THE TRUTH ABOUT HIMSELF

(A Short Story)

By ‘BUTCHI BABU’

(Rendered from Telugu)

(1)

“How long–and why–should I remain a good man?” loudly soliloquised Ramamurti, incidentally addressing his wife, Shanta. It may be said that with this query a storm swept over their placid family life.

And what, she asked herself, was the crime she committed that morning. She had mixed jaggery in the coffee. And later, when he had emptied the cup, she bashfully announced, “This is the fourth month.” That was all.

Accompanied by the eldest boy Raghu, she retired into kitchen so that she might brood over her husband’s startling remark about his being a ‘good man.’ A mother of three children–all of them boys–Shanta never liked discussing intimacies in the presence of the boys. In another month Raghu will be ten years old. And what is ‘goodness’ anyway? Feeding the wife and the children? Hard times are yet to come. There is the schooling of the bard and, if the next baby is a girl, there is the hunt for the son-in-law. It is not as though he had never tasted coffee mixed with jaggery. Family life entails so many handicaps and difficulties. During the last nearly seventeen years of their married life, they had encountered several hardships, and they had smilingly faced them all. Never did he show vexation.

“How long–a good man”–a fatuous remark! It made no sense.

As she crossed into the hall, Shanta caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror which hung on the wall. Hers is not a dazzling beauty. She has comely features and a quiet bearing which ripened into fulness with experience. Only those who watched her closely would know how beautiful she could be when she smiled. Hers is beauty which never draws attention to itself.

She smiled now–a slow, wistful smile that curved her lips, suggestive of a sense of pathos, as though a thought which she dared not utter crossed her brain. Before the smile faded, she approached her husband, and apropos of nothing, remarked: “Maybe it is only the third month.”

Murti felt a gurgle in his throat. He made a dash into the drawing-room, closed the doors with a bang and attempted reading the newspaper. He wanted to say aloud, once again, “How long should I remain a good man!” He put aside the clumsy pages of the newspaper and looked into the mirror on the table. The wrinkles beneath the eyes are deepening; the number of grey hairs is growing. Gone were the days when he could put off shaving for another day. He counted them. There were sixteen grey hairs in the beard. He counted them once again. Only fifteen. Something touched his feet. It was the second boy Seta playing on the floor with an emptied ink bottle. These ugly brats are the cause of it all! Each child meant five more grey hairs. He pulled up the boy, gave him a smack on the back and pushed him out of the room. He shot the bolt and removed the struggle with his true self.

Shanta would never know that her husband had been wrestling during the last three or four months with a vast mental upheaval. Barriers are erected between man and man; that is not all. In each man’s mind there is a thin screen, held tightly from falling by society. At some unguarded moment–maybe while soundly asleep on a sultry summer night, or when the earth thrilled to the rainfall–for some unknown reason, the screen sags and falls down, revealing the frightful skeleton of the true self–the self which is smarting and chafing, banging and biting. There was a fire in Ramamurti’s inner life–one of its sparks being the morning’s vexation; the sea had heaved and the remark he made had been but the foam on a wave; the earth had quaked somewhere and the smack he administered to the boy had been its crack.

Ramamurti is in his early forties, and the chain which bound him to the family had snapped He now ceased to be a husband, a strand the social pattern and a mere citizen discharging his duties. The eternal man burned in him leaving behind the core of individuality which defied and transcended religion, custom, and tradition.

In his younger days, Ramamurti had nursed high-ideals. Contact with Western thought and culture had rendered him sensitive to the shortcomings in his own society and infused in him a zeal for reform and the spirit of revolt. About love, marriage and children he had ideas which are considered progressive and modern. And what had happened to those visions of the complete life, those dreams of perfect bliss? Like most of his friends, he married young-a tame, loveless marriage to a country girl. Had Shanta ever discussed love? Shanta ‘falling in love’–the very notion is absurd. Like everybody else, he brought up a family, never bothering about the growing population of the country! The passion for art, the devotion to a cause, the worship of culture, and the grim purposiveness that governed all–all these had died out. His life was devoid of glory, beauty or freshness, or the joy of fulfilled ideals. An alien culture in the native soil–that in a sense is the tragedy of Indian youth. All those who failed to fulfill themselves have turned into truly tragic figures; they either sank into oblivion or plunged into notoriety. Ramamurti had forsaken the path of easy living and chosen to be a broken-hearted romantic.

