The truth is nobody gets you your wife except the stars. Try as you might and make every scheme to go and see her (after all you could go to Sawai Madhopur where her family lived) and as it were, lose your way with the camels, and, so to say, find yourself at Lakshmi’s door. But Lakshmi is not so easy to see, she’s always in the ladies’ quarters. Mohammed could take a message — a ring from Muthradas like Hanuman took the signet ring of Sri Rama for Sita, when she was prisoner of that ogre Ravana. ‘This, the signet ring, that the Lord of the Raghu race, in love for the fair recognition of Sita, sendeth, etc., etc.,’ No, this could never be. Look, look, the caravan is getting lost in the morning haze. Camels are eaten up by nothingness, and what remains behind are but Abdul Kader and Shamshir, the three camels, and the sound of their bells. Lord, it’s good to lie awake on a moving camel, and dream of Lakshmi.
It took three more years for Lakshmi to ‘come home’, and it was so big-like to be truly married. You entered your apartments, and awaited Lakshmi. After every piece of housework was finished, Lakshmi would slip in, and ever so shyly, with a silver tumbler of milk. The excited pleasure you get, after it all, to whom can you say? To no one. Lakshmi simply wept, she wept, that she was rid of her step-brother and all. Here, in this largesome house, it was great to be the eldest son’s wife. The mother-in-law was not always nice, true! But often she fed you with milk-cream after every shout: Poor orphan, she would say. And so the world moved on its hinges — circular and clear, and at night the milk, the shyness, and all the implicate bounty of limb and lip. Life is beautiful when you go with the whole family to Radha Mata temple, in the evening, and tell the goddess what you cannot say to anyone. ‘Mother, happiness is marriage. Mother, give me a baby boy soon, soon.’ She did not know then — she was so young — no Kanakmal can have a son, but by adoption. It was a curse uttered by a Kanakmal wife, one Anusuyaben — over a hundred years ago, as she drowned herself slowly in the Jamuna, one winter dawn, for her husband’s betrayal with a concubine. And she was a Pativrata, and who does not know such a curse will last for at least seven generations? It is a fact as real as the Jamuna flows towards Prayag to join the Ganga, and together they flow as Maha-Ganga to holy Benares. Thus the truth.
Muthradas and Lakshmi-ben were married for just fifty years. Nobody in the family now remained, uncles and aunts they died one after the other with this illness or that or of old age, which comes whether you want it or not — while the Kathiawar autumn festival’s demands became less with Ahmedabad millware, and Kanakmal’s family had only the old couple left, their account books, and many, many pillars. And just three camels. Muthradas adopted his second cousin’s son Moti Chand (a boy of seven), and before he could finish even his high school he showed up his ancestry. Though his mother he was connected with the Raghav Das Nathumals of Palitana. Now you understand!
He made unnecessary demands, and asked for monies and monies again, and was found, one morning, in the gutter by a prostitute’s house. They married him off but that brought no help. He beat his wife and eloped with a Brahmin pilgrim to Delhi. One wept at home, and one asked astrologers. ‘In three years Rahu’s position in the third house will be free, and he will return — do not fear.’ Indeed, just as the astrologer had predicted, after three years Moti appeared, neat and simple, as if much had happened within these intervening years. He stayed a model husband (life sometimes plays those awful tricks of Rahu or Ketu, it does not matter) and then he too died childless leaving behind his widow. Vrindavan was all sorrow and tears for Muthradas and Lakshmi-ben. But one day, a few months later, Lakshmi-ben herself was killed by a bus as she was crossing the street, after feeding the cows at the Goshala opposite (Oh these New Delhi bus drivers). Muthradas had no heart even for Vrindavan any more — he left his daughterin-law and her adopted son (he seemed a bright child and a good grandson who’d offer the annual funeral feast to his departed ancestors) and Muthradas with his cloth, bundle, his Ramayana, and his small cash, came to Benares and settled there forever.
His room on the third floor of Ananda Mahal building had always light at night — he read philosophical books. In the afternoons, however, he went to hear the Ramayana — Pandit Uday Shankerji of Kalyan gave ecstatic discourses on Tulasi Ramayana and hardly had he wiped his tears, then he came back home, ate his dry rice and pickle, and opened his books of philosophy. Vedanta is a heady subject and if you’re not aware, you will fall into unsuspected pits. He searched for a Guru, did Muthradas, and found one by the Ambasamudram hospice. The Guru was a man from the south but spoke some Hindi (he could speak English too, but Muthradas knew no English). The Guru’s sacred name was Sankarananda. Muthradas was given his initiation after some three years of spiritual practices. Many problems in Vedanta are connected with dream and sleep. They became a little clearer now. Muthradas had always believed you slept when you slept and you dreamt when you dreamt. What meaning could they have? But in Vedanta there’s so much talk of the walking state, the dream, dreamer and so on. And the nature of deep sleep is beyond comprehension. ‘Seeing, hearing, thinking and knowing are always experienced by people in dream, moreover, as they are essentially the Self. It is directly known.’ Sitting by the lamplight (electricity, though available, seemed a luxury), he read his Sri Sankara. The hurricane lantern helped you at night in your room, and at dawn it followed you to the ghats for your lavations. Shambho Shankara. Muthradas opened his Upadesha Sahasriyam and read again. ‘There is no vision in me as I am without the organ of seeing. How can there be hearing for me who have no auditive organ? Devoid of the organ of speech I have no action of speaking in me. How can there be thinking in me who have no mind?’
He waits for death, does Muthradas, as one waits for a car, the car that will take you to the Railway Station. ‘Grandfather, don’t you worry, you’ll catch the Agra Express. It arrives only at eleven-nineteen. It’s only nine-thirty now.’ But then there’s all the town to cross — sometimes you’re held up at the market square, or by the Boli Chawl Mosque, were it a Friday morning. A cur might run under your wheel or the engine may suddenly go phut. What a procession life is till you get to the station. The fact is, the Agra Express is always on time (even after Indian Independence). If death does not know time, pray who does? Time, however, is so evasive with man,
Muthradas gets three letters a year from his adopted grandson. The grandson writes for his father’s funeral-anniversary and for his adopted grandmother’s obsequies (‘the Brahmins were well pleased, and so must the manes have been, for such the auspicious caw-cawings of the crows after the feast’). He writes again on the eighth day of Dusshera, and finally on the first day of Divali, before he opens his new account book. The Kathiawar market has since been made up partially with touristic demands, today you have pilgrims and tourists. There are no camels now, and so no Mohammed. It’s all a past story. But when the trains rumble on the Dufferin Bridge you wonder if you should not put on your clothes and go down for the car. One should never make the car wait. For once you go you never come back. It’s just a question of courtesy.
Before the third letter of the year, this year (that is 1963) the car was at the door, and the four-shoulder Brahmins took his last procession to the ghats. Muthradas’ skull splits in no time — he was a virtuous man, of this there was no doubt. He had not yet discovered the true similarity between the waking state and the dream state, but there are still so many life cycles to come. Man goes where he has to go but one day he will arrive where there’s no going or returning. A car can always take you to the railway station. But you don’t need (or do you?) a car to go to yourself? No.