Cast of Characters
Amla — protagonist, an aware young woman (22–24)
Ramesh — Amla's cousin, a guest (25–28)
Conservator — retired Forest Officer, Renu's grandfather (65–70)
Professor — college teacher, Renu's tutor (45–50)
Renu — the Conservator's granddaughter, a student (20–21)
Aparna — a young widow (30–35)
Pardesi (the Stranger) — a man of letters living in the white haveli (35–40)
Scene 1
Ramesh: Amla, this room of yours is truly the crown of this house.
Amla: [laughing] The crown? What do you mean?
Ramesh: Here there is air, light, sunshine — everything.
Amla: Oh, Daddy had this room built for himself, but I took it over. Now schemes are always being hatched to turn me out of here, but I haven't lost yet.
Ramesh: What schemes are being hatched to turn you out, Amla?
Amla: First ask how I took possession of this room in the first place.
Ramesh: All right, my mistake is forgiven. First let it be revealed here how my cousin sister, like the moon, passed from one zodiac sign into another.
Amla: My father, who trespasses into the science of astrology without any right — this matter does not square with the moon's changing of signs, because that poor moon has to keep changing its signs continually, whereas to turn Amla out of this room now is no easy thing.
[Both burst out laughing.]
Ramesh: If Uncle takes my advice, this Ramesh babu will tell him — without charging any fee — the means to turn Amla Devi out of this room too.
Amla: Might I too be allowed to know that means?
Ramesh: Why not. Amla Devi, some have to be shoved out by force; but some, intoxicated by the heady notes of the shehnai, depart of themselves with someone. Understood something?
Amla: Understood, why not, my good sir. But even before those shehnais sounded, the tuneless cries of helplessness had begun to rise in this house. Downstairs, the room where I used to study and sleep slowly began to feel like a prison cell. The room had passages on both sides. Whoever passed — anyone of the house, any visitor — would be sure to peep in,
...as if to see whether the prisoner of this grim cell had not run off somewhere. Was she not perhaps digging some tunnel to escape?
Ramesh: I didn't follow you, Amla.
Amla: It's the matter of helplessness, Ramesh. In our homes — the helplessness toward young girls and boys, and especially toward girls.
Ramesh: It's a matter of upbringing, isn't it, Amla.
Amla: I'd asked Daddy and got this transistor. When I sometimes start listening to a programme of songs on it, I feel that Mummy is vexed. One day Daddy and Mummy even had words over this very thing. I was in the bathroom and heard it all. In those very days my aunt from the village had come too. She is a widow, well-off, but an image of a bygone age, with a world all her own. She had a great air of authority. In a single day she would say this thing about "setting the times afire" a good fifty times.
Ramesh: The times do change, Amla, but how is poor man to change along with them? The poor creature is a prisoner of his own ideas and conditioning; he can neither stop the times from changing, nor change along with them — and so he is vexed, he smoulders.
Amla: The difficulty here is — how are people of two or three generations, holding different conditionings, to live together in one place?
Ramesh: But here, compromise is the very foundation of social life.
Amla: Compromise can come only by honouring the feelings of both sides, can't it, Ramesh? You've come here for so long now — stay a week or ten days and you'll see for yourself how this compromise works out.
Ramesh: No, friend — I haven't come here for new experiments and new experiences. Downstairs, in that room — if you couldn't live there, how shall I, used to the open life of the village, live there all these days? In this house of yours there is one room here where a person can live, but you have taken possession of it.
Amla: But I can share this right of mine, for these few days, with a guest like you.
Ramesh: Meaning? I should live right here? O Ram — your Mummy, or that wealthy widow aunt of yours, how will they bear it, that a distant relative, a young man, should live with you? [laughs]
Amla: That aunt, poor thing, departed for the abode of the gods last year, after a hundred vows and supplications.
Ramesh: Aunt may have gone to the abode of the gods, but that gaze of hers dyed in helplessness, that spying mind of hers, that way of thinking that saw flames of fire flaring up in place after place... those won't have gone to heaven with her. Auntie might perhaps, taking me for a village lad, have given me a corner of her trust somewhere — but your neighbours and kin! No, brother, no.