(2)

Within a month, Shanta had begun to find proofs of the change that had come over her husband. That day Ramamurti was not at home; he was away on camp. The post brought a cover addressed to her husband in Telugu. Shanta kept it on the table. Sometime in the evening, Gopi the youngest boy had embarked on his usual destructive campaign and few things escaped his survey. The cover fell into his hands and Shanta retrieved it in time. It never occurred to her that she should not read her husband’s letters. Her husband had even approved of the practice. It was a luxury which betokened mutual trust. The letter was un-dated and without address:

“Dear Murti–I make bold to write this. The knowledge that you have a wife and children has till now checked my wish to write to you. Sooner or later we have to cut the knot. To have been able to keep ourselves in check thus far, I believe, is a sacrifice we made for the sake of society. I knew long back that you were in love with me. I suppose you are not fully aware of my desire and of my affections. A Hindu woman does not go a-hunting. Looking through the slit in the door, she keeps waiting for all time. You knocked at the door and I had no choice but to cross the threshold. I know that one day you would take me away into solitude. I shall not await your reply. It is not letters that I want; and what that is, you know–Your Priya ¹ Bharati.”

Shanta wondered for a while who this lady might be. During the seventeen years they lived together, the name ‘Priya Bharati’ or any individual bearing that name had never come to their knowledge. A shade of surprise flickered in her eyes.

Soon after his arrival Murti asked her about the torn cover.

“Yes. Gopi was about to tear it. I took it,” she said.

“Did you read it?”

“Yes.”

They had nothing more to say about the letter, that day. A fortnight later, while tidying the bedroom the servant girl found another letter underneath the cot, which she handed over to Shanta:

“To me you always appear young. Although advanced in years, you have the heart of a child. Sometimes I feel I like fondling you. I suppose as we grow old in years we become young in mind. In old age the fruit ripens and falls; by that time the flower in my hair withers too. The fruit and the flower perish and the bare trunk remains. That trunk is your wife and those bare branches your children.–

–Your Priya Bharati.”

Shanta folded the letter and gave it to her husband.

“Some paper here–I suppose it is yours?”

“Yes, yes,” said Murti snatching it eagerly. Nothing more was said about it.

A month after, while rummaging among his books, Raghu picked up a third letter which he tried to read. But he was too frightened and gave it to his mother.

“What is it, mother?” he asked innocently.

“Oh–office papers.”

“It looks different.”

“Surely you can’t presume to know!” she chided him.

“I mean, it looks as if some lady wrote it,” persisted Raghu.

“You see, our country attained Independence and women look to their own affairs,” Shanta assured him.

“Shall I ask father?”

“You need not. He will ask for it himself.”

Raghu, satisfied, ran to the playground. Shanta read the letter which ran thus:

“I hear that your wife is a very good woman–good and guileless. I have a feeling that she would gladly put me up. If so, what more do we want! Our dreams will come true. I am prepared to endure any bitterness and agony for your sake. As you know, there is nothing which love finds unendurable. The tears I shed in my dream last night wetted the pillow; the flower in my hair has shrunk to a bud waiting to blossom through you.– Your Priya Bharati,”

Shanta placed this letter on the office table and put a paper-weight on it.

By the end of the second month the fourth letter was found just in front of the kitchen. Ramamurti had been busily moving about the house as though searching for something.

“Did any of you see my papers which I kept here?” he asked addressing nobody in particular.

“Is this it?” Shanta said as she picked up the letter.

“This is it...” he said taking the paper with him.

Ramamurti could not sleep that night. The terrace was flooded with moonlight. He took up a mat and sat there. He felt suddenly that his wife was a stranger to him.

His experience of married life enabled him to disprove the popular saying that women are mysterious. He knew the innermost thoughts that crossed Shanta’s mind; he could predict, accurately, the reactions of his wife to any situation: he could foresee what she would say on any occasion. He knew her so well that he was invariably right. Such completeness of understanding might be fatal to harmony. That was a different matter. He satisfied himself that the existence of dark chambers in a woman’s mind is a myth.

