Godless

Artwork by t h lisa

This is my conviction and I do not to change it now. But I am not godless. I love the silent shimmerings of Nature and the little creatures of the earth--the tremulous pool of water in the courtyard, the kitten in the basket, the tender aswattha leaf...I love all children.

Do I not suffer so, at this moment, from so much love?

I have not met Abhiram babu for a long time. Could it be that he does not want to see me? No, I do not think so. I have also not been able to make it. For I have no respite these days from office-work. I shall go to his place next Sunday. I must. And I will take my son along.

I came to know Abhiram babu about one year back when I moved to Calcutta. We first met one day at the lunch-hour on opposite sides of a greasy table-top in a government office canteen. That was my trial visit there. But I was about to beat a retreat, thanks to the smoke, dirt and the sweating crowd when I saw a gentleman engaged in deep meditation. The meditation over, he offered a portion of the food to his gods. He smiled when he saw me, and said, 'Won't you be seated, please?'

It was more curiosity than a desire to make friends. I sat on the chair opposite and noted--here is one of those godmen.

I have a strong prejudice against these people. Yet I was taken in by his smiles, untouched as it were by pleasure, and the gentle, unhurried words. I thought it may well be nice to have lunch with him, once in a while, in the canteen. Eventually I found that he was not merely given to religion, he was also a lover of God. He would even get excited on hearing Ram-Dhun over the canteen radio. He would lose track of the conversation and would sometimes be lost entirely to the outside world, sitting there like an animated block of stone.

Abhiram babu had a small frame, fair complexion, and a balding forehead … He also comes to office neatly dressed; his gestures or manner of speech do not reveal any oddity either. On the whole I found nothing in him that is apt to tickle you in your idle moments…except the certain weakness of an emotion that refuses to stay under cover, his love of God. He hardly talks about himself. Most people in this world are on the side of God, but I have rarely come across such specimens of love for that invisible and unknown Person except for proclaimed saints and sadhus.

So, once, I pounced upon him. We were then standing somewhere in the Chowringhee maidan on a July afternoon, wanting to find a foothold on a tram.

'What is the image of your God?' I asked him.

The suddenness took him unawares and he stared at me. I re-framed the question: 'I mean, what is the image in which you happen to see Him? Father, mother, friend, child, wife, mistress or any other?'

He answered in his usual level tone. 'I do not see God. I feel Him.' A tram not overly crowded at the foot-board stopped near us then, and we rushed to get inside.

We were able to plant our feet somehow on the available space and were trying to keep steady with one hand clutching at the railing and the other clinging to the briefcase. Abhiram babu concluded his statement in this situation. 'You know what I meant by feeling Him? I gather myself completely. It seems I do not have any wants, not any more.'

The conductor came jostling among the passengers to ask for the fare. I managed to bring out the coins with painful contortions and handed over the fare for both of us, whereas my companion remained unmindful of everything. And then he said, 'I remember a funny incident. Once I had closed my eyes at prayers. When I opened them I found that my daughter Indu, sitting by my side, had also kept her eyes closed. She opened her eyes in a moment and smiled at me showing her two upper teeth. That is all. As if we had got hold of some hidden treasures between ourselves.' He laughed and added, 'She is a naughty one! Teases me all the time...but she loves me too much.'

Shortly he came to realize that he had not paid his tram fare and refunded me with apologies, then fell into a long silence. I thought--your philosophy wears the mystic veil of words and ignorance. Never mind. I can see how you love your daughter. She is no God, but warm and living and real.

I longed to meet the naughty little girl with a revealing pair of teeth. Her name was Chandrika. About ten years of age. The two upper teeth were indeed cute. The button nose was tilted upwards and the nostrils were definite. The thick hair was well-groomed in oil and turned back severely, as with village girls, to form a broad pigtail decked in red ribbon and a marigold.

She and my son came to be friends at first sight. So much so, that my son could dare to snatch the flower in her pigtail after a few minutes, and Indu ran after him. Abhiram babu had visited us with his family and we were both enjoying the scene.

'Why do you call her Indu?' I asked him. 'Her name is Chandrika, isn't it?'

'You know what happened--she had a round face and plump cheeks from the very beginning. So her mother and I decided that she must have something to do with the moon. She chose the name Chandrika and I preferred Indumati...' Soon we went on to other matters. Abhiram babu was back to his normal self--a peace-loving man of few words with conventional views: There is nothing particularly wrong with the policies of the government...however, the people have a reasonable cause for grievance...it is all a question of methods and procedure and will be sorted out in the near future. So-and-so is not really a bad person, one has to take into account the circumstances. Muted comments, and invocations to peace.

Dash it! Does not this man feel intensely about anything? Doesn't he suffer?...Should he not be made to suffer like you and me, so that he can understand the facts of life?

The moment passed and I felt ashamed. He is a real godman, I told myself, and hence genuinely foolish. Meanwhile, the children were carrying on with their endless games. Abhiram babu looked at his watch, and was thinking about calling it a day when we heard the singsong call to temptation---

The little boy will play
Oh my little girl will play
The little boy...

--to the accompaniment of a music of sorts from the toys and dolls. My son pricked up his ears. His eyes shone in anticipation. The toyman! He rushed out to greet the toyman, with Indu in tow. The angry moments were forgotten. 'Like the horse? Look how he swings his tail...' 'No, I'll take that bird, the one with the red beak'. 'How about the frog? Ugh!'

