Raja Rao

Dr. L. S. R. KRISHNA SASTRY
Andhra University

The publication of The Serpent and the Rope in 1960 brought world recognition for Raja Rao (a British Professor once mentioned publicly that the novel was even considered for the Nobel Prize) and ensured his place among the masters of Indo-Anglian fiction. Although a contemporary of Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan and a product of the India of Gandhi and Nehru, Raja Rao is a class by himself in technique and vision. Hailing from Hassan in the Mysore State, he carries in his veins a strong scholarly and spiritual tradition. His work reveals the evolution of a master artist, and The Serpent and the Rope can justly be deemed his magnum opus.

An attempt is made here to deal with three of Raja Rao’s works–Kanthapura (1938), a novel, The Cow of the Barricades (1947), a collection of short stories, and The Serpent and the Rope (1960), a novel again. To take the short stories first, The Cow of the Barricades contains nine of them, composed during 1933-47. Only one of them, A Client is translated from the Kannada original, while three others first appeared in their French versions. Slight changes are said to have been made in all the stories for the collected edition. Many of them are sketches rather than stories, like the fine free strokes of an adept painter, and vivify to us scenes of contemporary India and the India that is changeless.

Javni, the first story, is the portrait of a female domestic servant, to whom love and loyalty are second nature. She is simple and pure, happy and uncomplaining, and instinctively offers love from an abundance. She is freshly employed in the household of Ramappa’s sister–Ramappa is the narrator–and is past forty and wrinkled, but remins a rapture in her eyes. Ramappa’s brother-in-law is a Revenue Inspector and Javni has been serving only Revenue Inspectors all her life. She is sure that Ramappa too, whom she looks upon as a god, would one day become one, with his learning and beauty. She is good like a cow according to anybody in the town of Malkad, and almost a mother, as Ramappa’s sister regards her. She is content to eat her food in the byre in dirt and darkness, and is not a little surprised to find Ramappa disturbed over her plight. She cannot have light because oil is expensive and what she earns is only a rupee a month. Ramappa feels the agony that she should have felt but does not feel. He says:

I heard an owl hoot somewhere, and far, far away, somewhere too far and too distant for my rude ears to hear, the world wept its silent suffering plaints. Had not the Lord said: ‘Whenever there is misery and ignorance, I come’? Oh, when will that day come, and when will the Conch of Knowledge blow?

I had nothing to say. My heart beat fast. And closing my eyes, I sank into the primal flood, the moving fount of Being. Man, I love thee.

Javni sat and ate. The mechanical mastication of the rice seemed to represent her life, her whole existence.

It is not Ramappa but Raja Rao pouring forth his helpless misery at the sad lot of the common people in the society, and the sense of misery grows into boundless love for all humanity, which alone can end the evil. There is also a faint yet unmistakable insinuation against the malady of the caste system. Javni narrates her woeful tale to Ramappa in composed acceptance–her marriage with the Maharaja’s washerman, his tragic death, the constant protection of the ‘Great Goddess Talakkamma’, to whom she prays for Ramappa’s prosperity also. After sometime, however, Ramappa’s brother-in-law has to leave the place and Ramappa and his sister have to part from Javni. It is a tearful adieu on both the sides. Ramappa sums up Javni when he tells her:

‘No, Javni. In Contact With a heart like yours who will not bloom into a god?’

Javni is indeed a typical character of the Indian village. What is it that makes the poor people happy and fills them with endless reserves of patience and love? Is it their faith, which we call superstition? Is faith a way of escape or a means of happiness? One faces these questions in Javniand Raja Rao, also suggests the truth that God has his abode in pure and innocent hearts that know not to demand but to offer.