But today, he had to accept defeat. It looked as though he knew nothing about her. Panic seized him.

They say women are jealous. How is it Shanta does not show the slightest hint of jealousy? Dash it all! She could at least be inquisitive. “Who is this fairy–this Priya Bharati?” she could at least have asked! None of the letters had troubled her. For all the concern she expressed, they might as well have not been written at all. He began to conjure up excuses for her disinterestedness. She had no culture; modernism had not touched her. She was a creature of instinct completely immune to intellectualised concepts. “This is the third month,” is all the poetry and music she was capable of. An old-fashioned woman–Mother India gone hoary and grey with age.

Why not I myself broach the subject of ‘Priya Bharati’ with her? thought Ramamurti. “For Heaven’s sake, please exhibit symptoms of jealousy. If you are not jealous, pretend to be so,” he had to ask her! How silly! Murti was craving for excitement, for drama. It was possible Shanta was not interested in what another woman thought of her husband. She was interested in what the husband thought of the other woman.

He had written those letters with his left hand, in the name of an imaginary woman, ‘Priya Bharati,’ addressed to himself. He now conceived the plan of penning a reply to those letters. Bharati had served as a muse for inspiration. Now he should reciprocate her ardours. But who is Priya Bharati? What does she look like?

Analysed, the modern man’s ideal of beauty would be found to be composed of the features of the leading film actresses, of the pictures illustrating the newspaper advertisements, and their mental make-up very much like that of the heroines in the popular novels. A combination of the various elements unfortunately does not yield the perfection of beauty. The beauty of anything beautiful is its uniqueness. A thin oval face, fishlike eyes with large lashes, a long high nose, and a mouth curled to be kissed, a blade of grass come to life in the human form–Hope without hunger, Divinity without torture,–the illimitable source of experience–that is Priya Bharati as imagined by Murti.

He wondered if there was a spark of poetry in him. And why not? he asked himself. Poetry is not a thing that can be learnt. It is like a waterfall–a cyclonic storm; or a volcano that bursts. It is the secret which does not bear discussion in public. It is truth which refuses to be exposed in the work-a-day world.

Bharati is like the unknown, the Absolute after which the great seers of the world hanker. She wears all your beauty; your unreal existence can be made real through her; she could keep all your secret thoughts. Ramamurti is hungering after adventure, power and glory. What opportunities does the common man today have for attaining any of them.

Ramamurti completed the letter he addressed to Priya Bharati and it ran thus:

“I am happy that you are able to take the first plunge. I was so sure of your courage to do so. That is part of your charm. I did think about my wife and children. I believe that fundamentally man is anarchic; society put him in chains wrought by marriage. You snapped them. I am not even capable of love which I must learn from you. My being had its existence in and through you. That day When you looked at me, it was as though the stars had strayed from their orbits, Hope, solace, invitation–like Humanity opening its eyes–all were there.

“I cannot agree that this is tantamount to deceiving my wife and children. Suppose a middle-aged men, with wife and children to support, fell under a car by accident and died; who would dream of accusing him of deception? The same argument should hold good for a man who died under the wheels of the chariot of love. Nobody shall be blamed for it. Birth, love and death–they simply happen. That is all.

“All these years I had lived up to the social ideal of a good man and stuck to my wife. This meant great strain on me–almost like martyrdom. Men and women no doubt are monogamous by choice but ‘poly-erotic’ by instinct. They skim the surface of the circumference but come back to the centre. The same thing might happen to us tomorrow. But today, we shall merge and become the centre.

“I repeat that I am a good man; but I have no wish that goodness should be synonymous with imbecility. I am not ashamed that, at my age, I should succumb to the raptures of love. It is a matter for pride that there are forces out to conquer me and I have still the selflessness sufficient to be vanquished by them. The dark cloud moves altogether to the call of the south-wind, because it holds somewhere a drop of rain clamouring for release. You are my south-wind and you shall destroy the dullness, the lethargy and the heaviness, and clear the debris of the shattered pedestal erected by matrimonial purity.”

