About the author

Shreekumar Varma is a poet, award-winning playwright,
columnist and novelist. His novel "Lament of Mohini "(Penguin Books) was published in 2000. His regular columns can be found in the New Indian Express and the Deccan Herald. He has completed a second novel Maria's Room and is working on a book on Chennai and a third novel. He can be visited at ShreeVARMA.com

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Five Drops of Gold

Freedom

by

Shreekumar Varma

They came for him in the morning.

He had eaten indiscriminately, leaving his stomach a heavy, alien thing. Appu noticed his tension. “Be brave, Vijayan, nothing will be the same.”

He knew that. “I’ll be all right. And you---don’t forget to visit us when you’re out.” He pretended to be busy going over his things, weighed down by a sudden jump of pity and revulsion. He had grown used to the sprawling hall with its concrete bunks, these men.

Boots on the floor, their low enquiring voices, the key in the lock, and this time it was his turn. He felt himself grow pale. “Visit us?” Why had he said that?

He heard a sullen voice. “What’s wrong with him? Doesn’t want to go or what? It’s a remission, man, thinks he’s off to the gallows!”

Down the long narrow passageway, their footsteps echoing. He sat down in the anteroom, waiting for Kuriakose. A warder sat with him, polishing his short fat lathi with the infinite patience of his job.

He could see into the office room behind the half-doors, the newly painted green walls, a red phone and dusty books. Kuriakose would take his own sweet time. A peon went in and out of the office clutching files, humming a film song. After a while, the doctor and a policeman passed by, talking in low voices. The warder tapped betel nut on his palm. After chewing for a while he inserted a finger into his mouth, probing.

There were too many shadows in here. He felt comfortable and a little drowsy. When he thought about it ten years was too much, too fast. In the beginning days stretched without hope. Then a routine set in. Everything by the bell. Assembly, exercise, workroom, classes, prayer. Once a week, work at the quarry. He looked forward to the outing. The sky was warm and infinite. After a week of closed spaces, the sound of metal on hot stone rang around the earth. It was hard work, with a scent of freedom.

The men inside had nothing to share but their past. When letters came, they sat around.
“Ayyo Vijayan, still nothing from her! Don’t worry, women are like that. Let her see you once, she’ll melt like butter.” “Look at mine, different problem. She waits with fire in her belly!” “You fellows think I’ll get back my job? I can’t bear to be unemployed.” “God have mercy, how many more months. Seven years since I saw my two. They’re both doing well in school. God bless!” “And your daughter? Her periods have started?” “Pah! Who are you, her grandmother? Enquiring about periods and all!”

Like Appu, he too was a sympathetic listener. He helped out in the workroom and infirmary, read aloud newspapers. Appu was older by several years. He had stopped a man from becoming a rapist. “I stopped him with these very hands.” Some nights he woke up shouting: “It’s a mistake!” Vijayan sat with him, trembling, helping him through the rest of the night. After hearing that he couldn’t have slept anyway.

He began to sweat. He bent to wipe his face with his shirtfront. The warder glanced at him. He had funny square eyes that pinned you down. “What’s the matter?” Vijayan shook his head. The warder scratched his thigh robustly. “You waited so many years. A couple of hours won’t kill you.”

He leaned his head against the wall, idly rubbing his clean-shaven face with his fingers. There was a beard once. It had labelled him Scholar, like the cloth bag over his shoulder. Cobwebs floated lazily from the ceiling. This anteroom was a bridge to freedom. It was also the room where men sweated before an audience with Kuriakose. He didn’t trust life. You could dream all you wanted but finally some cruel twist sank you. Chewed up and finished like a dog’s bone. He no longer dismissed destiny. He had been a rationalist, seeking answers in the here and now, in action and determination. Life had changed him.

He tried to shut it out. He couldn’t shut out her face. The men sympathised with him, saying she needed time to get used to the idea, of course she’d visit. They had lists of loved ones daunted by the idea of prison; it was a natural reaction. Vijayan listened in silence, unable to take their empty optimism.

