N. was trying to remember the name. Before him lay a book of poetry. It was in Tamil. The contents, modern. He bent over the pages. He reminded me of a Rodin sculpture.
Someone once said it would have been good if memory was done away with. He meant psychological memory. But then there would not have been any art , captured by the slash of the brush and the stab of the nib.
The cover of the book. White upon black. Another Rodin sculpture. Two gnarled hands. Wrenching at space. Several poems there. Black on white. The poet. The reader. Friends. There were charts too. Words in boxes and arrows pointing this way and that. Euromissiles. Skyscraper-penis. A space shuttle with a purple rose at its surging tip.
The poems are good.
Some of it makes no sense.
They do, depending on what is within you. There is a key. A door. One enters in.
N. is there, bent under the words. He always told me, after you have written something, put it away. Come back to it. It works beneath the skin. Beyond the bones. Inside the marrow.
The introduction to this book puts it thus: It is all in the DNA, in particle physics, in chemical reactions, where cells meet.
I am a cell. I am in a cell. A cancer… A canker.
N. can't remember the name. Neither do I.
There is enough information on it, G. says in his introduction. Or there's too much of it. Chart after chart. Echoes. Eco. They don't help.
There is a method. In the empty air. Two hands seek to shape the empty space.
V. comes by . He has borrowed N.'s books. He sits down. Asks for a cup of coffee. N. calls out to P. She understands.
The coffee arrives. V. peers at us. He will not mention it. He talks of other things. The assault upon his individuality. Police brutality. When he sits down to write, the words do not come. He talks of other things. The un-pattern.
U. comes there. He is a lecturer in English Literature. It has been a long time. A long break. N. and I wondered about it. Now he tells us. He has girl trouble. A student. A lecturer. Her parents disapproved. Ezhava Hindu. Christian.
They met U. and told him: let her go.
But she won't let me go.
They persisted. He said: I am willing to marry her.
You must convince her not to do so, they said.
You convince her it's not worthwhile, he replied. None of it was lost on N. But he could not remember the name. U. brought her to N.'s place sometime ago. He warned N. beforehand. She was nervous. N. warned U: Don't fuck her here.
U. has no scruples, I said.
I managed to kiss her when you went to the loo, U. boasted to N. later.
When E. undressed before me that first time, it was like a bud opening up. A rose. Her open legs. A week after, I began noticing the undergrowth, the weeds, the thistles, the thorns, the fading petals. There it ended.
The name is there somewhere.
R. and H. are there too. One has a liking for liquor.
V. came again, it seems, when I was not there. N. told me about it.
The name was still missing , it seems.
V. said there was a political conspiracy to finish it off. So he would not mention it. They are all in it together. The leftists, the rightists, the moderates, the fundamentalists, all of them. I point this out when I write my articles and so I have become a pariah, he said.
How do you know all this, N. asked.
I analyse, therefore I am.
How do you get your information? N. asked.
That is a trade secret, V. said, peering at him darkly.
Can you tell me the name?
It must be here somewhere.
N. leafed through the pages.
The linkages are not right, he said.
That is not his language, it is mine.
The West is more spiritual than the East, he said. They have elicited certain principles during the process of inquiry. They have built a system. This is an attempt to use that mode of thinking, to apply it to us. That is why this introduction to the poems fails. All those quotations, all this jargon, the charts ... Does the writer himself understand? Or is it just book knowledge? He must be a voracious reader. But I have my own doubts. He has a copyright on this material. By the way, I still haven't figured out that damned name. What is it? N. paused and sighed.
Nothing matters, I said.
Art is deception. When you see through it, you have read well.
H. was there too. He wanted to be a lawyer, a successful one.
Will you lose certain values if you try to become a good lawyer? N. probed.
But otherwise, how can you succeed? H. asked.
Will you refuse to take up a case if you know the one you are called to defend is truly a murderer?
Do you want me to be a failure?
Nothing succeeds like failure!
It is a mystery of sorts. One wants to forget. One can't. One wants to remember, one can't.
Isn't there a case for learning by rote? N. asked.
H. nodded.
That might get you a first class. Will it get you understanding, I asked.
There was a time when I felt fragmented. I could not hold my thoughts together. I was dissolving. It got to be so frightening , I clutched at a straw. Hell, what am I talking about?
It's all right, I too lose the thread when I drink, said N.
I nodded. N. took over.
All our students do it. They are herded into the classrooms. If I ask them the meaning of a word, they don't know it. They won't think about its meaning, meanings, the nuances. They know nothing about denotation and connotation.
When I clutched at the straw, I began to be, I said.
What was that? R. asked.
