A DAY GONE BY

(Short story)

Dr. PREMA NANDAKUMAR

Now, what was there to distinguish this from other seminars? Nothing, perhaps.

The usual agenda and items; musty paper-readings and profitless discussions; a collection of nondescript writers, a couple of foreign academics, the brilliant Indian settled abroad but now on his sabbatical, and the inevitable local great man.

Actually, the “great man” was really great. Gaunt, past eighty-five; but still mentally and physically alert, a strikingly handsome man even now. T. S. Sundaramurthy was a household name. Famed novelist and moralist, a poet with no inconsiderable reputation, and a living Vyasa as people called him for his adaptations in mellifluous Tamil of the Bhagavata Purana. A fiery patriot, too, of pre-independence days. It had of course meant great persuasion to get him to preside over the seminar, because Sundaramurthy rarely stirred out of his ancestral village where he lived with his daughter’s family. Besides, since ten years, he had become almost completely blind.

His son, a Professor of Physics at Minnesota University, had just come home also, for his sabbatical. And it was by appealing to the son that the organisers had got the father to agree to take part in the seminar.

The proceedings were thus lifted out of the ordinary greyness of such seminars. Like a Greek God, Sundaramurthy sat through each session – he insisted that he would and because of his presence there was a measure of decorum, humour and high seriousness. Even the hand - swinging firebrand novelist, Suthi (meaning a hammer, a result of telescoping the first syllables of Suthamangalam Tirumalai), was sedate and subdued.

All went well till the brilliant Indian settled abroad presented his paper. The seminar was on “Moral and Spiritual Values in Modern Indian Fiction”, and his paper was titled “Integrity and Insincerity in Moralist Fiction”. Kamalanathan, Professor in charge of the Creative Program in an obscure American college, buzzed a lot about Bellow and Updike and Pyncho, before coming to Indian authors, and especially the Tamil writers and then launched an attack, as if under repetition-compulsion, on the moth-eaten morality of the keepers of the literary Establishment. Over two decades earlier, Kamalanathan had acquired a sort of sudden notoriety when he published a novel, Antics and Holy Ash, attacking the traditional mores of his own caste.

On the strength of that freak reputation, he had gone to the States to take a Creative Workshop Course. One thing leading to another, he had settled there and married another expatriate, a divorcee professing a different faith. A piece from him would occasionally adorn some Tamil magazine, and rather more frequently his petulant “letters to the editor” would appear in the English press.

It was always the same monotonous theme: the evils festering in his caste, his community, his country. All this had won him a steady foreign clientele, as also invested him with the halo of an incisive and fearless iconoclast, and he became an automatic invitee to international conferences, especially to seminars on Emergent Literatures and Social Anthropology. And a sort of studied pseudo - American critical jargon helped his image whenever he descended upon his native soil.

Sundaramurthy’s son, Ramakrishna, hated the very name of Kamalanathan. And not without good reason, for the tradition haloed hero with feet of clay in Antics and Holy Ash was in fact Sundaramurthy in disguise. The details being tastelessly parallel, the public no doubt relished such an audacious exercise in debunking on the reigning monarch of fiction. There was some talk of a defamation case, but it died down soon. Sundaramurthy was perhaps upset somewhat, and for nearly a decade he wrote neither novel nor shorter fiction. To this period, however, belonged some of his celebrated symbolistic poems including “Expiation”, “Memory is a Distant Knife” and “Stilled is the Fire”. When he returned to fiction, he preferred to go back several centuries and produce a magnificent trilogy on India’s historical past.

The thought of those years when his father had been under a temporary cloud came back to Ramakrishna. “All because of this cheeky blighter”, he murmured to himself. “There he is at it again, spouting about the tribal impulses traceable in uppercaste Hindus, and about their vanity, their hypocrisy, their futility...!’

Those days! Ramakrishna was then a student in the university, and had received on his face the full blast of Kamalanathan’s poison fumes. All around him he had heard students and the faculty discussing or whispering about “the novel of the decade.” What galled him even more was that, the initial identification being tell-tale, people carried the parallelism all the way, including the concubine and perhaps her murder as well. He still remembered the intriguing name in the novel, Ahalya, whose body was found in a disused well in an outhouse of the hero’s estate bought out of the enormous royalties...As Kamalanathan went on with his paper, while the audience yawned, Ramakrishna’s memories cleared the haze of years. Once when he had become vehemently argumentative, and suggested a defamation suit, his father had spoken of the folly of going to court on such matters. In that soft, quiet voice of his!

