Translated from the Hindi by Sahaj Kishen
Where there was a village many years ago, and where bulls had well oiled, black and innocent horns, where the afternoon jungle had an intense green scent of the leaves, where fresh slices of raw mango were cut with the flavour of salt and chilli, where there once stood green fragrant fields of rice, where the cook was a blind old woman, from whom the boys would get cucumber and roasted corn – this was where Ram Sajeevan’s childhood was left behind, fifteen years ago.
He’d left his childhood somewhere in those fields of Sunn Hemp. He would be there when he bunked school, where he would secretly take drags of Gada Chap beedis with the other boys.
It was a Brahmin family. Middle-peasant class. The kind of peasant-class which could afford to hold their head high in the village. Those that could give a big farmer or zamindar a small loan every now and then or pay a thousand or two for a court appearance. They could certainly afford to give the landless and the plowmen foodgrain and seeds at a one and a quarter or one and a half percent interest.
The kind of peasant household where the patwari, on his way back from the village zamindar, could stop for some paan and some tea. Maybe even joke around a bit.
Ram Sajeevan had leapt from the local town’s high school and the nearby city’s state college’s first division and arrived at Delhi’s best college, which is not only renowned in the country, but it is said that it is the most fabulous college in all of Africa and South Asia, nay, the whole Third World. The Prime Minister’s Wife, the Defence Minister’s granddaughter, Kirloskar ji’s daughter, Bata ji’s son and the country’s biggest writer’s youngest brother-in-law – they had all studied here. Most of the boys and girls here had their own sense of culture and attitude. They’d seem very special, transparent and delicate. When they’d laugh the radiance of their gleaming teeth made the village laughter resemble a grotesque mourning splattered with tobacco and catechu.
As for the girls! They had a different temperature and glow. They were mostly the jeans and sleeveless kind. They’d been made by kneading a very clean and white wheat, with just a touch of rouge. This grand celebration of bare arms, delicate voices and laughter that chimed like bells, had inspired Ram Sajeevan to acquire a new perspective on the philosophy of life. Whether he was in the bus, or alone in his room, every breath he took would make the fragrance of Voodoo and Intimate flow in his veins. This scent would always be mixed with the very unfamiliar, yet rather arousing smell of the sweat of the convent.
But a deep annoyance and anger had also crept into Ram Sajeevan’s being. In this grand and glittering city where huge shops, bungalows and cars all shone sparkling sunlight, even the biggest farmer from the village seemed to him a coolie or a garbage collector. His terrycot clothes seemed cheap, dirty and backward. His jutting pointy cheekbones, thick lips, eyes – alive yet stunned by the sun and the dust, hair – thick and black from applying sesame and mustard oil – it all seemed uncouth and backward. He wasn’t dark, but he felt like his wheatish skin could never hide the turbidity of the village. Delhi was the kind of metropolis where swimming in cash wasn’t just a metaphor. Not that Ram Sajeevan had seen another metropolis as big anyway.
Once, when he was rather new, he had asked a boy the price of his shoes. After hearing two hundred and sixty-eight rupees, he saw the shoes transform into a sack of a quintal of wheat. Going forward, this became his secretive way of seeing. Using the Money-Capital-Money (MCM) rules of economics, he would change things into their value in sacks of grain. It was a lot of fun. Altogether, this man is wearing three quintals of rice. This girl has fifty kilos of flaxseed wrapped around her wrist. The flat’s rent is three and a half quintals of wheat per month, excluding water and electricity and oh look, that bloody hero is sat on the yield of twenty acres of land, blowing on his horn.
But this wasn’t some fascinating, entertaining game. This was very serious and painful. The village’s middle peasant class was proving to be of a stature even lower than the lower class of the city. Even some small-time office clerk came across as more sparkly and elite when it came to standard of living and manners.