His fingers remembered his beard. He’d been full of labels then, an intellectual with Marx sitting on his shoulders. Most of his classmates found Law a conduit to politics. His aim was to open a legal cell in his village for those who couldn’t afford to fight injustice. He was an enigma. Idealism like this had died in the sixties.

It was this that attracted Meera. She was small and fragile, but a fire raged within her. Everyone knew of how she’d slapped a senior in full view of the college, wrenching from the men for weeks afterwards their right to shout obscene comments. There had been no retaliation. She was like that.

They met as opponents, pitting wits at debates, mock courts and elocution contests. They hated, respected and scorned each other. Their confrontations puzzled their friends because they kept returning for more. One day someone wisecracked: “If you two ever got married, imagine the fighters you’d raise!” He replied, and he was looking straight at her: “As long as they’re standing up for the truth.”

Antagonism drew them closer. Finally they discovered they were fighting for the same things from different corners. They sat in the library, in the canteen, under the mango tree behind the science block. Their discussions were intense, their silence powerful. They were mocked. “Chhe, what a romance! At this rate they’ll read Contracts to each other on their wedding night!” But conversation was a bond, romance had nothing to do with it.

She stayed in a small rented house on the outskirts. Her father was a retired journalist. One day she took Vijayan home to meet him. The visit was a revelation. Her father turned out to be VPN whose courageous writings and Leftist convictions had shaped him through his adolescence. All three were surprised. Meera had never realised the extent of her father’s influence. The old man thought people had forgotten him.

He hardly spoke a word. Respectfully he watched them in their roles as father and daughter, surprised by this supremely talented family. He saw old photographs of a sprightly bearded VPN spattered on the walls, speaking at college functions, meeting politicians, inaugurating political forums and showing solidarity with workers, farmers and tattered squatters. There was a feeling of speed, as though he was rushing through events like a runner who has to stop. The shelves were lined with slim volumes, the large magical VPN glowing on their spines, and bound collections of his articles. An era of political inspiration lived on in that room.

Vijayan held his tongue. He wanted to, but couldn’t talk about Venu, his eldest brother killed in a police encounter seven years ago. He lay in hospital for three days before he died. His last words were: “Let the master know.”

Did the master know? It was doubtful. With the grief in the house and the constant tension of police interrogations, no one would have found the time to inform VPN. Venu was martyred in the master’s name without the master even knowing. Vijayan spent months in mourning and confusion, on the verge of hating VPN for leading his brother into sudden death.

The books made up his mind for him. Venu had accumulated a library, and VPN had the pride of place. He was barely into his teens when he began to read his books and articles. They weaved a spell around him. They gave him the philosophy that was to sustain his life. While others spouted fire, VPN alone shed light. He was aware and kind. It was a difference that transformed Vijayan’s thinking. VPN wrote: “Before you think of your own livelihood, consider the lives of others.”

Even afterwards, when the rest of the world had abandoned the master, Vijayan remained true, bathed in an afterglow, the sputtering tail of a vanishing comet. He strode through school and college, part of a team of three, staunchly supported by his dead brother and the spirit of VPN.

But now it seemed a long story to be telling them. He checked himself, listening instead. As he left the house, the old man said, “Come again. I don’t get too much company.” He brooded over these words. A man like him. Did he long for company? Why weren’t the youngsters flocking to him?

After that day, his attitude changed. She was heir to the wisdom of the master. Now their closeness could no longer conceal their feelings. They didn’t realize it themselves. Classmates teased them mercilessly, were often rude and obscene. It angered them, but they still didn’t recognize the fuel they were adding to the fire.

One Sunday afternoon he went to see her father. He was laughing to himself. It was what their classmates had seen months ago. Through all their cheap taunting had emerged a truth that now struck him like a sunburst.

He wished he could gauge her feelings. From opponents they’d grown into friends, but did she feel anything more?

VPN was reclining in his armchair, watching television. It was amusing, the great VPN watching a mushy Malayalam movie. Vijayan said, “You like watching these things?” VPN smiled and switched off the set. “There are very few things left for me.” Vijayan felt something freeze in himself. Age had robbed this man of his robustness, a certain edge. “Why don’t you write?” he asked him.