'When are you coming again?' I asked Indu when they were about to leave. 'Let him come first,' said the lady, affecting a solemn tone. The young man nodded assent. The agreement was sealed by an expanding grin on both sides.

…They have not met each other since that day. I was meeting Abhiram babu fairly often. But I could not visit him with my family. To start with, a certain laziness. Then they left for their village home on a vacation for two months. About a fortnight before the vacation was due to expire there was a telephone call--the soft slow syllables of our friend: 'Namaskar. We have come back.' After a brief exchange of pleasantries, he said almost casually that Indu was not keeping well and that is why they had to shorten their stay in the village.

I went directly to his place from my office. I looked for Indu. Abhiram babu said that she was bed with a slight fever. His wife added that she seemed to have some peculiar illness. She was merely nibbling at her food and was getting thinner by the day. Abhiram babu sought to tone down her concern by mildly negative gestures, as if it was not quite proper to impose the obligation of sympathy on another person. I did not quite like his attitude of otherness. Was not Indu a daughter to me? I said I would like to see her. Indu was sleeping. I found she had really become thin. But there were no signs of her getting well. The fever would not subside. The city doctor was confirmed in his diagnosis that it was typhoid. He also said that several complications had set in, but there was no cause for anxiety.

Yet there was no noticeable change in the behaviour of Abhiram babu. He was coming to the office regularly, was having lunch in the canteen, and was getting lost unpredictably in meditations. Once I even saw him offer his naïve smile to the sick child, when her mother tried to conceal her tears. The moon-faced Indu--her cheeks were still fairly round even as the body had shrunk to a bare skeleton--answered him in the same token. As if they were playing the old game of communing with each other after prayers: We know the score, you and me. Mother would not know--poor thing!

Strange, how they sought to relate in sadness. The scene called for abundant sympathy. More abundant than acute, for the sadness seemed to be so out-of-the-world, almost inhuman, a bare idea of the limitless blue and the deep where the bubbles say hello to each other. I did not like it. I looked for the sorrowing mother, she was my kind.I consoled her as best as I could. I said the doctor was banking on fifty percent hope and we could provide the balance with our prayers. I hastened to add that I was not referring to God. By prayers I meant the outpouring of emotions, the fear and fervent wish and all, for the one we love...does it not amount to something?

Suddenly my son changed the scenario. He caught fever. Two days later his body was full of sores. The doctor said that it was small-pox, raging like wildfire in the city. I must say I felt somewhat exalted when I passed on the news of Abhiram babu. I have also been touched by Tragedy. Let me have the appropriate awe and respect from you all. But in a few days, his condition became critical. I swept aside the beguiling veil of Tragedy and felt the raw pain. The pain of the living body. The thousand angry sores, they were torturing him with needles and red-hot metal. He was crying, my son. I tried to comfort him in the manner of Abhiram babu. I tried to console his mother. But I could not control my own restlessness. I wanted to create or destroy something, so that I could gather a sense of power--and spread it like anodyne on his face. Once I saw the shadow of death in his eyes. No use asking the doctor. He would only nod his head like a know-all--wait, let us see. That evening I could not bear the sight of that lighted room, laden with numerous bottles of medicine, the uncasing of tears of his mother, the many orange peels and pomegranate seeds, and the pungent odour of the neem leaves. The efforts to extend life seemed like a cruel joke. Why suffer him to live if he has to die? Why this prolonged agony of the seconds and minutes...?

I wanted to be left alone and went to the rooftop. I surveyed the bright millions in the sky. Down below, I observed my fellow-men. Somebody is searching his garage with a flashlight for a precious piece of property. Precious indeed! He does not know a thing about my son nor does he care. There were men behind lighted windows and in the streets. Prayers? Does it have to come to prayers at last? Am I one of those intellectual weaklings, who demolish God by logic of words and yet run to Him for help at the sight of a ghost?

I did not yield to temptation. I did not pray..I remembered Abhiram babu.

Indu and Abhiram babu. He does not suffer like me for he is safe in the cocoon of a lie.

And then it came upon me that one of them will die. One of them will die so that the other may live.

How do you smother a wish that overtakes you? How do you deny the passage of a shooting star? It is inconceivable that I bore him any malice or that I did not love Indu like my own daughter. Yet, I wished that my son would recover. Indu will die. It will not hurt Abhiram babu, for he is a man of God.

All those men in view in houses and streets suddenly seemed to move at a faster pace. At a faster pace and together. Even the racing cars and the sentry standing at his post appeared to be bound together in purpose and movement...like performers in a grand opera. Only I was not there. I was the outsider. Godless.

I went down the steps in a scare. I sat beside my son on the sick-bed. His mother asked, 'Where had you been? There was a telephone call just now. Abhiram babu.'

'What did he say?'

She intoned restlessly, 'He enquired about our son and said that Indu has again taken a turn for the worse...'

There is hardly anything more to say. I could not go to see Indu on her last day. My wife was there. She told me that nobody knows if Abhiram babu wept for his daughter. For he shut himself inside a room for hours and was looking normal when he came out.

This is what I had imagined. I have no cause for remorse.

But do they mean to say that my sorrow is a mere luxury of the aftermath? The pretence of not being able to heave the sigh of relief? That man will pass by my lane any time now. Or he may not. But I hear him toll the bell constantly, unreasonably, in my waking hours--

The little boy will play
Oh my little girl will play...

---I shall not buy anything from him ever.

Kishori Charan Das pioneered the psychological mode in the modern Oriya short story.