Bharatwaj Iyer - Letters From A Brothel.

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Letters from a Brothel
Bharatwaj Iyer
2 Letters from a brothel
First published in India 2012 by Frog Books An imprint of Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd 1 Level, Trade Centre Bandra Kurla Complex Bandra (East) Mumbai 400 051 India Telephone: +91-22-40700804 Fax: +91-22-40700800 Email: info@leadstartcorp.com www.leadstartcorp.com / www.frogbooks.net Sales Office: Unit: 122 / Building B/2 First Floor, Near Wadala RTO Wadala (East) Mumbai 400 037 India Phone: +91-22-24046887 US Office: Axis Corp, 7845 E Oakbrook Circle Madison, WI 53717 USA Copyright Bharatwaj Iyer
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ISBN 978-93-81836-16-3 Book Editor: Gunjan Verma Design Editor: Mishta Roy Typeset in Book Antiqua Printed at Repro India Ltd, Mumbai Price India: Rs 95; Elsewhere: US $4
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Dedication To my parents.
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About the Author

Bharatwaj Iyer is a resident of Navi Mumbai. He studied at St.Marys School and is a first year B.Com student of S.I.E.S College. He is interested in reading and writing. The book Letters from a brothel is his debut novel.
He can be contacted at biyer11@gmail.com
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Dear Sir, The day is hot, and hence the heart has become insipid. Boredom pervades this room at this moment; boredom so acute that one may even touch it. But the cause of it is something different. It is not caused in me today because of inactivity or disinterest, or so we commonly believe the cause to be, but something else. What causes it isnt difficult to understand, but the problem is that there are too many causes and the cause is not distinct. This boredom has its root in doubt and in impiety. I do not know if impiety even exists but I know that I exist only in impiety and would only die in it. Being uneducated, it is difficult for me to enter into discussions of it nor would my mood today allow me. Never had I known before that doubt would have such an impelling effect, not impelling you to do anything but rather impelling you to do nothing. Yes, this thing almost gnaws at the heart, it racks the mind. But what am I doubtful of? I am at my wits end to find it but in vain. This doubt stands in some distant void, not showing itself but still insensibly mounts higher and higher in me. How ignorant do I seem! Unable to find out what is happening in my own head, how am I then to know the world outside? It is evident now that the world inside is the most difficult nut to crack. Even when I hold my door-knob or hold this pen while Im writing this, impiety seems to hold it with me. It no longer has that abstract and immaterial quality that we believe it had but has now become so real that it seems more real and more tactile than this pen. But does it matter? No! And yes. It is better for me that it doesnt, but it holds me with its icy something and drags me in itself. It is as if impiety has found me too immaterial and too abstract that it tries to materialise me by holding me too tightly, making me the very thing which it is. Yet it does not lead to virility, it leads me to boredom, abysmal boredom. It being the purest thing I have seen yet leading me somewhere where there isnt anything. Why pure? Because it
is. It is the only thing that is. Impiety is more is in my eyes than this pen or this parchment. But why do I care? Because it concerns me, because it is mine and no one elses. God knows me better than anybody but impiety knows me better than even God. Its just my head. I know impiety doesnt exist, its all me just creating it. But why? Because I find nothing more comforting, nothing better to create. No! Goodness or piety can be made too, but no! They belong not to me; they seem so otherworldly they seem so abstract and so idealistic. Hands off! I dont want them. The fact that Im impious doesnt make piety alien, least of all. The fact that it is alien is because it feels too homely, too familiar, and one with us to be true. Its not like impiety, impiety drags me by the hair, it pulls me arrogantly, makes me look a slave, makes me stand in abysmal unwantedness, it makes me bad and untouchable and thus does it give me its highest support and thus does it give me its hand in most arrogant condescension, it gives me itself! Yea, what more do I need when I have the most unwanted, I press this arrogant one to my bosom, I kiss it and caress it, I make it all mine even if it does not need me, and thus I have him fear me. There I had my only victory, there I crossed it, which was never crossed and there I was heightened. I fear I cannot continue, here I must stop. The arrogant one has entered and is waiting for me to meditate on him, to serve him like a slave does his master, and by which the slave wins mastery. Till next time. Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, Sorry for not writing to you for a few days. I was busy or rather kept busy I should say. Moreover even if I could have scavenged time somehow I had nothing to tell you. Neither do I have anything special to tell now. What makes me write now is not my boredom but my activity. Boredom I face like nothing I have faced before, it makes you suffer like one suffers in hell. The only reason it makes you suffer is that it restricts you from finding ways to avoid it; it wants you all by itself and would not allow you to cast it away by diverting your mind to anything else. Activity on the other hand, although it already gives you much to pay attention to, diverts you always to various ways, into various more activities and there is its wickedness. Oh! Why am I into the habit of grounding ground grains all the time? I have by now adopted the habit of reading newspapers all the time, and only English ones. Furthermore, writing to you for about six months now has improved my language more than anything. Circumstances here dont allow me to read and write, nor are any of our girls interested in all these things, they normally tease me for it, for my unnecessary struggle into fruitless indulgences. I dont have privacy as well in my room, I have told you that I share it with four other girls, when they go for their turn of work only then do I have any time for myself. And only then do I write; even now I am alone. Loneliness has its own charm, especially for the suffering one. No, I dont physically suffer from anything, only sometimes am I subjected to rudeness. But the suffering of the spirit, of my spirit, is intolerable. The monster called pride, which in my occupation must be completely destroyed if one wishes to survive, is day by day growing more and more powerful and by its power seeks to verily crush my whole being. It kicks me hard when I let myself subjected to it and thus causes me most pain. Like a father scolds his child for bad behaviour or for some other reason so does my father, pride, comes with its iron chain not to bond my being, for that would have
been most relieving, but to rub its iron rings over the heart and to make it bleed by the friction. Such is my sickness! When in company, this pride fails to show its wings, but when alone nothing has the power to control it, at least not me. But more the pain, more the relief. In careless joy alone do I find myself astray, then alone do I find myself most useless, listless and indolent. Hence are boredom and loneliness my sweetest companions and hence are joy, shameless bliss and activity my harshest enemies. For in loneliness is there no more of unwanted carelessness, here there is no self-forgetfulness and here and here alone with mother loneliness is there no forgiveness. As the mother unforgiving in her love and sincerity never lets go of her child from her bosom suchlike is the unforgiving, reprimanding love of pride when it tries to inflict its heaviest blows on the already suffering heart. And today as I write to you alone in this room, pitying myself, in the company of my strict master, now am I suffering like I never before suffered and in that suffering alone do I have any respite, in it alone does my life assume any seriousness, in it alone can I lose myself for a while. It shows to me that persons of my kind, too, are subjected to such serious and hearty emotions and thus it gives solace to the heart. Yesterday we went to the bazaar, me and a few other girls, and saw ladies of higher and better social standing. Huh! To us every other woman is a lady of higher and better social standing. The word us gives so much of power when I use it. We, us, our kind these words have the reassuring effect of telling me that I am not alone in this nauseating, nauseating to others obviously, business of selfinflicted murder of the soul. At least we dont see it as nausea. How relieving, how grand. No it is not nauseating! I am not nauseating! I know it, oh! How we lie! I am unable to write any further. Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, I would like you to meet Sharadha, the only friend I have in this world after you, she is one of the youngest among us girls. She is also studying in a night school. Bad circumstances have brought her into this dirty mesh. Her father was in a very good financial position when she was born but he lost all his property in a gambling game, and after that, his life gave a twist, a severe twist. Pressed by his creditors and also unable to handle the family matters with whatever little he had he was forced to sell his daughter off to our head mistress, and thus, inevitably she was ruined in spirit. She calls me didi, Im six years elder to her and she looks at me as her elder sister. Oh! You dont know how elevated you feel when you too are given the status of being a sister. Oh! You dont know, you just dont know. What a privilege it becomes to you once youre me. I want to somehow pull her out of this vortex of filth, shame, lowness and every other adjective I can use, I cannot ask your help of course; you can be of help only as a hearer who does not hear. I only wish you could read my letters but nevertheless it doesnt make a difference. Yes, Ill bring her out; we all will get out of this, all of us. We all will have better positions and occupations once our time comes. But we just dont wish it. By now you must have picturised me as a whining hag who does not have any self-respect whatsoever nor any respect for her job. By whining and complaining Im not deprecating my occupation or myself if anything, Im only making it high and valuable enough to have the privilege of deprecation. And in that attempt alone is there any peace to my soul. Never did I ever imagine that complaining could do so much of good to your heart and praising so much damage. Either praise me or reprimand me but dont be indifferent towards me, that pains more than anything, nay, death is better than knowing oneself to be a wayside yellow leaf neither stepped on by the wayfarers nor picked up. Show me disgust, spit on me or scold
