Glaring Shadow - A stream of consciousness novel by BS Murthy (read full novel txt) 📖

picture her bed hopping as her craving for love is galling indeed. Why in picturing Diana as the icon of love the media made lust a synonym of love and what’s worse, it made a villain out of her man who embodies the best of love that is constancy.”           

“Why hadn’t anyone seen it that way?” 

“Can one grasp the realities of life in the glare of glamour?” he said. “What is media if it doesn’t feed itself on sleaze and scandal with trivia thrown in between; why blame those who man it as all crave for such to gloss over the humdrum that is life of most. Even if you ever make the media privy to what all transpired between us, the meaningful part of it is bound to be blue-penciled. Whatever that’s the enigma of the media, like it or not, there is no escaping from it but were you to novelize it, maybe, there could be a few takers for your endeavor.”

“Maybe so but as Hitler had discovered, most of us take the media’s word as a Gospel truth.”

“Wasn’t it the basis for Goebbels concept of propaganda?” he interjected. “Back to my dad; he was more like a mullah when it came to the segregation of sexes though it had nothing to do with his upbringing either for my grandfather didn’t have a jaundiced eye on that count. I heard that my dad was opposed to his mother and sister resting for a while on the roadside verandah even when he was just twelve or so and that speaks for it. That’s why it was no wonder that he turned out to be a possessive husband and a guard of a father, especially of his daughters. How I wish he had read a book or two on the psychology of sex, especially that of Havelock Ellis, well that could have spared me of that shock and one of my sisters of her bitterness.”

He paused for a while as though to recover from the shock of his recollection.

“I told you that after the grief of the garden, for a hobby, I turned to the collection of cinema handbills distributed to announce new releases,” he continued. “What a pleasure it was to gather more of the same on the sly and how we used to prize the booty though it was of poor quality with an occasional color pamphlet being a bonus; but that Bhookailash one on a craft paper was a dream come true. That Sunday, as my father was in siesta, I was at rejoicing my collection before I lost myself to the Bhookailash thing. Can you imagine what followed? I was rudely jolted when my father snatched it from me accusing me of a premature interest in the female form for he mistook that I was fantasizing about the heroine. Sharing his discovery with my mother, he tore it into pieces and began thrashing me as if to drive the devil of sex out of my head; well I was not even twelve then and apparently he had seen it all through his adult eyes. Whatever, I cried more for the pain of its ruin than the plight of my back that bore the brunt of his beatings; and with that loss, I lost interest in the rest, and gave up the hobby itself.”

“Some psychology of sex should help today’s boys who become tomorrow’s fathers.” 

“You have a point there,” he said. “Maybe sensing the propensity of my destiny, disappointment chose me to be its abiding partner. As life would have it, in time, one of my uncles came close to marrying the Bhookailash heroine, whom my dad thought I had been ogling that noon; could he have ever imagined such a turn of events then? It’s another matter that my maternal grandfather’s view that ‘once an actress always an actress’ made my uncle give up on her. Maybe, he was right that with an actress wife, as he felt, one would never know when she was genuinely affectionate or righteously indignant for she can affect either emotion with consummate ease. Better it’s left for men who marry actresses, nay actors as is the norm, though without casting aspersions on their sexual straightness, to say whether life for them becomes make-believe or not.”

“If all carry their character to the office, may be the actors bring home their professional skills.”

“I would’ve known about it had not my uncle backtracked but to my dad’s jaundiced eye, the genuineness of one my sisters seemed to him as a put on one occasion.”

 

Chapter 11

Moments of Poignance

 

“Oh, how it hurts to think that my dad could’ve behaved so badly with my sister I was rather fond of!” he resumed after a long pause. “I was away in Ranchi then and what I had heard of it hurts me to this day. One late evening she was lost in her thoughts, whatever they were, on the verandah, oblivious of the ogling ways of a roadside Romeo. My dad who happened to return home then got it all wrong, and paying a deaf ear to her professed innocence, like a man possessed he had beaten her black and blue, the poor thing. Well, she never forgave him for that, even after his death, and I don’t fault her for that. But what an irony that it was on her account he once ventured across the Godavari in spate risking his and my life as well. Sure he came to soften up his stance on other issues but somehow he failed to shed his blinkers in sexual matters; and he was lucky that the inclinations of my sisters and the impediments of the times gave him no hiccups on their pre-marital front.”

“What a tragedy it is to hurt the loved ones owing to the debility of belief.”

