The Ruins

She had known this road before. It was, however, after ages that she was coming here again; and while treading this road, she felt as if she was a stranger.

Yes, that turning; was it there before? Perhaps a new building has come up there; no, that building was already there. Perhaps these shops are newly constructed. House number four in the third street turning off the right side of the road. (Number four? She thought it over and tried to remember. Yes, number four). It is Shankar's house.

Street No.3. House No.4. Shankar's house. Exposed to the elements, the door had lost its original shape and shade and defied familiarity. Which shade does it wear now? Un-nameable (with compliments from Samuel Becket).

The name-plate was fixed on the door. The letters had faded away. There was no call-bell. The door was locked from the inside. Hema knocked with her fingers. There was no reply. A fleeting minute seemed like eternity. She knocked again, and, at the same time, heard the sound of the bolt being pulled down. Her hand stayed on the door.

As the door opened, Shankar appeared behind it -- and on this side stood Hema -- both, face to face. They saw each other at the same time. In that fleeting moment they were able to gauge the changes that time had wrought on them. (The art of fiction hasn't the candid eye of the camera to bring into focus and describe all the feelings reflected on their faces. So it would be better to concentrate on Hema's and Shankar's separately).

Shankar observed:

Hema's hair was like a school blackboard that had at places white lines of chalk. She had probably worn her make-up in haste, as a few specks of powder were visible inside the wrinkles on her face. Shankar didn't like her ear-rings. The shade of her saree was a blend of green and yellow like that of the drying leaves. The tip of her nose rose slightly upward instead of downward -- it looked beautiful. Full lower lip appeared lascivious.

Hema observed:

Shankar's hair was dry and receding -- like ebbing waves. Deep lines on his forehead -- like the furrows left behind in sand by receding waves. Clean-shaven -- he had, however, not shaved that day. It was Sunday. Clad in a white kurta and pajama -- whiteness was dubious, but they were clean (white also fades like other shades). He wore spectacles; spectacles? Yes, he had them in those days too. It was a different frame now -- a cheap one.

Shankar further observed:

She desired to smile the moment she saw him. However, she doused the urge and pressed her lower lip between her teeth. The traces of a smile were still visible on her face. "Oh Shankar!" The words were enveloped by the aura of a warm smile.

Hema further observed:

He looked surprised . His eyes were glued on her, but as if the lenses had turned opaque. It was a fixed gaze.

"Who ...?"

"Remember me?"

"No."

"Won't you ask me to come in? You will remember me, surely."

"Come in."

Inside: Two beds covered with cheap bed-sheets were placed opposite each other, fixed to the walls. In the left hand corner stood a huge table crowded with books and magazines. There was a lamp placed on another table -- of course, without a bulb. There was no chair in the room. A few steel trunks occupied yet another corner. The walls were drab and dreary, bereft of any painting or picture. She felt as if the walls were not a part of the room. They had receded away from the floor.

"Where is the chair I liked most?"

Shankar maintained his reticence. He straightened the wrinkled bedsheet, placed the pillow in one corner and said, "Come on. Sit here."

She sat gingerly on the edge of the bed.

"Do you remember me now?"

"What's your name?"

"Hema."

"No!" He said with a blank look.

"Have I really changed so much?"

"I don't remember you."

"Please try to, I am Hema." She said with her head tilted towards him.

Shankar raised his eyes. The surprise in them was visible through the glasses.

"Your eyesight has further weakened, perhaps?"

"It seems your eyes are betraying you."

"Betraying me? But I remember you."

"Have you read Shakuntla?"

"Yes .. I have."

"Do you have anything to make me remember?"

Hema meditated for a moment, watched her fingers minutely, laughed and said, "Dushyanta had given me nothing."

"Then?"

"Have you been to the Himalayas?"

He made his face impermeable and said, "Yes, I have."

"Try to recollect."

"I do recollect."

"Do you remember you considered Hema synonymous with the Himalayas?"

Shankar uttered a guffaw and said, "Did you say that? It's really something romantic."

"So what?"

"Meaningless."

"The symbol you conferred on me! I mean the Himalayas."

(Whether Shankar and Hema remembered it or not, who can tell?)

Shankar had just completed filling in his form seeking admission for M.A. in the university, when a girl got there and stood by his side at the counter. She opened the cap of her fountain pen and started writing, but it wouldn't work. She flicked it but it had no ink. She looked around and for a few moments stood still, helpless. She, then, looked at Shankar and said, "Excuse me, may I have your ...?" She didn't complete the sentence. She again asked, "What's your subject?"

"History."

"Oh, how wonderful! Mine is History, too."

