The Breach

 

World, World, O World!
But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
Life would not yield to age.
King Lear, IV, i.

WHEN I wrote A Daughter’s Shadow* against the ground of Shakespeare’s play King Lear and of Balzac’s Old Goriot I had not read another classic, A Lear of the Steppes by Turgenev, the Russian novelist. A literary critic while writing about Turgenev’s short story, referred to my Daughter’s Shadow as an ‘incipient’ Lear. I asked myself: “if it was incipient in what sense was it?” My idea was to impress on the reader that a tragedy does often arise in the soul of an aged man on account of his daughters, though they may be normally good, without any of the intense selfishness of or the wanton cruelty shown by the heroines of Shakepeare or of Balzac. It is incipient only in the sense that my story does not display the crude primordial passions of a savage under primitive social conditions but the reactions of an age-long culture on an intelligent, and emotionally controlled Hindu, in situations where his ideals and aspirations are unrealised in his children and when disillusionment sets in the human mind in the course of human relationships and on the development of human events.

A short summary of Turgenev’s story may benefit the readers. Harlov (the Lear) is a strong well-built man with a giant human frame. He has two daughters by a frail wife who dies not long after the birth of the second girl, the elder named Anna and the younger Evlampia. He owns a large estate with a residence, outhouses, threshing floor etc., and is proud of a family lineage with a hoary tradition. His wife is chosen for him by a well-meaning aristocratic lady of the land, a lifelong friend of Harlov. (The story is related by a son of this lady who had seen the events to follow during his boyhood before he was sixteen) Harlov loves the younger girl more than the elder because of his wife’s death, and as the younger takes after him both in health, frame and features. He is also miserly, riding on an old horse for years, which is even unable to bear the heavy weight of the rider as it seemed to onlookers. He is a terror for the farm hands and his strength is such that he could easily strangle any man who would offend him. The elder girl is married to a man chosen for her by the aristocratic lady. The son-in-law works servilely for him on the estate and is poorly remunerated. The married daughter, the son-in-law and the younger girl reside with him. A husband has also been chosen by the lady for the second girl from one of the visitors, a man who had served in the army, but the marriage does not come off.

The story practically opens with the visit of Harlov to his lady friend, when he has had a bad dream followed by what he thought, was a paralytic attack of his arm while asleep. A superstitious fear of death takes hold of him. He wishes during his lifetime to divide his estates among his two daughters so that they may not subsequently quarrel among themselves, even against the advice and warning of that lady that his daughters may do him wrong, and that he himself may not be cared for by them when they have got hold of his monies. As in King Lear, he assigns to himself under the name of rations, a full allowance of normal provisions and ten roubles a month for clothes and reserves the right to go on living in the rooms he has occupied so far. The deed is signed with a pompous show before a big party wherein he invokes the aid of God that his daughters act by the deed of gift. It has even a clause embodying a curse to befall his children should they not care for their aged father. He reads aloud the portion of the deed pertaining to himself. The younger girl does not say profusely her thanks in public (as Cordelia did in King Lear) and the seed is sown for a set-in his love for Evlampia. The fool and the mad man of Shakespeare’s play are combined in the character of Harlov’s brother-in-law, in indigent circumstances, and a servant of the aristocratic lady. As in King Lear, Harlov is not properly fed, and not attended to by the daughters of the house, his rooms are even forcibly occupied by the girls as required for some or other purpose and his horse given away as a present to a farm land. He gets to be of a vacant mind, bordering on lunacy. He goes a-fishing without a tackle or a worm. When this is pointed out by the youngster, the story-teller, Harlov becomes furious and the lad has to run for his life lest he should come to harm. The accusation of the loss of his senses is keenly felt by Harlov. The brother-in-law who always accused Harlov of the death of his sister, on seeing his unkempt condition shows his scorn on his having become indigent like himself. Harlov’s affected pride makes him more furious in temper. One day he goes through a muddy tank in his desire to visit his lady friend and is described as a bear by her servants who could not fetch any dress large enough to relieve him of his wet clothes but only a sheet to wrap him up. He has already noticed that his younger girl is a paramour to his son-in-law; and that fact worries him and his pensiveness becomes all the greater. The brother-in-law’s scorn rouses him up to a sudden menta1 fury (akin to Nature’s fury in the storm of King Lear). He gets up to the roof of his house and pulls off after rafter with his own hands and threatens all persons that the beams would be hurled at their heads, should they either talk or come near him. There is a scene between the son-in-law and the younger girl who would proclaim that the house is really Harlov’s and not theirs as the son-in-law avers. No person could get to or approach him on the roof for fear of being wrung by the neck by his uncontrolled giant strength. The second house, it was said, was built with his own hands, including lifting the timbers therefor. The younger girl asks pardon and forgiveness but all to no purpose. Harlov falls down along with a beam torn up by his strength and dies by the fall. As nemesis would have it, the elder girl shoots her husband, manages the estate well and brings up her children nicely. The younger becomes a holy virgin in the Flagellant sect of dissenters and rules with a firm hand thousands of girls as a regular Commander-in-chief. The story is told with a matchless art, and it is not my intention to declaim the greatness of Turgenev. The lesson conveyed to the reader is one of terror and horror of Harlov, portrayed with all loss of culture and even the loss of love for children with no pity for them. The primitive, sub-human and animal nature of man when provoked, is seen in glaring colours as a painted portrait. What lesson the Westerner learns from the story is not clear to me but to a Hindu reader, it suggests (though unsaid) the Upanishadic saying Magridah–Do not grasp–and Kamo-karshith–Manyurakarshit–do not give way to passion and anger–for it is not human to give way to them under provocation. Both Balzac and Turgenev have only two daughters to their Lears, while Shakespeare has a third daughter Cordelia, through whom human love has re-entered the heart of King Lear. Thus Shakespeare’s art is supremer as it has given a self-direction to the reader of his play in the matter of his living a true life!