Akkayyais a moving story of the pathetic life of an old widow, who is also, like Javni, a part of most Indian homes. She is service personified. She cooks for the family, discusses Vedanta with the elders and brings up the children. But, alas, her service is un-recognised and she dies like an unhonoured soldier. In fact, the story is perhaps her only funeral ceremony. Narsigais a powerful account of a pure and simple shepherd boy, who gives his own version of the Gandhian revolution and its impact on the rural world. In Khandesh is a vivid picture of the village Khandesh, whose elders are loyal and faithful to the Crown and know nothing of the ‘city news’–riots and protests, arrests and shootings–that the younger generation indulged in. They are elaborately exhorted and authoritatively herded by the Patel, the local symbol of the Crown for them, to line up near the railway track to have a glimpse, although imaginary, of the Maharaja, who would pass along the route accompanied by the ‘Representative and Relation of Most High Majesty across the sea’. When they gather at last, there is a terrific storm, and a heavy downpour imprisons them, as it were. Sheets of rain like walls of curtain tear them and the trees before them look like policemen. The story depicts the transition between the era of unquestioning loyalty to the British and the beginning of organised opposition to the alien rule, and the picturesque concluding passage describing the climax has a double suggestiveness–the havoc of the British rule and also the beginning of the end of loyalty to it are alike suggested in terms of nature’s fury. The pattern of broken and unconnected lines adds a visual dimension to the description of the confusion of the storm.

The title-story, The Cow of the Barricades, is a poetic recordation of the Gandhian phenomenon, with Gauri the cow-mother as the central character. The Mahatma preaches the message of non-violence and the Master transmits it to the people, because he is their President. But the workmen maintain: “It is not with ‘I love you, I love you’ that you can change the grinding heart ofthis Government.” The people know that the Master is right and that the workmen too are right in their own way, and await the outbreak of violence with anguished hearts. Gauri, the cow, is the divine ambassador of peace. The workmen who find her proceeding towards the barricades want to shoot her but soon throw down their arms and salute her. Even the red man’s army, which after all consists of Indians, is transformed by her, because she appeared to them like a drop of the Ganges. They too join the crowd. The red chief is angered by this and shoots down Gauri: “But their chief, the red man, saw this and fired a shot. It went through Gauri’s head, and she fell a vehicle of God among lowly men.” Gauri is Soon deified and the Master Says: “Gauri is waiting in the Middle Heavens to be born. She will be reborn when India sorrows again before she is free” All creatures –the mute and the speechful–are alike capable of the fullness of love, and perhaps the mute can sometimes inspire and even elevate the speechful. Thestory thus combines myth and politics, which is often the case in India, and while in some of the other stories there are cow-like women, full of love and sacrifice, the cow is the central character of this story and, as a symbol of peace and love, strikes a contrast with the petty men who try to destroy one another, unmindful of their basic oneness as the children of God.

What is obvious in contemporary India–the impact of the red man’s rule and the transformation of the nation ushered in by Gandhi–and what is deeper down–her racial character, social peculiarities and mythical and mythological moorings–both seem to be effectively portrayed in these short stories. Though structurally they seem to be rather loosely knit, they are written in a style which has a piercing directness and poetic richness. Another important aspect of the stories is that they are the matrix out of which the themes, images and symbols of the later works are Woven. The cow image has already been referred to and this figures in some form or the other in all the works. Javni, Akkayya, Lakshmamma in The Serpent and the Rope–allseem to be of one mould and have something of the ‘Cow’ in them, while Ramappa, Moorthy and Ramaswamy appear to be portraits of the ideal man, though the character of Ramaswamy is the evidence of finished art and total vision. Likewise, In Khandesh, Narsiga and The Cow of the Barricades contain the seeds of Kanthapura.

Raja Rao’s first novel, Kanthapura, describes the whole gamut of the Gandhian revolution in a microscopic way. Kanthapura, a south Indian village, is the scene of action and the narrator is an elderly woman of the Village. She is herself a participant in the action and one sees things as she saw them. The novel is a mixture of fact and fiction, myth and history, as is seen in the short stories also. Raja Rao had already tried to impart something of the Indian idiom to the English prose style, and in Kanthapurahe writes a foreword to justify the choice of his rather peculiar idiom which includes the rhythm and the raciness, the vigour and the spontaneity of the vernacular speech. He says:

“The telling has not been easy. One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s own. One has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien language to us. It is the language of our intellectual make-up–like Sanskrit or Persian was before–but not of our emotional make-up. We are all instinctively bilingual, many of us writing in our own language and in English. We cannot write like the English. We should not. We can write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will some day prove to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American. Time alone will justify it.”