To get to the centre, I began memorising the Book of Psalms. There are a hundred and fifty of them. I reached Psalm 119, the longest one. I memorised it half-way, till verse 88. A strenuous task. Beyond me, but I managed it. I never got through all the Psalms though.
How did you do it?
Each morning, I'd get up at five a.m. I'd have a bath and settle down with my Bible, the King James Version. Thee, thou, thine ... I'd clutch at the straw and read a psalm verse by verse, a couple of times. Then I'd close my eyes and repeat as much of it as I remembered to myself. In those days I kept a notebook. I'd put the date down, close the Bible and write down the verses from memory. Then I'd check it for mistakes, correct them and write the psalm down again from memory. Correctly.
Can you remember the name, just now?
No, it just has to happen.
I kept talking.
When I went about my daily chores, I would suddenly stop doing them and run over the psalms in my mind. As their number grew, I took more time each day - remembering. For instance, when I made some spare time for myself, I would go through the psalms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... And back to work. Later, I would take up where I left off ... 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 ... and so on. Now I have given up. Still, the Psalms remain. Several verses are inscribed in the grooves of my brain.
A pretty girl passed by the house. We watched her.
To remember the name, N. said, he had tried out a mnemonic device advocated in some book. He began with the first letter of the alphabet.
A. Apple. Arthashastra. Argo. Auricular. Ahab. Anus. Abort it!
B. Breasts. Bhima. Bilingual. Brahma. Brahmin. Bum. Bah!
C. Cunnilingus. Cain. Cow. Cush. Cat. Christ. Cradle. Can it!
D. Dildo. Desdemona. Devil. Daemon. Desperado. Divine. Damn it!
E. Esperanto. Evolution. Envy. Erasmus. Escape. Excuses, excuses!
F: French kiss. Fear. Fish. Fellatio. Francis. Faithful. Far from it!
G. Groin. Gun. Gita. Gravity. Gospel. Give it all you've got!
H. Horror. Homo. Hieronymus. Hunger. Hamlet. How am I doing?
I. Israel. Ishmael. Isis. Irish. Indian. Icon. Image. I. I am!
J. Jelly roll. Juice. Jews. Jacob. Jericho. Jesuit. Jesus. Judas!
K. Kali. Keywords. Krishna. Kinky. Kalki. Kill the word to find it!
L. Lesbos. Leela. Lingam. Lazarus. Left-of-centre. Lose the thread!
M. Mahabali. Moses. Maitreya. Media. Mum. Messiah. Madness!
N. Namaste. No-where. No-thing. No-one. Nun. No!
O. Onan. Om. Onomatopoeia. Oversoul. Orgasm. On and on!
P. Pimp. Pump. Priyathama. Pattern. Paradise. Publishing. Put it in!
Q. Questions. Quality. Quim. Quixote. Queequeg. Quark. Quit !
R. Rishi. Randy. Rabid. Rebel. Rembrandt. Rhino. RAR. Risk it!
S. Satan. Sin. Sex. Suckling. Shoba. Sibyl. Saviour. Still it evades!
T. Time. Tears. Tirukkural. Tyger. Terror. Thinking won't help!
U. Umbilicus. Universe. Urvashi. Utopia. Uncoil!
V. Varaha. Vimana. Vishnu. Vincent. Variation. Virus. Veil come!
W. Woman. Werewolf. Watt. Wit. Wheel. Wisdom. Worm's eye-view!
X.
Y. Yin. Yang. Yeats. Yellamma. Yoni. Youth. Yours. You are it!
Z. Zigzag. Zipless. Zero the Hero!
The book method does not work, does it? N. asked.
Should we try it by numbers? The computer is waiting. Or should it be formulae? Or should we just wait it out? It seems a futile exercise. This whole damn affair, what's in a name?
If you can't remember it, so what? Nothing matters.
Everything matters, N. said.
Some of us swim against the tide, R. stated.
It is the enduring that makes a good book, I said.
What about the toll it takes, N. asked. How much can one bear?
I looked at H. H. looked at R. N. looked at us.
Science will show a way out, the method is tried and trustworthy, R. began.
There is something else going on. On the surface of it, rote-learning is conditioning, N. said.
Yes, yes, but sometimes when I remembered the verses, I would enter a hidden dimension. Thoughts would be consumed. I would see the poles and cross between them, I said.
So now, where has that name disappeared to?
Between the legs. In the space between one alphabet and the next. In the title and the last sentence. In the passages that make you pause. In the repetition and the silence. The talking's done. It shaped itself.
N. looked up. I was leafing through my diary and I saw it, he said.
The others were gone.
Don't mention it, I said.
(THE END)
