Chapter 1
The Beginning That Was
Do you know what life really means? Do you understand what God really means to us? I have spent my short life searching for answers to these questions. Somehow answers which satisfy my conscience have eluded me. At some stage in our lives, I am sure most of us have faced similar questions and we have tried to seek solutions. But I do have a vague apprehension that perhaps in the frantic search for a world beyond us, you and I are missing something somewhere. As my life unfolded, the kaleidoscopic experiences I went through offered some clues.
With some conviction, therefore, I have picked up my pen to share with you what I have learnt. As I write, I recollect those strangely moving lines penned by Rabindranath Tagore:
"Soon, I feel
the time comes near to leave.
With sunset shadings
screen the parting day.
Let the hour be silent; let it be peaceful.
Let not any pompous memories or meetings
create a sorrow's stance.
May the trees at the gate
raise the earth's chant of peace
in a cluster of green leaves.
May the night's blessings be
in the light of the seven stars".
Who does not wage his all for his love? I was naïve expecting love to be selfless, of giving and sharing. But my love was strange; it made me an instrument of someone else's vengeance. And it became my act of vengeance. Later it evoked a host of questions in my mind 'Who was 'I'? What is 'sin'? Who is 'God'?' Did I find answers? Let me tell my eventful story right from the beginning that was and leave you to be the jury and the judge.
The human mind is a wondrous resource. It can look back in time. It can also conjure visions of the future. No one as yet knows what powers it can wield once its potential is fully tapped. It can never remain idle. The mind fears the future. Often it invokes imagery which as dreams makes you break out into a cold sweat. It is full of remorse for the past, posing a question: could the past be redone to make me feel better? We try to bury our past of sorrow and darkness and dream of a world full of hope and the sweetness of roses. But the past often refuses to remain buried. It explodes unexpectedly flooding us with bitter-sweet memories.
I recollect in a flash the fragrances, colours and beauty of Nature I have savoured. My memories gently waft to the days gone by, from where I began my journey called life.
Some thirty years ago, I was born in an old aristocratic family in the small beautiful town of Saharanpur in the State of Uttar Pradesh in India. The town is surrounded on the north and north east by the Shivalik hills which separates it from its sister town Dehra Dun. The Shivalik mountain range extends from Jammu and Kashmir, cuts across northern India and ends in Bhutan skirting the hill resort of Darjeeling in eastern India.
It is from Saharanpur that the then long, winding hilly road to the Shivalik Hills began. The road runs through a mountain pass, known as the Mohund Pass on the steep hills. A famous wild life sanctuary flanks both sides of the road. The sanctuary hosts the Asiatic elephant among other rare wild life. This road has now been converted into an all-weather motorable road though it still has to cross the Mohund Pass, a tunnel which cuts through the sanctuary. On the west, the river Yamuna forms its boundary with the other Indian States. The other famous Indian River, Ganges, lies on its south. The town is, therefore, part of what is known as the 'Doab' (which is derived from 'do' meaning two and 'ab' meaning river) land. Four small rivers criss-cross the town and finally submerge in either the Yamuna or the Ganges.
Traces of the ancient Aryan Civilisation of some 4,000 years or more can be found near the town. It has a clutch of hoary pilgrimage spots that are visited by thousands of devotees. Along with its sister town, Dehra Dun some thirty miles away, it is famous for the sweet-scented Basmati rice and wooden handicrafts and wood carvings. Situated in the centre of the sugar cane growing belt, Saharanpur has a thriving sugar industry.
My mother was in pain. There had been two boys, twins, earlier, who had died at birth. Part of the pain arose because she felt she might lose me as well. It was a wet October morning of 1935, a Tuesday to be exact, with December-like weather. A steady mizzle of intermittent, misty rain clouded the window-pane. The oil lamp flickered dully in the shadows cast by the cut in the power supply. An overpowering aura of anaesthetics clung grimly to the low roof, as I was tossed up in the air by the hoary midwife. I remember mother telling me the permanent crinkles round my nose came up because the assisting nurse had with her unsteady fingers, added a double dose of antiseptics in the douche.
The gnarled nurse who had attended on my mother, informed me later when I had begun to understand the spoken word, with a wealth of detail how the midwife held me topside down, tossed me about like a tennis ball, pinched me, applied artificial respiration in despair, before I condescended to utter an indignant howl. That drew forth an indignant protest from my ninety year old grandmother who was convinced murder was in the air. The old nurse heaved a sigh of relief for she had been convinced that I was mute and possibly stone deaf as well. And she exclaimed piously, all the high-fallutin' jargon the doctor used would have been of no avail if God himself had not answered her silent prayer.