Raja Rao has probably provided in these lines a justification for all Indo-Anglian writing. If there can be American English or Australian English, why not Indian English, which will of course be basically related to the central ‘English’ English? Indian English, however, is not bad or ‘Baboo’ English. As regards the problem of style, Raja Rao says:

“The tempo of Indian life must be infused into our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs. We, in India, think quickly, we talk quickly, and when we move, we move quickly. There must be something in the sun of India that makes us rush and tumble and run on. And our paths are paths interminable...We have neither punctuation nor the treacherous ‘ats’ and ‘ons’ to bother us –we tell one interminable tale. Episode follows episode, and when our thoughts stop our breath stops, and we move on to another thought. This was and still is the ordinary style of our story-telling. I have tried to follow it myself in this story.”

The effect of the rather peculiar colloquial style is that the book reads more like a rhythmically recited ballad than like a mere novel.

Gandhi and Gandhism had their impact on almost every aspect of our national life –economics and education, politics and religion and even literature richly absorbed the influence. Several Indo-Anglian writers essayed to project the tremors and stirrings of the Gandhian India in their works. Gandhian politics and economics respectively form the themes of K. S. Venkataramani’s Kandan the Patriot and Murugan the Tailter. In Wailing for the Mahatma R. K. Narayan projects Gandhi himself and adds a new strength to the plot, even like Mulk Raj Anand in Untouchable and The Sword and the Sickle.

It is said that Gandhi made heroes out of clay, and, like the ubiquitous Krishna, proliferated himself in a way. Every village had its own local avatar of Gandhi, like Moorthy in Kanthapura, and its own share of the Gandhian revolution. In Kanthapurathe political struggle with the British is often raised to the mythological level–as in the short story Narsiga–andthe red men’s rule is regarded as the rule of the asuras. The Satyagrahis are the devas, who for the nonce suffer discomfiture but will ultimately emerge victorious. There are other interesting polarisations: Superstitious orthodoxy and progressivist reform, exploitation by the master and the helplessness of the coolie, the corruption of the official and the misery of the villager. All these minor conflicts and the major confrontation between the British bureaucracy and the Gandhian Satyagrahis unconsciously and interestingly mingle and jumble, and the book mirrors the India of the 1930 in all its confusion and intensity.

Gandhi preached the gospel of non-violent non-co-operation, and there was response like an upsurge. Every village and every town and every city had its Congress Committee and everywhere there was the stir of awakening life, the acceptance of a challenge, the preparation for a struggle. The Salt and Forest Laws were broken and toddy shops picketed. Social barriers likeuntouchability were sought to be removed and a common purpose united the people. All these phases we see in Kanthapura.

Kanthapura is calm enough to begin with like any other village, with its usual activities and innocent pleasures. The people too are seen performing their normal functions, listening to harikathas, etc. Then suddenly the city invades the village and the Congress work is started by Moorthappa, ‘the learned one’, because one day he had a vision wherein he heard a message within himself–the prompting of an ‘inner voice’–after a face-to-face experience of the Mahatma: “There is but one force in life and that is Truth, and there is but one love in lifeand that is the love of mankind, and there is but one God in lifeand that is the God of all.” He falls at the feet of the Mahatma calling himself his slave:

“What can I do for you, my son?” and Moorthy said, like Hanuman to Rama, “Any command,” and the Mahatma said, “I give no commands save to seek Truth,” and Moorthy said, “I am ignorant, how can I seek Truth?”, and the people around him were trying to hush him and to take him away, but the Mahatma said, “You wear foreign cloth, my son.”–“It will go, Mahatmaji.” –“You can help your country by going and working among the dumb millions of the villages.”–“So be it, Mahatmaji.”

From that very moment Moorthy rises a different man, and, like Ekalavya, shapes himself as a disciple of Gandhi. He gives up foreign cloth and foreign education, and returns to his village. His mother Narsamma finds all her hopes shattered. Bhatta, the custodian of orthodox religion, dislikes Moorthy’s attempts to rehabilitate the Harijans and, with the help of the Swami, the religious head, secures his excommunication. Narsamma is unable to bear the shock and dies. From that time onwards Moorthy lives in Rangamma’s house. He perseveres in his charkha and untouchability campaigns. Rangamrna also is no village simpleton. She gets quite a few newspapers from the city and acquires general education. The villagers hear her with wonder and fear when she describes the curious things that she reads about:

And she told us, too, how in the far-off countries there were air vehicles that move, that veritably move in the air, and how men sit in them and go from town to town; and she spoke to us, too, of the speech that goes across the air; and she told us, mind you, she assured us–you could sit here and listen to what they are saying in every house in London and Bombay and Burma.