The old man laughed and shook his head. He changed the subject, saying his daughter was out with friends, so would he make tea for both of them. Vijayan felt flattered, welcomed into the inner sanctum of their house. They sat out in the tiny veranda with their coffee. Vijayan tried to get him to speak about his past, his writings and his early motivations. It was a warm day with a good breeze. They could hear the birds and squirrels from the trees in the neighbouring compound. The fish-vendor’s peculiar call, a loud lowing whistle, came like an invasion, then petered off as the man wheeled his cycle away.

“There is no more reason to write,” VPN said.

It was the most extraordinary statement. Vijayan sat on the parapet, leaning against the wall. The empty coffee cups were in front of him. VPN was bunched up in a wooden chair, his knees drawn up sharply to his chin. No reason to write! At first he thought VPN was joking. But he wasn’t, he merely looked tired. Vijayan was besieged by the feeling that he’d perhaps intruded into some weakness of the old man.

VPN spoke about his daughter. He seemed concerned about her future. “What can a motherless girl find in this town?”

“She’s a brilliant girl, sir. She will have no problem finding her way.”

VPN laughed. “Brilliance cannot lead your life for you.”

They sat in the veranda as the sunlight grew brighter and brighter.

A month later, swallowing his bewilderment, he visited again. He had avoided Meera in college, not knowing how to face her. His state of mind was reflected by a dream he had where he sailed on a large commercial steamer with lots of people and things to do, and there was a feeling of togetherness and a sense of purpose, and the waters were way below, a swirling untouchable mass. In the dream he went to sleep in his bunk, staring out of the porthole at the brilliant stars in the black sky, and when he woke up next morning he was on a raft right in the lap of a rough sea, tossed and screaming and waiting for the end.

That evening VPN took out a bottle of toddy and two glasses. She withdrew into her bedroom, saying, “I don’t disturb him.” VPN explained: “It sometimes takes the edge off old age.” Vijayan politely declined a drink and watched him down three bottles and turn into a garrulous, slightly boastful raconteur. Mosquitoes harassed them in the stuffy inner room. Vijayan felt a strong desire to get away, to escape into the night.

Instead, he listened to stories of courage and daring, sympathy and honour, of celebrities the old man had met, issues he’d tackled. He was being guided through an era where something mattered all the time, when your time was never your own.

Slowly, Vijayan relaxed. But later when he declared his admiration, the old man smiled and shook his head. “I was being paid to write. Like an actor who plays his part. What to do, the novelty wears off and you return to your own life. With its responsibilities and problems.”

The conversation progressed and Vijayan felt a deep disappointment. It was a terrible unreachable facet of history. VPN’s idealism had gradually ebbed until finally it remained a mere tool to earn a livelihood. He had lived in a time of vigour and struggle; he was a product of the times. But like so many others, he had succumbed to the dreary requirements of ritual living, of prescribed reactions and inevitable consequences. VPN! That three-letter magic had remained only in the minds of his admirers. His own reality had sucked him into its miserable depths like quicksand. The world outside was simply an office or workshop where he was paid to write, lecture and advise. Vijayan felt his dream wither and blister. The old man’s voice droned on.

My brother was betrayed. He clenched his teeth and wished he knew what to do.

VPN said, “I’m glad I was able to influence so many youngsters. Youth needs the romance of ideals.” Vijayan stared at him. Was it the drink? Was the drink dredging up the true VPN?

He didn’t personally believe in anything he wrote. Vijayan was shocked. You deceived an entire generation of youngsters!

The night wore on. VPN lowered his voice. “I don’t want her to hear but Meera is a source of great worry. It’s time she thought of settling down, getting married.”

“What about her Law?”

“She’s a woman, does all that matter?” He sat brooding. “Already people are talking. Things would be different if her mother were alive. They blame me for her plight.”

“What plight?” The words rushed out before he could stop them, like a spray of anger.

“She’s twenty. Should she be in Law College or getting married and having children?”

“She’ll get a degree and do something good with her life. Isn’t that enough?”

But VPN continued to shake his head. “Who’ll let her continue her studies? Where can we find such a husband?”

