Shueli's Star

Novel
~ Anna Sujatha Mathai 
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Previous Chapters 

​Chapter 29
The Ballad of the Black Sorrow

The play was almost upon them. Charu talked to the girls who were going to bring Lorca’s play alive: “Bernarda Alba oppresses and imprisons her daughters, because she herself knows the disrupting force of passion. That it can destroy an entire family, even a community. We don’t often think about it, - but it’s true, isn’t it? Those girls are just like so many of us in India. Behind bars, of one kind or another, most of us – aren’t we? Thwarted passion can become warped. Bernarda cannot prevent her daughters from hearing the music in the fields, or experiencing the feel of spring in the blood…”
There was the usual tension and excitement, everyone rather highly strung, before the final staging of the  play. There they sat.  Prim, restrained daughters of an ancient line, dressed in black, their blood beating wildly under the stiff, black dresses. The hungry, unappeasable thirst for life could not be crushed by tradition or custom. Shueli had learned after so much privation and denial, that ancient doors had to be broken down if you were to grasp a moment of true passion. “It’s about freedom. That’s why I love it so much. It really is about you and me, Charu, and every woman here. We have to break out of  all kinds of  prisons. Like Lorca’s woman in Ballad of the Black Sorrow: ‘I come in search of what I am seeking, my joy and my own self.’”
“How very sad that someone who could write like that, who saw freedom as a shining possibility, was finally destroyed, killed by faceless, inhuman forces, and thrown into an unmarked grave. Charu, that young poet of the theatre, they didn’t realise his voice could never be stilled, did they? That it would spring, a flower of exquisite fragrance, from the darkest grave…”
Charu replied, sadly: “I feel my time is coming soon, and I shall be nothing more than a forgotten tune.”
“Charu, why must you talk like this? You will never be a faded tune, always a song remembered...”  and, as Shueli got carried away by her feeling for Charu, she continued, “ Long after you’re gone, you’ll be an underground river, whose music will still haunt us.”
  Why on earth had she said such a thing, Shueli wondered, and Charu just smiled,  flattered by her friend’s strong reassurance. Neither of them thought the words might be prophetic.
There were the inevitable last minute scenes and disasters , the usual high tension and rush of excitement, before the play started. In the final scene, Adela, the rebel daughter, confronts the towering force of Bernarda Alba, her mother. Shueli found herself trembling with anger, as she had, years ago, when the English girl in the Convent School had tried to bully her, or when confronted by physical and mental violence by Paul, or whenever she found some small human creature threatened by a crass and powerful  intimidator. Charu was sweating, a powerful, dominant energy, the very embodiment of tradition and authority, pitted against an equally unyielding will. She picked up her stick to strike Shueli. As it fell across her shoulders, actually stinging her, Shueli forgot everything except her wild desire to live.  Possessed by a fury impossible to contain, she snatched the stick from Charu’s hand, and broke it in two. It actually snapped!
                                                          ******
 