“Well said, more so the religious belief; maybe towards the end one might be able to shelve self-indulgent biases but the faith-induced bigotry tends to grip one all the more.” he said thoughtfully. “Saying ‘sorry’ would’ve helped, but he believed what he wanted to believe, and her denials seemed but self-serving arguments to his closed mind-set. Well he was rude with me too in my childhood that is; but in his deathbed gesture I came to see his way of saying sorry for his intemperate past. He gave me, and not my brother, his wrist-watch with his name embossed on it, which was a long service award from Lipton. It was another matter that my brother loved him more than I ever did, and it appeared as if he bestowed it upon his first born, but I suppose it was not as simple as that. When I was ten, toying with his wrist-watch, I dropped it down to its doom inviting his wrath. Frustrated with the loss of his first acquisition, he roundly thrashed me even as my mother tried her best to put sense into his agitated head that it was after all an accident. Though resentful then, it was much later that I could understand his sense of loss; money being scarce, it was no easy task to replace it. Maybe laying on his deathbed, he recalled the episode while he recapped his life; he surely would’ve, for one of my uncles once told me that he would project the celluloid of his life on his mind-screen thrice a day. Why not, if youth is daydreaming about the future and the middle age the dilemma of the present, then old age makes a memoir of the past. Well, it could have been my father’s sense of remorse that might’ve prompted him to make a present of that wrist-watch to me by way of his redemption. But by the time the possibility of that occurred to me, he was no more. If only I could’ve told him that I understood his constraints and never bore a grudge against him on that or any other count; oh, how that would’ve helped ease our consciences!”

“What a poignant moment it could have been?”

“Sadly it was not to be,” he said. “I believe the hallmark of his life was his boldness in the face of death.

The moment we stepped into that cancer hospital, seeing some patients carrying their urine bags, he said he would rather die than live with one such. Seeing scores of patients there prolonging their senseless life in a pitiable manner, I realized that there was also this greed to be alive that my father was not afflicted with. But awaiting his inevitable death in his home that he made the centre of his life, when he sent word for me, all knew that he believed his end was at hand. As I reached him, he lost no time in wanting a private chat with my mother and me; he took both our hands into his, and asked me to take care of her, adding, ‘I scolded her, I did even beat her up but I always respected her’. We his children always knew how much he loved our mother but at that juncture I realized that he chose to be a one-woman man all his life out of respect for her. I always wondered why he wanted to confess to my mother in my presence; maybe, he might’ve felt that being the firstborn, I was the first witness of his love for her in all its intimacy. But sadly for me, I failed to keep the word I gave him to take care of her;  it’s true she is not in want of any, thanks to my brother, and no less to my sister-in-law, who doesn’t grumble on that score. How I hope that life gives me the chance to redeem myself!”

“Your brother seems to be your conscience saver.”

“In a way he is,” he said. “But I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to thank my dad for what all he had done for me for all my infirmities that bothered him no end. If only I had said sorry, wouldn’t have the troubles he had taken for me seem pastime for him then? But it was not to be as I left him after the memorable meeting to fend for myself in the city I lived. But even when his final call came, I was nowhere near him; oh, had I reached him in time as he breathed his last, maybe I would’ve been inspired to make a clean breast of myself. But as luck would have it, some jamboree came to a close the previous day in the city and the revelers blocked all entrances of the trains that day, making it no entry for others. Oh how I begged to be let in, but none had obliged.”

“What to make out of the muteness of the masses?”

“As individuals most of them would have obliged but collectively all became callous,” he said. “Even sensible people lose their sensitivity in collectivity, which I call the camaraderie syndrome; won’t a group of six, in a train compartment of eight, collude to shoo away whoever nears them. Showcasing the insensitivity of another kind are those who never let others occupy the next seat in the long-distance buses, supposedly reserved by their never-to-arrive friends. See how their attitude unfairly affects the fellow travelers; while the early birds bear the back seats, the latecomers become the frontbenchers. Well, when I finally reached home, I was late by an hour to have a word with him; maybe he breathed his last lighter for his confessions but I’m left to live carrying the cross of my omissions.”

As his demeanor suggested that burdened by his guilt he was sinking into a state of depression; alarmed, I goaded him to tell more about his father.

“What a connoisseur of food he was!” he began enthusiastically. “Be it grains, cereals or vegetables, he bought the choicest, which were transformed into the best of meals by my mother’s recipes. When it came to fruits, he