Mother did not have a strong constitution, and was often indisposed. Therefore, I became the sole charge of the housemaid, Lakshmi. I gathered Lakshmi – who had served our family since mother's marriage – was not entirely pleased with me. If not physically handicapped, I was woefully obdurate and she for one did not think such obstinate babies came to any good. She nicknamed me 'Stubs', short for 'stubborn'.
My grandmother named me Deepak, signifying a figurine lamp since that had provided the light in which I was born; also, I suppose, because I came shortly after mother's miscarriage which snuffed out two precious lives, I was a source of pride and solace to her.
After a gap of several years during which I was busily occupied wetting napkins, certain events begin to stand out in my memory. My father, Ambernath Roy, was an eminent lawyer then. All I can recollect of him during those hectic days is a tall, athletic figure, donned either in shining black achhkan (men's long, close-necked tight fitting coat) and spotless white churidars (tightly fitting pants) or perfectly correct tweeds, with a perpetual, deeply bronzed frown embedded in a high forehead and a never fading cigarette dangling from his yellowed lips. When he left home at eight, I was busy resisting Lakshmi's efforts to clean me; when he arrived at eleven in the night I was to all intents dead to the world in a leg kicking dream. Mother was a Griselda if ever there was one – whether she was waiting to speak a few guarded words of admonition to a strong headed, errant husband, or vainly attempting to quieten an equally obdurate son from screaming at night and snoring when it was well past the time to awaken.
It was Lakshmi with her not-too-patient, ever-wagging tongue, who outwitted me; neither was she too soft-hearted not to indulge in swinging a hefty palm on my recalcitrant back – a light task considering her ample proportions but which left her in a long gasping spell.
I never knew what Sundays really stood for. In his sitting-cum-drawing room, father entertained an unending stream of visitors. Whether it was an ivory walking stick swinging Maharaja or the humbler clientele, they were all treated with the same unfailing pleasure and courtesy. He was addicted to his cronies, who were seldom absent from our house even to the extent of bedding in the spare rooms if they stayed too late.
The sitting room was out of bounds to us. Only hunchbacked Pritam, the manservant, who had served grandfather in his teens, enjoyed access to that room. And that too, to serve drinks or run some errands which were mostly to dash across the street and buy packets of cigarettes from the wayside shop. Pritam described the guests with a delightful gusto and I remember mimicking and imitating every visitor as Pritam described them to me.
When I was four, I received my full breath of freedom. It was really father who initiated this loosening of moral restraint. He had a heart mellower than a butterfly's in spite of his uncompromising visage: it pained him to witness, whenever he was able to – which was never often – a tyrannical rule imposed by what according to him was a half-witted maid servant. Lakshmi for once had the temerity to rebuke him for smoking like a chimney on fire and that kindled a fuming flame in his eyes. He maintained a discreet silence at that moment because of mother's frantic intervention, but nevertheless kept a close watch. One day, he did catch Lakshmi wielding an outraged hand on me.
I was determined to prove that gold and silver grew on trees. I had picked up several silver coins from Lakshmi's unguarded steel trunk and cautiously planted them in the courtyard. By the by she missed her money. My unexplained behaviour in rushing every morning after breakfast to a particular spot in the courtyard aroused her unhealthy curiosity. She dug up the spot one night and there discovered her silver.
The following morning she marched to my cot with a determined tread, while father was furiously shaving in an adjoining room. My cries, highly exaggerated I admit, brought him in. I quietened down on observing a purple patch quivering on either side of his half-lathered face. He demanded to know in a thunderous voice what the row was about.
"What's all this nonsense about? Can't a man shave in peace without the roof being raised over his head?"
Lakshmi quailed but bolstered up on remembering her previous victorious encounter.
"It's my money," she grumbled "'Stubs' stole them from my box and buried them. Twenty rupees in silver, imagine! I thought the rats had eaten them. Twenty rupees, just imagine! Wouldn't have bothered to say a word, if I hadn't needed the money to buy a dress, or if the amount had been paltry. But twenty silver coins….."
Father bristled up and shouted "If my son has planted your tarnished, moth-eaten silver to watch them grow into 'money trees', it only showed his dashed...his scientific spirit. Instead of patting his back, you have the nerve to drub him! Look here, old woman, I've had enough of your matronly behaviour. Henceforth, you're going to be a companion and not a second mamma to my son!"