Amla: It's a great misfortune, Ramesh — that of this new generation of ours. I don't say this generation is utterly spotless, that it has no flaws; but the helplessness of the older generation toward this one is very unfair indeed. To me it pricks, many a time, like a poisoned thorn.
Ramesh: It's the clash of two psychologies, Amla. It can't be helped.
Amla: But many times this thing flares up in a fierce form, and in its din many tender feelings are crushed to pieces. Two or four months ago, in this very neighbourhood, an episode of just this kind took place — over this very helplessness.
Ramesh: Oh! What happened?
Amla: In this neighbourhood there is a retired Conservator of Forests. Very wealthy. His elder son too is some officer or official, posted somewhere outside. His daughter lives here with her grandfather and studies in college. She's a year ahead of me. As the university exams drew near, the girl asked her grandfather to arrange private 'coaching' in one or two subjects. The Conservator persuaded a professor of the men's college to tutor his granddaughter.
Ramesh: Amla, in the cities these masters and professors do a brisk trade in tuitions. It's become a new business too. This trade has rather disgraced the teaching profession, hasn't it?
Amla: It's a poor country, Ramesh. What is the poor teacher to do? Bad, selfish people are everywhere, but tutoring is hardly a trade of much honour. How is the poor teacher to keep up his white-collar dignity in this dignity-less society? And so the poor man swallows this humiliation.
Ramesh: Let the poor man swallow his humiliation — you go on with the story. We'll have this debate some other time.
Amla: But it was you yourself who broke the thread of the tale.
Ramesh: Oh — I'm so sorry, madam. (I really do regret it.) (laughs) All right — so did that tuition begin or not?
Amla: The next day the professor came to teach the girl, but a new trouble arose.
Ramesh: What sort of new trouble?
Scene 2 (Flashback)
( The sound of a doorbell ringing )
Servant: (opening the door) Yes — whom do you wish to meet?
Professor: Not to meet — I've come to teach. Go say the professor sahib has come.
Servant: Yes — come, come. They are seated for their lessons. Upstairs, in the sahib's room. Climb these stairs, sahib.
( The sound of climbing stairs )
Conservator: Come, professor sahib. Renu — the professor sahib has come.
Renu: (coming in) Namaste, professor sahib.
Professor: Namaste. Where is she to sit and study?
Conservator: She'll study in this very drawing-room, professor sahib.
Professor: But you'll be inconvenienced here.
Conservator: No, no — we shan't be inconvenienced in the least. You teach her right here.
Professor: You may not be inconvenienced by my teaching, Conservator sahib, but I certainly shall be.
Conservator: You? What inconvenience would you have?
Professor: I, sahib, shall have difficulty teaching — because of you.
Conservator: What do you mean?
Professor: The meaning is quite plain, Conservator sahib. You have called me to teach. I am a professor. Ten or twelve years it has been that I've taught in college, but not on a single day have I taught anyone seated under guard like this. A watch kept over a professor's teaching I shall not bear, sahib. That you should order me to teach Renu here under your surveillance — this I do not like. To this I strongly object.
Conservator: What objection have you?
Professor: You look upon my character with eyes of suspicion, and then ask what objection I have? Should I not object to this excess of yours? I cannot teach kept under guard like this. I count it an insult to myself.
Conservator: (taken aback) Look here — you're making a palm-tree out of a sesame seed. But Renu will study here, in this very room. A young girl, alone with you —
Renu: (almost shrieking) Grandfather! You know that the professor sahib's own daughter studies with me in the very same college!
[ A silence falls. The tick-tick of the wall clock. ]
Amla: And the professor rose and left. That very day Renu gathered up all her notebooks and books, heaped them on the lawn of the bungalow, and set them alight. The grandfather was stunned. At first he flew red and yellow at his granddaughter, abused her roundly; then, abashed, he began to beg her pardon. But Renu refused to go to college, and wrote the whole matter to her father. She wrote that he should come and take her away — that she held this place guilty of the professor's insult, and that to live here was no longer possible for her.
