Restless is the Mind
An excerpt from No End to the Journey
a novel by S. Shankar
Borne aloft on scores of ardent voices the song rose around Gopalakrishnan. He was in the room of the Paavalampatti Bhajan Society. It was the day set aside for bhajans, the first of the three days of cultural events organized by the Society as part of the Diwali festivities. Restless and distracted, he listened to the voices of the singers and wished he had not come. He had not been planning to, but all day the house had felt stifling, comfortless. Until coming here, he had not gone out at all, had not even left the house for his customary morning walk! He had woken at the usual time but had been unable and unwilling to forsake his bed. Overnight the unsolved problem of an appropriate route for his walk had swollen to daunting proportions. What direction would he take now that his foray into the cheri had ended in such failure? So vexing had the question become, it had kept him, disconsolate, in his bed. It was late, well past eight, before he had risen to meet the day. Parvati, already in the kitchen, had called out with loud concern: "Feeling all right? Why so late in getting up? Even Suresh is up and about." The words had clattered down on him like stones on a tin roof. He had passed wordlessly to the toilet in the backyard. And from that moment on the day had had a ragged, threadbare quality to it. All day annoyance had succeeded annoyance-Parvati's noisy banging in the kitchen, Amma's loud chanting in the puja room, the television's frivolous prattle just outside his room. Especially annoying was the television: Suresh stuck all day in front of it, glued to some nonsense or the other. How could he spend so much time watching it? How could he?
Then, late in the afternoon, as Gopalakrishnan sat at his desk, trying to concentrate on his reading, his mother had shuffled into his room to ask a question. She had stood against his desk, looking down on him. The light from the window revealed the creases in her face, the hollow cheeks, the eyes grown so faded behind the glasses. She had said, "Parvati says she is not going to the bhajan meeting because she has to make the Diwali sweetmeats and savories. Are you?" At first Gopalakrishnan had felt only irritation at his mother's interruption. Then he had thought about her question some more. His restlessness. His irritability. Could it be because he had been cooped up in the house all day? Thinking to himself that the bhajan meeting was perhaps just the diversion needed to darn the ragged day into wholeness again, he had allowed himself to be persuaded by his mother.
Mistake. Here was Gopalakrishnan at the meeting and the day was only fraying even more. He was only getting more restless and annoyed as he listened to the hapless, tuneless voices of the singers around him-each no doubt hearing a Balamurali Krishna or an M. S. Subbalakshmi in own voice!
On this day, the songs were all about Krishna, the devotional object of the singers. From the row of divine pictures that usually lined the brown painted walls of the room, the portraits of Krishna had been removed and arranged by Vasu's wife on a bench covered with a yellow silk cloth. The bench was placed prominently at the head of the room. On the floor in front of it oil lamps had been arrayed. In pride of place on the bench was a splendid picture of the blue-skinned god standing with one leg crossed in front of the other. The crossed leg rested lightly on its toes. A yellow flute pressed against his lips. Next to Krishna, a peacock trailed the myriad brilliant eyes of its train along the ground and lifted up its head in adoration. In the far distance, white cows grazed along the banks of a vivid blue river winding its way through green hills. With clear, untroubled eyes Krishna gazed out of these bucolic surroundings at his devotees sitting on jamakaalams in the village of Paavalampatti.
Around this large picture other, smaller, pictures of Krishna had been arranged. A striking one depicted Krishna with Radha. The ever-present flute at his red lips, peacock feathers in his hair, a garland of flowers around his neck-thus adorned, Krishna gazed away to one side, while the radiant Radha, clad in a green skirt and holding a flower in her hand, stood beside him with eyes demurely cast down. Radha-Krishna. Radha's Krishna. The eternal lover with his beloved. And then of course there was the inevitable picture of child Krishna surprised in mischief, a pudgy hand smeared with incriminating butter at his mouth, the pot from which he had pilfered still in his lap. Yet another picture depicted Krishna guarding his cows-Krishna the cowherd, for whom Gopalakrishnan was named. The picture evoked for Gopalakrishnan the affectionate way Murthy used to tease him. "What, Gopu?" he would say. "Where is your flute? Where are your cows? Run away?" The memory made Gopalakrishnan cast a critical eye over the gathering in the room. Those were the days, those days in the barsaati in Delhi. Look at the kind of people he was with now. Who amongst these could compare to Murthy, who knew so much, was interested in so much?
The bhajan audience comprised an assortment of his neighbors, mostly middle-aged or elderly. They sat in the pallid light entering grudgingly through the four windows of the room. Overhead three white ceiling fans churned the heavy and humid air. Some sat cross-legged, others with their legs stretched out and leaning against a wall. Resplendent saris made splashes of red and blue and green here and there. Gopalakrishnan observed that many of his neighbors had brought out their finest saris and veshtis and shirts for the occasion. Surely that pungence in his nose was mothballs? He was amused by their vanity. He noticed that very few of the younger residents of Meenakshisundareshwarar Temple Street were present. Suresh had not come. Nor had Sarala. No doubt Sarala would appear the next day, when the young men of the street were to present their dancing prowess. But Suresh.... Of Suresh who could predict anything?
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