The cawing of the single crow in the back yard tried to shatter the quietness of the afternoon. “Krrr. Krrr… ka ka.” It tried to caw in different notes. But instead of destroying the silence, this only served to intensify it. When the glowing mid-day sun, the idle well-side, the content cows chewing cud, the dragonflies swinging in mid-air, the calves staring at them with wide and blinking eyes, and the people dozing after a hearty meal, had all blended in the total silence, what could a solitary crow do?
As she listened to the crow, Lalitha felt that its cawing too faded to blend with the silence.
She took out the betel leaf box and began to arrange the tender green leaves. She turned them over and over, and admired the greenish glow spreading beautifully down their stems. It was an everyday sight, yet the joy flooded in her each time unfailingly.
When Kamakshi is described as “ Tamboola pooritha mukhi ”, do the words only describe her coral-like lips reddened with the stain of betel leaves…?
“Could it not denote the cool tenderness of the plucked betel leaves on the palms and the way they cast a spell on one’s eyes and heart?” she wondered.
“I must tell him when he comes home.” Before this thought was born fully, a sigh rose from her and overtook it.
He had left for the temple in the morning and had still not returned. All the women in the town had eaten and gone to rest and she… still hungry... that really did not matter, she had by now got used to it. But what had happened to this man?
Was he still singing in the Kamakshi temple oblivious to the passage of time, or had he gone away in some one’s horse drawn carriage in Tirvaiyaru? She would know only when he returned home. Even then she would get her answer not by a direct response from him, but when Subbarayan learnt a new composition from him the next day. If it was a new song about Bangaru Kamakshi, it meant that it was composed while he was lost in Kamakshi in her temple. If he had gone to Tiruvaiyaru, the song would be different. Tyagayyar’s devotion, his simple, guileless emotional outpourings and his music would be discussed with admiration. This beauty, the appreciation and the depth of devotion were details which blended with one another with certainty, but her life was an enigma. Thoughts and imagination budded and blossomed forth in her heart too, like shadowy figures, but never did she experience the joy of pouring them forth. What could one share with a person who came home already brimming with the ecstasy of experience?
If artistes could be graded as great and small, then she was a small artiste, thought Lalitha. Aching with the unexpressed beauty inside her, she asked him one day.
“Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if I could sing too?”
“Whatever I sing is only for you,” he said. She could even now at this moment recapture the way he looked at her deeply, and the touch of his loving fingers stroking her head… but to live mostly in memories and sparingly in reality? She could not get used to this as she had got used to hunger…!
She heard the rear fence being moved open.
Dharma... She already felt exhausted. Now she must brace herself for a series of probing questions from her friend, that bore into her like a bee.
“Lalitha, have you not eaten yet?”
Dharma asked, assessing the situation by a glance into the kitchen.
‘No…”
“Has he not come from the temple yet? Does he intend to stay for the naalu kaala poojai ?”
“I don’t know Dharma. May be he has gone to your village.”
“To Tiruvaiyaru? Then it will be midnight when he returns…?”
“He may even return tomorrow…”
“Can’t he say a word to you, before he goes?”
“So what if he does not?” It was convenient to deflect her slight anger on Dharma.
“It does not matter to me, my dear. I asked you only because you have still not eaten. We have all digested our lunch. But you have still kept the kuzhambu on the side stove in the fireplace, keeping it warm for him. Look at the pooja alcove! The strung flowers, the dhoopa holder and the lamp are waiting for him too. And you are passing your time stroking and arranging the betel leaves...”
“No one here is worried about how I pass my time. And why did you come?”
“Yes! I came here to swipe off your yearly stock of tamarind!” Dharmambal retorted in sarcasm, flicking her shoulder with her chin.
For a while they sat there without looking at each other.
“I will eat in the evening when it is time to milk the cows, if he is not home even then,” Lalitha said appeasingly.
“You are going to eat now.” Dharma pulled Lalitha and made her sit down. Then she spread the leaf and served the food.
“I know. If there is a gathering of satsangam in Tiruvaiyaru he will forget everything, even his wife, why even what he is wearing! There must be a limit to your love and patience… mmm… start eating.”
