A Fine Family: A Novel (32 page)

From that day on the instrument was kept at Juhu, and Anees played every evening. People went about the house, doing their work, and she did not feel inhibited, or concerned about an audience. Bauji relaxed and gazed at her face as the voluptuous softness of the music filled the air day after day. Her face seemed to become younger, the smooth lips and moist eyes shining, as she played and Bauji felt closer to her than ever before.

One day, late in the evening, Bauji went alone for a walk on the beach. There was no moon and it was pitch dark. The sky was full of stars. There were almost too many of them. They came forward brightly as if they were an offering to be accepted. As they approached the sky retreated into the night. The indistinguishable constellations seemed to merge into each other, and the whole of the night scene came together in a unity and a celebration.

The cluster of stars called Rohini flowed above Bauji’s head in the direction in which he was walking, and seemed to bathe his head in its light. The light pierced the sky and pointed directly ahead. Bauji was entranced and followed it.

Bauji looked again and again at the constellation, and the light seemed to come down and wrap itself around his body. The light flowed through his body, shining like a great primeval glow, and stood at the edge of his feet. He was astonished at the splendid scene.

Bauji looked up again and he felt himself floating into the vast constellation. Its radiance was so close that it seemed to take him into it. Rohini seemed to hold the sea in a naked embrace. He felt rapturous. Rohini stood apart from the rest of the sky, and its limitless depth pulled his gaze into it.

He returned home, and sat on his usual chair in the garden facing the sea. He continued to gaze at the constellation. Suddenly his head fell back, and the light flowed deep inside him with a roar. He was dead.

A few months after Bauji’s death, Arjun took the lift up to his office in Ballard Estate and sitting down at his desk wrote the following words, ‘My dearest Mother and Father, Priti and I have agreed to marry. I would never do this if I thought it would compromise in any way either the affection you have for me or. . . .’

Suddenly appalled by the thought that this was an unspeakably cowardly way to behave, he tore up the note and folded his arms. Whatever he might write would sound defensive and inadequate. As he sat staring at the polished desk, he decided to act. After another moment of thought, he picked up the telephone and asked the travel department of his company to make arrangements for a visit to his parents over the weekend. He would fly to Delhi on Friday night, then take the overnight train to Nangal, via Ambala. He told his secretary to telegram his parents that he would be spending the weekend with them at the ashram.

His self-assurance now left him suddenly and he felt acutely shy, unwilling to face his mother directly and confront her with his intentions. He knew she would disapprove. She had refused to meet Priti a couple of months ago when she was in Bombay because of Bauji’s sickness. Each time Arjun had brought up the subject, she had quietly skirted it. As far as she was concerned Priti was irrevocably tainted by scandal. He looked out of his window at the harbour. The waiting foreign cargo ships formed a brilliant pattern of reflections in the water—brushstroke images of swaying masts and rigging and international flags. The play of light with colour created a resonance upon the surface of the sea. Several ferries connecting the mainland with the city glided in the harbour scuttling in and out among the great ships. Towards the south lay brooding the white silhouette of a warship of the Indian Navy parked in Lion’s Gate. A flock of glittering seagulls flew past, turning their wings to the light. This was Bombay, he thought, a city which could unconsciously make poetry and history out of commerce.

He turned his back on the panels of the brass-framed window to study his problem anew. He was puzzled by this disagreeable new feeling of shyness for he had always been close to his mother; although they did not often meet because of the distance, the affection was deep and mutual and often did not need words for understanding. He had always been special to her, as she had been to her own father. It was to him that she had turned when Seva Ram had decided to take early retirement from the government at age fifty-five the previous year in order to settle at the ashram. And she had accepted his advice to go with her husband for she felt that her son instinctively understood the sweetness and the sorrow of her life with Seva Ram. If ever Arjun had felt shy or awkward it was with his father, never with her. And now why did he fear facing her? Even though she would disapprove, he also knew that he would eventually prevail, and she would acquiesce. Why then should he feel inhibited? Curiously, the thought of his father’s reaction did not enter his head. Perhaps this was because Seva Ram had remained as saintly as ever, and matters of this world did not merit strong reaction. Not that he did not care for his son. But Arjun understood that this father’s passions were reserved for other matters.