A fervent desire for social equality began to rise within Ram Sajeevan’s mind. This is all unjust and wrong. Seventy percent of this country cannot eat the required grains for the calorie strength it takes to stay alive and others down drinks worth three and a half quintals of wheat in one sitting! In Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid area, Ram Sajeevan saw the people of his own village – on the footpaths and under flyovers. Just as poor, just as dirty and just as hungry. “Revolution is imperative.” thought Babu Ram Sajeevan.
This was in those days when the landless and small farmers of Bengal’s northeast region, Andhra Pradesh in the South and those belonging to the Bhojpur regions in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar had all started a movement. They were being killed in ‘encounters’. Being stuffed in jails. Their eyes were being shattered in broad daylight, and the pages of the newspapers were full of similar stories. Ram Sajeevan felt like he had had a deep compassion for the poor and the helpless since childhood. He remembered many instances where he had stolen rice and maize from his house and gone and given it to the Kol’s, who hadn’t seen their hearth alight in many days. His old clothes he’d always give away to the village boys.
Ram Sajeevan’s intelligence and talent shot up. He started reading all kinds of books to understand society. He read ‘Capital’. He studied ‘Anti-Dühring’, ‘Eighteenth Brumaire of Louise Bonaparte’, and ‘Holy Family’ as well as the theories of Lenin and Mao, and slowly but surely a very clear map of our society was beginning to emerge in his mind.
But it had been ten years since he left the village. He’d keep getting his fellowship, so there was no need to return, and slowly the muddy and solid faces of those from the village became fuzzy and unrelated in his head. The farms disappeared. The old peasant way of looking at things by changing them into herds was forgotten about. The familiar smell of the sweat of the cooks flew away somewhere alongside the stench of the goats. The class structure of society was now clear to him, but people’s faces had disappeared.
The university had a hostel where Ram Sajeevan stayed. He’d wear jeans. A kurta above it and a beard. He’d started wearing glasses. He was active in the organisation and its volunteers viewed him as a great thinker and writer. While studying at the Third World’s most modern university, Ram Sajeevan was writing a D.Lit. on the Awadh farmers.
Ram Sajeevan’s room was quite something. It was never swept. A few books and newspapers lay strewn amongst dust and spiderwebs. His blanket was old and when he’d sleep, its cotton would get entangled in his hair and beard. He’d wake up at twelve in the morning. He’d mostly stay in his room and write articles and the like about society. The duration of the fellowship had ended, causing an economic hiccup. The harder it became economically, the closer he found himself to the masses. The fury against inequality in his writings heightened. He wrote about the need to completely identify with the masses in terms of their worldview and experiences, and to de-class oneself, in order to dissolve into the proletariat – all from his hostel room.
But he did not labour. He wrote about those who did labour. He wouldn’t wash his clothes for months. Wouldn’t shower. The dictatorship of the proletariat had most certainly been enforced in his beard. He wouldn’t pay any attention to cleaning his room. It certainly looked like he had de-classed himself.
And just then, keeping in mind the demands of the students, the officials of that prestigious university of the Third World demonstrated an ideal example for other universities. The example of ‘co-education’, along with ‘co-living’ or even ‘co-live-ins’.The upper half of the hostel in which Ram Sajeevan stayed was allotted to female students. The hostel was in the shape of the English letter ‘H’. The southern leg housed boys in a three-floored building that had a hundred rooms on each floor. The northern leg housed girls and the leg joining them both housed a mess, where boys and girls had breakfast, lunch and dinner together. That’s how, in a country of bullock carts, where eighty percent went hungry, this university was like an institution out of Sussex, flying onto the path of co-education, co-living and communion.
Most of the boys and girls of the university came from the ‘hello-hi tradition’. From that upper class, where their ‘convent’ background permeated through their dancing and singing, their crying and laughing. With arduous hard work, practice and dedication, Ram Sajeevan had acquired the knowledge of English and he understood a lot, but while speaking, his peculiar Bihari inflection would come in the way. He’d dodge sentences like “A bheri good emorning”, but the childhood rote learning of ‘Bhee’ instead of ‘Vee’, had crept into the innermost ways of his tongue. He felt as though in certain distinct contexts, the universe would grab the body more so than the mind. His mind would crave a Slice, but his tongue would demand kadhi.
