Shueli's Star

Novel
Anna sujatha Mathai

Previous Chapters

Chapter  27

In Open Sunshine, Or We Are Unblest
 
      “  We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest .”   William Wordsworth 
Paul’s work was mainly in the Kavipuram Hospital. He did, however, help at a Clinic in an outlying village.  He said it was giving him great experience, which he could never have got in a large English hospital. It mattered a lot to him that he was in charge.  Soon after, he was invited to do some work at the hospital in the nearby city of Belapur. This gave Shueli also , a chance to escape from the claustrophobia of Kavipuram. Paul had rented a small apartment in Belapur, so Shueli, too, was able to spend time there.  Paul came back from work one day, and told Shueli about a baby boy, left in the Hospital Children’s Ward. Shueli resisted the idea, at first. She had been told she might still have a child of her own. However, she agreed, one day to go in and “just see” the baby, but insisted she didn’t want to be pressurised into doing anything I don’t really want to do.”
  In the Hospital Ward, the baby lay asleep. A minute after, startled, he opened his eyes wide, and stared at her. Shueli was possessed by a strange feeling of certainty, which she had never foreseen. “He’s mine. He’s been waiting here for me to arrive.” She felt the baby needed her, and she needed him. The Mission Hospital nuns, especially Mother Jocelyn, suggested that Shueli and Kuri might enjoy taking the baby home for an afternoon. “You can see how you feel, dear. Just bring him back if you’d rather not keep him. But let me tell you – he’s a special baby.” Mother Jocelyn’s face, always radiant, was glowing.
“Whenever I have some trouble, or feel low, I just sit and talk to the little fellow, and somehow, he always cheers me up.. He has a way of laughing, as if he knows just how to make me feel better.” Shueli noticed that the baby did have a most infectious laugh. They wrapped him up in a blanket, and took him home. He was fine, but soon after, he had a tummy upset. They found he could not digest most milk, except one brand. They rushed out and bought formula milk,  bath basins and baby towels and clothes. Shueli had never handled all this before. But “no question of taking him back to the hospital. He’s ours now, and this is his home. I’m going to make him well.”
At home, they placed him on the sofa, where he lay, kicking and gurgling. Shueli took off her wedding ring, dipped it in honey, and placed it on the baby’s tongue for a second. That was the traditional way in which new babies were welcomed home. That’s how “the little boy who didn’t like sad stories” came into their lives. Suddenly, he had two sets of grandparents, quite apart from an adoring Maa and Apaa, and an Aunt Gaya who began to smile again.  “Veroni lit candles for us at the Velankanni Church, and told me: ‘The Maadhaav will surely give you a baby now.’ Veroni is so pure of heart, so full of love, her prayers just had to be answered. The way his eyes flew wide open, and he stared at me, I knew he knew we’d been waiting just for him, and he for us.”
    Gaya, who had got a scholarship to Ann Arbor, Michigan, would be leaving in a few months, so they made the most of this happy time, laughing, singing special songs, funny ones, just to have him laugh his adorable laugh, which showed the sense of humour he would always have.. Shueli even read poetry aloud to him! They took him for long drives in the car. And all of them doted on him.
For a while, it seemed that distances between Shueli and Paul might be bridged.
But the baby could not really heal the barriers that had come up between them. Paul often became violent, leaving Shueli in a state of hopeless misery, wondering what to do. Paul had an extravagant way of making up, begging pardon profusely, so that Shueli was confused, and even blamed herself at times.
    Shueli’s visits to Belapur helped to keep her spirits up, and some of the interesting people she met there, made life more bearable. Kartik was always happy, laughing, a joy in his growing. She was now doing some Theatre Reviews for a magazine in Belapur, which was very exciting and stimulating for her. Some of the blackness that had eaten into Shueli’s heart seemed to diminish. But not entirely. She had grown, questioned, changed. Paul seemed to have remained stationary. The gulf between them had widened. “Why can’t you be like my mother?” he had said angrily to her once.. “She’s only interested in her home and her family.”
“Yes, and never mind the bridge sessions and parties, and the fact that all her children were sent off to boarding schools before they could talk. In any case, I’m sorry. I can’t be like your mother, or anyone else. I am myself, and will grow and develop according to my own best light.”  Paul’s mother, sociable, full of fun, and always hospitable, “managed” the men in her life, so it seemed to Shueli, mainly by manipulation and flattery. “She seems to give in on everything, eternally self sacrificing. But, have you noticed, - she nearly always gets her way in the end? Perhaps I should learn a few of those tricks!” thought Shueli. “But, on second thoughts, - no. Deviousness is not for me. I want honesty and directness in my relationships.” Paul’s Ma’s life was set in the values of an older generation, with just a veneer of modernity. Everything revolved around her husband and sons. “She sees us as minor planets revolving around the sun or something. A life of your own? She’d call that mere selfishness. She thinks a ‘good wife’ is one who has shed her own personality, or any of her possibilities, - unconditionally.  In return, you get patted on the back for being a sweet girl, a Good Wife!”  Shueli had begun to wonder if it was her manipulative way of bringing up her sons that had led to Paul’s secretiveness and frequent temper tantrums. Ma had always felt that those she considered powerful, had to be placated, and kept happy.  She believed that if your husband admired someone else, just a little bit too much, or even had an affair, it was best to look the other way!
Once, soon after their arrival from England, they noticed that Paul’s father seemed very much under the spell of a beautiful widow with grown-up children. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her! One evening, when the lovely lady asked Paul’s father to drive her somewhere, Paul’s Ma had quietly drawn Shueli aside. “Why don’t you and Paul go along, just for the drive?” That’s called long-distance targeting and destruction of the enemy, or underfoot sniper attack, Shueli had thought later, rather amused. Needless to say, the enemy had been routed! In later years, Shueli wondered whether that kind of skilful, behind the scenes manoeuvreing, would not have saved her marriage. No, probably not. She valued directness too much. She would rather live alone than have to “play those games.” Shueli had begun to discover that Paul was always very secretive, building up elaborate alibis for himself. Worse were his temper tantrums, and the episodes of violence which made life almost unbearable. He was ambivalent about everything,  chameleon like, switching from very modern and understanding one day, to highly repressive and authoritarian the very next day After they started spending more time in Belapur, she  began writing reviews, and later, got involved with a group who wanted her to act in some plays.
“I’m so glad you’re busy with plays and all that” he would say. “You know I have no time at all. You’ve seen the queues at the hospital. They fall at my feet, and say  ‘You are like God for us!’ That’s why I can’t spare any time at all. You really mustn’t depend on me for company. Make your own friends, your own life.”
“Really, your work provides you with a perfect alibi for being out of reach all the time, doesn’t it?” She remembered how he had left her, with so little warning, so suddenly, on her own in  Edinburgh. The loneliness, the drifting, the growing apart.
“You wouldn’t like it if I did make my own life” she replied. He had a habit of returning home at any hour, sometimes late at night. One evening, when he came home, and didn’t find her there, he was furious. “You have to be here when I get home”  he shouted, pounding the table with his fist. He alternated between tyrant and understanding husband in a way that was confusing and alarming for Shueli. The years she had been cut off and isolated from any kind of intellectual or artistic life, had made Shueli hesitant, yet more inclined to be rebellious. She would take the baby, and Veroni with her, to Belapur. The entire focus of her life had changed. She wanted to make up for time lost, regain some sense of self, of her own worth.

