Shueli's Star

Novel
Anna Sujatha Mathai

Previous Chapters

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
College Days
 
Back again in the heat of the plains, her Senior Cambridge exam behind her, Shueli  had to seek admission into the new college which had just come up on the University Campus, just near St. Stephen’s.. Though there had always been girls at St. Stephen’s, all of them were now expected to join the new college.. It had been named Miranda House, after the daughter, wife, or girl-friend of the paternalistic Vice-Chancellor, Sir Maurice Gwyer, or maybe just Sir Maurice’s favourite Shakespeare heroine. Sir Maurice Gwyer, so It remained one of those unsolved mysteries, as Sir Maurice would reply enigmatically and quizzically when asked. Red brick buildings, the same kind of system on which St. Stephen’s was based, but there was a far more Indian air sweeping the corridors of the new college. Perhaps it was the newly found Independence that gave Miranda House its liberal and rather jaunty air, though with some hints of the usual zenana attitude to women. Shueli found it all very thrilling and new, and opened her arms to embrace the intellectual and emotional excitement she felt College would surely offer her.
There were only ten girls in the English Honours Class. They tended rather to bunch together. To be a part of the select English Honours group seemed to set one apart in a way. They felt quite elite, and rather superior to the Pass Course girls!  It was a heady feeling, being on the threshold of womanhood, freer than she’d ever been so far, and, best of all, finding her own kind of friends. Girls drifted towards one another with vague hopes of friendship, attracted in mysterious ways, by qualities they sensed in one another. Wasn’t that the way friendships, even perhaps loves, were formed? On Shueli’s first day, as she drifted down the long verandah-corridors of the college, feeling hopelessly lost, and wishing Shalini were here, she heard a voice say “Hello Shueli. Don’t you remember me?” A wide, friendly smile accompanied the air of girlish enthusiasm and energy which drew Shueli immediately, and took her back to the three-day girl guides’ camp, when she was ten. She’d been worried that Papa and Ammy would wet-blanket the whole thing. But they hadn’t, feeling it’d be a “good thing for Shueli to learn to manage on her own for a few days.” At the Camp she found she had to share a room with Manisha Bhagwan, who had her hair in two tight plaits, emanating almost from her scalp. Whether they were practising the Reef Knot, or singing the Girl Guide songs, she made Shueli feel what a great adventure it all was. She bristled with plans and new ideas. She even told Shueli one day, when too much tooth-paste had oozed out of the tube: “Mustn’t waste tooth-paste, Shueli! There’s a way of putting the tooth-paste back in.” She never did demonstrate how it was done, but looking back on it, Shueli understood she was that kind of person. Someone who managed to get things done, however impossible. Being a bit of a dreamer herself, Shueli loved that quality in her friend. And now, here she stood, six years later, the same plaits, the same lovely smile. “Manisha, it’s you,” said Shueli, thrilled to see a familiar face, the weight of being anonymous among so many nameless, unknown girls, lifting for a while. “I’m mad about acting and plays and debates” Shueli confided. “Me too! By the way, call me Mani” with her wide, infectious grin. Mani told Shueli about all the school plays she’d participated in, usually as the lead. It was Shueli’s turn to be proud. While still at school, at the tremendous age of fourteen, she’d been asked by the head of the Shakespeare Society of St. Stephen’s College, a Reverend Gilroy, straight from Oxford and OUDS, an eccentric, brilliant young Englishman, who cycled around the Campus, his cassock rolled up to his knees, to be Viola in the Annual production, which was to be Twelfth Night. She could hardly believe it, was struck dumb by excitement. Shalini, when told, admitted she “was just green with envy. Going to play the lead with all those gorgeous looking Stephen’s boys? I’d rather do that any day than go for another term to boring old Rome, where I’ve been before anyway!” But Shueli, still aching in her heart for Arif, thought of him when she had to dress as a boy and go to Count Orsino’s court. The pain of that parting, the unthinkable horror of those days, informed her performance. When the Duke, who thought women could not love half as much as men, asked Viola: “What’s her history?” Shueli/Viola replied with feeling “A blank, my lord. She never told her love./ But let concealment, like a worm I’ the bud,/ Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought, / And with a green and yellow melancholy/ She sat like patience on a monument, / Smiling at grief.” How on earth did Shakespeare know everything,  Shueli wondered, even the innermost heart of a girl? The best bit for Shueli came at the end when she had to change from her male attire of doublet and hose, rather tiresome, into a white bridal dress and gauzy veil, and take the hand of the handsome young duke who, though world-weary in the play, brightened up perceptibly at the end. “Come on yaar! They’ve laid on quite a bash for us in the College Café! Let’s go!” Shueli found the air in the small café shimmered with excitement, she felt she was floating on air. Being the young heroine, she was the centre of attention for all the young actors, who produced their copies of the Programme for her to sign. The lady who had played Olivia was the wife of one of the Professors. The Maitlands were recently out from England to teach at St. Stephen’s… Mr. Maitland, bald and bumbling, was generally to be found under his car, checking or repairing it. When his wife, who had a high-pitched, quick way of speaking, called out to him in shrill tones, he would generally mutter, from under the car “Coming, darling! Wont be a minute..” and continue with his intensive examination of the car’s underside. They got the impression that he preferred it there. His wife, Nora Maitland, consoled herself with her pet Pekinese dogs, and filled her house with young students, all of whom found it a great privilege to be there. That’s where they had their play-readings, while Nora Maitland sat sewing the costumes for the Shakespeare Society plays. It was Nora who had designed and made Viola’s costumes, and she, too, was in high spirits at the party.. “Your costume turned out superb, the darzee did a great job, and you do look lovely in it, Shueli. Sshh.. Reverend Gilroy is going to say a few words…” The Reverend, rather acerbic in his speech, always stood on his toes when he was being especially sarcastic or witty. He loved the plays too, but his air suggested “Lord! What fools these mortals be!” He commented on each of the slip-ups, not one of which had escaped his eagle eyes, but, on the whole, he was pleased with his young actors and actresses. There was going to be another celebratory Supper Party at the Maitlands’, which would be fun, though they did seem quite old – thirty, maybe even forty! With the cruelty typical of the young, they weren’t too keen on those who weren’t immortal like themselves!