Without further response to her remark, Shankar silently produced his fountain pen for her.

"It's quite an exercise filling in these silly forms. Won't you help me? Kindly fill in this form for me."

He took the form from her, opened his pen and asked, "Name?"

"Hema."

He wrote down. "Date of birth ... place of birth ... father's name ... address?"

She told him and he wrote down.

"Any identification mark?"

"Scar on the left shoulder."

Shankar stopped writing. He looked at her and said, "Let me see."

Hema thawed her resentment. Her right hand abruptly manoeuvered towards her left shoulder. She didn't pull out her blouse to show him the scar, however. Instead she adjusted the pallu of her saree to wrap her shoulder. Shankar's longing and hope came away still-born. A smile played at the corners of her lips. He muttered "Identification ... scar on the left shoulder," and entered the information in the form.

(Hema dug deep in the limbo of the past. She tried to search the crises of their lives that lay dark and blurred in the sea of memories). Shankar had started saying something.

"I had given you something to remember me."

"Yes. And something I gave you to remember me."

"What?"

"I used to tell you, if I am the Himalayas, you are the Devata of the Himalayas -- Shankar."

Shankar smiled and asked, "What's your age?"

"I am forty-three."

"How long is it since I had symbolised you with the Himalayas, and you had called me the god of the Himalayas?"

"Maybe, twenty years. Maybe, twenty-two."

"So long! And after all these years, is it necessary to be sentimental about the things said at that time?"

Hema's eyes wandered over the bare walls and after a momentary survey returned to Shankar. She said, "You did M.A. in History and I don't see the degree hanging anywhere on the walls. The reason is obvious. It's an effort to forget what has happened, that which is history."

"I am not talking of erasing the past. I am talking of being sentimental."

"Well I am not talking of being sentimental, too. I am talking about an effort to forget the past."

"What's it, then?"

The evening was setting in. An aircraft roared past in the sky leaving behind an echo of its drone. Shankar's question was submerged in the drone. The pronunciation of the word 'What' lingered. The drone had its own impact on Hema. A name wafted down and settled in her mind -- Mozart; and rhythm, too -- a symphony.

"What?"

"Mozart's symphony."

His eyes turned into a frost which stuck to the lenses of the frame.

"And Professor Malkani."

Another layer of frost registered itself.

"And his library."

Layers over layers.

"And.... No. Now tell me, do you remember?"

Shankar took off his glasses and held them in his hand. (Habit). The frost melted.

Mozart's symphony.

Hema's house. An aircrash. Hema's brother died. For some days death hung on the walls of the house. It was a rainy night and incessant rain kept pouring. Intermittent bursts of lightning struck in the distance.

Shankar.

Hema.

There was utter silence and the atmosphere was impregnated with tension and sadness. Shankar placed Mozart's record on the turntable and got it going. The symphony was sorrowful and spelt death.

Shankar was sitting astride Hema. In a state of inebriation he had said, "I love you."

(Hema in profound sorrow, as the thought of her brother's death kept wandering. Why had he to go by air? Why didn't he travel by train?)

"I have been trying to analyse my mind. I am now convinced I love you Hema."

(But then why did he go?)

"Believe me, Hema. All this comes from the very core of my heart."

(What's death? Why does a man die?)

He held her by the shoulder and shook her. "Hema!"

"Hmm...."

"Where are you? What have you been thinking about?"

"What were you saying?"

Rain. Lightning. Thunder. Rivulets of rain meandering down the glass panes of windows. Mozart's symphony, and its reaching the crescendo.

Shankar took off his spectacles and held them in his hand. Naked eyes. He tried to fill in his voice all the tenderness and subtlety, but in the boom of the rain and thunder, his voice reached its own crescendo to be heard, "I love you."

(The ancient emotion of the first moment of the universe) "I love you."

(I am Yaksha. Who is that unfortunate person, who on a rainy night like this, like me, alone with Vishala, would....)

"I love you."

(Radha, this night of Poornima, on the banks of the Yamuna; Madhu-vana)

A call of yearning. Echo. Tongue and mind. Language and feelings.

And Mozart's symphony. Its crescendo. And rain and lightning.

Do you remember, Shankar.

And Professor Malkani.

When the professor would speak on any aspect of history, he would take off his glasses, narrow his eyes so that only the slits were visible and look at his watch for a moment; and then start his lecture; as if he could see the past historical ages through the slits of his eyes. He hadn't married. He would say that the institution of marriage was started by people living in jungles. There is nothing Aryan about it. Marriage is slavery. Aryan civilisation was a free civilisation, free like the flow of Sindhu.