Ram Saveen stood in the balcony of room number 308 of the third floor of the southern wing of the ‘H’. From the balcony of room number 316 of the northern wing of the ‘H’, the girl who lived there emerged. Both balconies faced each other. Ram Sajeevan finally looked over there. The girl was looking right at him. Their eyes met each other in a sensuous manner and caressed each other’s bodies, and the heat from this sensual recognition gave Ram Sajeevan a jolt of morality. Drops of sweat glistened on his forehead and on the tip of his nose. Amorous signs from post-medieval poetics. Now it was time to faint, which Ram Sajeevan avoided. He made himself look sad, serious, and somewhat indifferent. The girl went in after staying out on the balcony for a while. During this time, Ram Sajeevan did not leave his balcony, but he also did not look towards the girl again. He would feel her presence every now and then – sometimes on his back, some times on his temple. She seemed like an illuminated green shadow which had suddenly become rather close, intimate, and domestic.
While eating at the mess in the afternoon, he looked all around him with hopeful and cautious eyes, but nothing. Many girls were eating, but the matter had become otherworldly. In one go, every girl around him seemed like the girl from the balcony, and in another, they were all proven to be someone else.
When Ram Sajeevan was in his room, a sweet musical doubt opened his eyes: That girl was on her balcony and she was certainly looking at Ram Sajeevan’s balcony. He switched off the lights in his room and began looking at her with absolute amorousness. Her colour fair, not even like wheat and rouge, but like butter and roses. She was wearing a light vest like top, with an open neck and bare arms, with her thighs covered by faded foreign blue jeans. Her age was close to twenty. He felt like a spirit carved in Ajanta had been clad in modern clothes. What would this girl’s voice sound like? How would Hindi sound, doused in Voodoo?
He went out onto the balcony. The girl was staring at him in a recklessly brazen way. Values differ. If she’d been from the village, she wouldn’t have raised her eyes or would look at the park downstairs instead. Suddenly their eyes met. Ah. This was a girl’s gaze. A look that conveyed a lot. Loaded with meaning. This was a first encounter. Babu Ram Sajeevan remembered the Janak Vatika episode from the Ramleela of his childhood, and then he reached Shamsher, via Jayshankar Prasad and Maithilisharan Gupt —
Yes, love me,
like the winds love my breast,
those which they can’t
suppress to the depths
Like the fish love the waves… love me like that
Like I love you
Dissolve in mirrors and radiance,
and write me out and read me
in the sky
Smile in the mirror and
kill me
Mirrors, I am your life.
The girl had left, and he was now lost in Neruda - “Today I can write saddest lines…” In the morning, he asked the northern gate’s security guard, a Kumaoni called Dheeraj Singh Negi, whether he knew about the girl living in room 316, and he responded: “Who doesn’t know her? Back here from London. Father’s an industrialist in Kenya. Said baby studied for seven years in London before coming here. Sweet nature. She’s a researcher in CPS.”This man seemed like he had emerged from the novel ‘Kasap.’ What’s her name? Ram Sajeevan wondered. He asked the question apprehensively.“Pandit ji, your intentions seem noble. Her name is Anita Chandiwala. She’s from Gujarat. But the type to not know Gujarati, to stutter while speaking Hindi.
Then the security guard Dheeraj looked at him, took a long drag of his beedi, and started laughing and coughing. With a wink he said - “She’s hot though - a real firecracker!”
He’s a lumpen, Ram Sajeevan thought. To foster class consciousness in such members of the working class required intensive education. This was the work the communist parties of India were not doing. That’s why they don’t have a mass base amongst laborers, farmers and petty employees. Just have a look at this class four security guard - his blatant misogyny was a result of the degenerate value system of feudal and capitalist society.