She also tells them a great deal about the wonder of the country of the ‘hammer and sickle and electricity’. Pariah Ramakka, one of the listeners asks innocently, “So in that country pariahs and brahmins are the same, and there are no people to give paddy to be husked and no people to do it–strange country, mother.” Equally innocent is Rangamma’s reply, “My paper says nothing about that.” Rangamma is the leader of the women Satyagrahis.

During one of his visits to the workers in the Skeffington Coffee Estate there is an encounter between Moorthy and Bade Khan, the policeman, who symbolises the British authority. It is night time and Moorthy is asked by Bade Khan not to enter the estate. Moorthy tries to force his way and Bade Khan hits him on his head with the lathi. Immediately the workers–Rachanna Madanna and others–rush forward, fall on Bade Khan and hit him . The women tear his hair. Moorthy cries out for peace. The next day he announces a three-day fast because violence has been committed. He sits near the central pillar of the mandapand goes on meditating. Neither Rangamma with her pleadings that he should give up the fast nor waterfall Venkamma with her threat of a welcome with the broomstick at the end of the ‘counting of beads’ really disturbs Moorthy and he goes on to burn the dross of the flesh and purify the body. A new divine strength descends into him and love, unqualified and universal, gushes forth from his heart.

I shall love even my enemies. The Mahatma says “We should love even our enemies”, and closing his eyes tighter, he slips into the foldless sheath of the Soul, and sends out rays of love to the east, rays of love to the west, rays of love to the north, rays of love to the south, and love to the earth below and the sky above.

When love thus fills him, he feels a new exaltation coming to his limbs and his whole being beats out a rhythm, a song of Kabir:

The road to the City of Love is hard, brother,
It shard,
Take care, take care, as you walk along it.

When he opens his tearful eyes, he sees a blue radiance filling the whole earth and dazzled, he rises and prostrates before the god, chanting Sankara’s ‘Sivoham, Sivoham. I am siva. I am Siva. Siva am I.” On the night of the third day of the fast, there is a bhajan and people gather from the Potters’ Street and the Brahmins’ street, the Weavers’ street and the Pariah street, for the love of Moorthy has already communicated itself to the village. Even Bade Khan is there to join them. Misery needs the healing touch of compassion, and hatred is exceeded by love. At the end of the fast Moorthy emerges a different man, the man of peace and love and the instrument of Gandhi. He walks out to preach the ‘Don’t-touch-the-Government campaign.’

Very soon, with the help of Range Gowda, the man of action, Moorthy starts the Congress group in Kanthapura, affiliated to the Congress of All India, and ‘one cannot become a member of the Congress if one will not promise to practise Ahimsa, and to speak Truth and to spin at least two thousand yards of yarn per year.’ There is a god’s procession and a bhajan after which the Committee is elected. Moorthy and Range Gowda and Rangamma and Rachanna and Seenu constitute the Congress Panchayat Committee of Kanthapura. Twenty-three members are listed after two days and an amount of five rupees and twelve annas is sent to the Provincial Congress Committee. Soon afterwards the police come and arrest seventeen men of Kanthapura. All except Moorthy are finally let off.

We wept and we prayed, and we vowed and we fasted, and may be the gods would hear our feeble voices. Who would hear us, if not they?

Many advocates offer to defend Moortby. The students formed a Defence Committee and collected copper and silver. But Moorthy says, “That is not for me. Between Truth and me none shall come.” For, Gandhism implies implicit and unswerving faith in Truth. Advocate Ranganna and even Sadhu Narayan fail in trying to make him accept defence. At last the Sadhu leaves, giving Moorthy his blessings. A public meeting is organised at which the work of Gandhi and his followers is praised and orthodox religion with its threats of ex-communication is condemned. There is a big procession which cries aloud, Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai.

