"No, Uncle — what is improper in it? Only that I acted in a play with that boy? I asked Mummy before I took the part. Mummy said that, while she herself thought no harm in it, she would still ask Daddy. Whether she spoke to him or not I don't know — but no one stopped me from going to the rehearsals. In the college play, too, Rajesh and I did the 'major' roles. Granted, a few old-fashioned people here still don't like to see girls come onto the stage — but what is their objection founded on? Where is the argument behind it? The logic? Because it has not been so till now, it must not be so even now. Astonishing! Is that any kind of argument? Now, Uncle — is it?"
"It is most certainly a point." Uncle sat smiling at the shafts of light slipping through the glass of the doorway, watching them shift into a hundred shapes on the opposite wall. Still half-lost in that, he said, "Yes — it is a point, child." His tone, his unconcern, filled Sushma with vexation.
Beyond the doorway the dance of the long, slender eucalyptus leaves was lovely indeed; but just then this love of beauty in her uncle did not please Sushma. She glared at him. In his eyes and on his lips was that same unconcerned smile. "Yes, child — this is exactly the point," he said softly, looking at her.
"What is the point, Uncle? You didn't even hear mine out."
"Why not — I heard all of it. Your Daddy is a very sensible man, Sushi! He is a man respected; to set his word aside is, indeed, very much a point. He and I are classmates — in our studies I was the sharper of the two, but in the ways of the world I count your Daddy the 'Manu' of our age. His sight reaches very far — yes!"
"And does that mean he can never think a wrong thought? Never do a wrong thing? But how much does that ancient Manu of yours count for today, Uncle? From the day Manu wrote that Smriti of his to now, how far this world has travelled! No Manu has yet been able to bind the current of life's stream within his made-up rules and codes. This river is headstrong. It carves its own banks as it goes, and washes them away itself."
Hearing this philosophical turn in Sushma, Uncle burst out laughing.
Sushma looked at him in anger. "What is it? Is this wrong, Uncle?"
"What is right — and what is wrong? Who is to settle that, Sushma? We are the elder in years; we have watched a great deal of this game of the world. When we set our experience before you and say a thing, you young people don't care for it. Experience is nothing, you say — and the moment you start mistaking your own zeal and enthusiasm for the very light of wisdom, we elders cannot help but laugh. Your Daddy says that boy has no fault or flaw, true — but no virtue either. There is nothing in him of the special stuff that fills colour into the sketch of a life; he is just so-so. And in that your Daddy is right. There is much intoxication in sentiment, but it has no lasting age. And life is not a 'short story,' not some tale — it is a novel. Keep your eye fixed on a single point and a story may take shape; but the design of a novel asks for some patience, asks for the far-sightedness to draw that design out. Nor is this a stage play, child — a one-night tragedy, or a one-night comedy. Sushma — where are you off to?"
"I'm coming, Uncle — I can see your 'mood' is gathering. Let me make you a cup of coffee." Uncle laughed.
When Sushma had gone, Uncle lit a cigarette and, settling back at ease on the sofa, let his eyes wander over the things in the room. A single picture hung there — a work of modern art. He went close and read the words beneath it: 'The Longing for the Journey to the Moon.' In the picture, eyes shining, stretched wide with yearning, fixed upon the sky — a very emblem of their own helplessness!
Looking at it, Sushma's uncle seemed to feel a kind of unease. Two or three times he cleared his throat and fussed at the collar of his shirt, trying to set it straight — as though the disquiet had come not from the picture but from the collar.
Remarkable, this new generation! One picture in the whole room, and that of this kind — a mute attitude of helplessness, of powerlessness! We liked to hang bright, festive, heartening pictures in our rooms — portraits of patriots, of gods and goddesses! And yet — Sushma speaks truly. Who knows how many centuries have passed since Manu's day. Between us and them lies but a single generation's gap — and yet it is as though there were no kinship at all between the two!
Sushma set the tray down on the side-table. "And for yourself?" Uncle asked.
"I drink very little coffee, Uncle. I've no habit of tea, or milk, or any of it. To take up a habit of such things at this age —"
"At least have these 'snacks.'"
"This picture, Sushma — who made it? Do you paint as well?"
"No, I didn't make it. Rajesh painted it — the same Rajesh!"
"And what has he made in it?"
"Mummy has puzzled over that very thing many a time — why has he painted such a picture? But I know him; I understand him. When art moves forward carrying the reflection of life, it will paint pictures of just this kind. What else? Either a painter of imaginary pleasure-gardens — of some heavenly life — or else a merchant who betrays his own art."
"No — but what has he made in it?"
"The longing to go to the moon."
"The longing to go to the moon? And what does this longing mean? In the eyes of these helpless living creatures of the earth, what meaning does it hold?"
"What meaning does it not hold, Uncle? If the poor, who live in a single rented mud room, dream gardens in their hearts — where is the crime in that? If helpless people, in their despair and powerlessness, cheat their reality for a moment or two on the strength of such imagined longings — where is the harm?"
"Those two moments might also be spent untangling the knots of one's reality!"