Ram Sajeevan left there in a fit, while thinking about this complex issue, of whether people should be defined by their socio-economic class or by their consciousness, culture, opinions, and behaviour.
Anita Chandiwala. The name was a symphony. Anita - Anni - Anu. Anu. It could have many forms. Her surname, Chandiwala, grounded this ethereal name in materiality. Now, most of Ram Sajeevan’s days were spent gazing at the opposite balcony and uttering this name in privacy, feeling it to his core. He’d lie in his room under a blanket, and would say softly, as if addressing someone in front of him - “What did you think of Ulysses, Anni?” Then he’d go quiet to listen to her response to James Joyce. It would be in Hindi as well as in painstakingly composed English. One day, he asked her while under the covers about the films ‘Heat and Dust’ and ‘Jewel in the Crown’. Anita Chandiwala spoke at length about ‘British Raj Nostalgia’, in English. She told him about how the English were madly in love with their colonial past. They call themselves ‘Great’ Britain despite having shrunk to being thumbsized, and distort India’s history as per their whims and fancies. Then she said - “For example, the latest film, in process of production - ‘Transfer of Power’ puts that the very concept of dominion status for Indian republic was not demanded by nationalists – Nehru’s, Patel’s, etcetera…etcetera. But it was a suggestion by the last Viceroy Mountbatten.”
This girl’s opinions reflected awareness, along with the correct point of view regarding history. If she was to be educated in the scientific mode regarding society’s current circumstances and connected to the masses, then she could play a vital role in the organisation. Ram Sajeevan shrugged off his blanket and sat up on his bed - "Absolutely correct… bhat they have in. You see, they have turned our Netaji, Subhashchandra Bose into a funny political joker…” At saying ‘bhat’ instead of ‘what’, he felt deeply regretful. He solemnly vowed to never again let the shadow of his schooling fall onto his English.
Anita Chandiwala continued coming out to her balcony. Sometimes after showering she’d stand there to dry her hair. Bare arms. Eyebrows lifted in a carefree manner, shampooed and separately drying wisps of hair…Ram Sajeevan would shut the lights in his room and his innermost whispers would break out into conversation.
One day, after much waiting and after building up the courage, he made a final decision and said - “Anu, I love you.” For a while, the room was resonant with the music of this sentence. The scent of Madenia and Intimate lingered in the room. A childishly intense and dense squeal was borne from Ram Sajeevan’s heart and was just about stopped by his throat – it shook his entire body like a weak tree. He was quivering. He was hot to the touch and in saying this tiny sentence he had put much of his body’s energy, breath and blood at stake. But after saying it once he felt quite light and free. He was deliriously happy, and started singing a Hemant Kumar song.
The happiness was twofold, for in this decisive, long awaited sentence, he had said ‘love’ instead of ‘lubh’. It was a wonder, for it had happened spontaneously and without any effort. He had struck a blow to his rural, lower middle class, backward inferiority complex, and it was on all fours on the room’s floor, groaning.
Once, Ram Sajeevan felt like the girl was on her balcony till late, waiting for him. She just wouldn’t leave. She was sad and was watching the fading sunlight. Ram Sajeevan left his room and entered the balcony. The girl stood there, as if she had acknowledged his presence with a brimming intimacy and silent gratitude. He bent and rested his elbows on the warm iron railing of the balcony. The girl stayed. The relationship deepened. There was a knowing intimacy and acknowledgement in the air. There was no need to say any more. This was that moment where language was useless. ‘If silence sweetens…’ This sentence entered his mind. Then came Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan Agyeya’s line - ‘Silence is language.’
Ram Sajeevan cursed himself for letting the works of such reactionary poets enter his mind. But even after great effort, no poem by Baba Nagarjun or Alok Dhanwa came to mind. For revolutionary love poetry he had to turn to foreign revolutionary poets or desi reactionary poets. He recalled what Lenin had to say about the ‘Sleeping Princess’. Lenin considered dreams and love necessary for revolutionaries, and it was at this moment that Ram Sajeevan decided that he was going to write revolutionary love poetry! This lack in Hindi must be filled. Afterall, Neruda, Nâzım, Lorca and Mayakovsky were all revolutionaries who wrote such great love poems. In our Hindi, we have given this job to Dharmaveer Bharati, Neeraj and the New Song writers. Poets such as Bangla’s Jibanananda Das were rare in Hindi.