After Lalitha had eaten some food she continued, “Shyama Krishnan may be your husband, but I got married and moved here six years before you... I have seen him grow up. I knew even then… that the woman who becomes his wife will go through this torment.”
“Dharma, do you think I am suffering? Not at all. I have an abundance of everything at home by Kamakshi’s grace. When I step down on the street, everyone shows their respect. Our two sons are doing well too.”
“True, true. But if that were so, why does he cry out in song after song, ‘Protect me, have you no compassion, will you show no mercy?’ It is almost as if he will uproot Bangaru Kamakshi with his desperate pleas.”
Lalitha was slightly stunned.
“Madness of devotion! Anything in excess is a danger. You must be careful.”
Lalitha stopped eating.
“You don’t understand Dharma… he is not like us — satisfied with a life where one just eats, sleeps , milks the cows and bears children. His heart yearns for a fulfilment beyond that… I truly understand that, Dharma.”
“Yes… sure, it is just me… incapable of comprehension!”
“You will understand too, if you would only stop talking unceasingly and think for a moment.”
“Silly girl! You know his father repeatedly told him to give up this music and focus on service at the temple. But this boy was too stubborn. He absorbed the art of Music from Sangitha Swamigal, a visitor who stayed at home, and now just breathes and lives music, leaving you alone.”
“I am fine, Dharma. You are saying all this only because you are very fond of me.”
She went out to the backyard to wash her hands, when a question was aimed at her from behind.
“Tell me the truth, Lalitha…Do you not suffer a loneliness that we do not? With all the comforts at your command does not an invisible gap separate him from you? It is not just that... They say that Shyama Krishnan suddenly gets up in the middle of the night and starts talking to Amba Kamakshi… are you not afraid? When he chooses he shows you his love, at other times he behaves like one possessed… how do you bear with it?”
Rubbing her fingers clean, Lalitha was reminded of the solitary crow which tried to break the quietness.
Dharma’s questions were also aimed at breaking the vast quietude in the deep recesses of her heart… questions which could steal their way through the little disturbances stored in her heart’s corner... fierce questions which were intent on uprooting the foundation of her heart’s depths.
Wiping her hands on her saree ends, she came again to sit near Dharma.
“Finished..? Have you finished your interrogation?”
“Dharma, I was indeed filled with the fear, the loneliness, and the exclusion that you speak of. But now they are almost gone. It is not because I have resigned myself to his nature… it is because I have fully and completely understood him. The fear and the feeling of exclusion have truly disappeared, but the loneliness… the loneliness…” Lalitha continued clearing the huskiness in her voice. “I confess that I am unable to conquer the feeling of loneliness.”
“I feel sorry for you, Lalitha. That man will never fully comprehend your loneliness.”
“But I am not sorry. I am happy that I am here for him when he returns. And I bear the loneliness.”
“Martyrdom?”
“Do not use such big words. Have you heard his Yadhukula kambhoji swarajathi ?”
“Who has not? It is Shyama Krishnan’s swarajathi s which are heard everywhere. I have heard them all.”
“Can you show me another human or divine creation to match that swarajathi ?”
Dharmambal stood transfixed.
“The only one who can match it, is that Bangaru Kamakshi. Could anyone else have given a tangible form, a musical form to Her Eternal Youth and her Spiritual Being, Dharma? Isn’t it to this Shyama Krishnan, whom you constantly criticise, that She has given Herself? I think it is my good fortune to wait for such a man and to endure loneliness in that waiting. This good fortune transcends the man-woman divide, the husband-wife bond…”
She hid her flooding eyes in the folds of her saree .
“This swarajathi and his keerthanai s will spread waves of joy for so many years reaching so many persons. How many will attain internal purity, drowning again and again in that beauty, perfection and devotion? Have you ever thought of that, Dharma?”
When Lalitha wiped her eyes and lifted her face, Dharma was not to be seen.
Shyama Sastri stood there radiant with happiness.
“When did you..?”
“When I heard you call me, with exquisite beauty, Shyama Krishnan.”
Syama Sastri’s wife’s name was not Lalitha. The whole story is imaginary.
(The Tamil version of this short story was first published in Kalki .)