When his two favourite students, Shankar and Hema, would quarrel and commence their diatribe and indulge in asinine arguments, he would laugh and say, 'That's it, this war. Love connotes weakness. It's not Aryan to love.'

And then they would be in the professor's house, while arguing over various subjects, talking notes. They had gone through the metamorphosis of their attitudes, and transformed into un-Aryans (as per the convictions of the professor).

The professor had laughed away this transformation in them. His eyes had nearly closed and only the mere slits could be seen. He glanced at his watch and said, "I still hear the hoof falls of the Aryans' horses. Even now the swish of their arrows is audible. I can see them speeding away in the wide Indo-Gangetic plains with their horses and arrows. Leave the steeds free and see their speed, free the arrows from the bows and see the devastation they caused."

An impish smile played on his lips. He continued, "This boy, Shankar, is not Aryan; but then, how about you, Hema? You are an Aryan. You and the bonds! Call it love, if you please. Damn it."

Shankar and Hema had winked at each other. They had to bite their lips to imprison their laughter. And once outside the house, Shankar said, "Did you listen? Bhutnath is not Aryan. Be on your guard."

Hema had said, "The Ganges sprouts from your matted hair. The moon on your forehead emits its light. Your damroo is full of music. Every limb of yours animates as if in dance. You are death, you are time; you are immortality. You are a symbol of Aryan civilisation."

"And the professor?"

"Damn him."

Do you remember, Shankar?

And the professor's library.

Books ... books ... and books. They had classified all the books. They had prepared separate index cards on writers and subjects. They had read the books together and turned themselves into heroes and heroines. Like the characters in the drama books, they had read Jaidev's Geetagovinda and characterised themselves as Radha and Krishna and talked of every aspect of their body, and in the end, reproached each other.

Shankar would not talk plainly but recite from Geetagovinda to convey his feelings. And Hema, considering herself as Radha, twitting him for his nocturnal rendezvous with other gopis would also recite from the same book.

"Do you remember, Shankar?"

"No, I don't remember anything. I have forgotten everything."

"Why?"

Shankar held his glasses away from him. His gaze was fixed on Hema. His naked eyes did not blink, as if they were made of stone. He looked searchingly at Hema, as if he was trying to remember something.

Hema asked again, "You are a student of history. Do you think you can forget your past considering it valueless, meaningless?"

For a fleeting moment, in reply to her question, Shankar thought of throwing Hema out of his house. After a while, he answered, "You had money. You went away to England. Shortly after that my father died. I was only a lecturer and carried the burden of maintaining my family of seven brothers. I too had my dreams, but I saw them breaking into pieces and scattering away. Don't talk of the past, Hema. It hurts. You will find the blood of history, its ruins, spread all over in my mind."

"Shankar!"

"Only the present is true. Even if my mind may be on fire at the moment, yet this very moment is true. There was life ... life ... but when, I don't know."

Halcyon descended on the scene -- momentarily. That moment passed and Hema asked, "May I ask you a question, Shankar?"

"Please, do."

"Why are we lured to traverse backwards in time?"

"What do you mean?"

"We have traversed a long distance from the Satyayuga to Kaliyuga. We haven't even tried to take a path that leads to the Satyayuga. Why?"

Shankar maintained his silence.

"In every age man keeps stooping lower, sinking further. Why?"

.....

"Why don't you answer?"

"Your question is meaningless. You have to accept whatever is, as it is. Life means nothing else."

"There must be another way out."

"Turning back to the past, you mean?"

"To find out a way for a link-up with the past."

"I don't know."

"You are certainly aware of the way, I know."

"No, I am not."

"You aren't speaking the truth, Shankar."

"No, it's true I don't know."

"At the moment, aren't you taking the present as true?"

"There can be no other truth, I believe."

"Okay; but then, do you think the tradition of the time, or of this very moment, is a myth?"

"It's a dream. It's an illusion."

"Ved Vyasa had created Radha-Krishna. After ages Jaidev kept the tradition alive. And after centuries of slumber, Jaidev's Geetagovinda has risen again in a library. This moment is born of a yatra from time to life. Tell me how will you separate this moment from the first moment of history?"

"It's so simple; well, the way we separated."

"Or the way you stand alienated at the moment from your 'self', completely lost to your 'self'?"

They reached the outer door together. Hema crossed the threshold. Shankar folded his hands in namaskar, and closed the door.

Hema once again looked at the door. The same feeling came back to her : the door did not look familiar. It had lost its original shade in the rain and the sun. The name plate was fixed on the door. The letters had faded away with the rigours of time. There was no call-bell. The door was locked from the inside.

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Published in the 'Indian Literature' Vol 187 by Sahitya Akademi