Now, in college, she proudly told Mani about all this, and they laughed, and became best friends on the spot. A young lady wearing a large bindi on her forehead, and a very bright, crisply starched sari, joined them “Do you know who’s taking the Milton classes?” The girl with the bindi turned out to be Ashvini Joshi, and the the three of them soon became fast friends, joined later by Tara Dutta, and the four of them soon began to be known as ‘The Quartet” – very special and different, not only in their clothes, but in the books they read, and, of course, in their attitude to life. Ashvini always tended to see the sad, or grim side of life, which was quite a new experience for Shueli. She had always questioned life, its hopeless sorrows and injustices, its cruelties, the terrible poverty one could not escape seeing everywhere, and she felt that many things that had lain dormant in her for so many years, were now coming alive. They didn’t laugh too much, as Ashvini made them feel they were being ‘superficial’.
“Why are you girls so dreadfully morbid?” Ammy would ask. “Why can’t you just be natural and normal, like other young girls?” Ashvini had just introduced them to Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, of misshapen people and tortured love. Her story The Ballad of the Sad Café pierced Shueli’s heart to the core: Love is a joint experience between two persons but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but the two come from different countries…” Like Arif and herself, separated not only by the very nature of things, but by the cruel, artificial lines drawn between countries and people.
 Mani informed them  excitedly that the Milton class was going to be taken by Miss Dolly Muthanna. “She’s the Head of the Department, you know. Her class is really important, even if you hate Milton!. I believe she wants to talk to the whole Honours Course before starting her Milton lectures. Oh God! Now we’ll have to learn  about Blank Verse and all that stuff!” Which got everyone apprehensive, as they set off down the corridor to the room upstairs, where Miss Muthanna had already arrived. Miss Dolly had not acquired her English sounding first name at Oxford, where she had gone for Post-Graduate studies, after finishing with a First Class First and a Gold Medal at Madras University. She had been given the name Dolly by her very Anglicized father, General Muthanna. “Can’t keep calling her Dulari, though that’s what her mother would have preferred, God rest her soul! She’s got a sweet, round face, like a doll, and it’s a jolly good name too.” General Muthanna had been at Sandhurst, and living now in his native Coorg – “Just like the Scottish Highlands, or Wales, you know” – and so, Dolly she had become, and remained. The heavy pan-cake make-up, and the carefully drawn line of the lips and eyebrows really made her look like a doll, the girls thought. But her personality was awesome. She was always pleasant, and often called them ‘dears’ or ‘darlings’ or just Child, even when she was being utterly sarcastic, or delivering the most trenchant criticism. She started their very first class with “I’m glad you’re all here, my dears. Always remember this is an Honours Class. Never forget that most of the girls of this country never get to School, let alone College. So consider yourselves highly privileged. Which means you must develop some kind of sense of responsibility. You’re not here to study fashions or be playgirls! But I’m sure it’ll all come in good time. So don’t worry about it too much now, darlings! In the next three years, children, we shall delve into the mysteries of English prose and poetry. Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Spenser’s Faerie Queen is what we shall be looking at together.” Shueli was not so sure about the Faerie Queen, but Papa often used to read bits of Paradise Lost aloud in his study, or sometimes she had overheard bits of it, hiding behind the study door while he took his Tutorial group. One thing that Miss Muthanna said in her first day’s talk would stay in Shueli’s mind for years to come. “Children, it’s one thing to enjoy good writing, but don’t believe every single thing you read just because it’s in print. Learn to question the printed page. And do learn to think for yourselves, darlings! That is the whole purpose of education.” That was a great revelation for Shueli, who had always considered the printed page as being hallowed by its very being! And it was just another glimpse of the open road, the shining path of truth, which made Shueli so happy to be alive – and in college! All the doors and windows to experience stood wide open, and she breathed that air deeply. Bliss was it, indeed, in that dawn to be alive!
She was even more intoxicated by Miss Muthanna’s readings from Paradise lost. “Round he cast his baleful eyes, Which witnessed huge affliction and dismay…”
Dolly Muthanna would stretch the syllables with obvious delight at the description of Satan, and look around the class with relish. The sonorous language, the magic and music of far away places, Valdarno, Fesole, Hesebon and Horonaim, the gods and goddesses of Egypt and Syria, Baalim and Ashtaroth, Astarte, ‘the queen of heaven’. All the magic of the Old Testament seemed to come alive. Her sense of drama and poetry were deeply aroused by Miss Muthanna’s rendering of Milton’s description of the fallen angels… “..angel forms, who lay entranced, /  Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks / In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurean shades / High over-arched embower.” She was secretly drawn by Milton’s description of the fallen angel, Lucifer, and was relieved when Miss Muthanna explained “Children! We just can’t help finding Milton’s Satan more attractive than God, can we? (with a delightful giggle) And God is a bit of a bore, isn’t he? It’s very difficult to make goodness exciting!" Was it always like that, Shueli wondered – that evil had a strange fascination and magnetism, which goodness didn’t? People were usually a mix of good and evil. That’s what made them mysterious and interesting. Otherwise they’d be bland, like unspiced food.  Satan’s : “The mind is it’s own place, and in itself / Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n” and “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” struck a chord of sympathy in freedom loving Shueli’s mind.