Not just in the organization, but even the boys outside it also knew that Ram Sajeevan was in love these days. He had told everyone himself. He was rather simple, straightforward and emotional. He would often go to his close friends at night and update them regarding the developmental stages of this love. He told his friend Naveen Dhondiyal, “That girl wants me to say something, to ask her something. Yesterday evening we stood face to face, silently, on our own balconies for half an hour. You guys won’t get it. This is a unique kind of love. We haven’t said a word to one another, haven’t talked at all, and yet we are at that stage where people with ordinary and canny sensibilities reach after months of hanging out and going out. She stands there silently and I stand here mute. We feel each other’s presence.
He said to his friend Girish Mishra one evening, “These days I’m going through a distinct transformation. Feels like Anita is growing bored of this lack of conversation. She is, after all, five to six years younger than me. How can one expect maturity so early? It has been a while that we’ve been like this. It’s bearing a certain monotony, a repetitiveness, a tedium. She is just a girl after all. The ‘second sex’s’ psychology is completely different. They only make the first move in Bambaiyya films. That’s why I consider these commercial films against reality. Not only have they convinced viewers of an illusory reality, but they have spread the notion of an unrealistic woman through mass communication media. Just look at its result - every town and city’s middle-class boy slicks his hair back, gets dressed up, imitates the hero and thinks that any girl will look at him and fall head over heels and start singing.”
Ram Sajeevan said to Naveen Dhondiyal - “The whole matter is at a critical juncture now. I’ve observed that while eating at the mess she sometimes looks over at me on purpose. Today at lunch she dropped her spoon rather loudly so that I would look over at her, but actually I was looking somewhere else at that moment.”
Once he reached at ten in the night, and peeled a mystery layer by layer, like an onion - “Have you noticed something about Anita in the past five-six days? These days she’s been wearing so much sleeveless that not only her arms, but much of her underarm is exposed. The green top she was wearing today had such a low cut that even most ‘mod’ girls wouldn’t have the audacity to wear it. You’d consider this Anita’s shamelessness, right? No, my dear friend, that’s not the case. It’s a signal. It’s her expressing her helplessness and irritation. By wearing such arousing clothes, by showing so much skin, she is trying to urge me to end my indecisiveness and asking me to talk to her clearly. After all, a girl can only use her body to change silence into language.”
Kalyan Kumar Das said to him - “Yaar, why don’t you just talk to the girl. Go to her, and say that you have something important to tell her. You’re just sitting here and spinning a web for no reason.”
Ram Sajeevan was hurt. The very thing that Anita had said so secretively in her unique way, transformed into a silent language by her beautiful young body, had been turned boorish and obscene by Kalyan Kumar Das’s comments. After all this capitalist society has borne a consumerist populace that considers everything ‘jeans’ – a commodity, in order to be understood. Like the girl is ready to be sold and I, in the market language of exchange, negotiate for her and make her mine.
But on the outside, Ram Sajeevan was silent. He said while walking -”Yeah. Just waiting for the right time yaar. By the way, whatever you think of our love, it’s not like that. Guru, this is a different and strange kind of game. Its essence was captured by Ghananand too - ‘Ati soodho saneh ko marag hai’ - Love’s path is very straightforward. There’s no deceit here, no hiding. We are ardently transparent with one another. We hide nothing from each other. When it comes to talking face to face - sitting, lying down or while walking, then that won’t be a big deal either. My dear friend, just wait. Keep watching. That will happen too. Everything you can imagine, it’ll all happen.”