Lakshmi gave in with remarkable alacrity since mother was busy washing her long, glossy hair and, therefore, unable to rush to her rescue and father was in a great hurry and haste always made him more pertinacious. He departed gnashing his moustaches, after issuing the peremptory command. I felt free to pull out my tongue at Lakshmi. Poor Lakshmi! Her eyes burned red with battle, but she merely came over and stroked my hair. After that incident, she let me carry out my childish investigations and expeditions in the large garden or park as I called it, and occasionally came away from her chores to point out a new flower or perhaps a new insect.
The garden was a large triangle with a semi-circular pond in its midst, the latter fringed by an almost continuous bed of seasonal flowers. The two walls surrounding it were flanked by Rustam Road and Feroze Road. The house had an imposing structure. It had a long, covered veranda running from east to west and topped by three gables. There were seven large rooms and equally as many smaller ones. In the interior was an open, airy courtyard, and it was here that mother usually received her friends.
March 1939 breezed in. The Indian festival of colours, Holi, came round to our house. This festival occurs at the onset of spring. The festival of Holi begins on a full moon day usually in the month of March as per the Indian calendar with a bonfire and is celebrated over two days. According to Indian mythology, Holi marks the day when the child devotee of the Indian deity Lord Vishnu, Prahlad, the son of the king of demons, Hiranyakashyap, was saved from death by the God. His father warned his son not to worship the god; but Prahlad continued his devotion and prayers to lord Vishnu. His demon-father made several futile efforts to have him killed. Finally, Prahlad was ordered by his father to sit on the lap of the demoness Holika who sat on a flaming pyre to burn him. Holika, who was the sister of Hiranyakashyap, had been granted the boon that even if she were to set herself on fire, she would remain unscathed. Prahlad obeyed his father but prayed to the Lord to protect him. Lord Vishnu saved his devotee from dying by the fire and instead the demoness was burnt.
On the first day of Holi, a bonfire is lit at night to signify burning of Holika. On the second day, people go around until afternoon throwing coloured powder and coloured water at each other. A special drink called 'thandai' or powdered cannabis (called 'bhang'), derived from the hemp plant, mixed with cold milk is also consumed by devotees. People invite each other to their houses for feasts and celebrations later in the evening. The deity Krishna's mythological presence in Holi appears to be undisputed. It is said that the festival is also a celebration of the death of Putana - the demoness who nearly killed Lord Krishna when he was a few months' old. The effigy of Putana burnt the night before the festival, signifies death itself just as Putana represents winter and darkness. This festival, like most Indian festivals, celebrates the victory of good over evil or light over darkness.
For once, father consented to be sprayed with a liberal gallon of coloured water. He was then besieged by a flood of coloured powder and rainbow tinted water. The flowers not to be left behind ran in a colourful riot. The menservant were hopelessly tight and the tongues of their women-folk helplessly loose. Lakshmi bought me a mechanical train, which I promptly took apart and ruined. That was not met by a hail of protestations; in fact, I believe if on that occasion someone had misplaced father's cigar-box, he would not have cared in the least.
Next morning, a cloud of butterflies raided our garden. I caught about twenty of them in a special net borrowed from the garage where all the odds and ends were secreted by an alert mother. Lakshmi brought one down with a stick very clumsily, the frail creature writhed pitifully unable to fly or crawl. Something stirred in my breast. I discarded my net and foreswore Lakshmi from slaughtering any more. Later, an impenitent pair of bulbuls (Indian passerine song birds now introduced in Florida and Australia) swooped on the elegant flyers much to my chagrin. The red vented raiders with tall pointed black crest red face patch and thin black moustachioed lines could bag only the less nimble; the rest flitted too rapidly for the tiring butchers to perpetrate further crime.
An old crony of father's, Thakur Rana Singh (who carried the title of 'Rai Saheb' which was a title of honour awarded with a medal by the colonial masters) sauntered in the garden, while I was staring entranced at the butterflies. I eyed him with some trepidation for he was reputed to be as garrulous as he was broad. He crouched and before I could protest, a fluff of feathers disappeared into his hands.
"Just you watch, little man, and we'll capture its bride", he boasted saucily.
He demanded and procured a small cage in which he securely imprisoned the captured bulbul. Next he tucked that cage together with its indignant occupant into the largest wire cage we could locate, and positioned the assembly on the branch of a mango tree. We crouched behind a rose bush, and Rai Saheb firmly caught hold of his walking stick. Sure enough after much trilling and hesitation, the other bird – the female bulbul – darted inside the larger open cage. The Rai Saheb neatly lifted his stick and shut the latch of the cage.
