Creative Writing

Short Story:

Maternal instinct

Somasiri Attanayake

It was past midnight when I got off the special train at Gampaha railway station returning from Galle where we had been detailed for election duty. The ticket collector at the exit of the station was fast asleep in his chair with his mouth wide open. He snored loudly his ticket perforator lay at his feet. Fallen from his hand.

The town was as deserted as a graveyard. Post-election violence was expected everywhere. Not a single soul was there to be seen except the handful of passengers who got off the train. They too walked hurriedly in different directions and disappeared in no time.

I decided to walk the distance of about five miles and reach home as there was no any other means of transport available at the ungodly hour. With my hold-all slung over the shoulder, I walked fast along the desolate road a few yards and perceived that another person was also proceeding in the same direction, a little ahead of me. Quickening my pace, I caught up with him.

"Hello young man, I suppose you are also returning after duty." The sound of my footfall, make him turn round, said with a broad smile on his face. I replied in the affirmative.

He was also going home after election duty. I was very happy because I found a companion to walk the distance. My companion, a well-built, strong and athletic type of person who looked a little over fifty and seemed to be happy to find a fellow-walker for company.

He interminably talked on various topics while walking. We walked about one mile away from the town when a drizzle began to fall. In spite of the drizzle, we continued to walk and unexpectedly the light shower got heavier.

To take shelter from the rain we entered a half-completed house by the wayside. Fortunately, there was a lamp post just in front of the half-built house and the front portion of the structure was fully illuminated. Immediately after making our entry into the unoccupied house, my friend lighted a fag and offered one to me as well. I politely refused it. "You don't smoke?"

"Yes, I am a non-smoker." "As you're a non-smoker, I should'nt ask whether you take liquor," with smile, I indicated that his guess was correct.

"To my mind, you are an ascetic.....very raely we meet people like you nowadays." He cast a quizzical look at me with a mocking smile on his plump face and laughed, which stirred in me a tinge of anger.

"Very good......very good. Keep up your good habits promising young man." Looking up into the sky through the falling rain, he started sending out jets of smoke from his nostrils.

"If I tell you frankly, I smoke, drink and eat well. Even now, I am a little tipsy. Anyway, I am a very happy person." Once again, he laughed smugly.

He talked with full self-confidence and he appeared to be a person who took everything in his stride and enjoyed life to the full.

Meanwhile, the rain got still heavier. All of a sudden, a canine, all bedraggled, emerged through the pouring rain and crept into the place boldly carrying a small bundle in its mouth. It was a bitch. The bitch had brought in a tiny pup to protect it from the rain.

The canine mother huddled into a corner with her offspring which impatiently started sucking milk while the bitch licked the pup dry. She looked at us suspiciously from time to time.

My friend kept on looking at the spectacle with interest and said: "You know, the maternal instinct is very powerful, not only in human beings but also in animals. This reminds me of an incident that happened when I was an inexperienced youth. If you are interested, I don't mind telling you the story." "Go ahead....anyway, we have to stay here till the rain stops."

There was a roughly made trestle-table for carpenters to work on, with a heap of wood shavings on it. After wiping the litter off the make-shift table, he lifted himself onto it like an acrobat, balancing his heavy body on the arms propped on the table; sat comfortably and narrated the following story, to which I have lent.

I was not more than twenty five years when this incident took place. In our native village, we had a small clique of friends; all were youngsters, around my age. All of them treated me as the leader of the group.

On a fullmoon day, our household went on a long pilgrimage and I volunteered to stay at home because I wanted to enjoy the short period with my friends, away from the watchful eyes of the elders.

Ours was an imposing ancestral house that stood in the middle of a large coconut estate completely cut off from the other houses in the village.

All my friends assembled at our place on the day home people went on the pilgrimage. We spent a lot of time talking and discussing how we were going to enjoy our freedom in the absence of my parents. On that night, the moon shone very brightly in a very clear sky shedding her silvery glow upon everything indiscriminately.

