Bhava Read online

  He began writing in English:

  ‘Dear Shrimati Mahamata,’

  He laughed at himself, struck it out, and, more properly, still in English, began again.

  ‘Dear Mahamata,’

  —and on top of the page, to please her, he wrote in Devanagari, om namo bhagavati.

  ‘Dear Mahamata,

  When, in my troubled days, I was trying to understand my relations with you and Gangu, I read a story about you in the Illustrated Weekly. The story went something like this:

  One night you were travelling to Kashi in a train, and you saw a handsome young man. At that moment, you suddenly recalled that you had been Radha in a previous birth. A divine love welled up in you and you became helpless. Your body, which belongs to this bhava, could not bear this experience. You even forgot that your father was there with you. When the train stopped for a little while in some station, you got off with only the clothes you were wearing and from there you began wandering about like a religious mendicant. Once, while wandering, you felt tired and sat under a bodhi tree. It was then that you saw a cowherd playing on a flute. He, like the handsome young man you had seen on the train, was Bhagavan Shri Krishna himself, come to release you from your cycle of births. Listening to his flute, you were liberated from this world and became Radha herself.

  This was, in short, your history as given in the story. There were also some pictures of you as you look now. Yet I could immediately see that the old mischievous look had not disappeared from your eyes.’

  ‘Dear Mahamata,

  It is from me, not Krishna, that you had your first great experience of love in this bhava. From looking at me, who these days is in spiritual anguish. Listen, and I will make you remember.

  Twenty-four years ago, you must have been eighteen then. By chance I was travelling in the same second-class compartment. You were sleeping on an upper berth, your father was sleeping in the berth below you. As you told me later on, your father had brought you to Kashi to overcome your bad planets because you had refused to live with your husband. You were still a girl studying in college and you told me all this in your beautiful broken English.

  But here is the important point. My berth was near yours and I could see that your berth was not properly held by the chain. That was a good excuse for me to watch you anxiously. You had been looking at me, too, your eyes filled only with me. Your father was watching me suspiciously, but you didn't know this. Very gently, you began to bite your lips and move your mouth as if you were chewing something. You pushed up your breasts as if they were a heavy weight, then looked at the fan as if feeling hot. Under cover of your bedsheet, you began opening the buttons of your sari blouse. You smoothed your hair and even winked, showing me you understood that I wanted to bite your lips. Your eyes were very mischievous, eyes that smiled on their own. Even now your eyes are like that.

  I had been thinking of my love for a girl called Gangu a year before, a love that had dissolved our bodies. Now I was looking at you, wanting to eat you up, yet trying to behave as if the only reason I looked at you was my concern that, without being properly secured, your berth might fall. I came over and, making as if to fix the chain, brought my left arm near your thighs. Then you turned slightly and with your right thigh touched my left arm.

  While I was lifting the berth slightly so that I could attach the hook, your father got up, started hitting me, and shrieked, “Hey! Ay, ay!” Fortunately, other passengers in the compartment appreciated my concern, appreciated that a young man dressed in modern clothes responded so courteously to a woman in distress. They scolded your father, who had an irritable expression on his face. You still watched all this mischievously, and had silently come to an understanding with me.

  I have always been good at knowing the heart of a woman, even in the clothes I wear right now. I acted as if I had been insulted by your hot-headed father, yet had forgiven him. After everyone switched off their lights, you quietly got down from your berth and made your way along the aisle. I guessed where you had gone and, a little later, I followed and pushed open the toilet door. You were waiting inside, and you embraced me. Not only had you opened the buttons of your blouse, you had even removed your brassiere and tucked it into the waist of your sari.

  The stench of urine didn't bother us. I began biting your lips. You kissed me all over my face and ears, took my hands to your breasts. You murmured that you were a college student and hated the marriage that had been forced on you. You would go with me anywhere I wanted. In your reckless intensity of passion you seemed like a goddess to me. The train slowed, to stop at a station. Then you said, “Let's get down here and run away.”

  Although I felt great desire for you, I had no courage. Yet I said, “Yes, yes,” as if saying so were a part of foreplay, and began to touch you everywhere.

  But you were a wild girl. You left the toilet and got down from the train. It moved off again almost immediately. Soon your father noticed your absence. He shouted and searched for you, then gathered together all the bundles of luggage and got down at the next station.

  After Gangu, you were my second withdrawal. Both times I withdrew, and this made me doubtful of myself. I thought I might be incapable of real love, that I was perhaps obsessed only with my own self.

  Years passed, and I became famous. After many love affairs, I finally married. When I found that my wife was happier in someone else's bed than in mine, I felt furious and humiliated. I was disgusted by our quarrels over how much gold I should give her in order to divorce me. Despite my disgust, I didn't turn over. I didn't change. Just as she had married me for my wealth and kept up another relationship, I—in my own glamorous world—was balancing a few other relationships, like a tightrope walker in a circus. You may say that since I did not experience the truth of who I am, I suffered the illusion of being held captive by this bhava. Although I had known this truth intellectually, it was delectable to be under the spell of such intrigues. Forgetting the time I promised to one woman, I promised the same time to another; cheating on one in order to placate another; using the anger and emotion that I caused as a spice to make the act of love more delicious—this became an addiction. Yet it also led to a certain weariness that made it possible for me to listen, however dimly, for another strain of melody in me.