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Anna Sujatha Mathai grew up in St. Stephen's College Delhi, where her father was Head of the English Department. It was an idyllic childhood, reading wonderful books, hearing poetry, seeing plays. She and her sister spent many sunny days exploring The Ridge, unimaginable now! Sujatha started writing Short Stories and Essays for The TREASURE CHEST, an All-India Children's Magazine edited by an American Editor, and translated into many Indian languages. At 14 she was chosen by Treasure Chest to be their youngest Special Correspondent! 
 What she loved most was the Theatre. She was selected, at age 14,  by the Shakespeare Society of St. Stephen's College, to be Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Later, doing her B.A.{Honours} in English Literature at Miranda College, she won the College Drama Prize, and later, the Best Actress Award of the University of Delhi.
  Getting married at age 20, to a young surgeon, changed her life completely. In Edinburgh, she joined the University for a Post Graduate Course in Social Studies. She worked in that field for several years, in York, Sheffield, London. Leaving it all behind, coming back to small-town India, was traumatic for her. She used to write on scraps of paper, and throw them away. Her sister, in Bangalore, sent her a cutting in which American professor, Howard McCord of the Univ. of Seattle asked for poems by "avant-garde young Indian poets" for his Anthology. Her sister wrote "At the most, you'll lose a few stamps!" Prof McCord's warm response to her poems, made her start taking her writing more seriously! Her first poems were published in P. Lal's MODERN INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH. She continued to write, and, later, moving to Bangalore her dream of theatre was somewhat realised. She had roles in plays by Shaeffer, Ibsen, Sartre, Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Lorca and others. She was a co-founder,with friend Snehalata Reddy, of THE ABHINAYA POETRY/THEATRE GROUP.
Her poems have been published in The Commonwealth Journal; Indian Literature; The Little Magazine; The Times of India; Dialogue India; Chelsea (New York); The London Magazine; The Poetry Review (London), Two Plus Two (Switzerland.), Contemporary Asian Poetry Ed. Agnes Lam, Hong Kong/Singapore: Post-Independence Poetry in English ed. by Arundhathi Subramaniam She was among 4 poets "show-cased" on the 50th Anniversary of the Sahitya Akademi. She was an Associate Editor of the prestigious Literary Journal, Two Plus Two,based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has 5 collections of Poetry in English, and her poems have been translated into several Indian and European languages.
She now lives in Delhi. ​​​​​​​​​​​

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