"There you are, my little man! Now you can teach the pair of them to whistle a tune", he gloated.
I felt proud of his feat, even though silently disapproving of it. However, pets were pets, and since the bulbuls were not to be harmed, I gingerly picked up the larger cage, in which both the birds had been transferred, and went to my cot. A parrot and a couple of fan-tailed pigeons followed next, all caught by the nimble fingers of Rai Saheb Thakur Singh Rana. And before he departed on his yearly shikar (big game hunting) in the Shivalik Hills, he brought a pair of golden spaniels. The fluffy pups immediately took to me, much to my mother's dismay. She detested any creature that bit, barked or brayed, but the lord of the manor was proud of my acquisitions.
"Nonsense, Mitali, those helpless pups can't possibly harm you. No need to run about as though devils were at your heels!" he impatiently told her.
"Then why do they jump up and bite my hair, when I bend down to pick up my ball of wool?" she demanded fretfully.
"That's because they love your lovely silken tresses", he coaxed. She blushed and dashed inside the kitchen.
Not to be outdone, father caught a small, spotted deer on one of his trips to Mohund Pass which is on the hilly road between Saharanpur and Dehra Dun, and deposited it in the garden, chuckling "Ha! That dashed Rana Singh! Let's see if he can find a lovelier creature. I'll be dashed, if he has the patience to wait and coax and catch a wild animal alive!" This was unfair to the Rai Saheb, because he was adept at baiting wild hogs, bears and even catching rogue elephants.
The fawn promptly exhibited its gratitude by ransacking the garden and chasing Lakshmi twice round the house. The large, hazel eyes gazed in wide limpid innocence at mother when she came out. It was love at first glance. The fawn would have nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else, and mother would let no one have anything to do with it. Exercising authority, perhaps, for the first time in her life, she declared the garden out of bounds, and had the lawn disfigured by planting a ramshackle enclosure on it.
News reached us in April of that year that my eldest paternal uncle who was a leading revolutionary of Bengal died in the gallows for having dared to defy the authority of a British judge who was trying him on a charge of sedition. He was reported to have quoted his eminent friend Surendranath Bannerjee, the great Indian politician who is considered one of the founders the Indian National Congress, whom the pompous judge referred to as an "unprincipled black anthropoid."
He said "M'lord, while your forefathers were hanging by their tails from tree-tops, my ancestors were well aware of and practiced those civilized rules of conduct and commerce which unbaked gentlemen of your country uphold today!"
A few weeks later, father lost his only sister when she was washed away while bathing in the ghats at Hardwar, one of the holy cities of India. A gloom descended on him. He shed his western clothes and donned the kurta and the churidars. He was too well known and his personality too formidable for anyone to protest. His British friends turned up their noses and politely hid a smile beneath the moustache, but then he could always outwit them whether it was law, philosophy or just puns, and they invariably admired an intellect that was higher than theirs.
My ninety year old grandmother was extremely pleased with the transformation in her son. Father was less reckless in his business deals and had begun, though imperceptibly, to shun the company of cigarette-smoking ladies, who in their shorts and pale, bare arms shocked her aesthetic sense. She was almost bent double and her eyes appeared strangely magnified through the powerful bifocals she habitually wore.
Hibiscus was grandmother's passion. She had planted the red, orange, black, yellow, the bluish-red and the green-red varieties in a twenty by twenty foot enclosure in one corner of the courtyard. The flowers ranged from small pickle-sized ones to large, elegant blooms that raised the envy of our neighbours. At the plainest, they were a half-open scarlet cupola so richly coloured as to be almost black, or at the exotic best, orange, fragile delicately and intricately serrated touch-me-nots which began to wither if handled even for a short while.
The flowers were always in demand and her friends used to take away basketfuls every morning much to grandmother's silent fury. During the annual Durga Puja festival which is an Indian five day festival celebrating victory of good over evil when the goddess Durga triumphs over the demon Mahishasur, her garden was raided by hierophants from different parts of the town and reduced to a petal carpeted ruin. But the trees again burgeoned in a short while and she breathed a sigh of relief. She watered the plants daily with unfailing regularity, before taking her early morning bath. She pruned them before the rains and kept a constant vigil since squirrels were fond of the blooms and, when undetected, had a merry time leaping from branch to branch nibbling at the flowers.