  Egypt and Syria and the Lebanon, and all those far-away places whose shores were lapped by the temperate waters of the Mediterranean along one coast with the Red Sea on the other. Desert lands, rich with the history of the Jewish  and Christian people, and the children of Hagar, who had been cast out into the desert with her baby son, Ishmael. Hearing Miss Muthanna read Milton brought all this history alive for Shueli. The wonderful stories from the Old Testament, which Ammy had told them, surfaced again. How the people of Israel had been promised a land, and how Abraham had led them to that promised land. “Imagine Abraham, that old prophet, standing with his people, after wandering so many years in strange lands where they could not sing, weeping by the waters of Babylon, at last looking down, with his people, upon the promised land. Imagine the Red Sea parting to allow the fleeing children of Israel through as the Egyptians pursued them…” And hadn’t St. Thomas come from that land, carrying the story of Jesus of Nazareth to the people of Malabar, to her own ancestors, who had embraced it, while continuing with their ancient and wise Hindu traditions?
And as she listened, the gift of the shooting stars opened up a scene for Shueli, not any the less bright because it was in the “future” nor any the less dark because it was in “the past”. Wasn’t she going to hold it all in her fist – happiness and sorrow, light and dark? She saw herself on her twenty-first birthday… She was on one of those great ocean liners, which used to take all of three weeks to get from Bombay to “the white cliffs of Dover” in England. Tuning in to A Date With You on All India Radio, Shueli had often heard Vera Lynn’s emotion packed voice singing “There’ll be bluuue birds over / The white cliffs of Dover/ There’ll be love and laughter, / And joy ever after, / Tomorrow, - just you wait and seee!” For many Indians and Anglo-Indians dreaming of going to England, those magic words seemed to say it all. As Shueli got on the ship at Bombay harbour, with Kuri, both of them beautiful and young, with such a bright, shining future ahead, joy ever after was what Shueli envisaged. Despite some dark shadows that had emerged, making the sky less bright, Shueli was sure everything would turn out just right. That’s why she didn’t shed a tear when she said goodbye to Ammy and Papa and Gaya, who had gone into a dark mood ever since Shueli had been swept into this marriage proposal, and, despite her strong reservations, had been “persuaded” into accepting it. Gaya alone knew that it would never have been if Arif and Gaya’s roads hadn’t taken different turnings. The occasional letter from Arif would send Shueli into a wild spin. But he was a Muslim and lived in Pakistan! How would she ever break down all the barriers that kept them apart. She wrote to him often, telling him about her friends and college. He wrote too, though more infrequently. How could he ever forget the experience of escaping from Delhi, and the part Shueli and her family had played in that escape? The word love, which lay hidden like a bright desert flower under clumps of cactii, never surfaced. She tired Gaya out, talking endlessly about Arif, till Gaya stuffed her ears with her pillow, saying “Oh God, Shueli, if you go on like this, I’ll end up writing about Arif in my Social Studies paper tomorrow!” If she mentioned it at college to Mani, Ashvini or Tara, they were quite impressed by the story for a while, but not for long. Life around one, the real life, was far more absorbing. “What would you do in Pakistan?” asked Ashvini. “You might have to observe Purdah, and maybe Arif will have a couple more wives!” The very thought of herself in a burqa sent Shueli and all of them into paroxysms of laughter. “Forget about Arif, Shooey” said Tara. “Let’s go to the Coffee House. Maybe Arjun and Dilip and Joey will be there.”
“Tara, when life is so dreadfully sad, how can you be thinking of silly things like boys?” That was Ashvini, who tended to be high-minded, and subdue their girlish high spirits with such remarks. But all the same, they would get away from class, and walk, very self-consciously, to the University coffee house, where they would sit and talk about important things – like the suffering in the world, what life really meant, and such things. All the time very conscious of who was coming in with whom! Sometimes they would be joined by some of the boys, and would chatter about their teachers, the next college play, and what Reverend Martin had said to the Principal after Assembly. The walls of the old University building, and the Library, where they spent a good deal of time, were covered with wild bougainvillea in many brilliant shades of maroon, orange and pink.. In summer, when the temperature zoomed to 112 degrees or more, they were thankful for the exquisite flowering trees which blossomed miraculously just then, making the Campus, and all the avenues leading off the Connaught Circle shady, cool and a riot of colour. The brilliant flaming Gul –Mohar, the purple Jacaranda, and the Laburnum shed their leaves in abandon, while the black crows called raucously to them, four girls filled with the headiness of being young and alive! 
They had so much fun, chattering, gossiping, and imitating the teachers. “Mrs. Diashenko was so sarcastic in class today. Agreed, she’s brilliant, - but the things she says! It’s too much!” Mrs. Diashenko was married to a Russian émigré, who taught Russian in the Languages Department of the University. She was a tall and stately woman from Gujarat, whom the girls sometimes referred to by her maiden name, Dayabai Patel. Her wit could be lethal, but she could also care very much for a student, if she considered her worthwhile. “Don’t get hemmed in by a book. Let your mind go off at a tangent…”  One of the girls was nearly in tears: “Dishky really ticked me off in class today. Just because I said I’d never read Tolstoy, she went off the deep end. And guess what? She said I had ‘no soul. None at all.!’  Maybe if I do read Tolstoy, she’ll allow me to have a soul!”  They all laughed. The fact was that the very sophisticated and intellectual standards of the teachers could have a very damning effect on some of the girls. Only Dolly Muthanna’s benevolence shone, like the sun, on good and bad alike! Mrs. D. and her Russian husband had drifted apart, their only son later going back to Russia with his father. Later, the old man did come back, and continued to teach Russian at the University. Mrs. D. had divorced, and was remarried to a promising young writer, who was always away, in the U.S. or elsewhere, on one Fellowship or the other. Years later, when Shueli returned to Delhi, her marriage broken, struggling to make a new life for herself, she taught for a while at her alma mater. Old Dr. Diashenko came to meet her. He seemed spent and broken, alone, living far from his own homeland. “Please do take a look at my manuscript, It’s a novel,” he said, holding out the rather ragged manuscript, typed laboriously on an old manual type-writer.