(2)

The village of Mangudi is well known to the residents of the Tanjore and Tiruchi Districts of Madras Province. If the chronicles of the men who have lived there were written, they will surely rank high enough to be beacon lights to succeeding generations. About a hundred years ago, there lived in that village over a hundred Brahmin families of the Brahacharanam subsect of Siva worshippers. They were originally very extreme Saivites not even saying ‘Govinda’ in the sandhya worship, and thus a stern austerity in the ordering of their lives was noticeable. Cynics say in derision of these Brahmin folk that ‘Brahacharana’ means ‘large-footed’. It really means ‘Brahat-charana’–those who follow in the footsteps of the great. From the Vettar, a branch of the Kaveri, a channel takes off–called the Mangudi channel, to irrigate the rice fields of that village. It runs a very zigzag course, taken by a foot passenger of Mangudi followed by a horse rider to demarcate the channel for the reason it should never silt up when it was dug. Tradition has it that it is the gift of a Prince of Tanjore to that Brahmin of magnificent strength for routing the Pahlwans or professional wrestlers of his Court. No riparian rights of other villages in the earlier reaches are even today recognised by the owners of Mangudi rice fields.

Strange to say, these Brahmins of Mangudi and its offshoot Porasakudi, reputed to be a stalwart race of men, are all of the same Gotra: they are male cousins, sometimes removed even more than the seventh or tenth generation of male ancestry. These men had perforce to seek wives from other villages, from the same subsect in the Tiruchi district lying on the north of the Kaveri and south of the Coleroon. They were capitalists, small or large, owning agricultural lands, under the ryotwari system, engaging farm paid labour of Sudras and Pallas, the very house sites of the latter belonging to the Brahmin folk. There are even now a Siva temple, with an adjacent large tank, and a Vishnu temple, built later. There was a talim khana or wrestling ground for the training of Brahmin youth besides an elementary Tamil school for children, a Sanskrit Patasala for Vedic learning, as also a music school teaching Tyagaraja’s and Syama Sashtri’s Telugu kritis. They also learnt the art of fencing with bamboo lathis. The reason for their stalwart, physical nature, though they were only good and hearty rice-eaters with dhal, milk and curd, is attributed to the fact that their lands were in the centre of certain Kallar clans, depredatory in their habits of carrying away corn just reaped and stored on the threshing floor; and thus the Brahmins in pure self-defence, learnt the art of physical well-being. It needs hardly be said that the art of fencing and wrestling gave them a sense of ‘fair play’ in worldly matters too. It is said they would not brook a foul stroke in the feats of fencing exhibited by the Sudra folk in the Ayyanar or Village God festivals and the man who hit foul would immediately be admonished. In this Mangudi village, lived an old Brahmin of about eighty years, right at the very end of the Brahmin street, always looking after himself, about five foot seven, and walking erect all through life. His corpse was given a Govinda Kolli–cremated by the other Brahmin villagers but not by his son living in the village. The history of this remarkable man, named Sarikara Iyer was resuscitated by me, piecing up the details of his career from various sources, as the event roused my curiosity.