The people of Kanthapura see the news in the papers next day and feel relieved and happy that ‘there is still many a good heart in this world, else the sun would not rise as he does nor the Himavathy flow by the Kanchamma Hill’. The red man’s judges give three months’ rigorous imprisonment to Moorthy. On hearing the news all the Satyagrahis undertake a token fast.

Moorthy returns from prison after the passage of three months. It is on the eve of the launching of the Dandi Salt March by the Mahatma. The people of Kanthapura get ready for the event under Moorthy’s leadership. They think of the Mahatma not as a man or a god but as a Big Mountain–blue and high and wide and catching the light of the setting sun like the Sahyadri mountains. Moorthy is of course the Small Mountain. The Salt March, however, is a little delayed, and presently one sees the picketing of Boranna’s toddy grove. The melee of the advancing crowds and the furious red man’s police is indeed dramatised by Raja Rao:

Then Moorthy says, “Squat down before the toddy booth”, and we rush and we stumble, and we rise and we duck, and we all go squatting before the toddy booth, and the coolies are marching behind us and the policemen tighten round the booth, and then quick and strong, the rain patters on the leaves and the thatch and the earth. May be that’s the blessing of the gods!

The rain reminds one of the downpour in In Khandesh. Soon the idea of picketing catches like wild fire and it is done here, there, everywhere.

Events move on to the no-tax campaign and the orgy of violence unleashed by it. The flood of fury takes its toll. After prolonged peregrination some of the people eventually settle down in Kashipura. Moorthy is set free. He writes to his companion, “Ratna, things must change. The youths here say they will change it. Jawaharlal will change it. You know Jawaharlal is like a Bharata to the Mahatma, and he, too, is for non-violence and he, too, is a Satyagrahi, but he says in Swaraj there shall be neither the rich nor the poor. And he calls himself an ‘equal-distributionist’, and I am with him and his men.

The Round Table Conference, which held out the promise of freedom, is described thus in mythological terms:

They say the Mahatma will go to the red man’s country and he will get us Swaraj. He will bring us Swaraj, the Mahatma. And we shall all be happy. And Rama will come from exile, and Sita will be with him, for Ravana will be slain and Sita freed, and he will come with Sita on his right in a chariot in the air, and brother Bharata will go to meet them with the worshipped sandal of the Master on his head. And as they enter Ayodhya there will be a rain of flowers.

Range Gowda is the only one of the fighters to return to Kanthapura and the narrator herself takes leave of the village after praying to Mother Kenchamma and Father Siva. This brings the story to a close.

There are passages in the novel which are showers of lyrical poetry. Words tumble as in a quick succession and a picture of pulsating life is created. The coming of rains in Vaisakha, for example, is described thus:

The rains have come, the fine, first-footing rains that skip over the bronze mountains, tiptoe the crags, and leaping into the valleys, go splashing and wind-swung, a winnowed pour, and the coconuts and the betel-nuts and the cardamom plants choke with it and hiss . And there, there it comes over the Bebbur Hill and the Kanthur Hill and begins to paw upon the tiles, and the cattle come running home, their ears stretched , and the drover lurches behind some bel-tree or pipal-tree, and people leave their querns and rush to the courtyard, and turning towards Kenchamma temple, send forth a prayer, saying “There, there, the rains have come, Kenchamma; may our house be white as silver,” and the lightning flashes and the thunder stirs the tiles, and children rush to the gutter-slabs to sail paper boats down to Kashi.

One almost feels the rain and is drenched by the poetic prose. A slice of reality is forcefully presented and all the details are seen as in a slow motion film.

The novel portrays in this way the whole drama of the Gandhian revolution as enacted in a village in all its frenzy and fury. It might have been any village and the narrator could simply have been anybody’s grandmother. The typical features of rural life–its mixture of politics and mythology, its seraphic freedom from the taint of science and technology, its ruggedness and even its vulgarity–are faithfully reproduced in terms of art. Even the language is creatively moulded by Raja Rao to distil the raciness and the rhythm of the vernacular into English, and the poetic non-stop narration creates at once a sense of dramatic immediacy and personal intimacy. The novel is, in short, a unique fictional experiment in Gandhian politics.