”I am typing with two fingers only. So it is going very slow. Maybe you can suggest for me some publisher?” Shueli’s heart was wrenched by the sad voice of the old gentleman, yet admiring the courage and tenacity which had kept him going, despite the harshness of his life. The novel had been about the valiant effort of a man to keep alive in an almost prison-like situation, the only human element being the low-caste woman who came to clean his house every day. The details were as rich and thorough as Robinson Crusoe on his desert island had mapped out… The novel was not fashionable, and though Shueli did try, through Mitran, to get it read, there were no takers. Not long after,  Shueli heard that the old man had died, and Mrs. D. had sat by his side, as death freed him.
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For each of their birthdays, they had formed the habit of going to one of the new little restaurants, started by one of the enterprising refugees from the Punjab. There was Alps and Kwality and Gaylord. “Let’s go to the Alps” suggested Manisha. “Frederick is singing there. He’s terrific, and their chocolate cake is divine. What are you getting for Ashvini?” she asked, to which Shueli replied “She only likes Books.” The last time, on Papa’s birthday, she had made an awful faux pas, or so it had seemed. Suitably impressed by the highbrow author’s name, she had been sure Papa would be impressed too. But when she handed him ‘The Body’s Rapture’  both Ammy and Papa had looked incredulous, and had then burst out laughing. “Why, Papa? He’s a very famous writer, and it must be a very intellectual book.” “I’m sure it is, Molla. I’m sure I shall enjoy it” he had said, smiling affectionately.
 Perhaps she would get Ashvini a book by Graham Greene or Francois Mauriac – everyone was talking about these writers. Quite, quite highbrow. Ashvini would approve. When Shueli had told her the other day about a Romance she was reading, Asvini had replied in a pained voice “Shooey – how could you?  Luckily, Asvini was thrilled with Shueli’s choice of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, which she gave her at the Alps, after ordering dark chocolate cake, and delicious Cappucino Coffee which had to be drunk with fresh cream poured over a spoon. Shueli had rather a fiasco when it came to Mani’s present. With her limited pocket-money, she had bought a shiny new, but actually old, - record of the great Caruso singing some grand operatic arias. She had found it in an old record shop in Connaught Place. “We can find any music you want Miss, even if it’s very old” said the young man from Goa, who owned the Western Music shop. She had put the shiny new record containing a whole world of lost music into a brown paper package and, clutching it carefully, had got into “The Leyland” – the bus where “anything could happen” carrying the boys and girls from New Delhi to the University. (Papa had just recently left the University, and they had moved here, which meant a long journey every day.)  The Leyland was almost like the magic horse of her childhood. You might have the boy you’d been dreaming about leaning dizzily close to you, as you both hung on to the overhead bars, or you might see him sitting and talking animatedly to Sour Face Anita, which could send you into the deepest depression! There was always a lot of giggling, chattering, and shrieks when ‘Sardarji’- the driver – took a sharp bend, or just braked unceremoniously, throwing everyone against everyone else! But this particular day, as she was thrown against Raghu Menon, and landed on Sarita’s lap, Shueli thought she heard a cracking sound. As soon as she got to College she ran to see if the Caruso record was alright… There stood Manisha, grinning happily, as everyone greeted her with cheery Happy Birthdays. Shueli handed her the record, just hoping against hope that all would be well, and her efforts to find a rare, old record had not been wasted. Mani opened the package. The Caruso record lay there, cracked right across the centre. “Oh Shueli, it’s broken. Never mind. Thanks anyway”  said  Manisha, going on  happily to examine her other presents. Shueli burst into tears. Later, she never could understand why it had assumed such enormous proportions.. She knew she wouldn’t be able to afford to get Manisha another present, and she was unlikely ever to find another Caruso record again. Her mood had been blighted for the day. But, on Ashvini’s birthday everything went just right. “I’ve been dying to read the End of the Affair. How did you know just what I wanted, Shooey?” asked Ashvini, as they sat in the cool, dimly lit Alps Restaurant, eating chocolate cake, and making  ‘requests’ to the Band for their favourite songs. Each had a special song, which was generally sad and moody, as Ashvini played a part in deciding who had which song! So there they sat, on the threshold of their lives, as the Connaught Place shoppers strolled in the busy shopping arcades outside, and the Alvarez Band from Goa played haunting, romantic tunes. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes; September Song; Blue Moon and Some Enchanted Evening! That they were insulated and cut off from the teeming life of the pavements outside, just never crossed their minds, though they did carry within themselves fears and worries about their futures in the new, Independent, rapidly changing India. Shueli often felt really depressed and helpless when Graany, or some relative or friend wrote in with their suggestions of boys who might be suitable, so that proposals could be made to the family. “Why on earth should Papa have to make a proposal for me? You mean I’ll stay unmarried for ever, if he doesn’t? It’s horrible, and on top of it all, his family will ask for a dowry, I suppose, for the great privilege of letting their son marry me.”
 Gaya would tease  “Just wait, Shueli. Ammy’s sure to pin down some pimply young man, and he and his bossy mother will come to look at you, and decide if you’re good enough for him. You’ll be asked to serve the tea, while they look you over! And after all that, if he, or his mother, decide you’re not good enough for their wonderful boy, you’ll be disgraced. And no one will ever marry you. You’ll have to remain a spinster till the end of your days!”
“I refuse! I refuse  positively to ever meet anyone like that. What do they think girls are? Cows or something?”
Papa would explain, “Every community has its customs and traditions, which have evolved over the years. It’s best to accept that, fit in, and make something of it.”
How would Shueli, young and not too sure of her way in the world, ever escape from the weight of this tradition? Was she, who dreamed of being as free as the wind, going to have all her dreams crushed, and find herself boxed in by a loveless marriage? She pushed aside the dreadful fear that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her, and gave herself to the joy of being young, alive, and at College.