Was that when he made up his mind? Or did anger speed up his decision? VPN continued to drink. Abruptly, Vijayan held out his hand. “Just a second.” Having got the old man’s attention, he presented himself as the bridegroom who’d allow her to study. “As much as she wants!” VPN blinked, then waved him to silence. “Come tomorrow, we’ll talk about it. This is not the time.” The rest of the evening he drank hard, finished the bottles, sent him out to get a last one. As he left, VPN patted him on the shoulder and said, “Good boy!” Vijayan walked away with a greater sense of betrayal than ever.

He couldn’t sleep. His brother appeared in his dream, sweating and bleeding, asking him: Why, Why? When Vijayan told him how things were progressing, he shook his head and cried: That man killed me!

The next evening VPN spoke earnestly. “I didn’t want to get into the subject yesterday. Drinks don’t help a serious discussion.” He told Vijayan about his poor health. His motherless daughter was everything to him---son, daughter, mother. He would happily welcome Vijayan as his son-in-law provided he promised to love and care for her forever.

He should have been happy. He wanted to break the news to her. Instead, he walked out frowning and disturbed. There was a sense of distaste, a feeling that grew like a poisonous vine, a little everyday, wrapping around his heart and brain and nerves. The man was as weak as his daughter was strong. He needed her support as he limped through his tepid life! VPN had a stroke behind him; he firmly believed a second, final one was waiting around the corner. “Today he’s a master of self-pity!”

This had inspired his brother to die? He’d have been better off alive and ordinary.

He’d hoped it was only a mellowing that came with age. Many great men succumb to ordinariness once their provocations are done, when they reach an age that doesn’t support their rage. But VPN had spent a greater part of his life playing a part. Except for the very early days, as a firebrand in the vanguard of the Left’s greatest triumphs---except for that,, VPN was an actor! Acting out the role of a hero to earn his keep. The more Vijayan thought about it, the more he bristled until he stopped abruptly, asking himself if he wasn’t being excessively critical.

“I’d have been happier if he’d resisted. Happily accepted the challenge of wooing the daughter of a man I admired, a man with strong principles!”

She didn’t know the feelings he harboured about her father till one day the dam broke and out it all came. About Venu and his death. About his passion for VPN’s writings, and the great need to meet him. And then the anti-climax!

She was pained by his ambivalent feelings. She loved her father. Her own idealism had been fuelled by him. She felt Vijayan was over-reacting. “How about the hundreds of people who still respect him?” she asked. She found that Vijayan was often short with the old man, and frequently took pleasure in interrupting his morbid train of thought as he discoursed on his favourite topic, his impending death.

“I was younger then, now I look back and see my brashness, the over-confidence in your love. I was shattered by my brother’s ghost.”

One day there was a hartal in the city, no traffic, no shops, no offices, no college. The local reading room was shut, but regulars were allowed to come in through the back. There were surprised to find each other. A couple of college girls, some old men reading newspapers, there was a silence in the hall like a shadow cast by the empty day. She was behind the racks looking for a book. He was reading. The hall emptied without their realising it, and they were alone.

He went to find her. She was kneeling, immersed in a fat volume, a pile of books on the floor beside her. She looked so vulnerable, so beautiful, like a girl abandoned, clutching her book, he found he couldn’t bear the distance between them. He slipped up to her and took her in his arms.

She looked up startled. She threw a quick look over her shoulder but they were hidden from the librarian by the shelves. They had never been intimate before. She didn’t protest as he crushed her in his embrace. He could feel his fingers scathing her soft skin.

He heard a sound and started to turn. Something hard hit him on the side of his head. She had pushed him away and was trying to get up, handicapped by the pile of books beside her. The pain throbbed, swelling his temple. He squinted from his sudden blindness and saw a group of boys, smirking.

“Breaking the hartal, eh? Love-making in the library, eh?”

His blood boiled. He heard her sob, a dry, painful sound. “Bastards!” he shouted. She clutched his arm, warning him to be careful. He had never seen her so vulnerable.

“What you think, this is bloody brothel or what?”

He heard a sound behind him and saw the librarian peering out from a wall of books, scared, wanting peace again.

" Let’s go,” she whispered to him, trying to get up again.

“Hey you, can we also play this game? You want some real men? Wait at home today midnight, eh? We’ll come for you!”

