Authors: Bani Basu
‘Didn’t you know silk is cultivated in Maharashtra? How strange.’
‘Oh, is this where it comes from? Imagine the black soil giving birth to light. Do you know, Ari, from the train I saw a herd of rock elephants in the bed of a dry river. If only I could have shown you. Straight out of the Jatakas. Small, medium, large, elephants in all sizes.’
‘You wanted to show me, Esha? Tell me truly, me?’
‘I wanted to show someone. The joy of seeing something beautiful isn’t complete unless it’s shared.’
‘You’re very cruel, Esha. Couldn’t you have lied and said it was only me you wanted to show it to?’
‘But wouldn’t you have felt bad if you knew I was lying?’ Esha smiled at him. How much more cruel would he consider her if she told him that she had had no specific feeling about him till meeting him at Kalyan?
‘Esha, tell me you’ve come to me, to see me, to be seen by me, to be close to me—say it once, at least once.’
Esha said, ‘Honestly Ari, I’m here to visit Ajanta, I cannot explain how strongly it’s been calling me for some time now. My prayer to life is that I get to see the Sistine Chapel.’
A miserable Aritra said, ‘But still you won’t say it. Not even as a lie. Can the attraction of Ajanta be greater than a person’s?’
Esha said, ‘You said poets never die entirely, Ari. If, being a poet, you do not understand the attraction of Ajanta, whom will I explain it to?’
Taking Esha’s hand in his and holding it tightly, Ari said, ‘Don’t tell me charming lies then, or secret truths. Doesn’t the fact that I came to your mind in the context of Ajanta prove something?’
‘What does it prove?’ Esha smiled.
‘It proves that:
I want, it’s you alone I want still
A choking whisper in desolation’s ear
In your absence I cannot bear
My presence, my future’s dark and closed
Your name spells the meaning of eternal loss
Your name . . . just your name . . . just your name
Esha said, ‘I’d never have come if I hadn’t completely stopped wanting you. I wouldn’t have been able to. If I’d still wanted you, the humiliation, the rejection, the agony of being used, would all have hurt like fresh, gaping wounds. All this has died a natural death. I can see you entirely impersonally now.’
Every word of Esha’s was a knife being twisted in Aritra’s heart. He said, ‘How shall I seek your pardon, Esha, Presha? How? Forgive me, Esha.’
‘How strange, Aritra. I did that a long time ago. Didn’t I tell you that all these things have been turned to ashes and dispersed in the skies? It is because I have overcome those terrible shocks that I am who I am today. The ashes of those memories fell on the soil of my mind and made it fertile. I am happy that they took place and that they ended. And I can now seek your help to visit Ajanta along with Neelam. Ari, I . . . I’m hungry for experiences, parched, sometimes I wish I had a hundred bodies, a hundred minds . . .’
‘And if you did? Would you not give one of them to me?’
‘Life has to be drunk till the cup is drained, Ari, it needs so much time. So many minds. I think several lifetimes can pass having the same experience in different ways. Nothing’s left over, there’s always a shortage.’
‘How could you be so cruel, Esha? You’re not willing to give me even one of the hundreds of lifetimes, the hundreds of births. Maybe I did make a mistake, maybe I WAS unjust to you once. But still.’
‘You didn’t make a mistake, Ari. You were unjust, that’s true. But it’s not very serious in the context of one’s entire life. You didn’t do any permanent damage to me. On the contrary, your choice was right. Neelam is the one who has transformed you from your Bohemian existence to an ideal, successful, husband and father. She is your appropriate partner.’
‘I’ve changed externally. Yes, I live comfortably. But can such homebound comfort be a man’s ultimate objective? Esha, you could have been my inspiration, the one who would have helped me find my true north.’
Smiling, Esha said, ‘Don’t mind what I’m about to tell you, Ari. Humanity won’t suffer if a few poems remain unwritten, but the larger the number of peaceful, beautiful and successful units of parents and children there are, the better it is for society. And besides, you left me because you wanted Neelam, having got Neelam now you want me, if you get me you’ll definitely want someone else. This is your nature, more or less.’