(3)

The worldly interests of the Brahmins were necessarily co-operative in the sense that they had to work jointly for looking after the agricultural operations say, in the matter of silt clearance of the smaller village channels adjoining the fields, the guarding of the crops, the watering of the lands, the storing of water at the village anicut and the filling up of the village tanks for use if and when timely rains fail. The partition of agricultural lands under the joint family system or of co-partnership until the eldest member dies, should have led to the splitting up of the acreage under cultivation; and so when the yield from land was not sufficient to maintain the growing population, they took advantage of the English education provided in schools and colleges newly opened by Government, at Kumbakonam, Tanjore and Tiruchi and other near towns. Mangudi village saw to it that its children adopted different ways of additions to their income either by taking up Government jobs or other intellectual professions after completion of their new English education; and the rivalry of the Brahmin in the early years of the British administration took strange forms, in the matter of the successes of the younger generation. Both the rich man and the poor man sent their children to the English schools. But a rich man would say that so and so’s son too, referring to the poor man, has passed his Matriculation examination. Money had to be found for education of the sons. Land was mortgaged by the poorer cousins to the richer cousins either for the payment of interest on the security of the land or cash obtained under a usufructory system of mortgage.

Sankaran (as he was known in boyhood) was one of the first graduates with Mathematics as the optional subject to hail from the village from the poorer stock of residents. His earlier education was at the High School at Kumbakonam where his own maternal grand-mother took up a room and a kitchen to live with and cook food for him and the transport of rice and other commodities was easy enough from his village. He was betrothed at the age of fourteen just as he had passed his Matric to a girl from the Tiruchi district. In those days it was the custom for the parents of boys to pay a dowry to the father of the wedded girl. This event cost the family a bit of money and the father to continue his further education had to send him off to Tiruchi where he completed his Arts course at the then S.P.G. College (now Bishop Heber College) opposite to the huge temple tank and near the Clive House. As ill luck would l1ave it, his father passed away soon after he had left for Tiruchi to continue his studies; and his paternal lands had to be mortgaged under the usufructory system for cash required for his further education. This amount was placed on the hands of his father-in-law and he continued to be at Tiruchi. His village house in Mangudi in the Brahmin street and the house in the Sudra street were nominally let to one of his cousins so that the houses may not go into disrepair. He became a graduate at the age of eighteen but he did not take a high distinction since the languages were rather difficult for his assimilation. His father-in-law a Sanskrit scholar, and a State Vakil as a Sanskritist, suggested Sankaran’s moving to Madras to try his luck in the Provincial Accountant-General’s Office and thus his official life commenced. During any spell of leave he would go round to Tiruchi to meet his wife’s relations, with whom he was more familiar, and Mangudi was entirely off his round of visits. There is nothing to describe specially about his official life, which was humdrum routine and where one gets slowly pushed up to higher grades of pay by mere seniority and regular work. One particular feature of his character should be mentioned. He formed the habit of coming to a quick decision about the interpretation of the rules and regulations. This habit allowed him to dispose of work quickly without unnecessary waste of time, as was usual with other clerks, who would generally put up for orders long notes, discussing the pros and cons of the case. Not having any children for many years of married life he undertook a pilgrimage when nearing the age of thirty, according to custom, to Rameswaram, after which travel he was bestowed with a son. He was named Ramalingam according to the name of the deity of the pilgrim centre. A girl too was born to him some years later.