Shueli had always desired freedom, the right to choose, more than any gift. She had  once thought that she would like to sing her own song, laugh her own laugh, shed her own tears, above all, rather than express just what was required of her. In one of her favourite plays, while at college, she had come across the lines: “We think caged birds sing, / When, indeed, they cry.”
Caged birds sing heart-breaking songs. A caged bird, indeed, she too had been. Now, for the first time, she savoured the taste of freedom, a destined and appropriate freedom, the human dignity of choice. Maybe she could fly – like the birds she used to gaze at, from behind her barred windows.
  Still exhilarated by the wild and passionate defiance of  authority, the throwing open of windows, letting song and sunlight in, she rejoiced in affirming her own life.
                                                          ********
She felt she had arrived at a decision. The play had been catalytic for her. She would not flounder in indecision any more. She was worried about Kartik, What future could she give him, all alone, with no job, and almost no money. Would she wreck his life, as well as her own? He was the child she had taken into the shelter of her heart. She should not leave him ship-wrecked. The little boy who didn’t like sad stories – it was she who would have to make his life a happy story! Paul might oppose the whole thing, and refuse to give up Kartik. She would have to see. Terrifying as it was for her, she would have to discuss things honestly and openly with Paul, and they would have to work out a separate future.
  The  garden of the house in Kavipuram lay covered in fallen leaves. The flaming red hibiscus tree by the front door, had withered. Inauspicious, she thought!  She opened the doors and windows, as the familiar musty smell of fungus overwhelmed her. Paul should have come back from the outlying Clinic. Where was he? There was no sign of him. She cleaned the house, and  Veroni’s cooking soon had the fragrant smell of a tasty meal, floating through the house. When she heard the sound of a car, she ran out to the wooden gate, to open it up, and let Paul in. But it wasn’t Paul’s car, and in the car sat their friend, Dr. Keshavan.
“Come and sit down, Shueli. I have something very difficult to tell you.  We have to be very careful that no one else gets to know about it, so that the scandal doesn’t ruin Kuri’s career. He is such a fine doctor, and has been doing such valuable work in the village Clinic. There was a woman assistant, with some nursing experience, at the Clinic. She used to help out with all the routine cases. Difficult cases used to be brought back to our Hospital here. This woman, I think her name is Kamala, seems to have worshipped Kuri almost as if he were a God. You know how it is. Doctors can seem larger than life, - god-like, - as they work, and heal the sick and dying.
Sorry, Shueli, I should be frank. Kuri was sleeping with this woman. No harm would have been done, and you need never have known, except that things took a bad turn. I would never have known anything about it, either, except that Kuri sent for me urgently, as he found himself in a really bad situation. Apparently, Kamala was in tears, and told him she was pregnant, and it was his child. She comes from a very poor family, landless labourers, and has no one to support her. When Kuri first heard about it, he was desperate. He felt she was ruining him, - destroying his position, his reputation, - everything.. He said he would give her some money, but could do nothing more. Shueli, I think he was really shocked when she ran towards the well in the Clinic compound. You know these village people. The women often kill themselves, when faced with such hopeless situations. Luckily, Kuri ran after her, caught her, brought her back into the Clinic, and put her on sedation. If she had thrown herself into the well, it would have been catastrophic.  Meanwhile, one of her brothers arrived. They have made no threats, but that is the situation. Kuri could be blackmailed. He sent for me, and I was able to talk to the brother, and calm him down. Kuri is in a bad state. But I feel it can all be worked out. We felt you should be told the truth. I know you’re feeling very upset about it now, Shueli. But I’m sure you do understand. I didn’t want it to reach you as gossip or rumour. Kuri will come back tomorrow, after settling up things there. They have to decide about the baby….”
  Shueli thought quickly. She could not bear to see Kuri, or hear about his decision, or be the forgiving wife. There was nothing to forgive.  They had reached the end of the road. They had to take separate paths.
 She thanked Keshavan for standing by Kuri, and informing her. She told him she would think over what she should do. (Later, Keshavan told Kuri he had been amazed at how composed Shueli had seemed, “deadly calm.”)
Shueli then packed a suitcase with some of her things. She told Veroni also to get ready, as they would be going back to Belapur by the early morning train.
She left a note for Kuri. It simply said: Keshavan told me about everything. Hope you work it all out. I plan to start a new life. Kartik will be with me. I will send you my address after I know where I’m going to be. We can discuss things then. It is best we go our separate ways. Shueli
                                                      *******
 