She devoted the entire day in silent prayer, except for the hour or so when she petted the fawn which she called endearingly as 'my darling Gopal' obviously referring to the deity Krishna, or the Cow-Herd, of the Indian Scriptures. I rarely saw her. She could barely hear and had begun to complain of nausea attacks. Therefore, when she passed away in her sleep one night, we felt relieved though unhappy for a long time.
My mother had let my hair grow. I was very fond of the light brown curls. I was, in spite of the lack of restraint, not encouraged to make friends with the neighbouring children of my age. I lived in a world of my dreams, blissfully unaware that anyone lived in our immediate vicinity. Mother received many guests daily who occasionally bought along their children. The latter and I maintained a hostile silence, each determined to ignore the other.
A slight, grey-haired neighbour, Mrs. Anjali Bhattacharjee, visited us often. I called her 'aunty' and she lovingly called me 'a miniature Shakespeare in nappies'. The phrase was incomprehensible to me then, but I understood the term had something to do with my long hair. There was a small, bald patch in the middle of my head. The bare zone irked me, whenever my fingers touched it and I asked mother what made that part so smooth. She replied in soft, caressing voice:
"Don't you know my little angel God took an instant liking to you when you were born? Maybe he was very happy with what He had created! Bending over from his heavenly altar, he kissed your head, but since the hair got into his lips, he removed some of them before kissing you!"
She then recited several stories of the God Krishna. She told me I was just as naughty as the god, which even more firmly convinced me that I was his latest incarnation though I had no idea of who or what He was and why He had to rule from a heavenly altar! I was not satisfied and asked her "But where is He? Why can't I see Him?"
Seeing my disgruntled expression she replied with a tinge of sadness "Only those who lead honest, virtuous and pious lives can see Him. When a person with virtue and humility shuts his eyes, he can see Him in all his glory. Then he becomes one with the Infinite Presence. Not all of us are fortunate enough to have a glimpse of Him since most of us sometime or the other think evil of others and do evil things."
"But how does He reveal His presence to us?" I queried.
She told me several folklores from ancient Scriptures. Before resuming her stitching work, she said "God has no form or shape – He is the Eternal Spirit present in everything and everyone. People who have led a life of penance and piety glimpse Him in various forms – forms which our sages have called reincarnations when He assumes a human shape. When you reach that stage in life, you become one with Him, and depart from your bodily form. As you grow older, you must read about the experiences of our sages and I am sure you will find some answers to your questions."
I struggled with my fledgling logic, trying to find some cohesion in what my mother explained to me. Father brought my thoughts on the subject to an abrupt end. He finally decided I had enough of 'girlish looks' and thought it was time for me to be less effeminate and to resemble more of what Nature intended me to be. Ignoring my frantic pleas, he ordered the family barber to denude my head of most of its silken growth. I was horrified. A proud father presented me a small, silver-embossed mirror. I could discover nothing out of place. I had rarely seen myself in a mirror. All I felt was the loss of my curls. I threw the gift away and trampled on it. Father sternly eyed me. I quailed and ran inside. I believe, I sulked for several days and pretended to be asleep whenever he came into the nursery.
The same year, in October, for some unknown reason, I was not allowed to go near my mother for several days. When I resisted, I was told that she was praying and wasn't to be disturbed. God was about to send me a tiny playmate. However, when I saw the lady doctor enter her room armed with knives and syringes, I was alarmed. Father had to exert quite a lot of pressure to keep me under control.
A few hours later, the doctor emerged with a reassuring smile. She darted forward like a bewigged hawk, and pinched my cheeks. Very unethically, and deliberately, I bit her ring finger. It goes to her credit that she did not scream. She was all the same rather annoyed.
"You little imp! I thought you were a nice boy, and so I brought along a baby sister for you; but now I think I oughtn't to have. I'll return her immediately to......."
She determinedly walked away. I was horrified. I rushed forward and grabbed her hand. I massaged it vigorously. "Please, please doctor – don't take her away! I'll never, never hurt you again...."
To clinch the matter, I flopped down against the door and banged my feet together. She relented and helped me up, though with a warning "Behave like a good boy ought to, and you can keep her, or else...…!"
Even at the age of four, I felt great to have a little sister even though she was so tiny that I could hardly see her eyes. How could I play with her or express my love for her? We had a blood relationship; but all relationships need a bonding to stay put. Love, trust and expression provide that bonding. If that happens, relationships grow and flourish. I longed for relationships based on loving and caring. I always wished they happened to me. As I grew up I realised that a relationship is not like a glass of wine which one takes, enjoys the moment and moves on. Relationships require a continuity to endure. And one often spends a lifetime searching for that elusive continuity.