Narayan Tantri turned his car off the main road. He was still speaking, but Dinakar couldn't hear what he said. Stopping in front of an isolated tile house, Narayan surprised Dinakar by saying, ‘I come here sometimes when I want a drink.’ Dinakar began to feel suspicious when Narayan entered the house as if it were his own, and a fellow sitting outside, with only a towel over his bare shoulder, stood up and shouted, ‘Rangamma, lawyer has come!’ Dinakar thought, ‘Ah, this Narayan is also like me. He cannot keep up a strong emotion for a long time.’ A dark attractive woman showed her face and, while chewing paan, said to Narayan in welcome, ‘Have you come? And after so many days …’
Narayan didn't have to say anything more. She brought a jug of water and a bottle of whisky and placed them before him. ‘I have given up drinking for as long as I wear these clothes,’ said Dinakar. But he felt tempted, remembering his Delhi days as he smelt the whisky Narayan poured out. While Dinakar was admitting to himself that he would very soon return to his drinking, Narayan told Rangamma in Tulu, This is my friend from Delhi, a very great man. He is now in vrata. Bring him some lemon sherbet. No other requirements today.’
Rangamma went inside flirtatiously. Dinakar thought, ‘So this too is part of Narayan's condition. He suffers, yet keeps his consolations intact. And when he thinks, “There is no use in mere suffering,” he becomes a vedantin. But like me, he will not turn over and be made new.’
Dinakar felt ashamed of the way he was thinking. Here was Narayan, truly suffering, boldly getting ready, to marry Gangu. ‘Why should I judge him because of Rangamma when I myself have never been innocent? There is no liberation without clarity. And there is no clarity for me as long as I live in this world.
‘Once Ramakrishna Paramahansa put food before Kali and said, “Mother, you must eat this.” When she didn't eat it he began to cry, and then a black cat came and ate the food. Ramakrishna believed that the black cat was Kali herself.
‘If I were there, I would think it was just a cat, not a goddess. I can't even regret that I would believe so. Anyhow, it truly was a black cat. I am sure that if it had seen a mouse, it would have eaten it.
‘For people like me and Narayan, there is no clarity and there are no miracles, no wonderment, no turning over. There is no satisfaction in samsara either. Nor can I be content with not wanting to know what is beyond the world, even while I live in the world. Which means I have neither heaven nor hell, I have only small daily miseries.’
Narayan, who had been enjoying his whisky, suddenly became expansive.
‘I think that the only vice I have hidden from my mother is my drinking. But maybe Mother pretends not to know in order that I should keep thinking she doesn't know. What use is there in worrying about what we have become? We should just keep quiet. God's grace will come to those who keep quiet.
‘Never mind that. Think of Shastri who brought you here. Do you know that he had a wife like gold and he beat her so much that she ran off with a Malayali pundit? She took with her a trunk full of gold. But Shastri also has a keep. She was there from the beginning. She is a very nice woman. On her advice, he married a second time. He had a daughter who became disgusted with his ill temper and ran away with someone. Now Shastri goes around with Purana and pravacchan, thinking he can lose his karma like this, talking and talking. Mad brahmin! There is a proverb that the nature you are born with will not leave you even if you are burnt to ashes. Even if people change, others won't believe it. All over this province they say that Shastri killed his wife and that the jackfruit tree which he planted in the pit where he buried her has never borne a single fruit. And some people say he has hidden his own gold.’
Intoxicated by his own words, Narayan began to praise Gangu.
‘I used to take my drinks in Gangu's house. I would write on a piece of paper, and poor Chandrappa would take it and bring whisky and ice from a shop. Later I had a fridge put in Gangu's house. My mother had said, “There can be no fridge in our house.” She believes in madi. You see? Gangu's son probably did not like my drinking whisky in their house. Gangu held my feet and begged, “Don't drink here, please.” But when I stopped drinking there, I also stopped going there. I developed a new habit of coming here. This is what we mean by samsara.
‘But I haven't asked you anything about yourself. Also, Gangu asked me about you. You know what answer I gave her? “Artists like him don't get married, they live a carefree life,” I told her. And do you know what Gangu said? She said, “He looks as if he is in some deep sorrow.”’
Narayan began to laugh. All the pain in his mind seemed to have disappeared.
18
Shastri had returned and was waiting. Narayan went upstairs to his bedroom, on the pretext that he didn't want dinner, because he didn't want his mother to catch the smell of whisky. But Sitamma anyway mixed some beaten rice with curd and sent it to his room. She could not send cooked food because hands and eating-place could not be washed after the meal. When Shastri mentioned that he didn't take cooked food at night, she served beaten rice and curd to him too. For Dinakar and her grandson Gopal, she served a grand dinner.
This was very different from the afternoon meal. All around a cured banana leaf were different vegetable side-dishes, and also lentil salad, poppadom, crispy fried poppadom, kheer, a little dal — all of these things were like an artistically designed menu-card. Some items which were not visible now would appear later on.
To please Sitamma, Dinakar — like her grandson Gopal — took some water in his cupped palm, dripped a little through his fingers around the edge of the leaf, and drank the rest before starting the meal. Sitamma asked, ‘Do brahmins in your part follow this ritual?’ Dinakar didn't understand her and looked at Gopal, who explained. Dinakar nodded ‘Yes’ to Sitamma, then turned and told Shastri, ‘It is from this second mother that I came to know of kuttavalakki. If my mother was from this side, she must also have fed me that.’
Then he asked Sitamma for some kuttavalakki and she said, ‘Don't fill your belly with this. That's stuff that only old people eat when they are fasting in the evening.'
Once again, just as he had at their first meeting, Shastri stared at Dinakar while he ate kuttavalakki. He was startled when Sitamma laughed and said, ‘Why do you stare at that boy as if you want to eat him up?’
Shastri prayed to himself, ‘O Bhagavati, protect me. When I look at him, I see in his face the radiance of Pundit. His eyes are like his mother's, but his short nose, his complexion, the firmness with which his lips press together, all these are like Pundit's. When Pundit listened to music, he used to sit in just that way. He must be Pundit's.’
Then he thought, ‘No, he must be my child. I begot him while I was in that mad howling. Yet through some maya, he received a tender nature. He is mine, but he is not like me. He's a perpetuator of my family. Yet I cannot claim him.’ He began to sob inwardly, thinking, ‘My doubts will never be cleared. It will be my karma to go to hell and be wailing there alone for eternity. O Bhagavati, show this old man the path. Burn away my hatred for Pundit. Release me.’
Having made this prayer, Shastri finished his tiny meal. He spent the whole night thinking about meeting Dinakar the next day, asking himself, ‘Should I take him to my house, where the ghost is? Or should I not take him?’ Because of worry over this, he did not sleep.
Next day, when Dinakar got up, he said to Shastri, ‘When I come back from Kerala I will come and stay with you, all right, Uncle?’
‘Why should Dinakar say this?’ Shastri thought, feeling cheered by Dinakar's words. ‘It must be the Devi's wish that I have to wait before deserving to take my son home.’ With this in his mind, he left, after breakfast, in his car.