Luminous splotches of moonshine on the masses of foliage, the tree trunks, the banana leaves, the crowns of the coconut palms and the ground transfigured the whole world into an ethereal never-never-land where everything appeared unearthly; yet, fascinating and maddening!

As if bewitched by moonlight, all of us got up at once and went out into the compound. In a semicircle, we sat on the grass bedaubed with silvery effulgence.

"A fine idea struck me just now." One chap expelled the silence that crept among us.

"What's it?" Everybody asked in a chorus.

"Shall we bring a woman?"

"Excellent!"

A pretty young woman! All got excited and overjoyed at the idea. One fellow who had been silent all the time, started frolicking; he danced pirouettes standing on the tips of his tones like a ballet dancer, gathering up his sarong in his hands.

"Where are you bringing the woman from ?"

"Don't bother about the place."

"If you bring a nasty old tart, we'll end up in a V.D. Clinic of a hospital!" Another voice retorted.

"Leave everything to me and keep quiet till tomorrow."

As you know, when youngsters get an idea into their heads, they are hellbent on putting it into action. So, for all of us the morrow was a great day and everyone was brimming over with high spirits over the proposed adventure that we were going to experience for the first time.

The next evening, two of us were on the go making arrangements for the big event'. Liquor, provisions and other things were brought together with a live cockeral to be slautered for the table.

The proponent of the venture told us that he would come with the woman after dark, taking a lonely path without walking along the road frequented by many in order to avoid meeting the neighbours.

On the following night, about 8' O clock, a soft knock was heard at the back door. We rushed to the rear of the house and opened the door. First, the organizer, came in, the then go-between followed by the lady of easy virtue clad in a very thin white saree.

She hung her head down in order to hide her face from the strangers. She was around twenty five years of age, a little fat, not very tall but had a well proportioned figure which her voile saree failed to conceal from the onlookers.

She had no clear-cut features though she possessed a thick growth of black hair. She wore it in a thick plait. There were no ornaments on her person except two or three plastic bangles on one of her hands.

The white sarong clad go-between who was a man of medium build, very dark complexioned and blind in one eye, ushered the wench into an inner room as if he were familiar with the people and the place. He looked into everybody's face with a ready smile on his countenance.

The go-between remained in the room with the 'lady' for some time and his stay in the room with her made everybody uneasy. However, he was given a lavish drink when he emerged from the room.

All of us sat round a table on which stood two bottles of coconut arrack, three bottles of soda water, tumblers, a big tin of cream crackers and cheese cut into small cubes in a side-plate. After drinks, the man left the table. He turned cook on his own accord. I drank a large amount of arrack while the other two friends consusumed moderate quantities.

The cockerel was still under the kitchen table with its legs tied. The impromptu cook poured another glassful of arrack and gulped it down as one would drink water. With his thick lipped mouth contorted because of the unpleasant, sharp taste of the liquor, he went to the kitchen snatched the cock and wrung its neck as if he were wringing out a washed cloth.

The unfortunate bird stretched out and fluttered its wing in a desperate attempt to breathe, sending out confette of down that floated in the air.

By the mouth watering aroma emanating from the kitchen, it was evident to everyone that the one-eyed man was not only a good pimp but also a culinary expert. The whole house was redolent of the irresistible smell of cooking. With a loud clamour for food, the cat that had been hiding for fear of strangers suddenly appeared keeping its tail erect like a stick and started nuzzling and rubbing itself against our legs.

After staying for a very long time in the room all by herself, our 'common bride' came out voluntarily in a night gown of a sort and took a seat a little away from us.

A very beautiful woman, she was certainly not; nevertheless, she looked pleasing in appearance as she had well shaped limbs and a symmetrical figure which was provocative and seductive under the soft light cast by the lamp.

