The road that straddled the university ran parallel to most of the
important buildings. It was a broad track with pavements and lanes for bicycles
and cycle-rickshaws on both sides. A wide assortment of petty businesses and
stalls flanked the sides almost occupying the pavements, while students in
small and large groups jostled for space with cycle-rickshaws on the lanes.
When I exited the gardens through the iron turnstile, I saw a small crowd
outside the Student Union Office. The courtyard was littered with pamphlets
pronouncing the names of student leaders with their respective portfolios.
Fresher students looked nervous and chatted excitedly among them. The
help-desks set up by various political parties with a stake in the university
did little to defuse the clamor that prevailed. The one-room office from where
the student leaders worked was bustling with students standing in queues
outside makeshift counters and some of them were quibbling with their elected
leaders over deadlines and delays. A man in his mid-thirties, with an thick moustache
and his political affiliation pinned to his breast pocket standing outside the
office, gave me an anxious smile as I passed him. Two young women argued with
a cabulliwallah over two extra paper cones where he sold his
heavily spiced chhana. And the traffic moved slowly, their movement
hampered by groups of young men and women trying to cross the road every
hundred yards.
The first person I
greeted was the seller of fake jewellry. He was a short, heavy man with broad
shoulders who claimed to be a descendent of one of the sages of Benares. A
coarse red cloth with ‘Ram’ printed on it diagonally and horizontally
upholstered the basket in front of him. He called out to a lanky young man with
the face of a boy who eyed his wares as he was walking past. He held out a ring
with a blue stone in his fingers and said, This will keep you from
evil, boy. No? Then why don’t you try this? with a swish of his hand, and
the next moment there was a bracelet made of beads in his fingers. The young
man grunted and walked away.
I crossed a culvert that ran parallel to a shop selling stationery and
reached the spot where I had my evening tea. It was a dark uneven clearing amid
the ruins of a construction project that had been abandoned long ago and
offered a clear view of the road. Several tea-stalls stood on a line with
stools in front for customers. Most of the students had their favorite tea-seller
or the tea-seller who gave them the maximum freebies. The one I frequented was
run by an old man who wore a T-shirt under his kurta. The tea-stall was
subaltern culture. It reminded me of the discarded furniture from our
dormitories that were piled up in a dead alley overlooking the basketball court
that separated our hostel from the fountain. Half broken chairs, some without
an arm or leg and wasted planks of wood were invested with an amount of
credibility by some members of the college non-teaching staff. Every afternoon
after the lunch hour, the college carpenter and the electrician came there with
their band of men for an adda. The men were almost invisible from
our dormitories. But one day when I went to that alley and sat down for a
cigarette on the remnants of a chair, the view it offered startled me out of my
calm. The red-brick building of the dormitory stood out marvelously against the
tree-lined skyline. So did the black of the doors against the brick. Human
figures were clearly demarcated against the walls and the basketball court
stretched out like a starched piece of cloth on a table. A view from the dark,
ignored corners to the spacious lawns and courts. From the dark alleys toward
the lighted halls inhabited by class-riders.
And now the old man’s wobbly tea-stall appeared before me like a
resplendent apparition. On the side of the pavement. A run down wall
overlooking a ditch where the municipal department dumped the day’s wastes. A
shed which the people on the streets ignored. Posters of various political
groups vied for space on the crumbling wall. Happy drunks had painted
walrus-moustaches on the faces of student leaders beaming from the posters in
the late hours. Drunkards and drug-addicts abounded the place even in the day
which was why the old tea-seller had once admonished my friend who had a sudden
black out induced by the heat of the sun while sitting there with a cigarette.
He, incidentally, had never touched alcohol or drugs in his life.
I used to go there and take my seat on a concrete slab upholstered with
dirty rags every evening, and every time I saw the street in a different light.
It was a discovery. Looking at something which had always been there but was
never seen because of the lack of a vantage-point. From my makeshift seat, I
could see the flight of vehicles and pedestrians. It was similar to the
sensation one feels when circumstances force one out of the normal scheme of
things and he or she could come to understand normalcy only in retrospect. You
never know what is commonplace and ordinary unless you look at it from an
extra-ordinary vantage-point.
The old man’s wrinkly throat convulsed into a hearty laughter as he
welcomed me. His laughter was an index where one could measure how familiar he
was with a person. He admitted only a slight tweak of his lips when he welcomed
a stranger. I remembered him accosting me the first day I went to him for tea.