Ramamurti was not satisfied with this letter. It looked more like a thesis on love; he little trusted the verbal elegances and polished phrases, and his was not the adolescence that sought release through letters. His mind was becoming a blank. Momentary impulses, lasting affections, sudden ecstacies and slow rational processes,–they race through the brain and refuse to get caught up by language. His mind was like the bare trunk, bereft of fruit, leaf and flower.

The next day Shanta read the letter and smiled, as though she were seated by her husband while he perused it and given a few suggestions towards improving it!

‘There should be some papers here...” said Murti pointing to the desk. “Has any one see it?”

“Is this it?” asked Shanta holding the folded letter in her hand.

“Where did you find it?”

“It was found at the foot of the staircase.”

“Did you look into it?”

Shanta nodded and went into the kitchen. Murti suspected that she indulged in a smile, gradually broadening into laughter.

Ramamurti was piqued. He decided to ask her about it and elicit her reactions to the whole affair. He waited for nightfall. But it was not to be. By evening, Shanta’s aunt had arrived and they were preparing to take Shanta to her native home for confinement. On the day of departure, Murti went to the station to give his wife and children a send-off. There was still another ten minutes for the train to start. Several times he attempted to speak, but did not know how to begin. He fidgeted, cleared his throat, and wrung his hands.

Shanta spoke:

“The washerman will bring your clothes. Please take the help of Das to count them. Remember that he has yet to bring a couple of towels and a saree. And most important–don’t pay even an anna over the six rupees. Two of your shirts were torn because of his carelessness, you know.”

Ramamurti suppressed a smile and made gestures indicative of impatience.

“Don’t be silly...” he chided laughingly. The guard blew the whistle; there was a general scramble for the open door of the carriage and the train moved.

“For Heaven’s sake, see that you fasten the latch securely and lock the doors of the verandah whenever you go out.” That was Shanta’s parting message. With that she settled down into her seat, looking devoutly at her husband’s receding form. She smiled, knowingly, Simplicity or subtlety–which of them predominated in the smile Murti did not know.

(3)

That night he could not sleep; feelings of shame, disgrace and humiliation possessed him. He read those letters over and over again. He knew, and was therefore frightened, that although he was able successfully to imitate a woman’s writing by using his left hand, he gave himself away through the ‘style’ of the letters. Does a woman write in that style? He asked himself. Dash it all, is a woman capable of those ideas? Why not? An educated and cultured woman, brought up in polished society, certainly, should be able to write like that. Of what avail is this knowledge? He knew that she knew–oh! Women have a sixth sense which enables them to scent and intuitively apprehend such things. Shanta knew that he was the author of the letters. The humiliation of it all!

Even if she knew, he told himself, she could have put on a mask of innocence and kicked up a row expressive of jealousy. They say that hate, as much as love, can strike the chord of matrimonial harmony. That is the explanation of the many scenes between husbands and wives. The wife, like the heroine in the modern novel, should give him hell. Murti yearned for drama; he pined for excitement. It was clear that Shanta had ignored and dismissed the romantic episode as being beneath her notice. It was trivial and unworthy of her attention. Shame shook his frame.

Shanta, obviously, was not prepared to believe that her husband could inspire love in the breast of any woman. She could gauge the extent to which other women would be susceptible to his charms. She was sure that no woman would lose her head over him. Anybody could see, Murti ruefully realised, what Shanta thought of her husband as a lover. How contemptible and disgraceful!

Murti wanted glory and adventure so that he might prove to himself, how wonderful, how unique, he was. And thus began his walks along the streets. Release of emotion, through letter-writing and imaginary escapades, was insufficient and childishly absurd. He must run into something more tangible, something solid, imbued with flesh and blood.