I was fully drunk. In a drunken outburst of the merry making, I made a swift lunge towards the young woman, thrusting one hand under her knees and the other between her back and the chair, lifted her up and carried her in my arms like a small girl.

Lying in my arms, she kicked her legs in the air in protest while I kept on trying to kiss her by bringing closer to her visage my bearded face she continuously kept on pushing away my face with all her might amid the loud laughter of my friends!

Once the young woman and I were away from my companions, she behaved like a frightened animal caught in a snare. In spite of herself, she insisted vehemently that somehow or other she wanted to keep her bra on her intact. She remained adamant and unyielding.

My repeated persuasions, cajoles and threats were ignored point-blank by the woman. In the end, I was mad with anger and on the verge of snatching the remnant of cloth off her when she instinctively sensed my wrath and all at once sank down on her knees at my feet.

She broke into uncontrollable sobs. Her whole person shook continuously as though she were in a convulsive fit. Like a small child, she cried bitterly hiding her face in her hands.

She stopped her crying abruptly and said in broken voice that she had a six month old suckling at home and her husband was serving a term of imprisonment for selling illicit liquor. Further, she confessed that she was a sinful and unfortunate woman.

I left her alone untouched.

Profile of a scribe:

Solitude gives her inspiration

Anita Desai's tremendous contribution to Indian fiction in English was recently recognised by the Sahitya Akademi fellowship coffered on her in New Delhi this year.

Although she is the seventy-fifth Fellow in the entire history of the Sahitya Akademi, she is only the third Indian writer in English, after Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan, to be so honoured.

Speaking on the occasion, Desai described the struggle of those early days of writing in the language: "It is true that in my early days as a writer of English I and my colleagues were constantly having to apologise for using it rather than Hindi or Tamil or Bengali or Marathi.

We were the leftovers of the colonial age, unfortunately educated in what everyone could see was not a native tongue and surely ours was the last generation that would employ it. Yet we were enjoying the challenges of making the language our own, bending and twisting and manipulating it to express our own way of living, thinking and speaking."

Desai has been writing for over four decades now, steadily, through a marriage and four children, through moves to England and then to the United States with occasional retreats to Mexico. And through a teaching career, through several awards, and three nominations on the Booker Prize shortlist for her novels Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Baumgartner's Bombay (1988).

Beginning in the early 1960s, much before the phenomenal successes of Salman Rushdie and then Arundhati Roy, Desai's oeuvre includes several novels, short story collections and a children's book, all the way from the early works Cry, the Peacock (1963) and Voices in the City (1965) set in India, to The Zig-Zag Way (2004) set in Mexico.

She also wrote the screenplay for Merchant-Ivory's 1993 film version of her novel - and Ismail Merchant's feature debut as director - In Custody, although she remarked in a recent interview to a newsmagazine that this experience led her to recognise that film was definitely not her medium: "Writing the screenplay was like obliterating the text rather than creating it."

Born Anita Mazumdar on June 24, 1937, in Mussoorie to a German mother, Toni Nime, and a Bengali father, D. N. Mazumdar, she grew up as the youngest of three sisters and a brother in Old Delhi.

She grew up speaking German at home, Hindi with friends and English at school; Bengali she would learn after her father's death, when she was 18, after the family moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata).

In Delhi she attended Queen Mary's School and Miranda House, reading English literature before her marriage to businessman Ashvin Desai. They went on to have four children, with Anita making time for her writing between the needs of family and household.

Solitude

As Salman Rushdie observes in his introduction to the new edition of In Custody, Desai's great subject is solitude. Her characters grapple with regret, alienation and even brokenness and the need to come to terms with the past.

Out of these obsessions she has crafted her most unforgettable tales. One recalls the proud and brittle Nanda Kaul in Fire on the Mountain (1977), the old woman spending her last years in Kasauli. Nanda Kaul, who is referred to by her full name throughout the novel, who "had not gone to watch for (the postman), did not want him to stop at Carignano, had no wish for letters... She wanted no one and nothing else.