A few incidents may be related here about his athletic life. At about the age of twenty-five, when proceeding along with a marriage party of his relations, a country cart with the bamboo top and with a load of passengers slipped off the track of the bund of a canal, and a serious accident would have taken place. As he was walking by the side, he supported the huge wheel with his shoulders till further help came from other men travelling with him and the passengers could alight from that cart. On another occasion, he took a bet that he could break a silver rupee into two pieces by his teeth, and it is said he won the bet after about an hour’s struggle with the coin by his molar teeth. As to his general characteristics, it was said of him that he quoted often Shakespeare’s lines it is excellent to have a giant’s strength but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant’. His son’s education was entirely at Madras and the young man seemed to shape well for a high intellectual career. He took First Class as a graduate with History as his subject, and he was one of the top six. The next step in his education was a naughty problem. The young man wanted to take up the Bachelor of Teaching course so that he may go for a teacher’s work in schools or colleges. The father, however, having observed the son’s highly analytic talent in his summaries of studies of History, Politics and Economics, thought that the young man had inherited some of his father-in-law’s legal acumen. So in accordance with the wishes of the father, the young man passed both the Bachelor of Laws examination and his Master of Laws examination taking a high rank therein. Sankara Iyer always led a frugal life, consistent of course with the maintenance of the health of his children and his family; the earlier savings which he slowly accumulated were used for redeeming the original mortgage of his paternal lands in Mangudi village. The management of the lands was placed under one of his cousins who had so far lived in the paternal house. His subsequent savings were invested in building up a decent house with a first floor in the town site at Tiruchi, (which originally had a dilapidated house thereon) given to his wife as a stridhana at the time of his marriage. His object in putting it up was of course that his son would practise as an Advocate and if possible that he should become a great jurist, maintaining the intellectual traditions of his maternal grandfather. As it was also time near enough for his retirement from public service, he had programmed his house and built it up that he might also live on the banks of the Kaveri along with his son as it has many temples to offer worship.

Towards the end of his career, not only the sudden bereavement by the loss of his wife, but an official disgrace also overtook him. He was not given his due promotion to one of the lower gazetted services in the office by the then Accountant-General Rajah Iyer. It hurt him much because Rajah Iyer had been educated at the St. Joseph’s College, Tiruchi and passed the Intermediate examination the same year as himself; and they had been fair acquaintances then. Latterly, Rajah went to Madras for his higher education and then entered the gazetted rank direct, as the result of a competitive examination for candidates. Even during his early acquaintance, Rajah was a sort of a short fat boy, and did not command much respect from Sankaran. Rajah had all along been in Northern India and had only come to Madras at the end of his official career; so he could not forget, apparently, the intellectual snobbishness of his youth. When Sankara Iyer reminded him of his early acquaintance and pointed out that it was his turn for promotion, having had no unfavourable reports against himself, Rajah Iyer observed:

“You who are only a Third Class graduate, to take a seat along with me as a compeer! That could never be! After, all, it is a question of selection!”

In these circumstances he took some leave preparatory to retirement and came to Trichinopoly to live with his son who set up practice as an Advocate.

Sankara Iyer, Ramalingam and his wife were thus living at Tiruchi for about eight years. Sankara Iyer’s pension was sufficient to meet the family expenses along with the offtake from the paternal lands. As the father was past the age of sixty, he thought that he should complete his pilgrimage to Banares and Gaya, for it was the custom enjoined by religion that whosoever went to Rameswaram should proceed to Haridwar before the close of his life and vice versa. He then thought of writing up a deed in favour of his son (as his daughter died long ago before her marriage) settling all the lands redeemed from mortgage at Mangudi and the house at Tiruchi and other little properties elsewhere; and the deed of gift and settlement was properly drawn up and registered on stamp paper, his monthly pension alone sufficing for his personal needs.