Seva Ram’s decision to retire early had been traumatic for Tara. It had been taken several years ago at the peak of his career, when he had reached the rank of Chief Engineer to the Punjab Government. There were many perquisites that went with the position which Tara found useful and even delightful—a retinue of office staff, a big house with a garden and servants to look after it, an office car with a chauffeur. All of these were also symbols of power, and that summed up what was so delightful about her new life. She was now a somebody. She enjoyed the prestige and the status which his new position provided in the state capital. Suddenly she found sycophants visiting them at home and even though she could see through their flattery, she nevertheless enjoyed it. Socially she was now in demand, and she began to cultivate a new set of friends. There was a new gaiety in her life. And the prospect of leaving it all was altogether too depressing. And for what? A quiet life at the ashram, where nobody would care who she was nor where she had come from. No, no it would not do. She was willing to consider that sort of life when they were sixty, when he would have to retire by the rules of his service. But she must be allowed to enjoy the next few years of her life especially when she had waited so long for it.

Seva Ram’s own reaction to his elevated status was predictable. He was not even aware of the flowers and the shrubs which Tara had lovingly planted with the gardener’s help in the new house. He found the sudden growth in their social life an interference to his evenings which were meant for long walks and spiritual meditation. He found their new ‘friends’ false and boring. Yes, perhaps his work was more interesting, because it now involved motivating younger engineers to perform. His juniors responded to him because they realized that he was not political, and that he genuinely cared for the work. But his desire to move was influenced by the guru, who felt that his spiritual progress could be enhanced by moving to the ashram. Besides there were a number of projects which Seva Ram could undertake once he was at the ashram. For instance he could help to reclaim and irrigate the lands around the Sutlej. The river had changed course in the past twenty years and left a great deal of waste land between the river and the ashram. He could also help build a hospital, which had been on the guru’s mind for some time, as there was no suitable medical care for the surrounding villages; he could help construct rest houses and a new dormitory for visiting devotees who came from as far away as America.

Seva Ram liked the prospect of being close to the guru and doing all these things, and he announced his decision to Tara. When she realized that her husband was serious, she was furious. It was no use arguing with her husband, who seemed to her to be stubborn as an ox once he had made up his mind. So it was to Arjun that she came running, and cried her heart out. She thought her husband unfair to take her away from the world of society and power that she had recently found. She thought the guru was selfish to use her husband for his own ends. The spiritual life was an excuse she felt; the guru really wanted the free use of her husband’s experience as an engineer.

Mother and son spent several weeks together, at the end of which Arjun persuaded her that the motives of both her husband and the guru were honest. Talking to Arjun, she also realized that she did not have to ‘renounce life’ and live in complete austerity. In the end she returned home and agreed to go to the ashram provided that her husband built a comfortable house there, where she could cultivate a garden, keep her electrical gadgets and her furniture and live a ‘normal’ life.

The train arrivedat Nangal just after dawn, and Arjun saw from his compartment the short figure of Seva Ram standing on the platform. He threw up an arm in an awkward gesture of pleasure as he saw his father, and stepped out of the train with a beating heart.

‘Arjun!’ Father and son, so unlike in physique and looks, embraced with feeling after Arjun had touched his father’s feet. But there was an awkward shyness about them which was always present when they were alone without Tara. A porter with a white beard came forward to lift Arjun’s luggage.

The father, shorter and slimmer than the son, wore the rural working dress. His rough, woollen shawl covered a thick long shirt and baggy pants held up by a string. Arjun noticed his father’s nicely shaped hands and curly hair. His eyes were the same—innocent, sincere, and remote. Seva Ram led his son towards the waiting tonga.

The tonga driver was a familiar face, an old disciple, who had known Arjun from childhood. He folded his hands with a humble smile and then got busy loading the luggage. Arjun went up to him, shook his hand western style, and then embraced him. There were tears of happiness in the old man’s eyes. Seva Ram was touched by his son’s easy, feeling gesture full of camaraderie.

‘And mother?’ said Arjun in a low voice as they settled in the tonga.

‘Is well,’ said Seva Ram. ‘Your telegram worried her. But telegrams always worry her.’

‘There wasn’t enough time for a letter.’

‘Precisely what I told her. But she is a worrier.’

‘How does she like it here?’

‘She doesn’t as yet. But the new house is ready and the grass and the garden have come up. It’s much smaller of course. But then this is an ashram after all. She stays busy with the flowers.’

The tonga now took them along a network of irrigation channels. On both sides were rich fields, bursting with young, golden wheat. Arjun always loved this ride for it evoked his many visits during childhood. He looked proudly at the wheat and thought that this is what they called the ‘green revolution’. Guessing his thoughts, Seva Ram said, ‘It’s not the canals and tubewells alone, but the new dwarf varieties that have done it. Look, look over there! See, how much smaller it is. Small and prolific.’