Whatever else came, or happened here, would be an unwelcome intrusion and distraction."

Desai also writes about the family, its supportive concern and its suffocating demands, with rare insight. Mothers - bearing children, making time, multitasking, running their houses, being there for family and guests, making sure their husbands get something sweet for their tea, always being called upon to discharge their many duties - are at the centre of the ever-buzzing family universe.

The novels also explore the ties that bind mothers and their children. In different ways, Nirode in the early Voices in the City and Hugo in Baumgartner's Bombay are driven by their intense relationships with their mothers. Nirode's final realisation is that his mother is not merely their mother but Kali, the mother of Bengal: "not merely good, she is not merely evil - she is good and she is evil. She is our knowledge and our ignorance. She is everything to which we are attached, she is everything from which we will always be detached."

Baumgartner, on the other hand, lives with his bunch of letters from the mother he left behind in Nazi Germany, letters that ask affectionately, with heartbreaking urgency: "Are you well, my rabbit? Do not worry yourself. I am well. I have enough. But have you enough, my mouse, my darling? Do not worry..."

But heartwarmingly, too, there are young Hari, Lila, Bela and Kamal, the lovable, unafraid siblings of Desai's children's novel The Village by the Sea, who nurse their mother back to health, help their father come out of his drunken state, and become a family once again to adapt to their new circumstances and celebrate Diwali together on the beach.

Vivid prose

At the heart of Desai's storytelling, from the intense prose of her early novels to the spare and almost achingly unadorned later novels like Fasting, Feasting (1999), is the sharply vivid, Woolfian quality of her prose.

One of the great contributions of Desai's fiction has been its ability to illuminate the richness of detail, the texture and the sheer aliveness of the world where her characters move.

In fluid, evocative paragraphs, Desai writes about the natural world that is hidden all around, not only in the rugged terrain of Nanda Kaul's hideaway in the hills or in the decaying, crumbling gardens of Bim's Old Delhi, but even in the midst of Baumgartner's crowded Colaba.

In Kasauli we feel the "scented sibilance" of the pine trees, hear the invisible fiddling of the cicadas, and sense the explosive energy of young Raka's scramble up and down the hillsides, "letting loose small avalanches of pebbles and gravel under her toes, making newts dash, lizards slip and tree-crickets crackle".

In Bim's garden we go down the old rose walk where the roses are diminishing every year, their petals coming apart in Bim's hands and falling limply on the earth below, reflecting the slow decline of the old way of life.

And in Bombay, where Hugo Baumgartner watches the sunset on the sea in the evenings, as the brightly coloured flames collapse into the waves, he also makes time to care for the hungry and injured stray cats that he brings home from the streets, giving them names - Fritzi, Mimi-and paying attention to their quirky individual personalities.

But there are also occasional intimations of the violence that lies in wait beneath the surface of this inevitably divided, inevitably fractured world. The fire on the mountain, the black smoke curling up the hillside as the body of an old woman lies on a rocky path.

The tired horse lying on the road, screaming in agony as the cartdriver whips is with all his force, the animal finally sinking lower into the dust as the driver continues to whip it and scream abuse. The young man from halfway across the world who steals across the landing, picks up the kitchen knife that the old Jew uses to cut up food for his hungry cats - and then uses the knife to carry out his agenda of hatred.

The special quality of Desai's literary voice is its ability to weave together several strands of feeling into a complex, affecting symphony. As Rushdie observes in his introduction to In Custody: "When you first encounter it the prose seems to whisper, to speak to softly as to risk going unheard, but as you bend your ear to listen you hear many unexpected notes of wicked comedy, of sharp, even biting perceptions about her fellow men and women, and of a clear-sighted unsentimentality about human nature that is anything but frail.

The voice takes hold of the reader, gently, irresistibly, and its strength and clarity soon come to seem like small miracles."

Courtesy: Frontline