The girl went out of town for about ten days. She’d left the rear window of her room open. Ram Sajeevan would quietly lay down, or stand in the balcony and keep looking at it. He felt like even her absence and the leaving open of the window was filled with meaning. That was after all, the kind of form he had chosen for his love – in it, everything except language was language. They were all signs, and always filled with various meanings.
When he told his friend Shirish Mishra about Anita leaving her window open in the evening, Shirish responded - “Ram Sajeevan ji, I think you’re going to go mad. You won’t do anything. You’ll just stay in that cave and keep thinking about all this. You tell me, does this girl even know you? Go on and ask her if she even knows your name, go!”
Ram Sajeevan was hurt again. It was a deep wound. He found such straightforward and candid talk vulgar. In the past few days he had come to believe in a spiritual truth - until it is equal on both sides, love can never be that deep or intense. He fully believed that just as he had asked the guard Dheeraj Singh Negi about Anita, Anita too would have asked the guard about him. This belief was so firm and it seemed so true that he never felt a need to verify it. He’d also feel afraid to do so. What if it wasn’t true?
Capitalism is the greatest and most unpleasant enemy of the human arts. He had rejected the pattern of worldly love and tried to make a beautiful creation instead. Here, love wasn’t a relationship, it was an art, a fervently human artwork. But a damaging consequence of this capitalist structure was that it left him unable to talk to his friends. Alienation was erecting mountains of unfamiliarity between them. Chekhov’s story ‘Grief’ came to his mind, where the character, having found no one to share his grief with, ultimately hugs his horse and cries. Ram Sajeevan couldn’t find a horse but at night he wrote a poem - ‘The Meaning of the Open Window’.
These were its first few lines –
“...Shirish Mishra
You don’t know the
meaning of an open window
in history
But I know
an open window has a future
from which bursts forth
the radiance of vows and possibilities….” etcetera etcetera…
One day, Ram Sajeevan came running into Kalyan Kumar Das’s room. Naveen Dhondiyal was there too. There was a robust and mature tree of happiness on Ram Sajeevan’s face, and its crown was shaking wildly. It seemed like his lungs were full of hibiscus and oleander flowers. It was as if a helium balloon of happiness had been tied to him and his feet barely put any weight on the ground, they just touched the ground lightly. Just on its surface.
Ram Sajeevan spoke in one breath, “Something amazing happened today. Everything has changed now. This is a turning point - everything starts afresh.”
“What happened? Did you guys talk?” Dhondiyal asked.
“Why do you guys give so much importance to talking? You should know that my reading so far has been absolutely correct. Today I was at the bus stop. She asked me - ‘Excuse me please. Whether bus number triple six is gone?’ I said - ‘It is yet to come’ She smiled. She said thank you and then went back to standing at the stop.” Kalyan Kumar Das looked at Ram Sajeevan with the utmost sympathy and asked him - “So sir, what sign does your thinking find from this?”
Ram Sajeevan was injured once again. His face reddened. “I know these things are mostly nonsense to you but if you want to look at everything from your point of view then tell me why when there were at least twenty other boys at that bus stop, Anita asked me and only me that question?”
Neither Kalyan Kumar Das nor Naveen Dhondiyal had an answer to that question.
One day at around six in the evening, Ram Sajeevan saw that Anita had dropped a piece of paper from her balcony. She looked over at him, stopped for a bit, then went back inside.
Ram Sajeevan understood everything. He went down the stairs. It was windy. There were dozens of pieces of paper on the green grass. Here, there and everywhere. Shaking slightly, and moving. Some were completely quiet and still, as if rooted to the ground. Which is that piece of paper? How does one recognise it? What must be written in it? People watched till eight in the evening. Babu Ram Sajeevan had made a pouch of his kurta and he was sorting through all the pieces of paper. Just as he would get ready to leave, he would see another small piece of paper move under some grass. He would pick it up, trembling with inspiration.