Ramesh: But Amla, do you think Renu's sentimentality was right? To be so distraught at a grandfather's absurd behaviour and wreck one's "career" like this — whose intellect would call that wise?
Amla: You're talking of accounts, of arithmetic, Ramesh — but this is an episode of Kamayani, a question of the heart's tender feeling. This question is not solved by the rules of economics or ethics. Renu's reactionary grandfather did not insult only that poor professor. It was an insult to Renu, even greater. The poor professor — all right, the Conservator may not know him; but did he not even know and recognise his own granddaughter?
Ramesh: All right, Amla, but the whole blame cannot be laid on Renu's old grandfather either. You must have read that 'admission' by the minister in the papers — that in the capital alone, in the last four or five months, there were 60 to 65 incidents of girls and women being abducted or carried off, of whom the police have so far recovered only 40 to 42.
Amla: Does that mean, Ramesh, that a watch is to be set over every young daughter? I am speaking of this very helplessness.
Ramesh: No, your point is right; but the way life is growing dignity-less in today's society — who is to solve this problem of helplessness? Well — now even the breeze from the fan has begun to turn warm. You've kept this window shut. Shall I open it? A bit of the view of your neighbourhood will be had too.
Amla: As you like — I keep it shut. If you open it, the honk-honk of the taxis and tempos on the road in front won't let one study. From here, if you stand once at the open window, the boat of the mind too begins to rock in this restless river of people coming and going. This many-coloured world too is like a moving album.
Ramesh: There's a pleasure, too, in seeing the world from a distance, Amla.
Scene 3
Amla: There's pleasure only in being a spectator, Ramesh. But how is this spectatorship to be had, so long as your mind is not free of care, so long as you yourself have no trouble of any kind? And how many people would there be of this sort, who are blessed to stand at a safe distance and enjoy taking in the spectacle of the world?
Ramesh: How changed you've become, Amla. After years upon years I've come here, but hearing you talk it seems as though you are no longer that old Amla. Since when have you come to understand the difference between seeing the world close up and from afar? Did you not study philosophy in college?
Amla: (laughing) No, Papa ji, I haven't the knack for studying philosophy. I, Ramesh, have read the works of Kalidasa, some Sanskrit poetry and plays. I have read Hindi literature, read Dogri poetry. This world cannot be seen only through the telescope of philosophy, Ramesh! The world is like an open book. The wind of circumstance keeps turning its pages over. This neighbourhood of mine too is a little chapter of that book — or take it as a small edition of this vast stage. Do you see that old haveli with the white plaster, opposite, Ramesh?
Ramesh: That one? It seems a fairly large haveli.
Amla: It is a large haveli indeed. Its owners, the Dewans, were once people of great consequence. But today, this crumbling haveli? The heart hesitates even to call it a haveli. You were speaking of seeing the world from afar. But perhaps you know this too — that in this current of the world's life there dwells also a shadow-seizing demoness, who, with her magic, drags down even creatures flying far up in the sky.
Ramesh: Oh! Well done, friend — you've taken good soundings of this current of life too.
Amla: Not taken its soundings — but everyone makes the effort to sound it. I am fortunate that here I stand on a somewhat high stone and take in the spectacle, so the waves don't reach me. But these waves had, as it were, simply swallowed that poor man.
Ramesh: Who was he? Of whom are you speaking?
Amla: Who knows who he was, poor man. No one knew where he had come from. But come he had, to this unknown soil, to find some means of livelihood. He lived in that white haveli, renting a room. I never saw the poor man in that state myself, but those who saw him say he was very simple, very full of self-respect, and very fine.
Ramesh: What did he do? After all, when he had come to this town of yours, he must have plied some trade too.
Amla: He worked in the office of some local newspaper, but that proud nature of his became his very enemy. People, seeing his clean, tidy way of living, were jealous. They suspected him. The work of a malicious nature begins from this very suspicion.
Ramesh: What suspicion — what kind of suspicion?
Amla: Just this — how does this man's way of life run? He eats his meals in a hotel. He has the habit of taking tea and coffee regularly too. He smokes good cigarettes. He wears fine, clean clothes. He writes with a good pen. How does he meet all this expense? Who is he, this fellow?