“You new
here? Naye ho?”
“Yes.”
“Kahan se?”
“Assam.”
“Assam! Yeah it’s
a big province.”
I never understood what calculations made him say that. But gradually his
stern features thawed to make way for a happy-go-lucky old “chacha.”
The bamboo and plastic roof of his shack had a rightful justification for
being a world unto its own. A tattered match-box, may be many months old, but
re-fuelled with new sticks every time they ran out stuck out from an overhead
pole. A lantern hung from the centre of the canvas, its chimney blackened by
ash and soot. On another discreet corner, paper bags neatly folded into
rectangle bags cut out from newspapers and old notebooks swayed on a hook. The
day’s newspaper was stuck between a pole and the canvas that formed the roof.
I sat down for my evening tea. I could see black through the canvas roof.
Night had already seeped in.
The old man flicked out the day’s newspaper and grinned at me. The kind
of grimace that one wears when he rests on a pedestal of superiority accorded
by his own signature.
“Nirmal Verma?” He
grinned again and showed his yellow teeth.
I noticed the length of thread fastening his spectacles around his head
had turned black from use.
“Nirmal Verma used to drink tea in my stall once upon a time. But I know
he is not one whom you young boys remember these days. But I am proud Vermaji used
to like my tea.”
I took a moment to remind myself that he was talking about the same
Nirmal Verma who went to the same college that I attended now, and was now a
great Hindi writer.
I told the old man
bluntly that I knew Nirmal Verma and that I was familiar with some of his
works.
“Works?” the old man cried stubbornly. “What do you mean by works? Have
you read his Samvatsar lecture?”
“No.” I said.
“Then you are not
familiar with any of his writings, no? Huh.”
I was taken aback
but stood my ground.
He spat and then
growled again, “Have you read today’s papers?”
“Yes.”
“Why is our Prime
Minister visiting America? Doesn’t he know that America is a land of spies and
traitors? Isn’t he worried that America might train its guns on us tomorrow?”
“Every American is
not a spy as every Pakistani is not a terrorist and every Indian a saint…” I
countered him.
The old man was as
generous in his acknowledgements as in his admonishments.
“Very nicely put,
boy,” he said patronizingly and went on, “Why do our people get targeted and
shot in Norway, in Europe and in Australia? Our own people who have migrated to
these foreign countries for better opportunities and with no plans of
returning? Generations of our people had toiled hard as petty labor and many as
slaves for these wealthy foreign nations. Now when they are rich and claim a
part of the fruit of development, these foreigners think there is a problem
with sharing. They want us to go to their countries as workers but when the
descendants of these same hardworking immigrants leave poverty behind and
demand a share in the economy, the foreigners resent and bully and threaten and
shoot them, no? America, the most powerful country today was originally
inhabited by the Red Indians. Now the Red Indians are a minority in that
country of migrants living mostly in the western part of the country. They are
now beggars and drug-addicts, unemployed and uncared for. The neo-Americans
migrated, colonized and dispossessed the Native Americans in their own land.
Now they are worried that they might meet the same fate when Indians migrate
and settle down in the country. They are a very insecure race, no boy?”
Meanwhile the first drops of rain had begun to fall. Sounds of distant
thunder were audible. But the drizzle was light enough to go on working without
looking for a cover.
I drank the last
sip of my tea which was cold by then. The old man had already ignored two
customers, saying it was too late to make another round of tea but obliged them
with cigarettes.
He turned toward me, stamped his right leg on the ground and continued,
“Nirmal Verma is a brilliant person. Both as a writer and as a man. Someone who
bravely proclaimed truth as a categorical entity is removed from day-today
politicking. He has been a relentless advocate of the artistic truth, the
essential truth in this world. Inimitable as a man of letters, as a man of
valued convictions. You boy, do you read science? No? The progress of science
is fast and scientific truths are always there to be overtaken by another set
of truths or scientific theories. Einstein succeeded Newton as the face of the
march of scientific knowledge and as the yardstick of the so-called progress of
the human race. The ancient Greeks believed that our knowledge that the earth
rotates or revolves is based on nothing but from a series of repetitions of the
earth’s movements and is therefore no convincing proof that the earth would
move in set pattern in the future. But these nitwits were at least better than
their pre-Copernican counterparts.