It was two at night. He kept his room’s lights on, opened all the pieces of paper and turned them over diligently. Having seen all of them once, doubts arose in his mind and he looked over them again. He tried to sleep, but an intense arousal, a deep curiosity and a breath-stopping anxiety kept him up and he kept going over the pieces of paper one by one. Ram Sajeevan sat amongst the small colourful pieces of paper that now adorned the floor, his bed and everywhere in his room.
Ram Sajeevan asked - “Anu, do you know how people in the village live? How their bones start jutting out, having fought the barren land and the dry sky? How feudal oppression and exploitation from moneylenders renders their lives worse than insects…”
Anita’s eyes were moist. Ram Sajeevan covered his head with his blanket and burst into tears. For three hours straight. Ram Sajeevan’s eyes were always wide and red. It seemed as if, like Ghalib had said, his blood was no longer ready to just be in his veins, and that it had settled in his eyes. When he opened his mouth, it remained open. His beard was arbitrary and anarchic like an African jungle. The hems of his pants were covered in mud and dust.
Whenever someone would talk to him, it would take him quite a while to understand it, and even then he’d often mishear them. Then, he would begin telling them about his love with a great affinity, carefreeness and innocence.
One day there was an old woman standing next to Anita on the balcony. She was wearing a white sari with a brown border. Her hair, just like the wings of a heron. Wearing thin, golden rimmed glasses. They were both looking towards his balcony.
Ram Sajeevan washed his face after weeks. His mind lit up at the coolness of the water. He wore another kurta. He came out to the balcony, looked at the sky and smiled. He tried to recall Neruda or some other poet’s poem but for some reason Bankim Chandra’s lines kept coming to mind - “Dark fields waving, Mother of might, Rich with thy hurrying streams, Bright with thy orchard gleams, Mother, I bow to thee!” These days Ram Sajeevan had written something - ‘Society’s Current Socio-Political Situation and the Developmental Stages of Class Contradiction.’
This article was read at a specially convened meeting at night. Ram Sajeevan’s objective gaze and his scientific understanding of society’s circumstances were praised.
One day Ram Sajeevan sat at the college cafeteria till late. Ahead of him, a few tables apart, Anita was sitting. She was writing something in her notebook.
Ram Sajeevan knew very well that she wasn’t writing anything in her notebook. She was just acting as if she was writing and he knew that she was sitting there only because he was too.
These days there was a crisis - no one wanted to hear about his love anymore. And he had nothing else to talk about.
Relationships had lapsed.
Another reason for this was that Ram Sajeevan spoke of his love in a language that was so different, that it was impossible for anyone else to understand. Even his closest friends would shy away from him. One day, Naveen Dhondiyal told them about how Ram Sajeevan came into his room at nearly two at night. His eyes were red and wide. His kurta was torn and dirty. For about half an hour he spoke in a French-like language. He would stutter in between and spit dripped from his mouth. Then he laughed for a long time.
Naveen Dhondiyal, Aslam Akhtar, Shirish, Kalyan Kumar Das and everyone else turned up to Ram Sajeevan’s room. A decision was made that only by destroying the universe he had created for himself, could he be saved. “He has intense schizophrenia,” Shirish said. “His illusion must be confronted with reality in order for it to break.” “None of us will pity him. Beware of pity”, Aslam said, like a slogan.
Ram Sajeevan was in his room. He was under a blanket. Shirish Mishra started talking to him -
“Look Sajeevan Babu, the truth is, that girl doesn’t even know your name, let alone the fact that you’re in love with her. Are you a Majnu or something?”
“And it’s also true that you haven’t done anything about it and are just going crazy fantasizing. Come with me, I’ll take you to meet Anita Chandiwala.”
“But Sajeevan Babu, you’re well aware that among the class that she’s from, the condition of your class is even worse than a Chaprasi. Do you, or do you not know, that that girl’s father runs a factory in Kenya and that she has studied at Cambridge?”
“Go wash your face. Wear some real clothes. Comb your beard and be proper. When you’ve chosen to love a girl like this, then at least be worthy of her.”