 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Drama and Dissent
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Apart from the fact that she still hoped that her feelings for Arif would find a chance to blossom sometime, somewhere, - she had so many exciting, new ideas to assimilate, so much happening to take in her stride, she was sure a wonderful life lay ahead for her. She shared with Manisha the passionate desire to be an actress. But she didn’t quite aspire to the heights that Mani did. “I want to see my name in lights someday” said Mani. Shueli said Yes, that would be too, too wonderful, but rather doubtfully. Wasn’t that asking for just a bit too much? 
“Anyway” said Tara firmly, “What’s much more important than having your name in lights is - just, - well, - to be happy. I’d just like to have a happy marriage, like my Ma and Pa had!”
“Yes,” thought Shueli, “If it’s someone I really love, that’s what I would want too. But he’d have to understand how much I love plays and things like that.”  She knew how conventional husbands could turn out to be regular jailers or tyrants. Just last summer, travelling down to Tiruvella to see Graany and Graanpaa, she had found herself in a compartment with a young woman, who had a littler baby with her. As usually happens on these long train journeys, where strangers become friends, Shueli and Ammu were soon chatting away. Ammu kept borrowing all the Women’s magazines Shueli had with her, but seemed unable to focus on any of them for long. She just seemed to lose interest, and would hand the magazine back to Shueli, and pick up her baby and rock it. Shueli thought to herself, the poor thing, isn’t too educated, I suppose – just totally domesticated. Suddenly Ammu said, “My husband doesn’t like me to waste my time reading. I have to look after the house, my husband and baby, and my husband’s mother lives with us.”
“But surely, reading a magazine is alright. Why should he prevent you from having the pleasure and relaxation of reading?” she asked, rather mystified. Did this poor girl have any education after school? As tactfully as possible, she asked “What were you doing before your marriage? Did you go to College?”
“Oh, yes” Ammu replied. “Actually, I was a lecturer and working on  Sartre .. Existentialism and Responsibility, for my Thesis…” she trailed off, as if it was forbidden fruit, or as if she was speaking of somebody else. Shueli was so shocked, she couldn’t conceal it. “But why – why didn’t you finish it?”
“Well, my marriage was fixed by my parents. I thought I could take it up again, after marriage. But my husband is a busy man, an engineer. He hates to see me sitting and reading. And then I had the baby, and all the household responsibilities. He just told me straight out not to waste my time  reading, and concentrate on my household responsibilities.” Shueli was outraged by the injustice of it. “But Ammu, - WHY?       How could you give up when you were working on such an interesting subject? Can’t you go back to it now? Surely you have a servant to do the housework, and your husband wouldn’t mind. Maybe he’ll even be proud of you.” There was a glazed, blank, obstinate look on Ammu’s face, which Shueli was too young at the time to understand. Years later, she remembered that look, and did understand where it sprang  from. It’s when you’ve given up the fight, and become your own worst enemy, taking into yourself all the arguments of one who is secretly your enemy, jealous of your separate being, of any achievement that might threaten his own standing. You’re no longer your own person. The waste of her intellectual powers explained Ammu’s listlessness, her inability even to concentrate on the trivia of a Woman’s Magazine. Or,  perhaps,  her unconscious rejection of material unworthy of her total absorption. Her husband had drawn a circle round her, which he told her was for her own safety and the well-being of her family. It would take great strength and ingenuity for any woman to walk out of that circle. Lord Rama had drawn that protective circle around Sita in the forest, warning her not to step out of it. Shueli remembered from Ammy’s stories that innocent Sita had transgressed that narrow boundary, and had been swept into a world of evil, desire and violence. Was that why women were so afraid? Anyway, Shueli was thrilled by the thought of Ammu working on Sartre. They would be doing a play by another French existentialist, Albert Camus, for the College Play that year, and she was going to be in it. The play had been chosen for them by their two young Lecturers, Gauri Vishwanathan and Kavita Sahni. Straight out of University themselves, full of new ideas and intellectual excitement, they opened for their students a new horizon full of enchantment and promise. Miss Vishwanathan had just come back from Cambridge. Brilliant and sensitive, her hands trembled when she lit another cigarette (forbidden by the College Principal, but very much de rigueur if you were somebody in the English Department!)  Kavita Sahni had a pre-Raphaelite look, a delicacy of face and movement, which came from her being a dancer. The Principal of the College, Miss Santwan, - an old martinet – wasn’t too sure what “my staff” was up to. “Young girls these days have all sorts of strange ideas” – she said grimly, when Shueli and Manisha went to inform her about the play. Shueli told her it was about a mistake made by a mother and daughter, who run a boarding house. “It’s called Le Maletendu, which means Cross Purposes, Miss Santwan.”  Gauri Vishwanathan speaking in her intense, sensitive way had tried to make them understand about the play: “You see, girls, it’s about a tragic mistake, about our lack of recognition of each other. The mother and daughter run a boarding house. They kill their lodgers and dispose of the bodies. When the son of the family, who had left many years ago, returns – they kill him, and only then realise their terrible mistake, They were two lonely, isolated women, but you see, they end up destroying the very thing they loved and had been waiting for…” Shueli and Mani were suitably impressed by the high-sounding theme, even if they didn’t really understand it, or see the point of it!  Shueli really preferred Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy, but the Shakespeare Society at St. Stephen’s did the Annual Shakespeare play, and Greek tragedy seemed too, too difficult. Miss Vishwanathan, in her Poetry class heightened their sense of mystery and the inexplicable fragility of life. “Queens have died, young and fair –“ she read to them from an old poem. The girls, who had barely thought of death and beauty being so closely intertwined, were urged by Miss V. to dwell on these paradoxes. “What do you think these lines mean? Meditate on these..”  Many years later, the forgotten lines returned to Shueli, who had come closer to the truth of them. She found them in a dusty cupboard in Papa’s study, the time she had returned there after his death. The little known poet, Thomas Nashe, had somersaulted over time, - writing in the 16th Century, leaping into the 20th, - his  ‘In Time of Pestilence’ as true as ever, kept alive for Shueli by her teacher’s sensitivity. From a time of death by pox and apoplexy to the still mysterious killer – AIDS. 
