him as if he did not exist.

  Shastri chided her, beat her, but nothing he did could change Saroja's indifference. She slept by his side dutifully, allowed him to enter her, but no fruit came of their contact.

  Five years passed in this way, without Saroja becoming pregnant. Radha had supplied many medicines. She even counselled Shastri how to win over his wife in bed. But whatever erotic play he attempted did not loosen Saroja. He repelled her, and when the sexual act was over she would go to the bathroom; pour water over her head, then come and lie down on the bed with wet hair. In order to let his rage escape, Shastri would drive his car to Radha's house in the middle of the night.

  The surprising thing was that Saroja was friendly with Radha, although without any touch of intimacy. Radha was fond of books, and she would send to Saroja stories and novels which she had read. In return, Saroja would send to Radha books she had got from her mother's house. Radha sent Saroja jasmine flowers which she had grown, delicately woven in banana fibre. After first offering them to Sharada, whom she worshipped, Saroja would fix them in her braided hair.

  Radha would make excuses to visit the house, saying that she needed banana leaves, or rope, or rangoli powder. She would bring beaten rice that she herself had made, and tonde grown in her garden. Saroja always welcomed her politely, saying, ‘Come in,’ and would make her coffee. But she spoke no more than was sufficient for the occasion. The two did not address one another by name. If Shastri was there when Radha came, he would straightaway call the servant, go to his car, and supervise the cleaning of it. If Radha stayed for a long while, the car which had been driven in the dusty village tracks would become so clean and spotless that it shone like the statue of a God.

  6

  * * *

  Meanwhile, something happened that would change Shastri's whole life. A Kannada-speaking Malayali whose name was Karunakara Pundit opened an ayurvedic shop in Udupi. He was almost as old as Shastri, but he had a moustache and beard, and these enhanced the glow on his face. He had not cut his hair, but wore it in a big tuft. On his forehead he had a large sandal-paste mark, and his face had a quality of equanimity. His car was a better one than Shastri's. His clothes and demeanour made him appear a man of fortune. His Hindi was better than Shastri's, and he even spoke English. He had knowledge of allopathic medicine, and also of Sanskrit. For him, Sanskrit was as easy as drinking water.

  Shastri and Pundit became acquainted, proceeding from asking one another, ‘Of what model is your car?’ Finally, Shastri confidentially obtained some aphrodisiac preparations from Pundit. Their acquaintance grew, they became friends, and one day Shastri took Pundit home
for a meal.

  As soon as Pundit entered the house, he looked around, and then stood meditating. His gaze became more serious and contemplative and Shastri, worried, lit a cigarette and stood before him in humility. Then Shastri gestured for Karunakara Pundit to sit down on a modern sofa that Shastri had bought after his brother's death, when he became the master of the house. Again Pundit closed his eyes and began to do japa, touching with his thumb the joints of his fingers. Then he opened his eyes and said to Shastri, ‘Don't feel bad if I tell you something. I have some knowledge of tantra and astrology, which I have received from the traditional learning of my family.’

  Shastri's regard for him doubled. He said, respectfully, ‘Yes, please speak …’

  ‘There is an evil in this house. Don't misunderstand me. It is that in some bygone time a woman was murdered here. That is why there is no progeny, no peace, for those who live here now. Some lowly spirits hover over people living here. As soon as I came in, I felt two burning eyes open in my brain. And when two other eyes opened to stare back at them, I began to do japa.’ Hearing this from Karunakara Pundit, Shastri was stunned.

  ‘A tantric rite must take place in this house. It should be performed jointly by husband and wife. Towards the end of the rite, the lady of your house will have to sit naked and offer worship.’ Karunakara Pundit spoke as if he were prescribing the manner in which to take a medicine.

  Shastri sighed and asked, ‘Will you arrange to get it done?’ Karunakara Pundit agreed and, consulting the almanac, found an auspicious day for performing the ritual. ‘It will have to be done secretly,’ he said.