“But father, the fellow is gaining cheap popularity at the expense of an established reputation. He should be taught a lesson.”

“A Brahmin keeping a concubine and eating meat. It is a common enough accusation, and perhaps justified too sometimes. When a novelist deals with a social truth, why bother?”

“Of course, father. But in this case he is not.”

“What makes you think so?”

“But father,” he had begun and stopped. Then the truth had hit him and his eyes had dropped down.”

“You are grown up, son,” Sundaramurthy said; gently. “There are times when fate intervenes and mocks our best, intentions. Kamalanathan must have heard vaguely about one or two incidents in my early life and woven them up to suit his anti-tradition tirade. We were a group involved in the 1942 Movement, and I did become friendly with a fellow-worker. She was young, educated, charming, and was no doubt attracted by me and my fame as a writer. As for me, I was all alone and sick in that remote inaccessible village in charge of underground work, and forty-five is a dangerous age. That girl nursed me back to health. Jaya’s father who had already been estranged from me by my unconventional work among Harijans, raised some hubbub. And there was subdued talk in our family for a while.”

“And mother?”

“Jaya? Now when did she ever say anything? She was silent over this too. But my arrest and the prison sentence were a godsend for me. That also cured my friend of her infatuation, and she married another social worker not long after. And she is very much alive, and lives happily in Bombay.”

Then, after a pause, Sundaramurthy had said: “The only thing that now pains me is the realisation of what Jaya must have gone through. How could I have taken her so much for granted? And now there’s no chance of even asking for her forgiveness!”

Jaya had died five years earlier, and the house was being looked after by Sundaramurthy’s widowed elder sister.

Forty-five is a dangerous age! Sundaramurthy’s son smiled to himself. He would himself soon be reaching that age! He looked fondly at his father who sat in the velvet-upholstered presidential chair, listening intently to Kamalanathan. One could see the electric fans above reflected in his dark glasses.

The seminarians adjourned for lunch, which was a buffet affair. After lunch, Kamalanathan sat near Sundaramurthy in the hall, waiting for the afternoon session to begin.

“How’s your family? I heard that you are married and settled abroad,” said the old man kindly.

Kamalanathan cleared his throat. “Well, sir, you know I married outside our community.”

“Yes, of course. The Mahatma’s dream! It doesn’t seem to be remote from realisation.”

“It does, sir, on the contrary.”

“No, no! I mean, once this caste consciousness wears off, a lot of unnecessary bitterness will cease.”

“But, sir, we seem to be enacting only new variations of misery.”

“Why so?”

“It may seem funny to you but I now feel that the tradition bound within-caste marriages were rather more workable or endurable.”

Sundaramurthy could not follow Kamalanathan’s logic. But his son who could, now interjected with the sweetness of revenge in his voice:

“Oh, father, Kamalanathan’s divorce was the great sensation for the Indian community in the States.”

“Yes, we are separated,” Kamalanathan said.

“Why, my son? Marriage is a sacred bond. Of course, you would dismiss me as a moth-eaten rag.”

“No, no, sir. My marriage was doomed from the start. We got upon each other’s nerves, and this escalated with the passage of time. My friends were not hers, and over there our value systems can become grotesque. There was presently total incompatibility of temperament.”

“That phrase again!” sighed the aged novelist. “Are there children?”

“Three. She secured custody of them.”

“Oh, well. It saddens me. I am very old, you know. I do hope the children are being brought up well.”

“I really do not know, though I do shell out a fat alimony. It is because of that I am still stuck up in that hole, for I just cannot afford to give up the job.”

“The rebel cannot rebel against this imposition,” Ramakrishna said with a little extra emphasis. But Sundaramurthy slowly turned his face towards his son and said in a tone of admonishment:

“It is just a question of context, you must understand. You become a victim of circumstances and you learn to accept.” And he concluded in a whisper, “Like Jaya.”

Now he spoke again to Kamalanathan:

“Maybe such acceptance is the way of wisdom.”

“Acceptance or resignation, I do not know. But I seem to be gaining a belief, much against myself, in the Law of Karma, which keeps count of our past misdeeds, after all.” Kamalanathan spoke with a hint of deep regret in his voice. Was he thinking of his unscrupulous and easy canter to fame about twenty-five years ago?

“No, no, young friend. Think of Him, not as a Scourging Rod, but as Saviour Grace,” Sundaramurthy patted Kamalanathan’s back.

Then rising, he took his son’s hand to move towards the presidential chair.

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