He stopped there and started as though he had only then noticed that everyone in the room was staring at him. He looked around once, in confusion, and then he ran from the room. Dantu followed him out.
As he watched Balaram go, Gopal had a premonition: a premonition of the disaster he would call upon himself and all of them, if ever he was allowed to take charge of the society. He decided then, with an uncharacteristic determination, that he would do everything in his power to keep that from happening.
After that meeting Gopal’s standing among the Rationalists suffered greatly while Balaram’s, with Dantu’s quiet help, grew. Despite that, through the rest of that year Gopal struggled with all his resources to fight Balaram’s influence in the society. He succeeded, though narrowly, and the Rationalists spent that year safely rewriting parts of the great epics. But Gopal had only that year left in college. At the end of it he was to leave to study law.
Through that year, perhaps because of their clashes over the future of the Rationalists, their friendship grew stronger than ever. The day Gopal was to leave the hostel, Balaram helped him tie up his luggage. Gopal could see that Balaram was no less saddened than he was. But he saw, too, that Balaram was charged with the energy of a new-found freedom, and he was filled with a terrible foreboding.
But there was no longer anything he could do to save Balaram from himself.
Four decades later, long after the vindication of that first premonition, Gopal was to know that same foreboding again.
One afternoon, about three years after Toru-debi sent Balaram’s library up in flames, Gopal was busy with a client in his chambers at the High Court, when his peon interrupted to tell him that Balaram had arrived. Gopal was surprised, for it was not a Sunday, and Balaram rarely came to Calcutta on weekdays. But Gopal had to appear in court for his client that afternoon, so he told his peon to ask Balaram to wait in a room outside.
After the hearing Gopal came back to his chambers pleased with himself, for the judge had complimented him on his line of argument. He found Balaram pacing his chambers, frowning. Gopal dusted his hands briskly and lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. So, Balaram, he said, how did you spend the afternoon?
Does it matter? Balaram snapped.
Gopal paused. Balaram irritable was a matter of some surprise; it was rarely that he noticed the everyday vexations which irritate the rest of the world. So Gopal sent his peon to fetch some tea and Circus biscuits, and droned comfortably on about his client and his case. Balaram listened with evident impatience, pulling books out at random from the bookshelves.
Gopal stopped when he judged it right, and said: What’s the matter, Balaram?
I’m worried about Alu, said Balaram, running his fingers through his hair. It’s probably the asterion growing together with the sagittal suture. A disastrous combination: Firmness plus Combativeness. It could only spell obstinacy.
The boy had stopped going to school altogether. He still read when he could find books, and his talent for languages had grown if anything, but when it came to school the boy seemed quite determined. He never said anything — he simply wouldn’t go. Everybody had talked to him and argued with him, but it made no difference. He never said a word.
He seemed to have made up his mind, and he had a determination unusual in a fourteen-year-old. It was that asterion. And there was no known remedy for it. But there had to be. There had to be an answer.
What does he do, then, Gopal asked, when he’s not at school?
Nobody’s sure, Balaram answered. But people say he spends most of his time in Shombhu Debnath’s huts.
Shombhu Debnath? said Gopal. Who’s that?
Oh, said Balaram, don’t you know him? He has a remarkable glabella and frontal sinuses. I haven’t examined him, and now I suppose I never will, but even from a distance anyone can tell. It’s not just his glabella. The orbital edges over the trochleas are some of the best I’ve ever seen. It’s unusual to come across so many Perceptive Faculties in one specimen: you know — Individuality, Size, Colour. He has an interesting forehead, too, and good temples. You’d probably like it — plenty of Wit, Hope, Wonder and Poesy.
Yes, said Gopal, but who is he, what does he do?
He’s a weaver, Balaram said absently. He settled in Lalpukur years ago. You’ve probably seen his daughter Maya. She works in our house in the mornings. He has a son, too, called Rakhal. He’s taught him weaving, too.
What does Alu do in a weaver’s huts? Gopal asked astonished.
I don’t know. Watches them weave perhaps.
Well, said Gopal, you must explain to Alu that if he doesn’t go to school he’ll never be able to get a job.
What? Balaram looked at him in stunned amazement. How could I say that? It would be wrong; it would be immoral. Children go to school for their first glimpse into the life of the mind. Not for jobs. If I thought that my teaching is nothing but a means of finding jobs, I’d stop teaching tomorrow.
Gopal looked at him wearily. Balaram, he said, as you grow older, you grow more foolish. Why do you think children are sent to school?
Balaram sank on to a chair, cupped his face in his hands and stared at Gopal.
Gopal decided that Balaram needed a diversion. So he suggested that they go to see a film. That year, to Gopal’s surprise, Balaram had developed an enormous fondness for Hindi films. He saw one, sometimes two whenever he came to Calcutta. He often went to Naboganj, near Lalpukur, to see films, sometimes taking Alu with him. Gopal was hard put to understand his new passion. After suffering through a few at Balaram’s insistence, he had decided that he could stomach no more. But that evening he changed his mind; even three hours of tedium would be better than playing midwife to Balaram’s worries.
So he sent his peon home to tell his wife that he would be late and they caught a taxi to the Menoka, near the Lakes. The film was Aradhana. The queue for tickets stretched for more than half a mile. They had to buy tickets at ten times the rate, from a tout.
When they came out of the hall three hours later Balaram was smiling crookedly, his eyes mistily damp. But now it was Gopal who was irritated, resentful of his three wasted hours. He followed Balaram as he wandered to a bench in the park by the Lakes.
How can you bear these noisy melodramas? he burst forth at Balaram’s back in annoyance.
Balaram turned to him angrily: Noisy melodramas?
So much predictable rubbish, said Gopal. No story, no plot, just hours of weeping and breast-beating. There’s nothing remotely real even about the way they talk. It’s just speeches all the time.
Real? Balaram cried. Is it real to be cut to size with a tape? What you heard is rhetoric. How can rhetoric be real or unreal? Rhetoric is a language flexing its muscles. You wouldn’t understand: you’ve spent too many years reading novels about drawing-rooms in a language whose history has destroyed its knowledge of its own body. The truth is your mind is nothing but a dumping-ground for the West.
Gopal gasped at the injustice of it. My mind? he said. And what about yours? What about you, spending your life reading about Pasteur curing beer in nineteenth-century France? What about all those books you read written by crazy Europeans about the shapes of skulls in prisons? How can you say my mind is a dumping-ground …?