The cat came in and pawed the rug on the floor. The cat was not pleased with something. ‘What is it doing, Shantha?’ I asked. She said: ‘It is asking for its mate.’ ‘Where shall we find a mate for her, Shantha?’ ‘She knows herself where it is to be found. She knows the self. So she is the self.’
Shantha is always mysterious. Just as Saroja was always clear. Shantha always says two things at the same time. No wonder she and Govindan Nair like each other so much. She says: ‘How can anything mean one and one thing? Look at the bilva tree. It’s bilva tree all right. But were there no light, would it be a bilva tree? So when you say it’s a bilva tree, that means there is the tree and the light that makes it the tree.’ ‘If I touch you, Shantha, there is no light in that.’ She said: ‘I can see you have never been across the wall. For there you could touch me and see yourself touch me.’ ‘What, what’s special about that?’ ‘The specialness is that it is not special. You think because I bear a child I am special. Very, very special, my lord.’ ‘Yes, you are.’ ‘But you know, as I teach in my school, all that is born had a mother. The father is not always so clear. Look at the bees and the flowers.’ ‘So the mother is necessary for all children. Thus motherhood has nothing special. And what about fatherhood, Shantha?’ ‘Don’t you go on teasing me. Show me the proof of your fatherhood. You have a belly small as a cucumber,’ she said and laughed. ‘Yes, that is true. Where is the proof of my fatherhood?’ She said: ‘There is proof.’ ‘Where is it, Shantha?’ ‘I am your proof. You are only seen by me. Who could know you as I know you? So the proof of my lord is me. The proof became concrete and became the child. I must know I am. You made me say I am.’ ‘Who says I am, Shantha?’ ‘Nobody, and that is your proof. Only I say you. And you say I. That is the proof of proof,’ she said, and became very silent.
That’s always the difficulty with Shantha. She speaks true. She always speaks in puzzles. And when I ask her why, she says woman is the biggest puzzle. Is that a proof of proof? No.
So, I was saying Govindan Nair brought the cat and left it with me.
Two months later Shantha gave birth to a lovely child. From the moment he was seen, we said, ‘Why not call him Krishna?’ He was so blue, and her father was called Krishna Pillai. She loved her father, so she loved me. I loved the child, so the child loved her. The father, did he love me? Poor man, he was dead and so long ago. Was he reborn as the child to love me? Who knows? Shantha’s mother said our Krishna looked just like his grandfather. After all, you see what your eyes see. That is the root of the problem, said Shantha. So we gave the child no name.
I should be happy with the child, with Usha who had returned to me after spending the Christmas holidays with her mother, and the cat. But I can never be happy. How can you know you are an Indian? You must know India. If I am to be happy I must know happiness. What is happiness?
Govindan Nair’s definition is, of course, simple: The mind that is not when the cat carries the kitten, that is happiness. That’s not very clear. It is just like saying, my nose is that which I catch by carrying my hand behind my head, and turning round quickly hold a facial projection which could be called my olfactory organ. Strange, such roundabout definitions. Man, do two and two make four or not?
‘First tell me what two is, and I shall answer the rest,’ he said, and laughed. ‘You is one. I is one. Where is the two?’ he asked. I heard the baby cry, so I went to give the feeding bottle to him. And I sang a song and sent the baby to sleep:
Jo, jo, push the cradle, jo,
push the cradle of Sri Rama,
push the cradle of Victorious Rama,
push the cradle of Sita’s Lord, Rama,
push the cradle, jo.
I sing of man because he is my neighbour. After all, one’s big neighbour is oneself. The neighbour’s neighbour is always the Self. I speak of the wall and the cat which make the world I live by. Usha is my daughter, and she has a bad cold and is in bed. Shantha’s child is two months old, and still we’ve given him no name. ‘Call him man. Mister,’ says Govindan Nair. For him, nothing is particular, a chair means all chairs, a knife means all knives, a clerk means all the clerks that go on bicycles to offices, sneezing and wheezing like Abraham. Even a bicycle for him means only a B.S.A. Shall I call my son man? I have made a secret vow. If Govindan Nair is acquitted (for alas, he was arrested by Rama Iyer, not on a charge of attempted homicide, which would have been legitimate, but on a charge of bribery with the one-hundred-nine-rupees document), I’ll call the boy Govinda, Govinda, but from the way Govindan Nair laughs and teases Rama Iyer one knows the case is lost. As I told you, Govindan Nair had passed his first year in law. Besides, he was born as it were for argument. He could never see anything except in definition of its situation. If I said, for example, the bilva tree, his mind would not think of Shiva and the hunter, as it would occur to you and to me, but he would think of the manure the tree must have had (rotten banana leaves, of course), and of the man who planted it and was it morning or evening when it was planted. The man who had planted it became so important that I teased him often and said the mother is more important than the son. Yes, he said, that is so. The kitten is held at the scruff of the neck by the cat. Who is more important, sir? How can you argue against that?
In fact I used to send food to Govindan Nair at the Central Jail. He said, ‘When you were ill I sent you food (and Shridhar came to you), and now I am ill (for what is jail but a philosophical illness?), you send me food, and Usha.’ The face of Usha made Govindan Nair happier than anything on earth. He was convinced Usha was Shantha’s child. That was again the way with him. If he saw black and found it brown, he could prove it was brown because he saw only brown. His argument was so simple: ‘Is there seeing first, or the object first? If I have drunk a glass of coffee with milk and in actual fact I have not, but believe I have, which is more real, my exhilaration or the coffee that was drunk? Proof is only oneself. Proof simply means I know. So brown is brown. Don’t you believe you exist, even though you know you will die? How do you say that, Mister? When you know this rotten fat thing, with pus, blood, excreta, with semen for procreation, and bile for digestion, with the five sheaths and the nine supports (called dhatus by our forebears), the blood that oozes to the heart and the urine that is thrown out — this filthy sack of the five elements, what does it become? It stinks, sir, it stinks when it is laid on fire. It not only stinks, but as in the case of Bhoothalinga Iyer, it sits up suddenly in the middle of its end, it sits up, and one would think it was going to shout an order: Hey, there (sneeze, sneeze, two sneezes are good)! Hey there, bring me the Ummathur file and seventeen sacks of rice gone — and yet it’s a half-corrupt, half-burned thing purring with many fluids. “Chee-Chee!” This body. And this mind, with its encaged gramophone record, another His Master’s Voice, and all it needs is a white dog listening to its music. Yes, that’s the mystery, sir. The dog listens to this mechanical music. Hey, ho, you say: