Kashi, a short story by ‘Paadhasaari’ Vishwanathan

Paadhasaari Vishwanathan

This is an English translation of ‘Kashi,’ a Tamil short story written by ‘Paadhasaari’ Vishwanathan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.

***

It was the same month last year Kashi attempted suicide but luckily survived. It was the fourth month of his marriage when he slit his throat with a shaving blade. They broke the door open, scooped him out from the bed of clotted blood stains where he was lying unconscious, and admitted him to the government hospital.

Despite his dubious status of being called ‘demented’ in the village, I couldn’t get along with that description about him. All I could say about him is very simple—unlike others, he was unable to repair the finer aspects of relationships, like a shock absorber in a machine, with others and had been suffering from the bruises of repeated fallings onto the uneven stretches of relationships others normally acknowledge.

Yesterday I received a letter from Kashi. He had written the same sentence multiple times, like Shri Rama Jeyam, in an inland letter. “It is money that liberates…it is money that liberates.” During one of my visits to Coimbatore six months ago, I met Kashi accidentally at a tea shop. Visibly elated at seeing me, he grasped my hands and begged me to spend more time with him. Since I had to perform yearly funeral rites for my father the next day, I had to reach my village and burial ground before nightfall. When I told him that, he became very sad. We went to a park nearby to spend some time together.

When I was roaming jobless, if someone asked me what I was doing, I used to be grossly embarrassed and tell them some lame thing or the other just to get out of that situation. The pain of facing such a question was something of a different kind. I threw a similar question at Kashi, rather discreetly, “So…what are you doing these days?”

“I am doing a small wholesale medicine business along with my friend. My father’s house document is my last resort to meet the expenses. He has agreed to give it. I should try to get some bank loan by mortgaging it. If I can manage the finances, we could continue this business.”

As the park gates were closed, we jumped over its compound wall and sat at a secluded place on the grass bed. I remembered that I didn’t bring my cigarettes. He took out some cigarettes and a matchbox from his shoulder bag and put them on the grass. 

“This world of business is extremely cruel. Everywhere, abusive experiences. These doctors are indirectly involved in this medicine business, like indirect taxes. I will explain how. One has to bribe a doctor with three rupees to oblige him to prescribe a tonic bottle. So, if you want to sell a hundred tonic bottles, you need to bribe three hundred rupees. Apart from this, if big pharmaceuticals are involved in this, they will directly send them their gifts, like a television, wet grinder, and refrigerator. Very disgusting, Guna…”

I blew out cigarette smoke in curls on his face lovingly. “I don’t know how long I would be able to withstand this job. Nothing has changed. A step ahead doesn’t find a support to take another.” A lump of excreta in white and brown fell on his shoulder bag as Kashi lit a cigarette.

“Unlike before, I don’t abuse myself these days, tearing and soiling my body in filth. I have learnt to swallow my sorrows silently. It is all for the sake of my father. I don’t know what will happen to me once he is no more. I am clueless about the support system I would require so as to look forward with this overpowering mind.”

Kashi’s father lost his wife when Kashi was one year old. Kashi had a sister who was four years older than him. No other blood-related siblings. Kashi’s father didn’t marry after that. Along with two children, he settled with his elder brother’s family. He was working in a mill. He was a gentle soul.

“How’s your father, Kashi?”

“I and Father live in a house. A will has already been written that my sister is entitled to get half of the house. But the will hasn’t been handed over to her yet. A wall has been erected to bifurcate the house. My brother-in-law is not a problematic man. Father eats at my sister’s home. For me, one hotel for every ten days. Within ten days, I grow bored with that hotel. I will get a wage of three or three hundred fifty rupees. It is only with that amount that I have to look after my soul, mind, stomach, and body.”

A dog lying on a nearby bench rose and shook its body once.

“Sometimes I feel that you should have been a woman. To be right, I desire that you could have changed yourself into a woman. Guna… I feel secure and bold enough when I am with you. If I could reject the admonition of my wits, I would dare say that being with you is akin to lying on God’s lap. That too…a female goddess. I am unable to imagine a man as God. Your heart is like a playground having no thorny fences around it.”

“Not like that, Kashi… It is just your fantasy that you find my heart comfortable. Even in that world you perceive, some will have fences to their eyes. Leave it aside. Are you writing these days?” I asked him.

“No… I just only scribble in diaries. Writing poems and stories makes me think that I am writing about my personal rants.” The dog standing in front of them lifted its one leg and urinated on the bench. The cigarette in Kashi’s mouth was almost burnt down with remains of ash. A silence followed.

“I am unable to quit smoking, Kashi.”

“I too. Along with smoking, I am still unable to quit masturbating despite my earnest efforts, Guna. Smoking cigarettes does not, in any way, trouble me. I don’t find any troubles caused by nicotine in my chest. It is just like suckling nipples without getting milk. My habit of masturbating too has its own peculiarity. I don’t do it with hands like most men. Cuddling the pillows…fantasising about women who are in their thirties, essentially mother”s… Kashi must be twenty-nine years old, I thought. In a sudden attempt to divert the topic, he started inquiring about me, my mother, and a godman familiar to both of us. He asked about the beautiful woman who used to stay with that god man.

“That god man has joined R.S.S. He has been given a car. His disciple, that girl, Ramba, is working as a saleswoman in a textile shop,” I told him.

Kashi threw away his cigarette. It fell on the grass bed and emitted a streak of smoke. I became restless in search of another cigarette. I think I am also smoking cigarettes like Kashi just for fun. Sometimes I would stand in pitch dark in the garden and smoke. But I wouldn’t be satisfied with it. Watching the curls of smoke while smoking has its own pleasures. Kashi crushed the empty cigarette box and tossed it away.

“Ten past ten now,” I said.

“Shall we leave now? Kashi asked, half-heartedly.

While walking, I asked Kashi, “It appears that you don’t do Transcendental Meditation these days. Do you?”

“I am unable to do anything consistently. Eliot says that he has measured his life with the help of a teaspoon. But I am still indecisive as to what else I should pick up in my life to measure.”

Kashi was indeed very indecisive—he wouldn’t be able to select between coffee and tea if asked. But he had measured what death was. We jumped over the compound wall.

“Sleep doesn’t give me peace. Troubled by dreams frequently. Empty thoughts occupy my daytime as if I am running incessantly within me. Sometimes I feel that it is ‘I’ in me that is real, and ‘I’ visible outside is just an enigmatic phenomenon, a fear.”

“Aren’t you reading newspapers, Kashi?”

 “Occasionally I do. But due to the lack of interest, I remember news like pictures. Mind and heart wrestle with each other like a pestle hitting the empty mortar.” Going past the public library, we approached the bitumen road.

“Guna, whenever you come to this place, please never forget to pay a visit to my house. Dhanraj told me that you still feel guilty about your role in my marriage,” Kashi said, grasping my hands tightly.

2

Kashi, whom I have known for the last eight years, remained unchanged even today. Once he told me about the first step he took in his memory lane after he came out of his mother’s womb. It must be the sixth month or so since his mother died. One day in a harsh summer, an old woman is walking through a dry patch of track surrounded by densely grown cactus. Kashi, sitting on her waist, keeps crying all through her way. That white-clad old woman reaches his Periyappa’s house, drops him at the entrance of the house, and leaves without turning her head back. She is the mother of Kashi’s mother. Now a baby at this new home to disturb the siesta of the whole clan of his uncles. No one would tolerate that nuisance. Would they?

Kashi became my friend when I was studying in college. It was the time our friendship grew stronger through books. Feeling as inspired souls, our friendship found its liveliness in being sarcastic about human beings and ourselves by exposing the hypocrisy of the society. We appreciated each other as we thought that we stood different from others. Read and enjoyed Athavan’s writings. Met writer Puviyarasu. It was Kashi who took me to meet him. We grew more interested, gradually though, in Janakiraman, La.sa.raa, Pichamoorthy, Ashokamithran, and Sundara Ramasamy. Though not fully understanding Mouni’s writings, we faked our appreciation about him that he was an enigmatic writer. Meanwhile, I grew less interested in studies. First lusting after women and then becoming a muddled version of Vivekanantha, Pithukuli Murugadas, and Osho Rajaneesh at once, I learnt the hard lessons from experience. Now I am very often reading J. K. (J. Krishnamurthy). After I got a government job and transferred to Cuddalore, I lost Kashi’s proximity. Ever since his childhood, I had never had an inkling that Kashi showed any surge of urgency at the start of anything he did and left it halfway. He never spoke much about his school life. He had told me about his love failure while studying in fourth class and would make the entire school bored by his lecture on either fruits or Isaac Newton in the morning assembly. Later I came to know that he scored very high marks in S.S.L.C. 

He came out of the college in 1976 after failing in two papers. He didn’t attempt those papers again after that. In days, he started learning Hindi through a correspondence course. Then left it halfway. After that, he showed his interest in his mother tongue, Telugu. His Telugu teacher’s daughter mixed her love in the coffee she served him during his visits to her house. It happened when he was working in an engineering company near his house as a timekeeper. It was the job he could manage doing without any break in one place for one year. Kashi had a considerable skill in badminton. He was interested in two things during his college life—poems and games. He got a job in the NTC mill under the sports quota. It was from this job that the real ‘Kashi’ actually evolved. He worked in NTC only for six months. Disgruntled, followed by treatment for his mental health. I was then a government employee in Cuddalore.

Kashi convinced his father and got some amount from him on the pretext of shaving off his head at Thirunallaru. He spent two days happily with me. I even thought for a moment that he must have been genuinely interested in the Thirunallaru temple. One day, we shaved off our heads, went to Karaikkal, booked a room in a lodge, drank beer, and then slept.

When we came out for a stroll in the evening, he told me an unexpected truth.

“Guna… I am a sinner. I am a scoundrel. I have cheated my loving father. I am not suffering from anything. I have been cheating the doctors. Truly speaking, I am afraid of doing jobs. Fear of responsibility and freedom” 

“From which book did you read this English sentence? Your stupidity about responsibility is acceptable. But what about fear of freedom? It seems that you have misunderstood what freedom is. It is nothing but your pseudo image of being an intellectual and finding the workplace unsuitable for your pseudo image. Isn’t it? You are a fool.”

“Beg to differ, Guna… No job suits my temperament. No job ever suits. I am unable to bear the torment of working under time stipulation. Doing the same work daily at the same time…leaving the office at the same time… quite artificial… going to the toilet daily at the same time…quite artificial again… time of bathing again with the same artificiality…these fettered ‘dailies’ get me bored. I hate it…it is disgusting. Above all, if I am expected to be responsible, I grow afraid. Superior officers’ intimidations…over time work… Oh! My god heavens!”

“You …a crook.”

“I have an inherent desire. Do you know what it is?”

“Tell”

“I should run into a jungle and get settled somewhere near a mountain.”

“After that?”

“I should become one among the tribal people.”

“You, a fool. Do you think the tribal community won’t have any responsibility and fear of freedom? They too have a system and controls.”

Kashi remained silent. He did something I had least expected. He took off his shirt suddenly, loosened his lower garment, a lungi, and dropped it. He didn’t wear any undergarment. His right shoulder was very stiff, like a wooden plank. I couldn’t push him as he was very heavy. I rolled his lower garment around his waist forcibly, cuddled him along, and pulled him inside. I bought a soda from a nearby shop, sprinkled it on his face, fed him some of it into his mouth, and dragged him to the lodge.

He woke up at about eleven at night as I was sitting near, anxious about his condition. He didn’t have dinner. I went near to him. His shaved-off head, without any baldness, was sweating. I touched his shoulder gently and sat beside him on the cot. He rose and sat. His lower garment was on his waist as if not willing to stay there. His face was swollen. The very moment I grasped his hands with endearing words, “Are you hungry?” he broke down, wept inconsolably as his nose twisted. As he gasped loudly, I grew irritated and became afraid and, at the same time, overwhelmed with grief. What would happen if the neighbours came after hearing his sobs? I tried to subdue his sobs, grasping his face, but in vain. His howling went on not subsided for half an hour like an eerie noise after rain. I switched off the light.

“Did you have a good sleep?”

“I did.” Kashi’s reply sounded dull. We went for breakfast at eight.

“Kashi… Please open up.”

“I dreamt last night. I didn’t feel good about it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was an afternoon in the interiors of a jungle. A magnificent statue in the front. I was suckling its breasts violently. Suddenly something happened…as if I was having sex with it. I couldn’t recognise the face. When I woke up, the face that I saw in my dreams had started troubling me.”

“Can we go for a movie?” I diverted the topic.

3

I was one of the important reasons behind Kashi’s marriage. The first reason: Kashi had never hidden any of his sexual escapades with women from me. While studying in P.U.C., he was in love with the daughter of a small shopkeeper in the next street. She was a seventeen-year-old girl then. Putting in Kashi’s language, she was his angel in those days. One day his angel, who was fond of eating puffed rice and groundnut from her father’s petty shop as her staple food, fell sick with jaundice and died. Kashi found a nickname for himself by adding half of his angel’s name to it and published a small collection of poems, “Kannamoochu,” while working in his half-brother’s printing press. ‘Working’ meant nothing; it was just the time duration he took to bring out his poetry collection in print!

During the first year in college, he had two love affairs along with writing poems. The first woman was a fan of Mu. Varatharajan. She was studying chemistry. Her house was at the opposite. Kashi visited her quite often on the pretext of clearing doubts in the subsidiary subject of math. One day, in one forenoon, he climbed on the wall to have a glance at her when she was taking a bath and called out to her name out of uncontrollable sexual urge. She, the lily, closed her door permanently with a warning that he should never try to face her again. The second one, a graduate woman and unemployed, fell for him on her own volition. After getting a job, she left for Pollachi, which brought their meetings to an end. No replies to his letters. When he was roaming jobless after leaving his NTC job, he stole ten rupees from his father’s shirt pocket and boarded the bus for Pollachi. He purchased two rolled gold earrings and met her at the post office entrance in the evening. His presence might have annoyed her. She threatened him not to visit her again, “Don’t come to me again. I will have to inform my brother if you pester me again. Don’t you have any other work? You…a mental”. Kashi threw away those ear ornaments into the gutter, managed to swallow the lump in his throat, and walked away with shame.

His other love affair became a known reality to the parents of both. Kashi’s father went to the girl’s parents to seek her hand for him due to Kashi’s stubborn insistence. They sent him back with a suggestion for Kashi to find a job first before taking marriage talks forward. Kashi searched for a job unwillingly. He went to the extent of suggesting that no money needed to be spent on their marriage, and he could do some business with the amount meant for marriage. That girl, despite knowing everything about Kashi, was surprisingly adamant that she would marry only Kashi. She reportedly said that she wouldn’t care even if Kashi didn’t have any job, as she could run their family with four milch buffaloes. She was so innocent, not knowing about the cruel face of finances. Later she was married to a policeman. Kashi didn’t try to find any job after that. He befriended some guys around and was whiling away his time in the name of doing some business. He would demand money from his innocent father, telling him that he needed to attend interviews either in Bangalore or Chennai and would come back after spending the whole amount. At times he visited the radio station and earned petty amounts by writing some nonsense for “An information today’ or “For your kind attention.” He would spend those petty earnings of Rs 75 or Rs 100 either on tea, cigarettes, or drinking toddy. If sent to outstations on business for his friends, he would happily leave and complete the tasks assigned scrupulously. If given some amount for his expenses, he would be readily happy doing any task and wouldn’t be found at home. He would enter the kitchen whenever his brother-in-law was not found around. If his brother-in-law left the house on half-night duty in the mill, he would get two times food if he could manage to come there at three. More than half of the money his father received after leaving the mill job had also been spent. Among the four children of his brother-in-law, two were girls. Along with them, he was maintaining three cows as well. As a family man, he had his own troubles in life. His shift timings and tight schedule of hard work didn’t allow him to be nice in attitude to consider the niceties of being humane. The acerbic words of his brother-in-law hit Kashi directly; Kashi couldn’t stand it. As his brother-in-law failed in his attempts to bring Kashi on track, his anger changed its course towards Kashi’s father and touched the latter as an outlet of the former’s inability. As Kashi’s father too felt the heat of his brother-in-law’s words, Kashi, being unable to withstand those words, retaliated with a similar vein of vehemence once which resulted in them seeking succour in his Periyamma’s house located afar.

 “Stay is possible only on rent.” Both son and father levied four hundred rupees rent per month on them. It was due to Kashi. Truly, Kashi’s father loved his daughter more. Kashi’s sister loved Kashi more. Kashi’s brother-in-law was not someone unrelated to them. He was his own paternal aunt’s son.

In Periyamma’s house, Kashi’s condition became worse. I thought Kashi, who I was thinking was feigning a mental disease, was now genuinely suffering from one such. ‘The only small difference between a mad person and me is that I am not mad. That is’ it'—Kashi used to quote some Western philosopher to attest to his condition. However, it was evident that his mental health was progressively deteriorating notwithstanding his self-attestation about his mental health. I understood that he read a lot during his stay at his Periyamma’s house. He wrote a lot of some incomprehensible poems (for me). I never replied to them.

….

Kashi was struggling to stabilise his mind even for a second.

His mind seemed to have been caught within his body like a mouse caught in a trap. A stupid psychiatrist gave him four shock treatments for the fee of four hundred rupees. I was told that Kashi had an intolerable agony of hallucination in which he could feel the stench of burnt curry leaves hitting his skull every second. Lots of tablets…yet his mind remained uncontrollable. He blabbered, “mad of this moment…enlightened of this moment.” He changed his steps in three directions before walking a distance of a mere ten feet! Once he took a ticket to go to a village in the hills and boarded the bus four times but returned after travelling 40 km. Again he booked a ticket for a destination located 100 km away and returned after travelling 6 km. He was nagging his father to arrange for the girl who was working in a ginning mill for segregating cotton to get married to him. That girl was none other than the granddaughter of his Periyamma. She was the daughter of his half-older sister, who had developed a lifelong enmity with her only brother in a property dispute after their father died. Periyamma was also secretly happy with this arrangement. One of the reasons could be that the property would remain intact. I wasn’t sure about it. Kashi’s father somehow succeeded in asking the girl through a messenger. I learnt later that her father, a drunkard, insulted that messenger and sent him back, shouting at him, “How dare he ask my girl for him?”

Kashi became restive and lost all his shame when he begged his father, “Any woman will do…pa. If I get married, all my problems will be solved. How much longer can we stay in a relative’s house? I am scared to even think about it anymore.” As his anxiety grew stronger, one day he drank two bottles of Tik-20 (an insecticide) while eating coconut toffee. On knowing this, his Periyamma acted swiftly and made him drink the dilution of dog faeces. Another round of visits to yet another psychiatrist started, and taking tablets thus resumed.

One evening, he appeared in this hilly village suddenly. He looked terrible with the tanned skin and fattened body. Within two days, he started nagging me to arrange a woman for him to stay with him in private for a full day. There was a woman known to me living in a small town on the fringes located about thirty miles from here. Unfortunately, she was also not available. I was also not employed at that time. After the sudden death of my father, I left my government job in Cuddalore and settled here two years ago. I was assisting my mother and sister in farming along with my regular work as an LIC agent. I was very close to one godman in that village. He was living in a small hut near our village. Later I came to know that a beautiful woman was also with him as his disciple. We went about collecting donations to convert our hut into a full-fledged ashram. I was the chief disciple of that god man who claimed himself as incarnation of Swami Vivekananda. The God man walked through the towns, and his fame spread across. He was an English-speaking god man. He was an MBA graduate in his earlier life. He was a close relative of a prominent old film producer. His wife cheated on him, stepped out of his house for another, and this god man stepped out of his house in turn and found this hermitage here. I came to know about all these later.

I took Kashi to the god man and explained everything to him. The god man could understand in seconds that Kashi’s brain had grown only to the level of expecting a ten-year-old boy to keep his heart safe at once after he had handed it over to the boy.

“Swami…he had lost all his desires to settle in life like others.”

“Does he believe in God?”

To this, Kashi replied, “ No swami… But it would have been better if something called God existed.”

“Your words sound smart. Have you ever visited any godman before?”

“Yes… I had gone to one godman. His name is Shagaja Chaitanya. I went to him to learn meditation. He taught me a mantra on the condition that I should not disclose it to anyone. But I disclosed that mantra to everyone around. I went to him again and told him what I had done. He said alright and asked me to continue doing it. Then I explained about dreams that were disturbing me. He said that they were nothing but suppressed desires in my earlier birth that are manifested in the form of dreams in the present birth. I was terrified hearing those words….I didn’t dare going to him again after that.”

At last, to my utter shock, the god man pronounced his divine words in one single sentence. “Kashi… Your problem is sex. You have sex with her,” he told, pointing at his disciple ‘Ramba.’

Kashi remained confused for two days, unable to take any decision on it. Finally, he said he wouldn’t be able to accept his offer. He said something incoherent to the god man that the girl looked like his sister and what he actually needed was a woman, a mother. The god man said, “No other go…leave him. He has to remain mentally deranged like this forever. Try for sublimation, not for sentiments in sexuality with choice. I discussed your matter with your Guruji yesterday. He said you are yet to pass tests that would last for another ten years. Firstly, you must get accustomed to your own body.” He told this to Kashi to his face and secretly told me not to bring him again to the ashram.

4

For nearly one month, there were no words from Kashi ever since he left this place. The god man used to ‘offer his presence’ at one rich man’s house in Coimbatore. On one such occasion, I also accompanied him. A young woman, after leaving her husband due to some problem, was living there. She was the middle sister among three sisters. It seemed that she had been brought up with all masculine privileges in her life. None of those three girls was known for arrogance. However, this one had the arrogance of removing her thali and throwing it out on her husband’s face, calling him impotent. The elder sister and the youngest sister were married off to well-settled families. This woman’s family complained about her fate to the god man with the brimming anxiety. Later I came to know that that family was known to Kashi. The god man told them that I was Kashi’s friend and gave them some primary details about Kashi as part of his regular rants about the case histories he used to come across. When I met Kashi, as destiny would have it, I explained the travails of that woman. The destiny, in his words ‘his character,’ waiting to show off its true colour in him, rose up with ferocity.

…

Kashi’s marriage didn’t even stand the test of one month. One evening in the second month of his marriage, he came to this hilly village. Perhaps it could well be said that it was we both who were sitting without sleep in the whole of the village that night. His face didn’t carry the charm of a newly married bride. It was looking as if it was made of some buffalo dung.

“My father-in-law insultingly makes fun of me, asking which one of my poems he should carry to get half kilograms of cashew cake,” Kashi said. His father-in-law asked him to bundle up his books and dispose of them at a throwaway price and better utilise his brain to make money instead. He expected Kashi to live in his house as a ‘house bride.’ Kashi’s wife wouldn’t be able to run her family in Kashi’s locality, where the middle-class people lived. His father-in-law said that Kashi’s locality was full of people who used to get jealous of rich people like him. He said he had no problem in accommodating Kashi’s father in his mansion. He further said there were two servants working to attend to the needs of three persons, and his house could accommodate two more servants. Kashi’s wife led a funny life—daily scooter rides, eating ice creams, watching movies, and listening to some Tamil songs yet to be released. This was the world she lived every day. What Kashi expected of her and what he got bore the difference between Alsatian dogs and street stray dogs. He rued, “I couldn’t stand anymore. Hell with my demand of a mother! At least she should be a woman. We had had sex not more than ten or twelve times at the maximum. You wouldn’t believe Guna…she won’t even allow me to kiss her. Some women may not like to be kissed. It is alright anyway. But here the case is different. Her concern is that her lips, which she believes are more beautiful than the cinema beauty Manjula, shouldn’t lose its sheen by my kiss. It was her only care and concern. Beautiful lips anyway. But they are fake. Aren’t they?”

“I am afraid to be alone. Loneliness. Each second of my life snaps its fingers at me. The old trouble has started showing its head again in me, Guna… I went to my father and cried before him, ‘Father, I have lost faith in everything. Leaving these books, not reading them, my life will remain intolerable. I wouldn’t be able to stay anymore in that house. I lost my nerves to tolerate their show of vanity. I am seriously afraid of it. If I stay there for some more time, no wonder I might commit suicide. My sister told me, with a genuine concern, though, that everything would be alright soon and advised me to find a job first. I shouted at her to shut her mouth and mind her business. I told my father that meeting you will bring peace to my mind. He gave me a hundred rupees from the ‘Moi’ amount he received during the marriage and sent me here.”

He was with me for a week. I too stopped visiting the god man. I told him to be quiet for some days without doing anything and sent him off after that.

I was unable to find out any determined solution to any of the actions. A prick of conscience was also scratching at the corner of my mind. Other than smoking pockets of cigarettes with him, nothing was forthcoming.

After Kashi left me, I received no information about him for the next two months. It was from Dhanraj’s letter that I came to know about him.

Kashi’s resumed his old habits—varieties of sleeping tablets. He had torn his kurta into pieces, being half conscious of what he was and half mad. He hit the wall with his scooter deliberately. The scooter was registered in the name of his father-in-law. Wouldn’t he get angry with him? He did. He derided him as a drug addict and tried to beat him with his sandals. Suddenly one day, he solemnly pledged that he would mind his behaviour henceforth and tried to ensure another round of ice creams for her lips, a new movie, scooter riding, and the purchase of silk sarees. That night, only once below her neck, his coital bliss came to an end, and he slept deeply without the help of tablets. He got up at five in the early morning, took his scooter, and drove towards his house and surrendered in front of his father, which resulted in spending another hundred rupees from the ‘Moi’ amount. This went on for four or five times. Kashi remained in his wife’s house for two weeks after that.

It was when his father, an innocent, illiterate man, cried like a small boy after hearing that Kashi had swallowed sleeping tablets together. It was Kashi’s genuine, poignant effort of committing suicide. He climbed onto the cot after writing down a letter. He had even locked the door and closed his eyes with immense hope of dying. But when he got up the next day, he was disappointed. He got cheated of his genuine effort of dying. Unable to control his frenzy of disappointment, he took out a blade, tottered a few steps, and slit his throat.

He was admitted to the government hospital for two weeks. In the intensive care unit, he was kept for a week. A small surgery was done in his throat. A case notice was hanging near his leg in the bed with these observations: personality disorder, affection-seeking phenomenon, and advised psychotherapy.

5

I inserted Kashi’s inland letter under the tablecloth and came out. It was cloudy. I had to take the calf to a nearby field to feed him better fodder. Mother and sister were picking broad beans. I loosened the rope to release the calf. The mind was dense with thoughts about Kashi, unperturbed though like clouds. The very thought of Kashi’s miseries in his life even after his sincere reading of numerous good literary books made me grossly suspicious and slightly irritated with his very readings, with which he was so much attached. Perhaps a fear of facing eventuality well before it occurred seemed to be his instinctual trait—a hopelessness was running like bubbles through his bloodstream. I wasn’t sure about it.

Sometimes, he used to sit for ten or twenty days and read a lot, waking up late at night. He would write at least four letters in a week during those days. Kashi had a very good friend in Coimbatore. He was a young man, interested in playing flute and drawing. They used to spend their nighttime together in front of a tea shop on the highway side, sipping tea every half an hour and talking till four or five in the morning before parting. Kashi once told me about this young man that it was he who had taught him about literature and art and had played a big role in nurturing Kashi’s taste in literature. Kashi had a loud mouth, and sometimes he would use some harsh words, hurting others without understanding their impact on soft hearts. In one of such unfortunate instances of hurting, Kashi lost his friendship with that young poet. Sometimes I used to feel that his friendship, which he couldn’t continue with that young man, was one of the important reasons for Kashi slipping into such a lowly life.

Kashi had once told me that he was born when the lunar eclipse was not fully complete. He tried his faith in astrology too in his quest. He then left it—again thanks to his die-hard habits. He had been marching ahead with a sole conviction that nothing was permanent in life. He wrote me a letter after reading the Tamil translation of Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead. “Every man coming to this place is of the opinion that he has come to this prison as a guest. That is why he behaves like a thirty-five-year-old man when he is actually fifty years old. This is how the storyteller in that novel, Petrovitch, writes. How good it would be if I could complete my responsibilities thinking of me as a guest on this earth?”

In the third week since he was discharged from the hospital, he wrote me a letter with this: “I have been reading Williams Carlos Williams. I liked most of his poems. Meanwhile, something has been entertaining me too—a hospital case sheet that I found in an old diary. It was given in the government hospital with a note: ‘Come at 2 o'clock to visit again on… (day). Keep this slip safely’. Under diagnosis, they had written in block letters: CUTTHROAT- Psychiatric. I believe "cutthroat doesn’t denote betrayal. Does it? Among us, who had gifted that betrayal to whom? The spirit of my father-in-law must have possessed the doctor to write this…”

6

I didn’t reply to his inland letter replete with ‘Shri Rama Jayam’ and didn’t get to know about him either for the last one and a half years. But last week, I had a pleasant shock—I met Kashi in a wine shop bar in Bangalore, an unexpected meeting, though. He looked a bit emaciated, in modern attire and hairstyle. The black circles under his eyes seemed to be slowly disappearing.

He told me that he got a mutual divorce. It was delayed as his ‘former’ father-in-law was stubborn to get the divorce process completed by the same lawyer with whose help he could get her divorced from her first husband, he told. I was neither sad nor happy with that news. He was sitting there after taking a quarter of rum. The cigarette was emitting smoke in his mouth.

I was sitting in front of him, full of zeal, as it was a unique, unexpected meet. To my question, “How come you are here?” he took out a visiting card from his pocket and gave it to me. Marketing Director!. Oh good heavens! I was immensely happy reading it. I thought that he must have set his tracks right, sticking to a standard profession, ensuring the absence of any shade of his past, and progressing in his life without severing ties of friendship. He called out to the waiter and asked for another cup of liquor. I wondered whether it was his steadfast devotion to Shri Rama Jeyam, which he held as his lifesaver, that had brought him this fortune.

“How come all these are possible?”

“Everything has its place when the right time comes,” he spoke like a philosopher. Our conversation which started in the evening lasted till late night half past ten. He informed me that he had borrowed some amount from his half-brother on interest and had invested in his business. He further told that his partner was also a good man and helping him in his business. I openly declared that Kashi would have a decent life henceforth. He laughed to his heart’s content. He asked how I had landed up there. I told them that I had come there to attend something related to my job in life insurance, saying my words were elongated more than required. He said, “No problem.”

The bar was packed with a lot of people but was calm. I thought it might be due to the room being air-conditioned. No matter how louder one spoke, the sound was minimal. Though we had a lot of things to discuss, there was an element of hesitation sitting between us. As the intoxication rose up to a point, the hesitation disappeared. Kashi demanded ice and asked me to empty my tumbler fast. He extended his pocket of cigarettes and asked if I didn’t prefer smoking.

I told him, “Stopped it long ago. But sometimes I occasionally do, like in this meeting,” and picked up a cigarette and held it between my lips. The rum got choked as he laughed violently. I asked him amidst laughter.

“What has made you laugh like this?”

“No problem… Nothing, Guna… Recently I read an Italian novel, “Confessions of Zeno.” Its second chapter has twenty pages. The name of the chapter is The Last Cigarette. It is about leaving the habit of smoking cigarettes. Full twenty pages will tell you about the resolutions taken to leave the habit of smoking and then the ensuing torments of being unable to do that.”

I could see the Old Kashi. He was talking about that novel written like a biography for a long time as if he had gotten goosebumps after reading it. He told that its author, Italo Sevevo, had also written a poem about a baby fly like him and shared his whole-hearted happiness. He took a sip, paused for a while, and then said, “If you remove the descriptions related to nations, language, people, and the environment from that book, that novel consisting of seven chapters will look exactly like my life story. You must read it. Once I am back home, I will send it to you”. Not stopping with it, he asked me to listen to the titles of chapters.

Introduction

The last cigarette

The death of my father

The story of my marriage

Wife and mistress

A business partnership

Psychoanalysis

He got another small peg of liquor. I stopped taking more. Suddenly he became pliant and told me that I should not conclude that he had totally changed. He spoke these words through his eyes as if he was cautioning me. He quoted a small incident to attest to his words. It happened six months ago, he said:

A young lady assistant professor of physics, working in a women’s college functioning under one Christian charitable organization, staying in a YWCA hostel, was introduced to Kashi a couple of times by one of his friends. She was a very beautiful lady. But it was unfortunate that she had become a widow along with a child and hadn’t even completed two years of her widowhood. He wrote her a letter addressed to her hostel seeking her acceptance to marry him. He wrote four letters. The last two letters were sent through registered post. All those four letters were opened and read by the hostel warden. Kashi’s friend caught him on the street and slapped him with English abuses. He threatened Kashi that he would drag him to the lady’s elder brother if he didn’t mend his ways and further told that the lady had been crying incessantly for three days in the hostel. After one month of this incident, Kashi went to her hostel and expressed his sincere regrets for his action. Those moments of intimidating her, followed by his going to the hostel to ask for her forgiveness, were flowing in his blood like an unbreakable bubble, and it was the real tragedy of his life, he said.

Kashi’s readiness of his heart to sink into tragic mode of existence in a matter of seconds, especially when it came to women, had not yet changed, I thought. This romantic view of life is being looked down upon even now. I could understand through his talk that he had changed a lot in other matters. Once he told me, Even after getting what one wanted, something would remain unfulfilled. If you feel the agony that fills in that space, you would understand what exactly the nature of one’s desire is—he uttered these words in a different context while talking about something else.

He said that he went to Tirupathi along with his friend for fun. Just for the sake of giving his friend ‘company,’ he also got his head tonsured. In the same vein of giving him company, he accompanied him to different temples and met a Yogi called Ramsurat Kumar in Tiruvannamalai. He considered the yogi’s words, “The way you knocked at my door was pretty intolerable,” spoken at last without anger while sending him back, as the message of his blessing. He further believed that his words carried a profound meaning in them.

I asked him about his father as I lit another cigarette. He said, “No problem.” I was watching him use this phrase, “No problem,” frequently for every query. As I asked him the question, he smiled again and repeated it, “No problem.” I grew repugnant and annoyed at this sentence. Since he had been able to discover a sense of freedom and an enormous desire void of any exigency while doing the things for the sake of doing it, he could find every task he performed giving him profound happiness, he said. I remained silent for a minute. I had seen his tongue losing its elegance and finding it difficult to raise while talking. The difficulties I had faced before I could complete all my responsibilities towards my sisters came over my mind as a singular thought, flashing like a lightning bolt. Like a lizard chasing a fly, my thoughts too ran faster. As it ran faster, the tip of the lizard’s tail was cut off and fell into my thoughts. Kashi asked me, “Busy in deep thoughts?” “No problem,” I said.

Amidst laughter, he asked me in a loud voice suddenly, “Let me suppose I give you a hundred mosquito coils. Each coil contains two rolls in it sticking to each other, and I ask you to segregate them. Will you have the patience to do it?”

I remained silent for a minute this time too.

He touched my face and asked, “Are you ready?” 

“How much will you pay for it?” I asked him.

He got up, gently knocked on my head, and laughed heartily, keeping on laughing. It was dark outside. Kashi was sweating even in that air-conditioned room.

He told that the days were gone when he used to suffer from the mix of guilt, self-pity, inability, and fear while meeting aged, frail beggars on the streets and act swiftly to alleviate their pain by comparing them with his father at the bottom of his heart. He said that he had now learnt to accept them the way they were and was working with some good Samaritans who were striving to change these people’s condition. “Even though I understand that the sufferers wouldn’t accept restricting the pain of suffering to something related to “heart felt”, this is what I feel,” he told. He continued speaking as I found myself in a jinx, unable to follow him. I felt that my eyes were becoming heavy and thought of going out to get fresh air. Kashi tore open a new pocket and took out a cigarette.

He told suddenly that the desire for getting married was still tormenting him. He asked me with the innocence of a small boy whether it was wrong to consider loneliness, washing clothes, and going to hotels as reasons for wanting to get married. Insane! His life gathered its strength for survival by spending the days and evenings after torrential downpour. Sometimes when sitting in a bus travelling a long distance on a national highway, he said he felt his life as a wonderful gift when it got merged with the music of the bus’s speed. I also became zealous hearing him speak like that. He stopped talking abruptly and asked me eagerly to join him to have fried rice together. I loved the way he asked it. Though he didn’t like fried rice and was fully composed these days, he would falter at times, he said. While reading his most favourite poet in a lonely room in utter serenity, he would hate his father for his irresponsible way of yawning with a peculiar sound lying on a cot at the entrance. He would prefer going out of his room just to block his father’s yawning mouth once and for all. He looked visibly tired while narrating how a yawning of that kind would make his entire post-midnight bliss completely spoilt. He was becoming hopeful of living his life the way he wanted it after the death of his father. Four or five of his friends who had totally lost their self-identity, writings, and readings were only responsible for all these, he said. Amidst his last sip, he asked me if I still continued reading. He fixed a cigarette between his lips.

In a quick shift, he changed his topic to his recent dreams. He was speaking as he was stirring the chili-laced water floating in a beautiful glass bowl with a silver spoon. Though having dreams like earlier, it set them aside with his ‘no problem’ again. The serene face of Ramana Maharishi came in his dreams once, he said. In another dream, he had his toe bitten by a snake, and blood came out from his toe. In one of his dreams, he saw his dead body being carried on a bier, and in another dream, he was a terrorist chased by police. One night, he jumped over a tall wall, crossed big mountains, and was flying in the sky, whipping the wind with his hands elatedly. This was the only dream he was longing for its recurrence, he said. One dream that repeated itself frequently, yet grossly, got him annoyed: the one in which he was writing an examination without preparation and blinking without knowing answers in the hall.

If he started writing down the dreams in a notebook for four days, he wouldn’t get any dream on the fifth day, he said. He told that dreams would run away if we kept our watch on them. When I asked him what if they came back again, he replied that he wouldn’t have a definite answer for it, just the way this magnificent life does not contain answers to all its riddles.

Plates full of fried rice were brought to our table along with elegantly arranged butter knives, spatulas, and dinner forks. I knew it well, though, that Kashi had to eat more than half of my share. 

***Ended***