I thought our poetical excursion was going too far and it was time to get back to reality. We were being hijacked by our metaphors, a predicament writers often find themselves in. Words jump in from nowhere and interrupt our dialogue with our readers as well as with our characters. It is not an easy and happy walk for a writer, between these two entities, as many seem to imagine. Especially when the medium of the journey is one where reality, logic, fiction and fantasy compete with each other. The predicament of a writer could also be that of an artist, as with my friend here.
So I asked the tailor: ‘And yet, my friend, these fragmented souls do converse between themselves. They are laughing, quarrelling, embracing, kissing, caressing and even mating to produce new entities.’
This time the tailor was clearly displeased with my intervention. Perhaps he found my artistic fervour to be a step behind his. That I did not belong on the plane where he lived. And he was not willing to walk back with me.
Shaking his head and sticking to his style of poetics, but now with a new harshness in his voice, he cut in, ‘The new souls they give birth to would not be very different from them. Fragmented, directionless and away from the light of truth. The false light they go after mistakenly will only lead them to hell, where they will remain like animals, naked externally and internally.’
I was a bit alarmed by this change in language and tone. At that moment he resembled a prophet, I feared. Or, perhaps an artist’s predicament could also at times be that of a prophet — an artist has an element of the prophetic within him.
In a moment he started drifting away from me, his listener. Like a sleepwalker he moved towards the door; he stood there and, raising his hands in the air, addressed an imaginary multitude out on the road: ‘Oh, you poor souls that wander in the wilderness, naked and not knowing your nakedness, fragmented to pieces and not knowing that you are unable to put yourself together, gather your limbs and come to me, get into these garments I have made for you. Let me give you a shape, a path, a destination. Let me show you your real desires, passions and mates. Liberate yourself through the art of this artist. Nothing else can grant you this freedom in these times, these tragic times!’
‘Of course, be their tailor,’ I said to placate him. ‘But why not allow them to choose their clothing?’ I said, trying to pull him back from his frenzy.
The tailor placed his hand on my shoulder in such a way that I felt its full weight. He eyed me sternly. ‘Man does not select his clothes, my friend, clothes select the man. Clothes are stitched not just to make the wearer look attractive, but to give him a shape, a character, a soul. They formulate his behaviour, direct his actions. Clothes make him understand his objectives and the path he needs to take to achieve them. A man is his dress — that is the vision of tailoring. A man without clothes is a clay mannequin. A man without art is an animal. Tailoring is the art, the art of converting a clay mannequin into a man.’
Holding my hand, he led me to a book laid out prominently on a table in his shop. It was called The Book of Cutting and Tailoring. He picked it up and touched it to his forehead and stood for a moment in veneration. Then again, returning to the poetical and prophetic style, he said: ‘But, alas, people go after fashions, not knowing the dresses ordained for them. The dresses that can put their fragmented souls together. Only this book knows it. And only this artist can make it. In our time, this tragic time.’
As in a ritual he again threw his hands towards the people on the road and cried, ‘Oh, you poor souls wandering in the wilderness …’
Though he was addressing the people in the street, he seemed not to see them. His eyes stared unseeingly into the distance and his mind into a world of revelations.
As I stood watching him in awe and with mounting unease, his voice came down gradually and finally died. I watched him shrinking into a still picture at the door of his shop; he walked back to his worktable, shoulders sagging. No longer were there the rhythmic movements of the feet and the dance of the fingers. Not an artist but the picture of an artist. I wondered if it were the artists reduced to two-dimensional images who were later hailed as prophets.
If he had been addressing the people out on the road, they had not heard him. They continued walking in the crowd, talking, gesticulating and immersed in their own affairs. They had no time for him. Even if they had no homes or direction, they seemed to be content with the way they were. Many of them had their desires and passions, and companions to share them with, it appeared. Was it this desire to be with those of our own kind that he described as going after false lights? In any case, I did not feel any revulsion towards those people at that moment.
I saw the tailor the next day. He was sitting on the steps in front of his shop. His hands resting on either side of him on the stone steps, his eyes vacant, staring into the distance.
I looked into the showcases of the shop. To my amazement, they were all empty. There was not a single coat or kurta or kameez left. It was a holiday and there were no assistants in the shop either. But he had kept the shop open, with the showcases empty.
‘What has happened, tailor?’ I inquired. ‘Have those people come at last in search of your works of art? Seeking homes, paths, desires, passions and mates? Those fragmented souls, the naked bodies?’
‘No, my friend, they did not come.’ The tailor rose from the steps and invited me inside. Pointing to the empty showcases one by one, he told me in a hard and mechanical voice, ‘Last night my creations, without exception, declared a revolt. Unable to bear the loneliness and emptiness any more, in the darkness of the night, all of them came down from the hangers and stood before me. Watching the shapes and roles I had accorded them growing larger than my wits, I bowed my head before them. I threw open the doors of my shop for them. What a satiating experience it is, my friend, to be a witness to our creations taking over the mission from us! Yes, each one of them has started its journey in search of human bodies, which would lift their sagging shoulders and make their limp limbs come alive. Out into the street! My shop has been emptied, my friend, without even a single customer visiting it!’
The tailor again took me to the table with the book. Touching the book to his forehead he opened it. As on the jacket, the title page also carried the name in large letters—The Book of Cutting and Tailoring—but I noticed that it did not carry the name of the author or the publisher. Like scriptures or holy books.
The tailor started turning the pages of the book mechanically as if to show them to me. I did not see anything in it other than what could be expected in a book of its type. There were pictures illustrating the cutting patterns for different types of dresses. An arm lay across a page as if barring my way. A leg hung down as if poised to kick me. And so on. For a moment I feared if these pages were resurrecting before me the people in the street he had been talking about, with their broken down and separated limbs. Then I laughed at myself; it was just a book of tailoring, giving instructions on the shaping of limbs for dresses …
He did not laugh. He acquired a profound expression devoid of feelings and emotions. Lowering his voice, as if speaking to himself, he muttered, ‘My creations have left me. My shop is empty.’
‘What is there to lament, my friend?’ I asked. ‘Your art is still with you. You can create them again.’
He shook his head, and said in his now familiar prophetic tone: ‘When the creations of an artist walk out of his workshop and start forging their own paths, the creator should take it as the end of his imagination, his path. My mission has ended, and my life is now in their hands … But do not be despondent. Tailors will come again. To discover the bodies, the souls … to dress them. No chasm will greet you on your path.’