"Which is the very reason the longing inspires them to ignore those knots. Each of us has a moon of his own in his heart, and the longing to reach it — who is without it, Uncle? Are you? Why else do you remember Manu so much? Manu is the champion of that order of rank in which society is a building of many storeys: where some make merry in open, airy, comfortable rooms, and some, of necessity, pass their lives in cramped, dark, foul-smelling cells below — and both take it all to be by the verdict of the Creator's own court. So those below have no claim, no right, upon the light and the wholesome air above; and those above are under no compulsion whatever to share in the damp, the dark, the bad air of the rooms below. Manu served the people of the upper storey many centuries — but these rebel winds that wake the longing to journey to the moon, who knows from where they blew in, that they have turned the record-room of that imaginary court into a lumber-room! Today his files matter only this much: that a sample of them be set away in some research centre, and the script written on them be given a psychological reading. Is that wrong, Uncle?"
Uncle had lifted the coffee cup between three fingers and brought it to his lips — and there had stopped. He was looking at Sushma. On his lips a faint smile, in his eyes a vexation. He spoke:
"Very well — Manu has grown very old. But is this law of karma also false? Have deeds, good and bad, no fruit?"
"They have, of course they have, Uncle — they have. The fruit of deeds does ripen — only, the very definition of good and bad has yet to be arrived at. Even Manu could not arrive at it. You've heard Achala's story too, haven't you?"
Uncle set the cup down on the side-table and began to light a cigarette; he did not speak.
"You've heard it, surely, Uncle — how happy she is these days. She's found herself a man of money. A car, a bungalow, a garden, a gardener and servants — everything. What she has come into, in a single year! Her husband's people, they say, took ten thousand rupees and signed a paper that he had divorced her. The court loosed Achala from the bond; and today that Achala — the headstrong wedded wife of a poor household — passes a happy life in this very town."
"Is this a happy life, Sushma? Do you too call this a happy life?"
"And how is it an unhappy one, Uncle?"
"His age?"
"Each of them has an age of their own. Let the world say its hundred things — Achala has found, for that age of hers, a new home. Dayal Babu, as owner of the Steel Syndicate, was patron already of many of the town's institutions; now he has the jewel of a 'happy household' besides. A new liveliness has come into that joyless garden. People aim their hundred barbs at Dayal Babu — but with Achala's coming it is as though he has stepped back onto the cheerful road of life."
"I am not speaking of Dayal Babu — it is Achala I'm thinking of. How deep is this happiness of hers? How real is this joy?"
"In the eyes of society — or in her own eyes, and Dayal Babu's?" Sushma asked, smiling. "When the crowd gathered, you know what she did? She folded her hands to them: 'I beg you, people — leave this place. It is our household's own quarrel, and a reconciliation has been reached.' The people stood astonished, angry, let down — and they went. A little while after, Dayal Babu's motor came out of the courtyard, and Achala sat in it, laughing."
"And her husband?"
"The husband, Uncle, must have kept silent. He neither wept nor cried out for justice. The matter was settled."
"What reconciliation? Dayal Babu robbed the poor man — what else? Ravana carried off Sita —"
"No, Uncle — say rather that Sita carried off Ravana, and that too on Rama's own advice. Rama had got ten thousand rupees in cash, and with it, riddance of his headstrong Sita."
"Then say the Ravana of money looted the joy of an innocent home!"
"It does not quite work that way, Uncle! In that home's joy, Achala too had some share. She is very happy now in the new surroundings. Dayal Babu's life has grown cheerful — and Achala's husband, it's heard, now goes about saying: 'Thanks to Achala I am very happy now. Beside Achala I always stayed small, like a culprit. She was a girl of another kind: the bars of the cage had not the strength to hold her in. And there's no pleasure in keeping someone caged, anyway. If hearts do not meet, what does the show of social bonds mean?'" Sushma asked, sharply — "Is that a lie, Uncle?"
"I see — it is the truth, not a lie. Dayal Babu is past fifty; Achala is still twenty-six or twenty-seven. It isn't even a case of fifty against fifty-five. Dayal Babu cannot walk ten yards without his motor. There's much talk in the city that Achala takes him out at first light every morning for his 'walk.' On the road beyond the town she makes him run — slowly, slowly — switching on the headlights herself and driving the motor at a crawl behind him. At his age, what a strange pranayama Dayal Babu is put to!"
Sushma burst out laughing. "All right, let it go, Uncle. The fruit of deeds, the eyes of society, Achala, Dayal Babu, and Achala's husband — were Manu here today, he'd have some new chapters to write into that Smriti of his."
"The new Manus who'll write the new chapters are just us — you and I, Sushi. But this story of Achala's only bears out your Daddy's words. What else did her poor husband lack? Only this — that he was poor, while Achala dreamed of bungalows and motors. And is Rajesh, too, anything but the son of a poor father?"
"The question was not of poverty, Uncle — the question was of the soul. Achala was no lump of clay. She was educated, of a keen nature and temper. She did not get a companion to match her feelings, her longings. Between the two was a difference of person. Society, to this day, has gone on weighing nothing but ages for such bonds — matching the pedigrees of clan and tribe. Nature and temper, faith and taste — these never so much as crossed its mind. And that is why there is restlessness in society today, an uproar, a revolt!"
"Sushma!" Her Daddy's call came. "Did you hear? Come outside — see what news this gardener has brought."
Sushma and her uncle both went out.
"The gardener is saying — 'Achala Devi has left Dayal Babu and gone off, no one knows where!'"
Uncle saw that Sushma's face had turned pale. ✧