Ramesh: The suspicion was natural, Amla. A man who'd come here in search of work for a livelihood, if he begins to live like a prince — then people are bewildered and dazzled, poor things. There is room for suspicion, indeed. What fault is it of the people's in this?
Amla: I blame the people, Ramesh, because they see the sesame seed and not the palm-tree; the mustard-grain comes into their view, but the mountain does not. In this very town — why, in this very neighbourhood — there are several houses upon which Lakshmi has come bursting through the roof. Those who hadn't the means to rent a decent house have today become owners of bungalows and cars. Why do the eyes of these suspicious people not settle upon these new millionaires? Did no one ever ask them: good sirs, where did you get this wish-cow? How has this wish-tree sprung up for you, that the moment you shake it a rain of gold coins begins?
Ramesh: That's why I said — how changed you've become! Seeing the marks of revolution in you, I'm astonished. This irritation, this vexation has crept into your nature. Why ruin your health brooding over such things? What's the matter?
Amla: It's not that — but to think this way is cowardice, Ramesh. To see such naked sin happening, and yet turn one's gaze away? That is tantamount to supporting that sin. If that poor stranger wore clean clothes, what was lost to anyone?
Ramesh: Then what happened, Amla? Did that stranger flee, leaving the town, or not? Why do you stare at me so?
Amla: I'm thinking — you too think just like the other people. In his place you would probably have fled, but he was not one to flee. He stood firm in this Lanka of Ravana like a Vibhishana. But when even the colleagues who worked with him asked him, with that same feeling of suspicion, how after all his expenses were met — what was this secret?
Ramesh: Then what did he say?
Amla: He told them all — this is the price of my sadhana.
Ramesh: The price of his sadhana?
Amla: He said — I sell my sadhana; what else do you ask? People carry on a thousand trades by stealth — does this trade of mine kindle such alarm in your minds?
Ramesh: What sort of sadhana did that stranger sell?
Amla: Here too the people asked. What is sadhana? What is this that he sells? Who buys it? What sort of commodity is it? Where is it sold? Who takes it?
Ramesh: Bargains struck behind a veil — it's natural to be curious about them, Amla. Why did that stranger too keep the bargain of his sadhana behind a veil? Why didn't he strike it before everyone?
Amla: He didn't — that was his wish. How many people strike the bargain of their own soul before everyone? The people's real curiosity was to know his customers — the buyers of his sadhana.
Ramesh: Who were those customers? One, or many? You must know.
Amla: I don't know, even knowing, Ramesh. What good is it to keep poking and prodding at the petals of tender flowers and buds? Have you never heard, on this earth, the tales of writers' sadhana being bought and sold?
Ramesh: I have heard them, read them too — but it has never been thought a good thing. When the secret comes out, people only laugh.
Ramesh: At whom?
Amla: At the seller — and at the buyer too.
Scene 4 (Flashback)
( Two soft laughs. Very restrained and wholesome, gentle. )
Woman's voice (Aparna): But won't it grieve you to sell your own creations like this?
Man's voice (Pardesi): Grieve? Grief and joy are very strange words, Aparna Devi. Those waves of sorrow on which I drifted here into your garden like a dry leaf — those waves now seem to have turned. This too is a state of happiness. If these days of my life pass thus in comfort, how shall I call it grief?
Aparna: When a mother in distress sells her own children to provide for her own ease and comfort, then the people of the world...
Pardesi: The world that has no shame for that helpless mother's helplessness — what right has it to laugh at her?
Aparna: The works you write for me will become entirely mine. You will never, on any occasion, speak of them as your own work?
Pardesi: That goes without saying. The works I write for a fee will have only this much connection with me — that they became the means of my livelihood.
Aparna: When I get these works published in book form, the foreword will have to be written by you.
Pardesi: For that foreword you'll then have to pay me a fee.
Aparna: I'll pay it — but never forget that Aparna is a widow, and you a tenant in this house.
Pardesi: Both things I know well.
Aparna: One more thing. This world does not approve of such bargains.
