It’s a question
interesting enough to think about- well, at least for a little while. What kind
of relationship has the most scope for pain? I’m not trivialising it by calling
it interesting. It’s just that it’s difficult to defend tags like profundity whereas
‘interesting’ will always find takers. So yeah. I’d come down to two options.
Parent-child is one. There’s too much emotional investment there, too much
history, too acute an instinct for anticipation and attack. You know
just where to hit and it almost always hurts. And of course, man-woman. That
one has a remarkable range of death-bound routes to choose from. The pair I’m
going to talk about in a moment is just one of the ways it can get crazy.
So let’s begin with the
girl- Sameera. She didn’t seem to be particularly exceptional in any way,
except that most people who met her thought she was. And though naturally they
didn’t think about why, chances are they couldn’t really offer an explanation
for it. In fact to be honest, she was really, well... moderate. Patient without
the halo of a martyr. Passionate without the zest of one who changes things.
Acutely logical and perceptive, but always tempered by a distaste for harsh
criticism and a fear of misplaced praise. Never really straining against the borders
though she appeared so very close. Yet, with her, one was always moved.
She moved people in the sudden, half-conscious way that an empty street at
dawn, or a new bloom on a dying plant, or the soft sigh of an animal might move
you. It didn’t have to be full of grace or subtlety, but it was real, it was
alive, it was coursing through your veins and you couldn’t dismiss it. Long
after the thrill of a first encounter with her had faded, the depth of emotion
she had once evoked would persist and call for love, even if she had been
intellectualised and dissected and scaled down to average size in the meantime.
Now that’s a lot of
words and concepts. But if we want movement, we need a few more rounds of them.
We need to introduce the man. Because till Sameera met him, there wasn’t much that
was dramatic in her life. Family played a big role, and it was an affectionate,
close knit family of four- well off, not highly cerebral but educated and in
love with the idea of education. They had a very healthy respect for each
other, and an equally healthy difference of opinions. There were frequent,
pleasant little vacations. There was a lot of talk. Friendly repartee and fiery
(but sometimes pointless) debates, the usual quarrels and some solid advice–
this formed the stuff of Sameera’s home-and conclusively-early life. Sure, her
thoughts were largely beautiful and her appearance entirely so. Her growth from
infant to young woman was full of exquisite little details; but with the world
so full of grand, explosive things, we need more than that. We need something
big, something we need to grapple with before we can name it. And that only
happened once she met Prakash.
It was in college, he
was in her class, they were both studying English. There was however a distinct
difference in the way they responded to literature. Sameera’s first instinct
was to celebrate what she loved. She knew what to say and look for as a
student, a budding critic, but above all she loved to pay tribute to a work
that affected her deeply. She spoke of these books on very personal terms,
pointed out little nuances for having struck her instead of working them into
an argument; and often went about in a glorious haze of recalling and reliving
the reading experience instead of following it up with a flurry of research.
Prakash had no patience for celebration. It came too close to religion for him,
and he despised religion, though that didn’t stop from knowing an awful lot
about it. That was the thing with him, really. He knew about
things and had a hell lot of opinions too but they hardly had anything to do
with sentiment. As for ‘intuition’, ‘instinct’, ‘spontaneous perception’, they
were dirty words. He believed they were convenient abstractions, maliciously
created to place ideas out of intellect’s reach. And he believed they were
degraded even further by romantic simpletons who pounced upon these concepts as
a means of worshipping the artist, and taking some warped pleasure in widening
the rift between the ‘intuitive genius’ and themselves. Was he a cynic? To say
that would be the easy way out. Rather, he was full of anger and that anger
worked at many levels. Often it was quiet like a snake in the sun, at other
times bristling and restless, or at still others- just a resentful fatigue.
Interestingly, his background was almost the same as Sameera’s, except that his
family was more old-fashioned, milder, their tastes more at odds with his. And
that little inclination towards the slower side was all it needed for him to
reject them. Not through confrontation, no point there; but in his mind and
heart. So he lived apart from them, in a mess near college, hardly ever got in
touch with them, and earned money by working part-time; so that his scorn
wasn’t dismantled by a parasitic existence.
Now from the above it would seem impossible for Sameera and Prakash to
achieve anything close to intimacy. But that wasn’t how things happened.
