The Cat and Shakespeare (9 page)

I want to take you to London, will you come? I want to take you to Paris, Delhi, New York, will you come? Will you truly come? Don’t you hear the koel sing on the coconut tree, don’t you hear the anguish that wants to eat your heart, cut it and pickle it, and savour it, and say: Look what a good heart I have. I am a woman. And I have such a good heart. What will you give me in return, my lord? I should give you, woman, a house three-storeys high. Lord, may that rise. And do not forget the windows that go running along the wall towards the sea. I must have eleven windows on the sea. A window on the sea is a window on God. Buy me a plot and build me a house eight directions wide, and that will have a tamarind tree in the backyard for the baby’s hammock, a row of dahlias (like Europeans have) in a bed to the right, and a mango tree that will stretch and burden itself with such riches that, when the koel sings, we know its song will make the fruit ripen. For the woman with a womb that has grown round, what one needs is ripe, rich
rasapuri
mangoes. Cut them, peel the skins off and, Mother, give them to me on a silver plate. And one cup of milk immediately after.

Oh, Shantha, how beautiful you look in your pregnancy. You look like Panchali herself.

I am no Panchali or Damayanthi, Mother. I am just a woman. Lord, may I just be woman. Let me bear womanhood. He has given me his manhood that my womanhood be. If I were a queen I would build a wall of wattle round the garden and I would then hear the sea. The sea knows me.

White is the foam that goes gathering along the sea, white as the skin of snake, with ripples and soughs, and the last song of despair. The sea lurches and tears from inside. O Sea, where will you take me? Will you take me to the nether world of the Nagas, and tie me a chignon wound into a big bun? I shall wear a large
kumkum
and my ear lobes will touch my shoulders. I want to hold my child so round he would kick ten distances long. I want to love. I want to kiss my child. Lord bear me and build me a house.

Like a pirate on the high seas (at the time of the Dutch, so to say) is Govindan Nair. He can command a crew of ten Mophlas and in any language you like. He could put a bark on to the sea and say: Sea, take it, and the sea would heave and bear you to where the isles are. Truth goes over the sea, for the isles are to be blessed. The seagulls know that truth is a breath of Antarctica. Did you know, for example, that if you stand at the southern tip of Travancore and look down against your nose, straight down lies Antarctica, rich in its fissures of fishes? The fishes of Antarctica are made of gold. Gold is dug there. They discovered a tablet there some years ago which showed they probably wrote in the Dravidic tongue. Antarctica is our home. They used to grow pineapples there. You can find congealed seeds of the lotus in Antarctica. The bones of its people are all long and thin, un-Aryan—their heroes lie beside coconut shields made on tropical seas. I know whence they came. They came from Malabar. Malabar is Truth. Antarctica is only a name for Malabar. So we’ll go in catamarans and down the seas to where the isles lie. Let us go and quarry there. You’ll see stone there like ice frozen for a million years. It has the colour of human eyes. What a fine thing to build a house of eyes—of kittens’ eyes! Lord, the isle is far and I am a man. But, look, look, at the silver bark that stands. Truth goes on a ride. We’ll ride with Truth. Ancient temples lie there. Nobody worships there. The seas meet in Antarctica. Lord, help me build a house.

That’s what Govindan Nair said coming to see me the next morning. ‘Mister, I had such wonderful dreams. I wanted to build you a house in ice and give you a garden. I want to give you a large tree at the back for the child’s hammock. And in front a mango for the pickles. Then you will hear a lot of birds. We’ll get a pair of peacocks too, and your child will dance. How do you like that?’

Govindan Nair looked indeed as if he had ploughed the seas.

At about nine o’clock in the morning, while we were sitting and playfully gossipping, what should happen but somebody knocked at the door. It was my fat landlord, a towel tied around his head (for he had a bad cold—it had rained a little during the night). He was smoking a cheroot. Morning and evening it never left him. His name was Murugan Mudali and as his name said, he tapped palm trees for toddy—huge lorries and bullock carts carried the white frothing, invigorating drink, and people sang praises of themselves singing songs, and they sang him out money with which he built these houses. He was not a bad man—he was a good man. He thought of the bathroom and the kitchen with such care, every housewife blessed him for it. He even ran a hotel—called the Madhura Town Hotel—and the inmates there spoke so well of the tap that ran with hot and cold water (unknown in Trivandrum, except at the Mascot Hotel, and that is run by the government). Since the war started, he had paid as much as thirty-seven rupees a yard for the Hume water pipes, and that is black-market price. He wanted to be just. He made his seventeen per cent profit—that is what his father and his father’s father had fixed in the good old times as decent income on any investment—and the rest he gave to you: ‘I spent fourteen thousand rupees on building Kamla Bhavan’ (which you remember is the name of the house I live in) ‘and, sir, take it for eighteen and three. It satisfied you and it satisfied me.’