Pardesi: I know. From me, the world will not get even a scent of this purchase.
Aparna: The world's power to sniff things out is very keen. You yourself, in one of your works, have aimed a very sharp satire at this. But the difference between my earlier published works and these new ones — will that stay hidden from the world's eyes?
Pardesi: However keen the world's eye, it will not be able to see this secret imprisoned behind these lips of mine. You need have no anxiety about it. This fee I'm to get from you I cannot give up at any price.
Aparna: The question of my honour and dignity is more delicate even than this fee of yours.
Pardesi: The whole basis of this future income of mine rests on this very thing, depends on this very thing — and I understand it very well. The world, which ought to feel sympathy with the sorrowful, why should it grieve and burn over this simple compact of ours?
Scene 5
Ramesh: Amla, so that widow of the haveli was quite well off. What cleverness did she see in this deceit of hiding others' writings under her own name?
Amla: It's not a matter of cleverness, Ramesh. The longing to make life worth living is a very basic thing.
Ramesh: But to live, is such a false show necessary? What we are not — why do we have the longing to become it? What mockery is this of one's own self?
Amla: False show angers me too, Ramesh babu, but where is this false show not found? Look... at those young girls. Their clothes, their hair, their gait, these vulgar bursts of laughter, this shallow talk, this display of nonchalance even while they feel shy of their surroundings — this is not their true form, Ramesh. One must look at the boys too. Is there any lack of false show anywhere?
Ramesh: But Amla, Aparna Devi was a widow.
Ramesh: What need had she to fall victim to a weakness of this kind?
Amla: That's just what I'm saying. Widowed in her very youth, if the poor woman was tempted by false supports of this kind, how very bad is that? It's no misconduct, Ramesh. And in it was mingled the merit, too, of giving financial help to a needy man of letters.
Ramesh: No — why then did people's hearts begin to smoulder and burn over it?
Amla: That's just the point, babu ji. Those who longed for the pleasure of seeing her stumble and fall — when she began to live with such poise instead, their egos were stung. Her smiling seemed to them their own dishonour. It seemed an insult to their power.
Ramesh: How cowardly, really, are these people of the deceitful world, lickers of the soles of the strong and the rich. Even seeing one man laugh and smile, their hearts are cut. Is it not extraordinary?
Amla: That stranger did right, who went on bearing such pin-pricks with a smile.
Ramesh: What other road was there, either? To save a tender soul from the merciless gaze of these heedless people, he kept smiling, and kept bearing the barbs and stones of calumny and slander.
Ramesh: Then what happened, Amla?
Amla: But the world's eye too is a thing, Ramesh. Following that man of letters, it sought out the young widow as well. Then the blows on that stranger grew harder still. They called him a lecher, a scoundrel. When sensational articles about him began to appear in the papers, that sorrowful widow quietly sold her haveli and went away, far from this town, to some relatives of hers.
Ramesh: And that stranger?
Amla: The new owner turned out the old tenants. The stranger took another room somewhere and lived on, but his world had been laid waste. As much courage as he had shown before, he proved just as weak now, after Aparna's going.
Ramesh: Just as weak?
Amla: Yes, weak. His income had fallen. But even so, he didn't leave the town. He kept circling that neighbourhood, that haveli.
Ramesh: Kept circling it? But why?
Amla: Some bond, who knows of what kind, had formed between him and that haveli — a grip that would not set him free.
Ramesh: Oh, I see. The poor man must have begun to love that widow. But why didn't Aparna take him along with her too?
Amla: Where could Aparna have taken him?
Ramesh: Then why did she sell the haveli?
Amla: Defeated by this world.
Ramesh: Aparna turned out very weak. The one from whom she drew support for her own life, she went off and left him without support.
Amla: And who knows Aparna's heart either, Ramesh? Of a thing that stays only in the heart, what can another guess? Look there, Ramesh — look, how those boys are tormenting that madman.
Ramesh: Who is this madman? Not that stranger?
Amla: They say it's that same stranger, at whose smile this whole town used to burn. Now see how happy this town is.
Scene 6 (Final)
'The Play'