“Brightness falls from the air;  /   Queens have died young and fair;  /  Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.  / I am sick. I must die. /  Lord have mercy on me.”
To prepare them for the play, the Misses Vishwanathan and Sahni decided that the area of awareness of their girls had to be extended. “You girls need to get into the mood of the play, stretch your imaginations a bit. What do you think, Kavita?  Shall we get them listening to a Beethoven Symphony or to some poetry. Do you think they could come into town with us next week when we visit Anand?”
“Yes, - why not? Why not indeed?” replied Miss Sahni rather shyly and self-consciously, though Shueli couldn’t quite figure out why. The following week, soon after the morning lectures were over, Miss Muthanna asked them with a benevolent smile and a slight smirk if they were going to meet  “dear Anand..”  “Do go, darlings. It’ll do you all a lot of good to get out of here, and spread your wings a bit.”  Shueli decided not to mention it to Ammy and Papa, though it was likely that the secret would be out quite soon, as Shueli found it very difficult, unlike Gaya, to keep things hidden from those she lived with. Anyway, as they were going straight from College, in the University bus, she could keep it to herself for the time being.
Full of anticipation, they climbed the dingy stairs that led to the spacious flat above Connaught Place, where Anand Arya lived. “Is he married?” Tara asked in a whisper.
“Who knows? No signs of any wife here…”   Kavita Sahni, who had a rather attractive blush when she smiled, the wisps of hair around her fine-featured face giving her that look which Shueli remembered having seen in books on the Rossettis and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, took charge of them, laughingly introducing “My students – my girls – “ to her friend, the famous painter, Anand Arya. He seemed a rather reserved, shy man. “Hmm. Yes, make yourselves at home. We’ll have some tea in a while,  Kavita, look after them -”  he broke off, and started speaking in chaste, beautiful Hindi.  Gauri V., meanwhile, had gone across to the Record cabinet.
“Shall we start with the Eroica, or will that be a bit too much for them to take in straight away?  Alright, let’s start with this piece by Schumann, and maybe a bit of Lizst?”
“Miss S. Miss V.” Manisha interposed brightly, “Could we have a look at Mr. Arya’s paintings? That’s if he doesn’t mind…”
“No, of course he doesn’t mind.” Said Miss S.  (The girls had shortened all the teachers’ surnames in this fashion.)
Jumping up impetuously, Miss S. leaned over the silent, rather withdrawn Anand Arya. Wisps of her long hair escaped from a loose chignon to fall across his shoulder. She put her arm across the back of the sofa, leaning over him, her lips just grazing the top of his head. The girls sat there, rigid spectators, not quite sure what to make of all this. They were relieved when Miss S., doing a little pirouette of sheer happiness, said laughingly, “Come on into the studio. Anand  has been working on the concept of Infinity in his Art.” 
In the small studio, stacked with paintings, seeing Shueli gaze raptly at one where lines and dim shapes seemed to move in a shimmer of hazy colour to what seemed to be a magnetic central point, she said, “Ah! That! The parallels of Life and Death never meet in our earthly life, but they merge in infinity. Only through Art can you penetrate that barrier.”
“Oh!” murmured Shueli, too overawed to speak.  She felt as if she were standing on a height, falling into an infinite space filled with colour and light. She was hurtling through space and time, to a single, many faceted star, like the star which had been so central a presence for her throughout her life.  “A single sound embodies that concept. It is Om!” said Miss V. joining them. ”Let’s have some tea, and listen to some music.”
Miss V. spoke to them about Cross Purposes. – “Try and connect it with the music, and Arulji’s paintings. All Art is the effort to reveal, and to understand, however fleetingly, the mystery of life.”
After tea was over, and the magic afternoon with the serious painter and the two women who sought to magically extend their world, it was time to go home. Just for a moment, as the music touched a crescendo, Shueli felt that the table they were sitting at, had risen above the floor, and was floating, suspended in the air, while the  paintings, with their indecipherable lines and crosses and circles floated in the space above. Miss V. and Miss S. suddenly looked like some ancient High-priestesses in the Temple of Isis. Getting home was quite a come-down after the rarefied atmosphere they had inhabited. Shueli hugged the secret new world that had been opened for her, to herself, as they would sometimes shine a torch under the blankets to read in the dark!
“Anand Arya is a married man, did you know?” Manisha whispered next morning, after class.
“Where on earth was his wife?” asked Shueli, for whom the world of extra marital affairs was still a closed book, despite encountering it frequently in fiction.
“Well, it seems he just ditched her, though she was also a fine writer. Buaji was saying they both got married very young. His wife – you’ve heard of Sashi Arya, haven’t you –  she writes most of her short stories in Hindi, though many have been translated into English?  Oh, you should read them, Shooey – they’re   so –o  mystical!”
“Yes, fine, but why did Mr. Arya leave her?  And was she awfully cut up about it?”
“Which woman wouldn’t be? Luckily, she’s got her writing. But, the thing is, Shooey, he seems to be  in love with our Miss S. – and she with him. Though she’s years younger. She’s about 25 or 26, and he’s old – maybe  even  forty!”  Manisha and Shueli both enjoyed dramatic stories like this.. “Miss S. must be feeling terrible about it..”
“Well, you know what it’s like. When you fall in love, there’s nothing you can do about it.” Shueli’s only experience of love, such a distant and far away love, had not prepared her for this kind of situation. No one at home would approve of her visit to this artist’s home. Ammy would say “Why can’t you girls be normal and happy and young? Look at Valsala, - so pure and simple. They have brought a proposal for her from an old family. The boy is in the Indian Police Service, and has seen her, and approved. Now she will make an excellent marriage.”
“Yes, but did she approve of him? Why is that only the boy’s prerogative?  Ammy, at this rate, because I’m dark, no one will ever approve of me. I’ll have to stay unmarried for ever!” said Gaya.