He heard her gasp. He saw the librarian’s bulging eyes. When he looked again they had disappeared, their threat still echoing in the room.

The peon emerged from the shadows with two tumblers of coffee. The warder took both and handed one to Vijayan. The hot watery liquid scalded his tongue. He blew gently and watched the vapour rise. After a while, the warder said, “Come, I need a smoke.”

They stood between the office building and the passageway. The warder lit a cigarette, handed one to him. He inhaled the smoke deeply. His hand was trembling. On the other side of the low wall, the prisoners had assembled for their drill. One of them issued sharp commands to the others. A couple of policemen lounged around, rifles hanging from their shoulders. He spotted Appu in the back row.

“This is what I’ll be leaving behind… And outside? Those eyes will haunt me forever. And the question will always follow me wherever I go. Was it really a mistake? Or were you right?” He clenched a fist to stop the trembling.

That night the three friends who shared the house with him went to see a late-night movie. He stayed back. But he couldn’t sleep. He locked all the doors and windows and paced the front room like a caged animal. A madness seemed to have gripped him. He could still hear the words: “Wait at home at midnight. We’ll come for you!”

To calm himself he picked up a book at random. The words made no sense. He drank several glasses of water. He couldn’t forget the look in her eyes, the first time he’d seen her so vulnerable. He swung open the front door, took a few turns outside the house. Everything was silent in this late hour. The cool air, scented with flowers of the night, washed over him bolstering his purpose.

He opened Mohan’s cupboard and took out his hockey stick. It was a quarter past eleven. He locked the house, left the key in its usual hiding place between the doorframe and the rafter, and walked out. He walked slowly but with determination. Stray stalkers of the night, a few cars and trucks, a parade of dogs jealously guarding the street. Some of them must have wondered. Who plays hockey here at night? But hockey sticks have other uses as well. The stalkers kept a safe distance from him.

Their neighbourhood was deserted. The houses looked pale and unreal, like a ghost settlement. The sudden screech of a night bird startled him. He gathered his wits and sat down on a small cement slab just inside the wall. He leaned against the wall, prepared for a long vigil. Minutes passed. He could actually feel the sluggishness of time. He was tired and uncomfortable, there were mosquitoes above and ants below, wreaking unreasonable vengeance on him. The silence was unnerving.

He didn’t know when he fell asleep. Some sound woke him up, a shout or a cry, human or otherwise. The sides of his mouth felt gritty, his eyes burned. His body ached with the cold hardness of its perch. He jumped to his feet. What was that sound?

And then he saw a figure hurrying away, down the side of the house. It was the figure of a man, thin, a towel wrapped around the head. He wanted to yell out, to make him stop, but the words wouldn’t come out, his tongue felt swollen. The words echoed in his head: “Midnight! We’ll come for you!”

He charged forward, the stick clutched painfully in his hand. The figure with the towel around the head was now coming back. Vijayan could hardly make out the man from the shadow. He yelled and raised the stick high, holding it with both hands. The figure cried out. He heard the sound distinctly, though he couldn’t make out what was being said. He brought down the stick with all his strength. “Bastard!” Vijayan yelled.

Once was enough. The figure lay immobile, an untidy bundle grown from the ground. The moon came out. The moon had to come out then. To display his folly to himself in full brightness. A cruel imitation of a human being, the features tight with pain.

He couldn’t move, the stick wouldn’t drop from his hands, his legs were weakening horribly. He couldn’t stop himself. The words poured out from him. Unstoppably. “It’s a mistake, it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake----”

Later she said, “My father cried out. Even I heard that.” The fire in her eyes was unmistakable.
The peon ran up. “Kuriakose sir has come.”

The warder turned to Vijayan. “Okay, your time has come.”

Appu and the others were still in the yard. Exercising briskly. Getting the sun. Obeying orders. Every minute of their time was accounted for. No decisions to be made, no relationships to be mended, no guilt. Most of all, no guilt. This was the place that cleaned up your guilt. He was leaving, walking away from here.

There was life in the games yard. In comparison, the office building looked forbidding, darkly grim.

Reluctantly he began to follow the warder.

************************