‘Very well, if getting you releases me from my evil planet, you will also find some sort of release, won’t you? Although you haven’t analysed me correctly at all, I’m saying this from your point of view.’
‘Why do you keep making the same mistake, Ari? And besides, one of your notions is completely incorrect. You think Neelam is only a homemaker, a housewife, who can offer nothing by way of what you call inspiration, but you’re wrong. The truth is that you haven’t got Neelam entirely. And you don’t even know this.’
‘You’re saying Mahanam is still in her heart . . .’
‘No.’ Esha laughed. ‘Honestly Ari, I’m not saying anything of the sort, working in a commercial firm has really coarsened you. I cannot find a trace of Trilokesh Gaurav in you anymore.’
Neelam said, ‘You take the window seat now, Mahanamda. You’re here to see the sights.’
‘Haven’t you come to see them too?’
‘I have, but not the scenery.’
‘Why have you vowed to see art but not nature?’
‘There are things on this trip much more worthy of my curiosity than the scenery,’ said Neelam brightly.
‘Such as?’
‘You, Esha, Ari.’
‘Are you studying us? Aren’t Seema and Bikram included? They too are worth seeing and listening to.’
‘I’m done with seeing them, listening to them. You can.’
‘No you’re not done, Neelam. Like everyone else, they too are evolving constantly. If you’re interested in variety, you cannot ignore them.’
‘You haven’t demanded an explanation from me, Mahanam-da,’ Neelam said in a disappointed voice.
How could Mahanam tell her:
I never built on your body
A sky-kissing stairway to heaven
I never forgot you’re a magic moment’s gift
He said, ‘Very well, explain. I’m putting you in the dock.’
Neelam was hurt. ‘Your eyes are shining with laughter. Is this any way to demand an explanation?’
‘Then I shan’t ask for one,’ said Mahanam. ‘“Does anyone want to excavate his heart for pain?”’
‘No heart. No pain either. Nothing. There never was.’
‘Don’t say that. You don’t have to be so poetic.’ Mahanam laughed loudly.
‘Is Neelam telling jokes?’ said Aritra from the back.
‘Great sense of humour,’ said Mahanam, getting to his feet.
‘She has a huge stock, Mahanam-da,’ said Ari. ‘I’m not sure whether all of them are suitable for you though.’
Neelam heaved with laughter when Mahanam sat down. Pleased, he said, ‘It seems Ari has made you happy. That’s why I’m not going to scold you. I hope you understand that. The most important thing is to be happy.’
‘What makes you think I am? Because I’ve grown fat?’
Mahanam laughed loudly again.
Esha said, ‘Neelam is having such a good time. Mahanam-da is enjoying himself so much. And you’re whispering all kinds of morbid things in my ear. Be easy, Ari. Accept the truth simply.’
‘If only the truth were simple. Truth has appeared to me in very complex form.’
‘Don’t laugh, Mahanam-da,’ said Neelam. ‘Obesity could be a sign of unhappiness too. It’s nothing to laugh about.’
‘Unhappy? Are you unhappy?’
‘We’re talking of illness. Disease. Not unhappiness.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Might be dropsy.’
‘Impossible. No one can travel or do household work with dropsy.’
‘Could be a glandular problem.’
‘It could. You’re a doctor’s daughter, I’m a doctor’s nephew, let me see if I can diagnose the problem. Is it a thyroid problem? Your eyes don’t suggest it is. Don’t talk rubbish. You’ve just eaten yourself to this state. Do you have a drink or two at parties?’
‘You think a drink or two can do this?’ Neelam began to laugh. Mahanam didn’t see the tears lurking behind the laughter.
The bus had stopped. The passengers got out to stretch their legs. Bikram came up to them with two glasses of sugarcane juice. Handing them to Neelam and Esha, he came back at lightning speed with two more glasses. Giving one to Mahanam, he offered the other one to Aritra in the manner of the Air India maharaja, saying, ‘Here you are Dada.’
‘Pour it over your own head,’ snarled Aritra.