“Anyway” Ammy would most likely say “Why should these women lead such dissolute lives?”
“Ammy has no imagination, or understanding of the darker side of life” Shueli glowered moodily, which was becoming more frequent as she became more and more of a misfit and a rebel. How stifling it would be, she sometimes thought, to fit into a conventional Syrian Christian marriage. It would be goodbye to the theatre, maybe even Literature. To be “a good wife”, - just have babies, - and cook, - no, that would be the end of all adventure and dreams.
It was Miss Kavita Sahni who introduced Shueli to the Romantic Movement and the
Romantic Poets of England. Oh, the magic of Keats and Wordsworth and Shelley, to
rediscover the voices hidden in Nature, to regain the child-like sense of wonder and mystery buried, yet alive, within each of us. All their scribblings in school, on blank pages of exercise books, Arif’s enigmatic green eyes, Shalini’s letters, filled with quotations , the long hours spent in her father’s dusty study, all came back with renewed intensity and meaning. Not just the sickly champak odours of Shelley, but his ethereal Odes, - even if we’ve never seen a skylark, thought Shueli!  (No wonder Sir Edmund Gosse advised Sarojini Naidu to stop writing about nightingales and skylarks, and write about the bul-bul and the koel  instead!) And Shelley’s great poem, Adonais:  “The soul of Adonais, like a star,  /Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.”
Shueli had already discovered Keats in her childhood:  “Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art – Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night / And watching, with eternal lids apart,  / Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite…”  Miss S. reading to just Ashvini and Shueli in their shared tutorial hour, heightened the rich sense of discovery, and cast a radiant light on even her darkest hours in the years to come. Miss S., dimpling, wisps of hair curling around her rather Greek profile, read:   “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies   /  When a new planet swims into his ken; /  Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes  /  He stared at the Pacific – and all his men  /  Look’d at each other with a wild surmise -  /  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”  Tears of joy stood in their eyes as they read this together. “Yes, that’s what the Romantic Movement was all about  - wonder in the most every day – a sense of the extraordinary – as if one had discovered a brand new planet for the first time.”
That was what Shueli would remember, years later, as her plane began to descend over New York Harbour, the first time she ever visited the great continent of America. And there, standing majestically, holding aloft the torch of liberty, was the Statue that represented a country’s finest dreams. There was the great, new continent, which had become home for so many immigrants fleeing persecution and injustice, seeking opportunity. She remembered it too, when news came that same summer, of the men landing on the moon. She read of how those first men ever to set foot on the moon, had fallen down upon the earth of the moon, and kissed it, as moved, or more so, perhaps, as Cortez and his men must have been when they had discovered the Pacific Ocean.  Or, thought Shueli, as each one of us is when we stumble upon unsuspected beauty in every day life.
When it was time for the play, Shueli brought some of this burgeoning vision to her role. They rehearsed for days. She was to be the old mother, while Tara played the daughter. They wanted to borrow one of the St. Stephen’s boys for the part of the lodger, who was actually the son. “Stephen’s is always borrowing our girls for their Shakespeare Society productions – what’s wrong with our asking one of their boys to act in our play?” asked Shueli. But Miss Santwan put her foot down. “Rubbish. Nothing doing. I won’t have any of those boys wandering around among our girls. Girls have always acted as men in our college productions. You just stick to that.” Last year, when she and Mani and Tara had been given parts in the Shakespeare Society production of Much Ado About Nothing, all sorts of arrangements had to be made. As the rehearsals were at “odd hours” – sometimes after dinner, the Hostel authorities insisted that “our girls must be escorted back.” Which the Stephen’s boys found a most enjoyable duty.
Misses S. and V. rehearsed them meticulously, and at the oddest hours, with cups of tea to keep them going. There was an air of great expectation on the final day.
”The Press is here,” someone said. “The Independent’s Art & Theatre Critic has come.
“Oh!” said Shueli nervously, “That must be Mr. Gabor Szabo. Hope he doesn’t say anything awful about us!”  Mr. Szabo was a Hungarian, who had made India his home for many years now. He had been in Lahore as Curator of the Museum there where Papa had first met him. The Curatorship had established him as a great scholar of the Arts. After the Partition, he had moved to Delhi. “He’s awfully high-brow –“ the girls said, not using the word pejoratively, but as high praise. “He knows all about Indian, as well as European Art. And Tantra, and the Theatre, of course, - nowadays he has a Column on The Arts and Theatre.”  Shueli used to see Mr. Szabo sometimes, as he was in the circle of Papa’s intellectual friends, in the Thursday Club, which met once a week at different homes to discuss books and ideas. Among them was Penderel Moon, who was in the I.C.S. and was the last British Finance Secretary, and later, Bursar of All Saints College, Oxford. He also wrote an important study  of Gandhi and Modern India. Some of the others were the B.B.C. Correspondent in Delhi, several distinguished Indians, scholars and creative people, and of course, Gabor Szabo, who was to marry a well-known Indian woman designer and architect. Shueli used to listen to all the scintillating talk, which she could overhear in her room. Once, when she did peer in, to pass on a message for Papa (Ammy usually kept clear of all this highbrow activity, except to send in the most delicious South Indian coffee and ‘bondas’.) – Gabor Szabo spotted her. “Come in. Vhy do you not come in?” She hesitated, as her hair was loose, and she was bare foot! “Vhy you are shy of not having shoes on. You are looking most beautiful with your long hair flowing like that. And bare foot…” which made Shueli scramble for her slippers, and emerge, feeling rather flattered, but also highly embarrassed by Mr. Szabo’s compliments. He looked so odd – he made Shueli feel uneasy. He had long, white hair, which he brushed across his rather bald head. His elaborate East European way of speaking English set him apart from the others. Mr. Szabo gave them an excellent write-up for Cross Purposes, praising their histrionic abilities, though the references to Existentialism and European Theatre Aesthetics probably went right over their heads.