Prakash, for all his anger wasn’t cold and he wasn’t overtly hostile. He had a
way of being friendly and full of laughs even when he didn’t really care for
the person opposite. Sameera found something oddly appealing in him- the
presence of an energy and ideology, even if it wasn’t very cohesive. She knew
she herself would never achieve a concrete ideology- there were too many voices
in and outside her head, too many things to make excuses for, bring in the ‘yet
I can see why’, or the ‘even so, one might be justified in...’. Prakash’s
ability to feel things definitely, to voice them in his inimitably crude but
right on point, and often uproariously funny way- these were things that
attracted and disconcerted (even annoyed) her in the same breath. An added
factor was his face, endearingly nondescript when it wasn’t animated by
declamations. As for her effect on Prakash- it wasn’t overwhelming, but the
very fact that he couldn’t dislike despite her wispiness got him thinking. He
could chart out a whole list of things he thought was wrong with her, were
absolutely small and degrading. And yet, yet he responded to her physically, even
emotionally. There was in her a generosity, a startling lack of ego, something
which thrived on affection. It was impossible not to meet that with
pleasure.
They began seeking out
each other’s company. It was easy and unobtrusive because they both wanted it.
They never seemed to run out of things to say to each other- if opinions became
too hard to handle, there was always an anecdote, or a fresh in-house joke to
take off from. Perhaps Sameera was the only girl around who was as lovely as
she was genuine. The rest seemed to be divided between glitz and dowdiness- the
former was repellant to Prakash and the other not arresting enough. Perhaps
Prakash was the only guy who was as stimulating without being frighteningly
academic. But whether it was for lack of options, or sheer circumstances or a
natural attraction between them, Prakash and Sameera were drawn closer to each
other every day. Soon enough, the inevitable happened- a day when everything
came together- good weather, unity of thought, a well-timed kiss. And they
were, without a doubt, romantically involved.
At first, things
weren’t too different. There was the same friendly banter, the exchange of
stories. Their lovemaking didn’t seem to add much their non-physical
relationship. But few things remain static. Prakash and Sameera were definitely
heading along a trajectory and it was one that found most transparent
manifestation in Sameera. You see, she was a girl who was unnaturally sensitive
to opinion. Every little thing one said to her, unless she thought the person
was a real idiot- mattered. And if she liked the person a great deal and had
discovered the joy, thrill almost, of agreement, it mattered a hell of a lot.
It’s not as though they made her change her mind every minute, but they put her
through moments of torturous reflection and vacillation during which she’d find
herself putting forward passionate defences of contrasting opinons to differing
groups. And the conclusion she’d come to would be positively quivering with
vulnerability, where the only certainty was an overriding sympathy with the
simple, the ignorant, the pained and the conflict-ridden. Prakash listened to
what others had to say, listened carefully, but unless it was ostensibly
earth-shaking, irrefutably wise, his attention rarely seemed to serve a purpose
other than inducing a sharp reaffirmation of his thoughts. He would acknowledge
that compassion had its place in the larger scheme of things but it could never
tweak his beliefs. So it was natural that of the two, Sameera would be
disturbed by the other whereas Prakash would merely be annoyed as one might be
with a child’s naivety.
---You’re too middle
path. Middle path never goes anywhere.
--Never? That’s way
too simplistic.
--That’s a common
misconception. Extreme isn’t necessarily simplistic. It can be complex enough.
And actually achieve more.
--What if I don’t
want to achieve the same things as you do?
--Naturally, we’re
different people. But it wouldn’t stop me from scoffing at diluted philosophy.
Like, like private good, that’s another thing that really gets to me these
days. People who have more patience for a friend’s sob story than, I don’t
know- a classroom of poor children. I don’t know when we’re ever going to break
out of the I-love-my-mother mode.
--You’re so bloody
opinionated.
--Since when was
that a bad thing?
These glib assertions
on his path would trouble her more than one would expect. The worst part was,
she couldn’t be sure if he was serious because he’d even be known to say things
like -Oh I speak a lot of cock. Why was she so damn self-conscious?
But it was worse when
they spoke of concrete things. Like poverty and government and war. The cover
of reality that these subjects assume generate more memories, more tangible
images than theory so that superficiality is often hard to detect, and jargon
becomes inevitable. Sameera began to hate words like ‘fascist’, ‘tradition’,
‘neo-liberal’, ‘natural’. Every thing that tried to say something definite
seemed suffocatingly smug to her. But she couldn’t shut tear herself away from
them. They seemed too real, to urgent to shrug off. Retreat to the havens of
art was impossible now. Art became too firmly affiliated with society, and none
of the thinkers who she could respect without misgivings ever severed this connection.