Bikram said, ‘I thought you had to pour cold water on someone’s head. Mistaken metaphor, Dada? That’s the problem with anger. Flouts all rules. You know, don’t you?’
Taking the glass from him, Seema went up to Aritra with a smile. ‘Ari-da, please.’
‘I’m smoking, Seemachal,’ said Aritra with a smile.
‘You can smoke anytime. You can’t have sugarcane juice anytime.’
‘All right then,’ said Aritra, holding his hand out.
Bikram recited loudly, with suitable gestures:
What sorcery is this, friend, what magic do you know
No one can slay a helpless damsel just the way you do
Neelam, Esha and even Mahanam couldn’t help but laugh.
The steps were cut into the hillside. The rest house was directly opposite. A quiet place. The guide said, ‘You have a little time to look around on your own, please gather here in exactly ten minutes.’ Ellora had no connection with human habitation, it was distant, not destroyed but abandoned. As though the relationship between its greatness and spiritual values was so deep that it avoided proximity. Ajanta seemed to have come a little closer to human civilization. And humans too had been emboldened to construct a place for rest nearby.
The guide said, ‘In 1817, while hunting here on Ajanta hill, an English soldier spotted rows of arches and pillars on the side of a hill across the river. The Tapti basin lies on the other side of the mountain range, while the Deccan plateau is situated this side. The tiny Waghur river flows here through gaps in the mountains, curving like a horseshoe near the Saatkund falls. This is where the Ajanta caves are situated. There are thirty caves in all. Five of them are chaityas or meditation centres. The remaining twenty-five are all sangharams or viharas. Temples. The tenth cave is the main one. Ajanta was built slowly over the period between 200 BC and 400 AD. Then, with gaps of a few years now and then, the work continued till the seventh century. In other words, it represents almost seven hundred years of work.’
Seema was counting the steps as she climbed. ‘Exactly one hundred, Esha-di,’ she said. The higher they ascended the more did JPJ, Priyalkarnagar and Neelam recede from Aritra’s mind, while the College Street crossing, Hazra Road, Cornwallis Street, Ashutosh Building and Esha came closer.
Entering the first cave temple, Esha said, ‘This must be the last cave built, isn’t it, Mahanam-da? It was carved out during the reign of the Chalukya kings, I’m told.’
She fell silent on walking deeper into the cave. How could this oblong cave with smooth walls, like a gigantic hall, have been carved out of the mountain? What extraordinary architecture. The Kailash temple was huge, regal. But for some reason this cave appeared even more astounding. So cool that it seemed to be air-conditioned.
The guide shone his torch to show the figures of Buddha in the interiors of the temple. Buddha was seated in the lotus position, as in Sarnath. The expression changed depending on the angle of the illumination. From one side he appeared to be smiling, from another, melancholy. And from the front, the Light of Asia was rapt in meditation.
Mahanam said, ‘I don’t know whether the artist meant to bring about this variety in his expressions. If he did, we have to say he was brilliant. But we are invariably reminded of the expressions of the three figures of the sun at Konark. Newly-risen, noonday, and sad and weary at sunset—do you remember, Aritra?’
Aritra said absently, ‘No. The Konark figures of the sun are in Delhi.’
‘That’s the statue from the interior of the temple,’ said Esha. ‘Don’t you remember the figures in blue stone outside?’
Mahanam said, ‘The sculptor must have felt that that prince who had renounced his home because of the pain of his fellow humans could never have forgotten the agony. Perhaps the artist in him could not accept the detached sage, indifferent to both joys and sorrows. So these expressions of happiness and sadness had automatically emerged alongside spiritual peace from the hands of this talented sculptor.’
On Mahanam’s request the guide now held his light up to the depiction of Avalokiteshwar Padmapani. Here the Bodhisattva held a bloomed lotus in his right hand, with a bejewelled crown on his head, diamond ear rings, and a necklace of one hundred pearls round his neck. The artists of Ajanta were particularly adept at painting pearls. Avalokiteshwar was standing in the well-known Tribhanga posture, immersed in his thoughts. Opposite this painting was the one of the Avalokiteshwar Bajrapani. The human world was infested with decay, death and disease. How could the Bodhisattva devote himself selfishly to private worship? Negating the lustre of ornaments and attire, of luxury and lavishness, the rapt, meditative compassion of Avalokiteshwar shone through.