Ramamurti thought of an eligible woman,–one able to understand a man’s love and capable of responding to it. It was obvious that no married woman would fit into the role. The husband would complicate matters, if he came to know of it. There might be a scandal and even a crisis. Murti was not prepared to stake his social standing and reputation, for love. A woman without matrimonial entanglements, not in her teens but young enough to take love seriously–that should be his choice. He found such a one on the balcony of a two-storied building at the turning of the Bank Road. Seated in a chair on the balcony and looking down the passers-by on road–there she is! Not too young by appearance, just about twenty or twenty two years old. He walked along the street for four days, and all the time he saw she was there; she looked at him; even stared at him. A broad, round face–he preferred an oval face, but what could he do? –wide eyes, her complexion pure as the sky cleared of clouds; in her hair, white, red and yellow flowers; clad in a green saree elegantly folded–there was no doubt that this was she! The woman who stepped out of his day-dream, waiting to melt into his night-dream. It was quite common for respectable middle-aged men in western countries to run away with their maids. That appeared crude to Murti. It was devoid of beauty, distinction or culture. What he wanted was imaginative exuberance, not physical satisfaction.

It remained for him to ascertain whether she was a married woman. Supposing he asked the washerman or the Postman of the locality? He saw a group of school children returning home. Two of them, a boy and a girl, walked into the two-storied building. By cajoling and coaxing them he could obtain the information from them.

Four days later the opportunity came. He fell into conversation with them; he gave them chocolates and lozenges; he accompanied them to school. He pieced together their disjointed prattle and elicited that she was unmarried. Why she remained unmarried, how she was related to them, he could not know. Day after day he walked along the street and, every time, there she was looking, as he thought, pensively at him.

Ramamurti’s imagination worked itself to a fever-pitch and he became restless and apprehensive. He must pour out his heart to her. If there was some hitch, some unforeseen and embarrassing development, and people came to know of it, what would he say? Yes, sir, he would tell them: “I am planning to write a novel and I wanted to study from real life the behaviour of an individual so as to evaluate its correspondence to fiction–that is why I did it.” But then, would they believe him? He ignored and even chafed at the possibility that they might give no credence to his story. If society thought the intentions of a middle-aged, respectable citizen and a responsible husband were dishonourable, then surely it showed how degraded our present-day society had become. Such a society had no right, could never claim any right, to assess his conduct and judge him!

(4)

It was past six O’clock and the sun began limping down the western sky as though wounded. There was a splash of twilight, scarlet like blood. The row of lazy clouds at last combined to melt, revealing the first star that twinkled.

Ramamurti pushed open the front door of the two-storied building. He climbed the stairs and found himself on the balcony. The woman was there, seated on the chair which was familiar to him. She did not stand up, and there was no other chair. It irked him to keep standing and make his ‘declaration’. He looked into her eyes steadily and began to recite his ‘set speech’. At places he lost the thread, his memory failing him, and he eschewed certain statements.

Ramamurti looked at his watch and noted that the speech took exactly three minutes. He stood awaiting her reply. The woman had nothing to say. There she was, seated on the chair, fidgeting, and tying the folds of her saree into a knot round the forefinger. Twice he made attempts to stand up, but she did not speak.

“Won’t you say something…?”

There was an awkward pause.

“Of course, you need not reply at once. You can think over the matter and let me know. Shall see you again tomorrow about this time.”

She fingered the loose coils of her hair, and a flower fell down. He picked it up and handed it to her.

“Shall I get along...?” he asked in a tone implying that he was prepared to stay any length of time.

She said nothing.

Ramamurti hastily climbed down the stairs; in the hall, he thought he heard a footstep. He looked up. Standing behind the closed door in the hall was an elderly woman.

The hurricane lantern shed a dim light and he could not see her features distinctly. She was saying something. He fell back a step and listened to her:

“I heard all. She is my sister’s daughter. Shall be ever obliged if anybody related to you, say a son or younger brother, could take her as wife. What can we do? It is her fate–her Karma. She is dumb–born mute. Could you please fix up a bridegroom–someone known to you?”

Ramamurti caught his breath and hopped into the street.

The body would gladly brave a sword-cut, or a gunshot, or a lathi charge; but a word could annihilate the Ego. He was not fit to marry even a dumb girl!

A wounded ego lets the imagination loose. Impulses and thought processes run amuck. He wanted to resign his job, to tour round the world hopping on one leg, to renounce life and turn an ascetic, or shave his head and ride a donkey. He felt like murdering someone.