  I wasn't able to live with my wife. Yet, for the sake of convention, I felt unable to leave her. Then one day I was drinking fine Darjeeling tea with her in the Taj Intercontinental, and I simply got up and left, went to the bank, and brought back some of the gold which my mother had left for me. I placed before her bars of gold worth nearly twenty lakhs of rupees, and she was wonderstruck. I will never forget the way her face bloomed. I saw in her the delight of an innocent child, and felt touched by the play of illusion that the gold produced in her. It seemed then that my hatred for her disappeared.

  But that hatred returns whenever I remember the sounds of her lovemaking with the other man. One evening, I had entered the flat with my own key and stood silently in the drawing room. I heard her moaning in ecstasy. Her lover was a mere dull engineer. They were like two animals making strange sounds and then getting spent. I couldn't bear it, and thought of taking a knife from the kitchen and slashing her. Even the most lustful man will find it astonishing that his woman would get done to her by another person what he himself does. Why shouldn't there be release even in such painful astonishment?

  Anyhow, seeing her enthralled by the illusion of gold, I thought I had a glimpse of my possible release. I took this Ayyappa vrata, postponed all other engagements, and for three months wandered in holy places. But I found no peace of mind. Then I read the story about you. That gave me hope of another way of release, and about a week ago I came to your world-famous ashram near Madras.

  Such crowds of people, such jubilance! Everywhere there were colour pictures of you, clothes with your picture, stickers with your picture, plates with your picture. From the outside your ashram looked like a modern shopping place. I felt a little d
isappointed, but also curious. There were dharamshalas with rooms where people could stay in whatever degree of luxury they could afford. But I stayed in a resort hotel which had been built in a village on the beach, where quite a few foreign devotees also stayed.

  Even if you personally met everyone for a minute, and sat like a Bhagavati Devi for ten hours, you could still see only six hundred people a day. Although I hid my identity as a TV man from everyone else, I revealed it to your managers, and so after three days I was lucky enough to get your darshan. There was a queue about a kilometre long, where each person got a half-minute with you. I had been standing in another, smaller queue. This was for VIPs who would get a full minute with you. There I had to wait, hopeful and uncertain, for darshan of your face—I who was an agent of that great change in you.

  The half-minute queue people were fortunate enough to have their heads touched by your hand; but those in the one-minute queue were fortunate enough to be embraced by you. I had heard one of the mysterious tales that the pilgrims told each other: whoever has pure bhakti, whoever is standing on tiptoe, poised for release, having worn away all the karma and dirt of this becoming—when you embraced such people, it was said, your breasts would leak milk. If milk appeared, you would press it to that person's eyes. There was an old judge of the Supreme Court who got your milk, then gave up everything and stayed on to help manage your ashram.

  Waiting anxiously for my turn, getting nearer and nearer, I counted on my watch the good fortune of the people standing in front of me—I wanted at least to glimpse you when I moved up in the queue. But your officers had arranged the queue in such a zigzag maze that no one could catch sight of you until they were almost face-to-face. Perhaps the intent was to make you suddenly appear like a vision.

  But gradually I lost interest in following the process. Because of my TV shows, I too am adept at timing. And hadn't I come in search of you because I was tired of such games? Just like those who become artists in sexual matters and who deliberately stage the climax of an erotic experience.

  Then I saw you. It surprised me that you did not seem tired, even after touching so many people. You embraced me, but I was not a blessed one who brought milk to your breasts. Did I or didn't I see the old mischievousness in your eyes? Have you or haven't you truly crossed over? But even after turning over, don't we still remain limited by our bhava? You still urinate, don't you? You embraced me just as I was thinking all these things.

  You enfolded me in a divine, never-stale-however-much-touched love. I was filled with a sense of wonder. Then you went on and embraced the person standing next to me. But when you had embraced me, you made me feel for that moment that only I existed for you, just as you made the next person feel that you existed only for him. I thought that this might be a gift which never tires you although you do it day after day after day. I also felt sad that you, always sitting there that way, had grown fat despite your young age.

  After having your darshan, I took up my journey again to seek out an old woman named Sitamma, who years before had become like my mother, and also to look for Gangubai, who had secretly shown me the taste of this body which I am now trying to punish in my vairagya. During this journey I also met an old man called Shastri. He fed me kuttavalakki and became like a relation from some past life.

  My dear Mahamata, is the son of Gangu, whom both Narayan and I had loved, my son? It seems he intends to sacrifice all attachments in vairagya. Tell me, what should I do now?’