After Kanthapurain 1938, the collection of short stories, The Cow of the Barricades, came out in 1947, but after that there was a spell of silence for nearly thirteen years. The Serpent and the Rope come out in 1960 and justified the long incubation. The novel is at once intriguing with its wide canvas and multiple vision of France, England and India. The response was rather one of mingled feelings, and an American reviewer, Charles W. Mann, says that “the reader must face a flood of learned allusion and often annoying garrulity in this complex, yet poetic work.” He further accuses Raja Rao of producing one of the most ‘difficult and circuitous’ novels of recent years, although he recommends it for all libraries concerned with serious modern fiction! The reviewer finally says that the try of Raja Rao is worthy of respect and much more subtle than can adequately be expressed in a review, and one would agree with Mr. Mann’s conclusion. The reviewer of the TLS, however, calls it another ‘leisurely novel’ and sums up the plot as a series of ‘difficulties attendant upon a marriage between a young Indian, Rama, and a French intellectual, Madeline. Naturally considerable adjustment of values and ideals must take place if such a union is to be satisfactory.’ Professor K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar says in his book that it is perhaps the most impressive novel yet written by an Indian in English. It might even be said that it is the most inclusive novel to be written in English by an Indian. One might turn to it for the ineluctable ‘Englishing’ of the Sanskrit verse, or one might witness in it endless debates of teasing philosophical systems, or one might gather from it pithy pronouncements and intriguing epigrams. The total comprehension of the book certainly calls for a variety of insights and hence the despair of the critic. The complexity in structure is the obvious result of Raja Rao’s unique personality–his rich and versatile scholarship and the highly metaphysical bent of his mind, which is amazingly mercurial in its movement. He cannot for this reason, conform to any formal ceiling, and this is true of all his work.

The plot is concerned with the life of a South Indian youth by name K. R. Ramaswamy. He goes to France to work on a thesis connected with the Cathar heresy. He is a Smartha and his lineage goes to Vidyaranya and even the Upanishadic Yajnavalkya. He had been initiated into the Upanishads at the age of four and is a master of his mother-tongue and Sanskrit. He quotes from French and Italian too with facility. He is firmly rooted in the Indian Vedantic tradition, but is at once at home in France or England and achieves communion with its living spirit. He is wise in himself and is the cause of wisdom in others, like the Ganges whose waters purify and whose purity does not diminish.He is the modern embodiment of Tristan, Krishna and Satyavan.

It is at the University of Caen that Ramaswamy or Rama comes in contact with Madeline and they marry On 10th February 1949. A child is born who is called Krishna and later Pierre, but the child dies of broncho-pneumonia within a year of Its birth. Hearing of his father’s illness, Rama returns to India in 1951. This is the starting point of the story and the happenings till 1954 are included in the novel. Retrospective narration, jottings from diary, descriptions and dialogues, and sheer poetic thapsodies sometimes–all these fill the wide scope of the book and make it difficult to read, though perhaps doubly rewarding.

The action of the novel is the physical basis for the spiritual evolution of Rama. Apparently Rama travels widely in India, France and England. He visits India in 1951 for his fathter’s obsequies, in 1952 for his sister Saroja’s marriage, and at the end of 1954, he proposes to return to India and spend his life in Travancore to seek his fulfilment in solitude. Having seen and experienced enough of the world and men at the physical and intellectual levels, he now qualifies for the quest and fulfilment of the spirit. In fact, this urge flows as an undercurrent throughout, because whatever the experience he is able to detach himself from its involvement, and even sensuality is but a necessary passage to the higher realms. Through a long process, he hues his way through the winding paths of Becoming to the goal of Being.

Madeline, his wife, is vividly created and her life too passes through the most breath-taking vicissitudes. From French Catholicism she drifts to Hinduism and from Hinduism finds her way to Buddhism. The process is however convincing and natural. The two children she bears do not survive and she realises that her life would acquire a meaning and a fullness only if she rises from limited love to unlimited love. Thus she naturally takes to Buddhism after Georges has initiated her into it. Through a process of struggle and hardship, she ascends to the highest spiritual levels and reduces the body to nothingness–a mere assemblage of the eighteen aggregates.