Shanta was the central source of evil. Oh, she was the cause of it all–the silent architect of his damnation! She it was who ordered him about, to sweat and slave for her motherhood. Women have no responsibilities–they have only rights; the right to motherhood! Feeding and serving them is man’s duty!

Ramamurti reached home without his knowing it. He saw the postman getting down the bicycle with a telegram in his hand. He wished it contained news of some mishap to Shanta during her confinement!

The sender of the telegram was Shanta’s uncle.

“Shanta labouring. Your presence desirable. Start at once,” said the telegram.

Ramamurti sank on the stairs at the foot of the pial. He could not imagine life without Shanta. Shanta alone, he knew, could console and comfort him at the present juncture and counteract the feeling of humiliation that had overcome him. He could not help telling her of his foolish escapade. Even if he did not tell her, she would know. She would laugh away as trifles matters which had for him a tragic import; and things like the washerman’s account, which appeared trivial to him, claimed her serious attention. That was the secret of Shanta’s charm. Was it love that was at the bottom of their intimacy, and their understanding? He knew not what it was. She never discussed love with him. She was never romantic even in her letters. There were few things he could say to her without feeling that he was making a fool of himself. Yet she never said a word that struck at his vanity or humbled his conceit. Shanta simply is. If she is not, a void would form in his life which nothing could fill, not even thoughts of her.

Ramamurti packed a few things and started immediately to Shanta’s home. The train journey put him in the frame of mind which vividly recalled past memories. The day after marriage,–Shanta’s bashful smile slyly displayed behind the thin white saree, the odd way in which she yawned–her limbs carelessly stretched and a far-off, sleepy look in her quiet eyes–there was beauty in her very clumsiness and oddness, charm in her very weakness.

The day dawned and the journey by the bullock cart took the whole day. When he entered the home of Shanta, the cloak in the drawing-room struck seven. Shanta’s uncle greeted him.

“I sent the telegram myself, despite Shanta’s protestations. She gave birth to a female child. Mother and child are doing fine and there is nothing to be anxious about. It is only our habit to be extracautious,” he said.

“A girl!” exclaimed Ramamurti vaguely.

“Yes,” he said, and added he could go and see her for himself. He stepped lightly into Shanta’s room. The moonlight fell like a silken mantle on the objects in the room, and the light that fell from the roof lighted Shanta’s forehead. Beauty had ended her pilgrimage, and slept at last that day.

Shanta feebly smiled and pointed to the baby.

He mended the wick of the lamp, and saw. He could not believe it. Was it illusion? A faint smile feebly curved Shanta’s mouth, which momentarily disturbed the still vision of her eyes.

The freshness of a wild flower which, unable to withstand the heaviness of its own fragrance and the intensity of its colour, drops down; the purity of a flake of snow separated from the main mass in its descent from the mountain top; the central fire which life lit in the midst of the cosmos; the dumb pain of dreams in the middle of the night–Shanta’s look had them all.

Like a man who stood facing Truth, Ramamurti’s frame shook. What could he say? He turned to go.

‘Please,’ said Shanta enjoining him to remain.

He stood.

She signed to him to come nearer.

“Uncle was a bit hasty. They called you away from your work, I am sorry.”

“It is all right,” he assured her with a smile. You know I was myself very anxious to see the baby.”

“It is here–look,” she said. Then she wanted to say something.

“Yes?” he said.

“It is nothing.” And Shanta turned aside and drew the sheet over her.

Ramamurti came out and began to pace the verandah, A few minutes after, Setu, his second boy, brought him a scrap of paper.

“Look, father! Mother gave it,” The boy ran inside.

Ramamurti went into the drawing-room and threw a beam of light from his torch onto the paper:

“Our dream has come true. I shall name my girl ‘Rama-Priya’– yourself and myself. You need not strive, any more, to be good. Your Priya Bharati.”

Ramamurti ran into the open and laughed at the moon. Suddenly he ran into Shanta’s room and looked at the baby. There was no doubt about it. The baby resembled the ‘Priya Bharati’ of his imagination. The delicate oval face, the long, dark eyes, the beautifully pursed lips–same as those of Priya Bharati!

¹ Beloved

Back