A few days later after the registration of the deed, the father called his son and told him of the settlement and they conversed thus:

F: Our religion says that when one’s grandchild has ascended the knees of the grandparent he should relinquish family ties and start on the Vanaprastha Ashrama: on un-selfish public service if the idea is given a modern interpretation. So I have assigned all my properties to you except the long shed at the of this house with the right of entry by the side lane eight feet wide adjoining it, which would be under my control during my lifetime and left at my death for a charitable purpose, along with some funds to keep it under repair.

S: -Thank you very much, father. I am very glad indeed. I now feet a sense of independence.

F: -Since you came of age, you have been maintaining the accounts of the family. I have no other ties in this world now and I am unable to see why the sense of independence should only dawn upon you now.

S: -Though the assets are practically your self-earnings, and the income therefrom would form additions to my earnings as an Advocate I cannot explain my present feeling. The present profession of mine is indeed a very long waiting. I don’t make much except to pay for the law journals I subscribe for, as I have to keep in touch with legal decisions, and for my Bar Association membership, and for a few personal expenses including the jutka hire to attend the courts, with no decent briefs whatsoever.

F: -I am proceeding on a fairly long pilgrimage and it may take a year or more before I come . The small cash which I leave to you as capital you may draw upon for your expenditure if the need arises, for my entire monthly pension may be required to pay my travelling expenses and railway fares, etc. I have a duty to perform to my forefathers: the offerings of water and balls of rice, at Benares and Gaya for their good, as enjoined by the scriptures. So get to work with a zest and put in more zeal into your work of earning a decent livelihood.

S: -I have been cogitating whether I may not get to teaching work in one of the private colleges going to be opened shortly.

F: -If you are so sick of the Advocate’s profession, there is nothing wrong in applying for a Professorship in History. Surely the legal degrees will only be additional qualifications for your selection. As for the Degree in teaching which you don’t possess the college authorities might depute you later for such a study.

S: -Perhaps I would be the laughing stock of the Advocates Association, having passed my Master of Laws examination at a very young age.

Thus the talk ended.

Ramalingam, being now deprived of his father’s guidance seemed to be at sea in regard to his career as an Advocate. He hated his profession, which meant occasionally being slightly dishonest with the clients in regard to cases which had no chance of success whatsoever in the courts. Being of a bashful and a shy nature and having had no self-direction all these nine or more years in intellectual or other worldly affairs, it suddenly struck him that he should leave off all town life and get into a village; for he did not also like to start afresh on a different career.

As ill-luck would have it owing to an attack of illness at Benares on his return trip, Sankara Iyer was delayed long at the place. But he finally recovered though lying helplessly for long in a hospital. On return home at the end of two years to Tiruchi, he found his son not living in the house which he had built for him. The shed was also locked up. His previous letters had also been un-replied to, probably because the son’s replies could not reach him at the previous station of pilgrimage from where he wrote. Sankara Iyer had no inkling whatsoever why the house was occupied by one of the sons of Rajah lyer Mani. He got the news that the house was sold to Mani about six months previously, and that his son Ramalingam had gone and settled down in Mangudi Mani, he knew, was one of the class-fellows of Ramalingam in the B.L. course and secured only an ordinary Third Class. Rajah Iyer’s death on account of heart failure brought in a lot of money to each of his sons. As they were people of Tiruchi town for two or three generations, Mani had settled down for practice there as an Advocate two years earlier than Ramalingam. A casual talk between them must have resulted in the sale of the house at about double the money Sankara Iyer invested therein, since the site had increased in value during these long years he came to be in possession of it.