When Shueli returned to Delhi years, she wondered what had happened to the Szabos. “Well, it’s a tragic story,” someone told her. “Gabor Szabo’s wife, Kanta, had a mentally retarded, albino child. She deserted both of them, leaving him with the responsibility of the child. He suffered terribly, and later, when he heard of her death in some far away country, where she had gone to create a great Pavilion, - he  sank into a terrible depression, and took his own life .”  Not too long after, Shueli saw an albino boy in the market, wandering around aimlessly. She was told it was the Szabo boy, lost, homeless, alone in the world.
Though the real meaning of the play largely evaded the young actresses, they got a lot of attention and praise for it. Even more than praise from the critics, what really meant a lot to Shueli was the reaction of Ashvini’s mother, Mrs. Joshi. A simple lady, not highly educated like her husband, who held a position of influence and power, she was much loved by her entire family. Mrs. Joshi had said to her daughter: “Tears came to my eyes, Ashu. How did Shueli, at this young age, know what it feels like to be a mother, to be old and broken?”  But the very next day, soon after Miss S. and Miss V. had told them to relax, and they would take the girls for a special treat to the Coffee House just then – they got a summons from the Principal’s Office. The College Peon told them: “Principal MemSa’ab wants you in her office immediately.”
In her spacious office, Miss Santwan sat, twirling a pen rather feverishly. Her grey hair, which always had a fly away look, now seemed to be full of electricity, almost standing on end!  “Come in, girls. You may sit down,” she said grimly. “I’d like an explanation from you about this dreadful play you did. Who on earth chose it?” When Shueli and Mani sat absolutely silent, knowing that it would be no use trying to impress Miss Santwan with talk about Existentialism, she went on: “ Why  do you girls, who come from nice, happy families, choose plays about such wretched women, and murder, and horrible families?” Well, thought Shueli rebelliously to herself, Othello isn’t about nice, happy families. Neither is King Lear. Macbeth is even worse, and as for Hamlet, the less said the better! …And how would old fuddy-duddy Miss Santwan even begin to tolerate the great Greek Tragedies? They were reading Aristotle’s Theory of Tragic Drama with Mrs. Diashenko, and Shueli thought it was so profound. The Greek words, Catharsis, Hubris, speaking of human pity and fear and pride – why, the Greek tragedies, and Shakespeare too, - despite all the corpses that littered the stage by the last Act – didn’t they reveal human destiny, and divine purpose? But what would someone like Miss Santwan, - who was a mathematician, totally unsympathetic to Literature – what would she comprehend? Perhaps, the four of them, so caught up in the exaltation of their literary studies, had become a trifle arrogant, and imagined that they belonged to some Higher Order! It was Ammy who brought Shueli down to earth. “Why must you all be so ridiculously morbid? Why can’t you just be like other normal, ordinary girls?” She more or less seemed to agree with Miss Santwan, so Shueli began to give her up as a lost cause! But the worst blow came from Papa, who had always been so understanding before, so very much on her side. When Shueli muttered that she “didn’t want to be dull and ordinary, but someone rather different,” he answered bluntly. “Well, I’m afraid you’re just an ordinary flower, like everyone else, and you’ll have to ‘fit in’!”  That Papa could say that to her, hurt Shueli more than anything. More and more, she was beginning to feel cut off from her family. And Arif, who she imagined might have understood and comforted her, was so hopelessly far away.. Once in a long while, a letter would come from Arif or his mother. They were always filled with affection for the whole family, but never contained any of the special words Shueli’s heart yearned for. It would be too unladylike for her to write him a letter revealing her hidden feelings. Recently she had even begun to feel that she had built it all up in her own imagination. It didn’t seem to have any existence in the real world. And even if she could make it all real, reveal her own feelings, and have the joy of knowing that hew reciprocated them, her family would be unutterably shocked. They would never agree to her marrying a Muslim and going off to Pakistan! She was timid about even mentioning this possibility. Once when she had talked of marrying outside the community, she had got  quite a harsh response from both Ammy and Papa. “Well, if it matters so little to you what we think, - you can go to Timbuctoo!” said Papa crushing Shueli’s resolve to get her point of view across. She simmered inwardly and thought  Papa is getting to be like Mr. Barrett.  She and Gaya had discovered a very old copy of a play called The Barretts of Wimpole Street, about the life of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. How she and her brothers and sisters had been crushed, subdued and almost destroyed by their tyrannical father. Elizabeth Barrett had been in a wheelchair, till she had been rescued by he future husband, the poet Robert Browning. Maybe, thought Shueli with some self pity, she too would be confined to a wheelchair, until she was rescued by some famous poet – or maybe Arif? Her imagination enabled her to work out the logistics of such  a dramatic rescue. But she wilted when she thought of the reality. It wasn’t as if there was someone waiting in the wings to rescue her. If there was an actual person urging her to stand up for herself and fight back,. she could surely be heroic. But here she was, in love with a distant unreality. She felt put down, made to feel helpless and powerless. She argued about everything under the sun with Papa, - religion, freedom to think, even love and sex, - but when it came to this matter of choosing her own husband, whatever his background, they just couldn’t see eye to eye. Anyway, she thought, What am I fighting for? Arif has probably forgotten all about me. True, he writes sometimes, letters full of thankfulness and affection.. They shared the memories of those nights full of fear, when the sky was lit by flames of hatred. That memorable rescue was something they could never forget, creating an irrevocable, though tenuous bond between them. Maybe, Shueli thought, maybe, when I finish my B.A., I can try to get there, and meet him again. And when he realises the depth of my love, he cannot but return it. She felt like a woman, and yet she was a child, or was treated like one. After all, there was plenty of time. Besides, what of her dreams of Oxford, or of the Theatre?
“So intimately near  / And yet as far, / As aching star from star.” she read in a poem by the Indian poet, Armando Menezes, and thought how aptly it described her hopeless situation, not only with Arif, but with all her dreams.
​

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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