Vermaji and his breed of human beings are the ones who take us to the
core of the sense of our being through assertion of a core set of values that
they claim to be the truth. There is no progression but the sameness of essence
in successive works of writers and poets. A book or a poem written today cannot
be more truthful than in the aesthetic sense of the word than another written a
century ago. Now listen to a story Vermaji told in one of his lectures. The
story is from the Matsya-Purana after the world has been destroyed. The Creator
Vishnu is floating on the calm waters with nothing but the dark sea surrounding
him. The Maharishi Markhandaya is wandering inside Vishnu’s body where
everything is pure and radiant. Suddenly he slips out of Vishnu’s mouth and
crashes into the waters of the sea. He can only see darkness and water around
him. He wonders if he is dreaming or has fallen into the trap of an illusion.
The next moment he discerns Vishnu’s floating body, luminous and calm on the
water. But Vishnu picks him up and puts him back into his mouth. The Maharishi
finds himself back in the same lighted world from where he had fallen into the
sea. He finds himself at a loss to understand which of the two worlds he has
experienced is the real world. Now boy, what have you learnt from the story?”
He said this with a swagger of his shoulders that was more like an
appendage than a part of his shriveled frame.
“You should understand that the nature of reality is always mysterious
and incomprehensible to the human psyche. You are sometimes unable to understand
whether your experience is real or illusory. And that is the precise moment
when you are staring at life in its barest form. That is when you are shorn off
your trappings and encounter yourself face to face simply because you do not
understand yourself. And this is what truth comprises of. It is not a milestone
nailed on the ground by someone claiming to be a seeker till another seeker
comes along and replaces the old milestone with a new one. Truth is beyond the
everyday and commonplace.”
He
reasoned with a final waving of his hand that exposed the torn kurta at his
right armpit.
“If truth doesn’t encompass the events unfolding and changing rapidly
around us all the time, that truth doesn’t do justice to life at all.”
I got back to
him.
“If the price of petrol goes up today, there will be protests from the
common citizens against the hike. If you choose not to identify with the protestors
your truth is unjust toward your life because rising petrol prices will affect
your life in so many ways, your everyday trip on the bus, and your son’s daily
hike on the bike. If the price of sugar goes up, you will have to invest more
in order to sell tea and you will have an inclination to increase the price of
your tea which in turn will affect many people like me who walk down this road
expecting cheap tea from you. Your idea of the transcendent truth sadly leaves
behind the only degree of agency that you have over your life. Your truth makes
you sacrifice what you have in hand in order to make way for something that you
have no evidence of. If your life is an accident, you have a right to be
despondent about the listlessness, but at the same time you should be
profoundly happy and thankful about getting that which you had never expected
and to which you can give a direction. The search for a meaning in life gives
meaning to life.”
The twinkle in the old man’s eye told me that he acknowledged my words
but he went on to quote a philosopher and then admitting to forgetting the
original words, paraphrased him. “The transcendent God which I believe in is
not at all concerned about saving this world. He is more interested in saving
individual souls as they pass from this world through time. You ought to look
beyond history rather than within if you are to be convinced of God’s triumph.”
The drizzle was now a steady downpour. The street was almost deserted now
and the lights of passing vehicles formed bright images on the water sliding
away toward the pavement. A few young boys walked past, heads bowed, snatches
of exciting conversation audible and undeterred by the rain. One of them
balanced a handkerchief on his head but pulled it back the next moment. Two
women and a boy walked briskly through the rain and took shelter in the
bus-shed opposite the old man’s stall. The older women took out a handkerchief
from her bag and wiped off the water from the boy’s hair first, and then from
his face. The boy stared disinterestedly at a cycle-rickshaw weighted down by
four boys, shouting and singing at the top of their voices. They made no effort
to cover themselves from the rain.
The old man covered his stall by hauling a tarpaulin sheet across the
roof and pulled the stove and the cylinder further inside. The jars of biscuits
and other snacks were wet from the rain but he made no effort to save
them. He left the used glasses outside on the pavement. Then he
unpacked his packet of bidis, lit one with a lot of effort, and
remarked, These boys don’t know that it is not good to get wet in the
first shower of the year.
The rain receded soon. It was humid but there was a chill in the air from
the first showers of the season. A wind shook the drops of rain from the leaves
on the tops of trees. I decided to walk back.
I paid the old man; now busy throwing out the rain water collected inside
the used glasses, and took to the street.
“The rains have started. I am afraid you have to close early today. And I
hope I didn’t discourage customers during our long conversation.”
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