“And if you can’t then instantly return to your world. Open your eyes, look at the sun, and return to your world. That girl is from another universe. You’re not from that world buddy. The classes you keep going on about aren’t just a thought pulao; they’re a concrete reality. Know this - class war doesn’t just mean struggle, or writing poetry, or taking out processions and chanting slogans. Things like love also die at its hands.”
“Ram Sajeevan, come back to your senses.”
“If you don’t return to your senses, you’ll go mad.”
They all spoke one by one. It was all planned. A cruel and cold-blooded drama. Ram Sajeevan lay there, unwavering. Then he started singing loudly. There were tears streaming down his face. People later understood that he was singing the second half of the Gita. It was shocking, the way Babu Ram Sajeeevan had it all memorized.
One day the hostel warden called Naveen Dhondiyal and Kalyan Kumar Das to his office. Warden Sadgopal placed an inland letter in front of them. “Read this and tell me what is to be done.”
It was a love letter, written by Babu Ram Sajeevan to Anita Chandiwala and posted to her room, number 316. The letter was in two languages - Hindi and English. It contained the lines of Jibananda Das, Lorca, Neruda and Tagore. It had a piercing and wrenching description of his heart’s deepest love. Kalyan Kumar Das felt like the letter was a section from a distinguished classic.
The warden went on, "That girl is terrified. She’s asked for security protection. She found the letter this morning. At first, she couldn’t tell who had written it. Then she asked the guard Dheeraj Singh Negi. Ram Sajeevan has written his name and address on the letter.”
“What did the girl say?” Dhondiyal asked.
“She’s really scared.” The warden responded. “She was saying that she did feel like a crazy man was continuously staring at her for the past few days, but she didn’t take it seriously. Now it’s a different matter. Please do something. I have consoled her for now. It would be best if Ram Sajeevan was sent home to the village for a while. He’ll be out of here, his environment will change, and perhaps he’ll become better.”
Ram Sajeevan was forcibly sent home on the night train. Everyone went with him to the station. Aslam Akhtar was sent with him to the village. He made sure Ram Sajeevan reached home and then returned on the third day. Babu Ram Sajeevan’s room was changed to one in an all-boys’ hostel. In his absence, his stuff was moved from his old room to the new one.
A few days later, the warden called Kalyan Kumar Das and Naveen Dhondiyal again, and placed a pile of inland letters in front of them. All of them had been sent from the village, by Ram Sajeevan to Anita Chandiwala. She hadn’t even opened the letters and had handed them to the guard Dheeraj Singh Negi, to pass on to the warden.
Those letters were on the table. They trembled in the wind, absolutely shut. Nobody had read them. Kalyan Kumar Das placed them into the deep darkness of his bag.
Ram Sajeevan is back now, after a year of him being in the village, Anita Chandiwala finished her research and went to Kenya. Kalyan Kumar Das is a deputy editor at a newspaper. Naveen Dhondiyal has gotten a good job on some Guwahati tea farm.
Ram Sajeevan still fully believes that Anita Chandiwala is at the university. She’s looking at him and examining him.
Ram Sajeevan continues to write about society’s objective circumstances, the materialistic traditions of philosophy, class war, etc.
Uday Prakash (born 1952) is a Hindi poet, scholar, journalist, translator and short story writer. He has worked as administrator, editor, researcher, and TV director. He writes for major dailies and periodicals as a freelancer. He has also received several awards for his collection of short stories and poems. With Mohan Das he received Sahitya Akademi Award in 2011. He returned his Sahitya Akademi award in 2015 as a protest against the killing of M. M. Kalburgi that initiated a storm of national protests by writers, artists, scholars and intellectuals.
Sahaj Kishen is an undergraduate student interested in Hindustani poetry and literature alongside pursuing a degree in Literature and Creative Writing. They also enjoy acting in theatre and film and are pursuing a nascent hyper-fixation in hip-hop. Some of their favourite writers and poets are Harishankar Parsai, Parveen Shakir, Akhil Katyal and Vikram Seth.