The sun came up on the other side of the river. Arjun’s face was filled with pleasure, watching the bountiful fields and the Sutlej. It was a fine morning, and people were already busy in the field. He could hear the new sounds: tractors had replaced bullocks; there were tubewells instead of Persian wheels. Here and there they passed a hamlet, whose old, flat houses of unbaked mud were giving way to brick and cement, but the stacks of the monsoon harvest still covered the flat roofs. More and more people were on bicycles now, he noticed. Seva Ram turned his sparkling brown eyes to stare into the dark eyes of his son.

As they approached the ashram, there were suddenly more trees. Arjun knew that the guru had a modern mind: he believed in reforestation and reclamation. On either side of them were wooded lands and Arjun could see eucalyptus plantations, and acacia and palm. Before he realized it they were at the rusty gate of the ashram, half-smothered in bougainvillaea. Seva Ram jumped down and opened the gate and climbed up again. The tonga moved through bylanes, past the water tank of the old colony, which was much the same as it was thirty years ago when Bauji had visited to offer his daughter to a canal engineer. The tonga came to a halt at the western periphery of the ashram near the river. The modern house, which Seva Ram had built for Tara as an inducement to live in the ashram, fitted in well with the architecture around, although it was clearly more functional, and had a garden on the outside, as well as the benefit of trees which had now grown tall since the guru decided to first plant trees along the perimeter years ago. As Arjun looked up at the soaring eucalyptus, Seva Ram said proudly, ‘We planted one lakh trees this year.’

Arjun entered the cool house. He noticed pictures of the guru on the walls, and walked straight out into the garden at the back. Tara was sitting in the sun, waiting for him. He touched her feet. They embraced with such trembling tenderness that looking at them Seva Ram laughed, as he tasted the joy of Tara’s love for Arjun.

Holding hands they sat down together in the winter sun. Seva Ram brought out a pitcher of buttermilk. Tara questioned her son on worldly matters with those dark, clever, and still youthful eyes which looked steadily into his. From time to time she nodded vigorously in a determined way, while the father watched them both, admiring the simple, concise way in which Arjun expressed abstract ideas.

Tara had maintained a lively interest in politics, despite Seva Ram’s complete apathy toward public affairs. Three newspapers on the side table attested to the fact that she was not about to abandon her secular interests in favour of an uneventful country life at the ashram. Nor did Arjun perceive any sign that she intended to embrace the spiritual life. Although she did attend the morning discourse of the guru, it was, she hurriedly clarified, to help her wake up early, and it gave a nice beginning to the day. She admired the guru she admitted. ‘He says and does so many things that make so much sense in the modern world.’ Arjun concluded that underneath her calm, which fitted nicely with the peaceful hermitage, a fire still burned on. She wrote long letters to her friends daily, which now took the place of more immediate face-to-face interaction. So long as she had this outlet she would not allow herself to be lonely or bored.

‘Explain something to me, Arjun,’ said Tara. ‘It seems to me that the basic problems of our society, and even their solutions are known to the people who are ruling in Delhi. Then why is it that things don’t get done?’

Arjun looked at her thoughtfully.

‘Shall I tell you why?’

Arjun nodded.

‘Because doing the right thing goes against the interest of the rulers. When you ask them, both the politicians and the bureaucrats come up with reasonable and convincing answers. You know what I call this? I call it tender-mindedness. And there was no one more tender-minded than Nehru. We Indians are tender-minded as a nation. Whenever we are faced with a tough choice, we have a tender excuse for not taking it.’

‘If problems and solutions are known and still nothing gets done, it shows an extremely unhealthy state of affairs, doesn’t it, mother?’

‘Of course. Now go inside and have a shower. You are filthy after the train journey. The geyser is on and there is hot water in plenty.’ She winked at him as she made the last statement, for it was a private thing between mother and son: that she had brought her gadgets and worldly goods along with her and she meant to be comfortable here.

He walked back into the house. In his room the walls were covered with family pictures, many of which she had inherited from Bauji. These were now the prized memories of a life gone by, and jealously guarded because they were all that Tara had to live for till she died or decided to adopt a different outlook more in keeping with life at the ashram.

In the shower Arjun’s mind was distracted from his own mission as he thought of his mother’s life at the ashram. Despite the brave front she put up she was lonely. His father was clearly absorbed in his work and his spiritual life. If she had accepted the guru and been initiated in the path, she might have had an outlet; it might have also opened up the possibility of richer companionship with her husband, based on a shared interest. But she had remained a sceptic, like a true daughter of a worldly, free-thinking father. Now, here she was, removed from the glitter of the life that she so dearly loved, trying to overcome loneliness by growing flowers in her garden and writing interminable letters.