‘Here are seven,’ said Govindan Nair as though he were producing the money.

Usha, who had stayed on with me, was still fast asleep in my room. On hearing the sound of such large sums of money she woke, and came scampering to find out what was going on outside her dream. She knew her father lived in many, many worlds. So Usha said: ‘Father, who is this?’

‘Your grandfather,’ answered Govindan Nair, as if led by intuition. The Mudali was silent, and then with a sigh he wiped the lone tear at the corner of his eye. Why should one not be a grandfather? Is it so difficult a thing? Do not toddy pots get full in the morning, once you tie them to the tree at night? Why should not my daughter bear a child? A child, sir, a grandchild is what man must see to prove he dies well. The question, however, is, Can one die? Must one die?

‘This house will be yours, Usha,’ said Govindan Nair, and for some reason Usha started shrieking and said: ‘Mother take me away. Mother, I want to go home.’

‘What is your name, child?’ asked the Mudali.

‘Her name, sir, is Usha Devi—Usha Devi Pai,’ said Govindan Nair.

And taking Usha on his lap, he added: ‘And she will be my daughter-in-law. Shridhar is seven years and eight months old. Usha is six years and two months old. That makes a nice match,’ said Govindan Nair, stroking her hair. ‘I’ve even thought of their horoscopes. She is Sagittarius and he’s Pisces, with Jupiter in the eleventh house. She will make him live long. I want a son that lives long.’

‘Are you an astrologer too, Mr Nair?’ asked Mudali. ‘If stars govern me, then I must know the stars. If the Travancore Police Manual governs all police officers (and the public), then we must know it too. Travancore is a paradise that follows police rules. If the ration department were under the police, there would be no corruption. We’ll build a house yet, sir. Then what is your final price?’

‘My price is always final.’

‘Oho, is that so?’ Govindan Nair spoke as if to himself. ‘If Usha becomes my granddaughter I will reduce it by five or six hundred rupees.’

‘If she lives in your house, she’s your granddaughter. So make it seventeen thousand.’

The Mudali somehow consented. Once he gave his word he never changed. So it shall be seventeen thousand. Meanwhile Tangamma was handing down coffee from the wall. It was hot, steaming hot. The Mudali preferred a smoke. When the last cup came, Usha stood under the
bilva
tree and Tangamma had to bend low to give it to the child. Shridhar still had the same fevers.

‘When Advocate Krishnan Nair comes, send him here.’ ‘He’s already at the house, reading his newspaper,’ said Tangamma.

‘Hey!’ shouted Govindan Nair across the wall. ‘Hey, Advocate, Advocate General, future Chief Justice, please come, sir. We are ready.’

The advocate, impeccably dressed, came, down the wall as if he were coming to perform a marriage. He needed only the copper vessel and the sacred-bark bundle. Why, he even had the bundle. Didn’t you see it? Tangamma brought another cup of coffee. She bent down and gave it to Usha. Usha brought it and gave it to the Mudali. The cheroot smoked itself away. We lived in a sort of jabbering silence.

Who was talking to whom? Who talked, in fact? Nobody talked, and we all understood.

By now the cheroot was finished. The coffee, too, was finished. Govindan Nair produced a table, and the advocate took out and placed before us the three-hundred-rupee stamped document. He had written down on a piece of yellow notepaper all about the thirty cents of land in Puttenchentai belonging to Murugan Mudali, and situated in Plot No. 705, Survey number 4176, Municipal number 663. My name was mentioned as at marriage or funeral—father’s name, grandfather’s name. Usha Devi Pai was the chief character of the story, as it were. The house was bought for her and for seventeen thousand rupees. Including the yield of the coconut trees, etc., etc.

Govindan Nair jumped across the wall and went to the National Typewriting Institute near the Post Office. Meanwhile the Mudali told me of his wife’s grandmother in Madurai who was a great lady and a beauty. They said she could stop a flood with a mantra, such were her looks. She spoke to the Goddess as if she had known her always. She spoke in classical Tamil. In some past life, so astrologers said, she was born a princess and was married off to the Chiefs of Madurai. She walked in the palace as if she knew all of it. From that came their love of houses. The grandmother and her spouse built and built everywhere in Madras, in Mysore, even in Ootacamund. The Mudali and his wife had no grandchildren, although their daughter had done every pilgrimage. She was thirty-seven and no children came. They never made a false statement; they always took seventeen per cent interest. Even so, no child came, and no dream came to make the child come. Sadhus had blessed, and some had even given coconuts with mantras. Nothing happened even after these many holy acts. Well, sir, that is as the Lord Subramanya wishes.