  In this way, Dinakar finished the letter, felt tired, and slept.

  20

  * * *

  On his third day at Sitamma's house, Dinakar thought that he had woken up very early, but when he came out he found that Sitamma had woken up earlier still, had already swept and sprinkled the veranda, and was ready to lay the rangoli. ‘Did you sleep?’ she asked. ‘Bring a chair and sit down. Look what rangoli I am going to lay. I will fill the whole veranda with the picture of Sri Chakra which is on your amulet. Isn't that rakshe from your mother?’ And she began to work.

  ‘Sri Chakra’ were the only words he had understood. But as he watched, he grasped little by little what began to rise on the veranda in red kumkum and yellow turmeric, and when it had fully arisen he took in the whole thing again, all the while drinking fresh coffee.

  Nine triangles joining, one inside the other, creating an orbit which becomes a circle in turn becoming a chakra, the chakra becoming a petalled flower, the flower a form manifested within a square opened out to the four directions, the whole figure wombing in itself the creative energy of earth and sky.

  This form had perfected itself in Sitamma's meditation, so that the eyes of an observer became absorbed in the continuous intermingling of yoni and linga, resting in the colours of kumkum and turmeric, then moving towards the point at the centre, becoming one with it.

  After his coffee Dinakar felt serene, went upstairs to his room and again sat down to write, this time to the wife from whom he had separated.

  ∗

  ‘Dear Ranjana,

  In the extreme hatred and jealousy I felt that day, I see now a hint of my release. I had wanted to take a knife from the kitchen and kill you. But even for a slut like you, there might have been a possibility of release in getting fucked by him. I have begun to believe this now that I can, without any jealousy, imagine that moment when you opened out continuously to him, allowing him to enter into every nook and corner of yourself, as you moaned in ecstasy. It is possible to get free of bondage through an unearthly pleasure so intense that you feel you cannot bear it, that you will die.

  But if you continue to be a scheming slut all your life, you will never completely turn over. I am writing this after seeing that a girl who was touched by me in her ecstasy of passion became a mahamata. There was also a hint that vairagya might flower in you when I saw your face bloom in the ecstasy of illusion while looking at the gold I gave you. I cannot guess where you might find release. But if it happens, you will realize how easy it always was, how it could have happened at any time, how at any time you could have turned over as easily as turning over in your sleep. I wish you success in this. I never truly touched you and reached you. You have never truly touched me and held me. I hope that someday I will find it amusing that I still sometimes feel jealous when I think of another man caressing the birthmark on your thigh. Why do you want to get fucked by a worthless scum like him? I can't understand why you want to get fucked by a man who enjoys leftovers. Keep my flat as long as you want. Don't worry that I may suddenly turn up there. I am sending by registered post my key to the flat, so that I am not even tempted to do so. One thing more. Whatever I bought during the year of our marriage because you desired it, is yours.

  From one feeling weary because of you, still not free from hatred, searching for a way out—

  Dinakar’

  Then he thought of all his other lovers and began writing short notes to them.

  ‘Dear Sudarshini,

  I never loved you wholeheartedly. You too did not fully love me. But we were eager to conquer each other.

  I remember seeing you one day, humming to yourself, sitting alone and looking inwards. In such moments I see the possibility that you may be released from bhava.

  Dinakar’

  ‘Dear Priti,

  Your desire for me grew from the fear that your youth was fading. And I, always curious in the beginning about every woman, came together with you. But later I began to search for ways to escape from you. Yet I held you to me through some illusion of love. That's because, like you, I am lonely.

  Now I believe that you pretended to enjoy sex with me even when you didn't, because you wanted to cheat yourself. Forgive me for pretending to believe that you were happy. I remember one day you carefully removed the jasmine from your braid and placed the flowers on a green leaf. With your fingers, you delicately sprinkled water, the right amount, with loving tenderness. You were not aware that I, in wonderment, was watching you do this. Remembering this now br
ings hope that some good will come to us from that moment.

  Desiring desirelessness, and realizing that it can't be got by desiring it,

  Yours,

  Dinakar’

  ‘Dear Mamata,

  You never allowed me to see you naked.

  But one day as you quickly removed your clothes to get under the blanket, I saw a white patch on your thigh. I knew that it was not leprosy, but you feared I might think so. Your liberation might lie in the leucoderma itself, even if it spreads all over your body. May God give you strength to face it.

  You made many sacrifices for me. You accepted all my other lovers without envy.

  I was never truly excited by you. It was feelings of compassion that united us.

  Praying for you,

  Dinakar’

  He put all the letters that he had written into envelopes, thinking that he would write still more letters the next day—to one in Lucknow, to another in Allahabad, to another in Kuwait, to yet another whom he had been trying to seduce and who had been putting him off to make the desire more delicious—a reporter for a Delhi paper. Perhaps there was no use in sending the letter to Mahamata, who hardly had time to breathe. He stepped out of the house to go in search of a mailbox.