When Shueli reached Belapur, she spent several days organising things, trying to make plans for the future. Maybe she could get a job teaching, or with some publishers. She had been so out of touch with things that her career prospects didn’t seem too bright. But she was determined to do something. Maybe she could do a short course,  which would give her more possibilities.
     Mitran had left a message for her, telling her he had had to go back to Delhi for 2 or 3 weeks. He did not know anything about Shueli’s decision to leave Paul and Kavipuram  for ever. Nor did he know about the catastrophic happening that had forced things out into the open.
 Because of the critical situation that had completely changed her life, Shueli realised she had lost touch with Charu. When she enquired, she was shocked to hear that there had been a midnight raid at Charu’s house. Charu had not herself been there when it happened. She had gone to Madras, with her husband, to attend a political meeting.. Her very old and feeble father, and her young son, who was a musician, were at home. Sometime in the middle of the night, there was a banging at the front door. “Police! Open up!” A group of men in police uniform, with some others in plain clothes, entered the small drawing room, opened up by a sleepy-eyed Gaurav, Charu’s son.
“What’s happening? What on earth is all this about?”. Gaurav, always preoccupied with his jazz band and electric guitar, hardly ever gave a thought to politics.
Later, he told Shueli: “I didn’t know whether this was real, or I was dreaming a scene from a Spy thriller, or a movie about the CIA and the KGB, Man, this was something else!”
“Where are your parents? Your mother – where is she?”
“There’s only me and my grandfather at home,” replied Gaurav, still sleepy and dazed by this weird spectacle of men in uniform.
“Get your grandfather up. We have to ask you both a few questions.”
“Oh man! Questions at this hour of the night?”
The old man, who had a heart condition, was aroused, and emerged, still in his night pyjamas. He was shocked, and trembling badly. “Sit down, OldDad, This is too much for him. Do you mind if I get a spot of brandy for him?”
After that, they had both been grilled intensively, for over an hour, about all Charu’s political friends and activities. “Man, my Mum loves Theatre and Dance. My father makes films. People of all kinds come to our house. We don’t keep lists of them…”
“Quiet, young man. Don’t fool around. There is a serious charge of conspiracy against your mother, and of aiding and abetting people charged with criminal activity against the State!” Gaurav was too stunned to reply. OldDad was weeping by the time the interrogation was over.
  The next day, Charu was arrested, and taken to the Central Jail. Protests from artists, writers, film makers and intellectuals from all over the country, and other parts of the world, did nothing to change the situation. In jail, Charu, who suffered terribly  from bronchial asthma, was placed with prostitutes and other “criminals.” The prisoners were given the job of husking and cleaning wheat and rye grain, in the courtyard just outside the jail windows.
“It aggravated Mum’s asthma greatly, so that she was put on higher and higher doses of medication. We found her limp, and almost unconscious when we visited her the other day. Father has spoken to several people, very high up ones,, and lots of petitions are going to the Chief Minister, the Governor, even the P.M…How can they do this to my poor, sick mother?”
Charu did not waste her time in the prison, on useless self-pity. She began to talk to her fellow prisoners, mostly young girls and women, picked up on flimsy charges of soliciting, or prostitution, or theft. She began to keep a Diary in which those pathetic, broken, helpless voices found a place. ”Not that anyone cares” thought Shueli bitterly, when she later read that sad testament of voices from the underground.
“Injustices against the poor and already oppressed …just seem to go on and on. All this talk of ‘Garibi Hatao’*… It’s just a political gimmick, to cover up the lust for power, and the immense greed and ruthlessness of our leaders. Someone like Gandhiji, who genuinely cared about the people .. well, they killed him”
 In the prison, one of her young fellow prisoners said to Charu:  “If you become free, go to Delhi, Charu Behan, and speak to Mother Prime Minister. She is on the side of us women, and doesn’t want people to be poor … speak to her. She’ll surely come down here personally, and free us all.” Charu had smiled bitterly at their ignorance, naivete, innocence.
   The reprieve came too late for Charu. As she gasped for breath, she was put on dangerously high doses of cortisone. Her condition was so poor that the Jail Doctor and Police felt it was best to let her go home. “It’ll be a big head-ache for us, if she dies here.”
“Our Big Sister, our hope, our voice, she’s going,” wept the girls in the prison, as Charu was led out to where her husband and son waited to take her home… a few hours after she got home, Charu breathed her last, painful breath. She was released from prison indeed!
  When Shueli came to see her, she found her vibrant, passionate, beautiful friend laid out on the floor, cold, dead. She still had so much to give. Why should someone like her have been called away so early? Years later, when Papa lay dead, she found a half-finished page on his type-writer. It was part of the book he was writing, which he
would never complete. That unfinished text, the incomplete text of our lives, those unwritten pages, began to haunt Shueli. Perhaps this life itself is  only a small part of that greater text, that text which holds the secret of all human life...

* * Garibi Hatao or Remove Poverty : tslogan of Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party  

Chapter 30
The LightHouse on the Rocks 

“I come in search of what I am seeking, my joy and my own self..”
            The Ballad of the Black sorrow.  Federico Garcia Lorca
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 One sultry evening, Shueli sat grieving about the death of her friend, her own wrecked life, wondering how she could reshape it, give it meaning and impetus. She heard a shout from below, and, looking down from the balcony, saw Mitran standing there, a single red rose in his hand, smiling that boyish smile. She almost threw herself headlong down the stairs. As she flew down, she remembered the dream she so often had. She was running down the steep slope of a hill, alone, desperate, falling into space, likely to be destroyed. Sometimes she would wake up sobbing. Sometimes, in her dream, unknown arms held her, and saved her.  Now, Mitran caught her in his warm, strong embrace. He had heard about Charu’s death, but was shocked to hear about Paul and the woman at the clinic. Shueli told him that she had decided to leave Paul. Mitran said “ Shueli, more than anything, I want you to share my life, and, of course, our Kartik will be with us. We may have troubles, but we can face them, if we’re together. Somehow I feel strong when you’re with me!”
 Mitran and she  decided to take a walk by the ocean, not too far from the house. Arms around each other, they strolled along in the moonlight, discussing their future life together. Not far from the deserted temple they found a small clump of casuarina trees. They sank down in the sand, embracing each other. “ Love of my life. You’re the love of my life!” he whispered in her ears.
“I never knew what love was until I met you. “
Naked in body and spirit, intoxicated by desire, with the moon and the stars as their only witnesses, they became one. The sand made a gritty bed, but they were oblivious of it, overwhelmed by an experience  so primal and absolute.
 All night they lay there, holding each other, talking of their plans to stay together for life. Shueli found a perfect shell  lying beneath her. She held it out to Mitran. “Put it to your ear. Listen carefully. Tell me what you hear. Can’t you hear the music – of time - the secrets of people and families long gone from here?” He hugged her, and whispered, “Yes! Yes, of course I can hear it all!”
  In the clear sky there was that one perfect star, Shueli used to gaze at, as a child..
“There’s your star!”  he laughed.
“No” Shueli replied. “It’s our star. It’s our world. The whole world belongs to us, because we believe in it! Love makes you inherit the whole earth!””
                                                            *****
 

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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