She began using
Prakash’s terminology with surprising ease. She would defend his ideas in his
absence when she sensed them to be under a mere impersonal attack. And all the
while she grew increasingly resentful towards him, for not realising that she
wasn’t a ray of sunshine who’d never met a cloud. She wasn’t a fairytale
princess obsessed with crowns and rose gardens. She was scared and confused,
she always had been and the only thing she knew how to do was love. She, who
would always give more time to the individual over a group, simply because the
sight of one sad face sucked her in before a mass echo of depression could
knock her out completely. It was survival, in a way. A loving heart has a lower
threshold for sorrow than a harsher one. But he never felt pity for her, only
indulgence and affection.
Prakash sensed the
change in Sameera. More than anything, he sensed a core growing bitterness and
anger within her. And it thrilled him. All along, he had questioned himself on
his choice of lover. He had wondered whether it wasn’t mere lust, or surrender
to fresh, feminine charm. He had even suspected with a shudder that he might’ve
been pampering his pride with the tolerance and tenderness he knew he’d get
from her. But now, he felt there was substance to it. She was allowing ugliness
to breed inside her. She had opened her arms to anger. She could share his
pain, even if she didn’t quite understand it yet. Now, when they had sex, there
was a violence in it which gratified him.
With time, Sameera’s
actions and words became more and more erratic. She would just not turn up at
college on certain days, and refuse to explain why. She got a tattoo and then
got it removed in the next three days. To compensate for the waste of money,
she refused to buy herself lunch for a week and then gave up, though it hardly
covered half the expense. She would stare at the raw, red patch of skin on her
forearm with a menacing glare while it lasted. One day she woke up at dawn and
walked over 5 kilometers to college, arriving flushed and jubilant. But soon
she was bleary-eyed and slept through lessons, and when she went home it was
like a dog with its tail between its legs- humiliated. Even while these changes
were taking place, she initially retained the sweetness and vibrance of her
disposition in direct conversation with friends. But gradually it wore off. She
became increasingly argumentative and she would often just stop short in the
middle of what she was saying and drum restlessly with her fingers on some nearby
surface, staring into space. They found it tremendously strange and exhausting
too but they couldn’t hate her. A few were genuinely troubled but at large they
grew more wary than anything, backed off and hoped it was just a
passing phase. If anyone was really hurt by this change though, it
was her family. They just couldn’t fathom it and they watched and acted and
watched more with growing desperation and weariness.
She still got
into debates with Prakash but now she had had stopped being pacifiying and
accommodating. Moreover, there was no consistency in what she was saying. Her
views jumped from more radical than Prakash’s to indifferent or spiritual
within moments. Prakash never bothered playing the role of quiet listener, but
he found a peculiar sense of fulfillment in these outbursts. He looked upon
Sameera’s whole change as a transitory phase- a necessary period of turbulence
before something hard and profound set in. Even regressive views didn’t bother
him as they would have coming from other people, because they were provoked by
momentary madness. The madness would be self-redeeming. From the chaos would
emerge truth.
One day they had a
particularly violent argument. Prakash was somewhat restless that day;
Sameera’s venom and hysterics were getting a bit taxing. The last words she
said to him were-
You, and everyone
like you. You’re just so fucking arrogant. And limited. In this world, how can
you believe in anything? Anything at all? How can you even speak with a free
conscience? I don’t want your ideas, I don’t want your pretty little
guide-books telling me how to change the world. I want- I want to see pain. I
want to walk into a room and see a crowd of miserable people, wasting away, not
knowing what to say to each other, to themselves, to god or the sky or
anything. That’s the only way to be.
In a few days, news
emerged that Sameera had disappeared without a trace. Her family was frantic,
her friends concerned but not entirely surprised. They all waited long enough
till they stopped expecting a dramatic return from a whimsical absence. No
news. The moment Prakash finally accepted her disappearance as final, he said
to himself-
She’s free she’s
finally free. She’s even free of me, she doesn’t need me or any of us anymore.
He kept muttering these
words to himself, faster and hoarser. Then he went into his room, locked the
door and wept for a while.