Savitri too–the Cambridge returned Raiput princess–discovers the full meaning of her life through Rama’s association. There is mutual attraction between them, and while Rama sees himself in Savitri, Savitri feels he is her Satyavan. He is Tristan and she is Iseult, he Krishna and she Radha. Even the toe-rings given by Little Mother, Rama’s second step-mother, seem to fit her. They also marry, in a symbolic way, in England, but soon she returns to India to marry the bridegroom of her parents’ choice–Pratap, a jagirdar. Both Rama and Savitri realise ultimately that their ‘marriage’ is only spiritual and should never be corrupted by physical desire. He reveals to her the true nature of love–rejoicing in the rejoicing of the other. He accepts her as his principle, his Queen. Savitri achieves her happiness in life as a true wife.

Rama also plays the peace-giver to Saroja, his step sister and to Little Mother herself. He is the wise Vedantin who is always ready with a treat of wisdom to Georges and Lezo. Even Catherine, the cousin of Madeline and the daughter of uncle Charles, is helped by him to secure her happiness. She even has a feeling that she must have been his wife in the previous birth.

In this way almost all the characters in the truly cosmopolitan gathering share the influence of Rama and work out their realisation of peace and happiness. He himself finds that he is unable to bridge a gap, fill a void. The physical operation of thoracoplasty makes him lighter and takes away his disease and sorrow, and the climatic stage of his evolution starts. As Rama says once to Madeline:

The world is either unreal or real–the serpent or the rope. There is no in-between-the-two and all that’s in-between is poetry, is sainthood...And looking at the rope from the serpent is to see paradise, saints, avataras, gods, heroes, universes. For wherever you go, you see only with the serpent’s eyes. Whether you call it duality or modified duality you invent a belvedere to heaven, you look at the rope from the posture of the serpent, you feel you are the serpent–you are–the rope is. But in true fact, with whatever eyes you see there is no serpent, there never was a serpent. You gave your own eyes to the falling evening and cried, ‘Ayyo!’ ‘Oh! It’s the serpent! You run and roll and lament, and have compassion for fear of pain, others’ and your own. You see the serpent and in fear you feel you are it, the serpent, the saint. One–The Guru–brings you the lantern; the road is seen, the long, white road, going with the statutory stars. ‘It is only the rope’. He shows it to you. And you touch your eyes and know there never was a serpent...

Here perhaps is a clue to the crucial philosophical problem of the novel. The Rajjuis mistaken for the Sarpa, and the confusion brings about a chain reaction, which only strengthens the initial confusion or illusion and imparts to it the look of reality. All action in terms of duality and relativity seems to be within the purview of the operation of this illusion. But the illusion is itself the inevitable process of reaching the Reality. The forbidden apple has to be eaten and the consequences exceeded. The many have to coalesce into the One and the multiple vision has ultimately to transform into the integral vision.

Rama’s quest is thus over and he knows his destiny. As he says, “Man is born in pain. His rebirth is solitude, his song is himself.” The key lies in looking within or antardrishti. It is then that Rama says, even like Moorthy in Kanthapura, “Siva am I.”

There are, of course, more things in the book. The concept Rajju Sarpa Bhranti or Illusion and Reality needs a scaffolding, even as the spirit needs the sheath of the mind and the mind itself the frame of the body. There are beautiful descriptions of nature and penetrating probes into human nature. The fun and frolic of a Hindu marriage, the pomp and ravelry of an English coronation, the campus of Cambridge and the life of Paris–all these and many more perceptions on a global scale are granted flesh and blood in memorable prose. There are philosophical conundrums which can exhaust the most tireless mind and expositions of serious thought which are a source of sweetness and light. One has the feeling, finally, that the novel is perhaps an inverted autobiography of Raja Rao and that Ramaswamy is a projection of the author himself in a large measure.

While Kanthapurais a novel of action, The Serpent and the Rope is essentially one of recollection. Both are authentic testaments of Indian life, but, while the one tries to capture the exciting drama on the surface, the other is concerned with the deeper verities comprehended in an epic sweep. While the one, in fine, is an experiment in language, the other is the language of the experiment that is life.