The sad and angry thoughts which arose in Sankara Iyer’s mind had been recorded in a rough diary which he had begun to write soon after he began his tour of pilgrimage and I quote therefrom the following passage: -

“My father lived according to a certain tradition and wanted me to set up a different intellectual tradition in which, I should say, I was fairly successful. For several reasons I wanted my son not to follow in my steps in subordinate official life but to start in an independent profession, on the lines of his maternal grandfather. How miserably have I failed in bringing to fruition my life’s work: of my son’s setting up a new tradition for which he has talents! The house which I built under my supervision, that I might live with my wife in our old age and where he should have looked after us has also been sold. My wife had not lived to see its, completion. I was indeed wretched owing to that fact and I named the house after my wife’s name; and yet my son seems to have had no respect for his mother’s memory and did not even wait for my return to dispose of the house. Was it a foresight that I renovated the old shed as handed to me by my father-in-law so that I might live in it until the call came to me to depart from this world? No, I shall not live here. The proverb ‘The ant builds up the anthill for the poisonous cobra to live in’ has come true in my case. For I can never forget, especially now, Rajah Iyer’s snobbishness and hurt to my self-respect. Oh Siva! Thy ways are mysterious. I may not love, but I should not hate. For hatred ever spreads like poison in subsequent lives in this world. I will go now and ask my son what precipitated the sale.” So Sankara Iyer went down to Mangudi well-nigh after a lapse of fifty years and found Ramalingam occupying the old village house and managing the lands himself. On seeing his son, he shed tears, which the son could hardly understand. The following conversation between the father and the son in snatches was also recorded in the father’s diary: -

F: -Cou1d you not have waited for my return, to sell that house which I had taken a lot pains to build, and that to Mani, Rajah Iyer’s son of all persons in this world?

S: -I do not see that I have done anything far wrong in disposing of the house. For after all, property changes hands when the wheels of fortune turn, as is often the case in this world.

F: -If you had no ready money you could have taken a small loan on the security of the house, and have deferred the sale. It pains me much to have lost what I have created for our comfort. Have you had no respect for your mother’s memory after whom the house was named?

S: -(flippantly) You said you wanted to relinquish all ties of family and worldly possessions before you left on your pilgrimage. What does all this talk mean except a strong attachment to the house, after you had given to me the full control and enjoyment or disposal thereof?

F: -You cannot understand my sentiments, and the love I had for the structure which I created out of my mind. I don’t say I have done anything wondrous. Even a bird builds its nest for its young ones. I acted on a similar instinct. I am after all human.

S: - I have not wasted the money. I have bought a few more acres.

F: -What about your legal studies on which you had spent so much of your life’s energy! Should it all go to waste except to write lease deeds yearly, to be executed by the farmers, who till the soil? To what a shallow affair your knowledge is used?

S: -Why do you thus criticise my conduct?

F: -I am sorry for all that has taken place. I have no house wherein to lay my head till the call comes for me to depart from this world.

S: -You may go where you like. You are a veritable egoist. You have been fashioning my life from the commencement, in not letting me go my own ways. The crash in my life as you think it is only due to you, and I hate you.

F: -I am sorry. If only fathers left off their children, as animals do as soon as they are able to walk, and not look after them for many long years till they are able to support themselves, how should culture, human tradition or civilisation continue to exist? The vegetative life which you propose for yourself is indeed a sorrowful plight for me to see.

S: -I have already asked you to go wherever you please.

F: -(in a fit of anger) You need not cremate my body when I am dead. You can leave it for the kites to peck at. A curse will befall you if you should do so.

Sankara Iyer did not leave the village except for a few days. Before he settled down in the village he saw to it that the long shed became an asylum for old people to live in. He lived in a small house at the end of the long Brahmin street. Though his son considered the teaching profession infra dig because he had passed his M.L., he started the work of teaching the children of the village to enable them to understand the best of the East and the West. By his labours, the Primary school became a Secondary school. All the children of the village called him ‘Thatha’ and were so pleased with the gifts he gave them from his pension, as there was enough and to spare since the village standards of living were very low indeed.

Long afterwards I asked Ramalingam why against all public opinion he had not cremated his father. He then told me his father’s final angry words and he feared a curse. I could hardly repress my cynical smile. Ramalingam may have passed his Master of Laws Examination but he very little knew the laws of love operating on the human heart, for his old father lived in the village itself to continue seeing his son during his life-time. But he would not retract from his last word though his faith would presumably often press him to ask his son’s favour, but his self-respect did not allow him to do so.

* Reviewed in ‘Triveni’ for March 1944.