The National Typewriting Institute has a very good reputation for job work. How clear the document was. It made your heart shine gold, such was the excellence of the typing. I put my signature: Ramakrishna Pai. S. Ramakrishna Pai. Then Govindan Nair signed as witness. Usha drew an Om, and Govindan Nair certified her signature. Murugan Mudali carefully shaped his signature, and somehow wept. He just did not know. Tangamma handed over to Usha betel leaves and coconut, and even tobacco to chew. She ran back as Shridhar was in some sort of delirium. The doctor had promised to come at three. Govindan Nair went home and ran back quickly. I entered my room and brought out his seven thousand rupees. Usha handed the money to Murugan Mudali. Within ten months the rest of the money would be paid, in two instalments. The house became mine—I mean Usha’s. Murugan Mudali (he was about fifty-five) began to smile, and seemed almost happy now. He took Usha on his lap. Then he lifted her up to his arm. ‘What a sweet child,’ he said, and stood up. Govindan Nair said: ‘She is the true owner.’

‘Permit me, sir,’ said Murugan Mudali, ‘permit me to take the child home. I want my wife and daughter to see her. May I keep her till the afternoon?’

‘Of course.’

‘But Shridhar is ill. I want to see him,’ said Usha. The children had build little stone stands from which they spoke to each other across the wall.

‘Shridhar will be well. The doctor is coming,’ Govindan Nair assured her.

The Mudali took the child in his arms and, smiling to himself, closed the garden door. Usha was going to see Grandmother. Was she beautiful? Will she give me glass bangles? Will she take me to the temple? ‘Grandfather,’ she said, ‘will you take me to the temple just once?’

‘Why, we’ll go now. We’ll go home and take Grandmother. We’ll go to the temple,’ he said.

How beautiful the god was you will never never know. The god lay on his seven-headed serpent. His one wife at the feet and another rising from his lotus navel—blue he lay and in deep sleep. Grandfather wept profusely. One weeps in temples. Grandfather and Grandmother went then to Chalai Bazaar and bought Usha two ankle bands of silver. She looked so lovely she wanted to go back to the temple.

There’s only one depth and one extensivity and that’s (in) oneself. It’s like a kitten on a garden wall. It’s like the clock of the Secretariat seen through a mist of clouds—time moves on according to a moon (and the sun) but the offices go on working, people scribbling, smoking, typing, belching, scratching, farting big, fibbing, exuding asafoetida perspiration or the acrid smell of buttermilk—there will be peons to whom a rupee warrants well, but two warrant more, and up the staircase you go, one, two, and three, and each step is worth a rupee, on to the first floor. On the second floor the prices are higher. You pay ten rupees a step. And on the third, it’s like offerings to the Maharaja, you pay according to ceremony. And above it all sits time like a nether world recorder asking no questions. It revolves on itself and when the hour comes it strikes. And off it goes—something. What is it that is gone? What is time? What is death? In fact you could ask what is life. You issue a ration card. Your house number, numbers of the family, are all indicated: you are class A, B, C or D. You buy what you want and when you want, but only what is available. Governments are notoriously mismanaged. A railway car might have gone off to Coimbatore containing rice for Cannanore or Conjeevaram. What matters is that the station begins with a C. Cannanore, Conjeevaram, Coimbatore. It would almost make a nice mantra. Life is only such a mantra—you go on saying life life, or in Sanskrit
jeeva jeeva
(and in Sanskrit it sounds more real), so you go on living.
Jeeva
is life. So I live. There is a clock tower. Then there is the ration shop. Ration Office No. 66 is just above it. The Revenue Board is under the clock tower, and that is where I work. Down the road that goes to the hospital is Ration Office No. 66. That is where Govindan Nair works. His face is full now. I have a house. I have laid the foundation for myself—and through time. The Secretariat clock will go on chiming forever, and as long as it chimes, it will go on telling you the time forever; can you imagine a state without a government? You must have permanence. So permanence is the Secretariat with the clock tower. I hear the clock chime at night from my house. Thus I live a bit of eternity. My house has a garden wall. There is, as you know, a
bilva
tree by the wall. A hunter once broke twigs off the
bilva,
you will remember, and down the leaves fell on the oval emergence of the alabaster. Shiva was pleased with this unknowing worship. I look towards the garden wall. Lord, I am not even a hunter that in his nervousness lets down
bilva
leaves. Lord, what hope is there for me?