The colours of the photographs in the Unesco albums were too loud. The actual colours were much more mature, subdued.
‘So much better than the prints, aren’t they, Esha-di?’ said Seema.
‘That’s just what I was thinking.’
In the tiny chamber deeper within the cave, a huge panel showed Buddha rapt in meditation and the attack of the lord of death Mara. Accompanied, obviously, by soldiers. Mara’s three daughters were present too.
Mahanam said, ‘They’ve come to disrupt his meditation, but they might end up joining it themselves.’
‘Siddhartha’s power is so much stronger in comparison that Mara’s daughters have also fallen under its spell,’ said Esha. ‘They’re defeated in the sense that they are overwhelmed.’
Bikram said, ‘These paintings are not lifelike at all. The bodies are bent and twisted in ways that are not even possible while dancing. Did they all learn Odissi?’
‘Art is never lifelike,’ said Aritra. ‘Look at the full figures, they’re completely neglected waist downwards.’
Moving further ahead, Bikram said, ‘Oh, this is paradise! Indra’s court in Amravati! When the fortunate go to heaven, this is how the nymphs make them sit on thrones and entertain them. How nice! To ensure that people do good deeds out of their greed to go to heaven, the disciples of Buddha went to so much trouble to carve out caves and make all these paintings.’ Winking at Aritra, Bikram said, ‘What do you think, Chowdhury-da, should you and I start earning some piety?’
The guide said, ‘This is a tale from the Jatakas. The Mahajanak Jataka. The Bodhisattva was born as King Mahajanak. Here he is announcing his decision to abdicate and renounce the world, which is why Queen Sibali looks so dejected. The singing and dancing have stopped. The ladies of the palace are engaged in consultation and speculation.’
‘Good god,’ exclaimed Bikram.
Esha stopped in front of the image of Princess Krishna. She was the one whom Esha had dreamt of. Thrice in succession. After seeing the pictures in the Unesco album. Dark-skinned. Downcast eyes. How had the Buddhist artist learnt of such depths of despair? The melancholy of Avalokiteshwar was not the same as this suffering. ‘Look, Ari, how miraculous this grief is. It pervades the entire cave.’ Esha sounded desolate. ‘They may look different— Sibali, Mara’s daughters, Sumana, this princess—but they’re the same in one way. Companionless. The finest men in the world have burdened a solitary woman with the sorrows of the entire world and renounced earthly life.’
Seema said, ‘I’m telling you Esha-di, without one person’s suffering another cannot achieve happiness. Are you saying this Princess Krishna is also Yashodhara?’
‘Excellent idea, Seema,’ said Esha. ‘Could be. While Mara was under attack, and Siddhartha was acquiring his status of Buddha with great pomp and ceremony, perhaps an artist was reminded by this scene of the suffering of the queen in the joyless palace in Kapilavastu. It could also be the case Seema that the bereft, unhappy female character seen everywhere in all these tales from the Jataka and the Buddhacharita has been depicted symbolically. An open symbol of womanhood. You can analyse it as you like.’
Mahanam was standing behind them, listening. ‘Don’t you have something to add, Neelam?’ he said.
Neelam’s eyes were brimming with tears. ‘What can I say, it seems to me that this is a hapless woman who has got so many things and yet got nothing, for whom getting everything has been negated, turned into a failure, by the one big thing she hasn’t got.’
Smiling, Aritra said, ‘Since I used to write poetry once upon a time, I had assumed I was the only poet in this group. That I was the only one who could understand the artists of Ajanta correctly. Now I see my notion was completely wrong. Not me, it is these three women here who are the real poets.’
Mahanam said thoughtfully, ‘Three women of the twentieth century can see the truths of life in paintings from the seventh century. Can you gauge the immensity of this artist’s success? What would he have done had he been here today?’
‘I’m sure he would have exclaimed, “Wow!”’ said Bikram.