me or pat me but do not deny my presence. Oh! I face that every day, treating a human being as a machine is worse than killing him. That is why Im forced to take refuge in sadness and melancholy gloom; they are my friends, they tell me that I exist. Pride on the other hand is glorious enough to tell me that I must rise, yes, that I am deserving enough to rise. Bare existence is terrible I tell you, you havent experienced it yet, its scary and awe-inspiring, existence is worse than non-existence. If you want to survive you must top it up with enough mystical and ineffable substances as you go along, but if you strip it naked its sight would become unbearable, gory, black and pure! Such is naked existence. When you become nothing more than just a stone, which knows nothing neither cares, when complaints so also praises become void then does your soul reach its abyss, and the blackness and gloom in it. Lord! One can see it only once, to see it twice requires superhuman lust, lust as none have seen before. For death, gloom and sadness are all objects of supreme lust. The lust to be insulted is nothing in comparison to the lust for perishing. Oh, my voluptuousness wouldnt spare me raptures of delight in hearing that name, that sweet blissful and promising name, that delightful idea that one day I shall perish. Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, It is raining today. Joy! The scene outside this crowded room of mine is elevating. I can also spot a blurry rainbow out in the distance. The shine in the wet leaves which gives them a sort of a white colour to their green gives me a little hope. I lied. It gives me nothing, yet I tend towards it and even wrote about it now but no, it gives me nothing, absolutely nothing. Its like a luring matador who lures the bull towards it but in the end has nothing to offer, how cruel my mother nature is. Cruel not because she thwarts or kills or harms for that would have been delightful, cruel because she shows, indicates and lures and these are worse than killing. Rains bring joy and delight and happiness. The heart especially feels relieved by the sound of thunder, I dont know why. And in the night especially, when all our senses are acute and the mind is sensitive it has more powerful effects. But that which delights us also gives us guilt. Happiness and joy and more importantly over-joy have damaging entailments. They leave us guilty and mistaken! Thoughts kill us and thereby make us living.
Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, Blissful inanity, blissful inanity, blissful inanity! How lucky, how wonderful is the life of this ant scurrying about on the floor as I write you this! Unthinking and uncaring it goes about its daily work like a clock unstopping. The worst boon my Lord gave me is my mind, what a bane! Blessed are the stones and rocks and inane animals without understanding. I am cursed! For I can feel and think. For a man to survive in a company of people he requires only one thing; pride. If he does not have anything to be proud of, hell meet his end, emotionally. Pride sustains and pride murders and a mind without pride is the most blissful. Conversely, pride is my master and ruler and Im his obedient slave, slavishly breaking and regaining at his command. My occupation, if the wish be to survive, demands me to throw him off, to be free of his thraldom! But I cannot and I still suffer. He provides me the power to suffer as well, without him my suffering would break me down and kill me. A life wholly devoid of these emotions, these which torture and molest the soul day by day, would be a spine-snapping burden, no, a soul-snapping one. I wish not to live a listless, carefree, mindless and consequently a blissful life like this ant is living. A life where youre thrown off and denied, denied by denial itself, yea, even listlessness is indifferent towards you. A valueless life, hence a blessed life! Oh wretched bliss, Oh wretched blessedness! Oh sacred profanity, how beautiful the abysmal! Here in the company of these devils, you become worth something, youre worth their suffering, their tearing and wearing and breaking you, their torture and molestation their hard-soled boot on your chin! At least I am worth that! Worth being the slave of my master: pride. In the company of the blissful, I am a strewn leaf on the roadside neither
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worth picking up nor crushing with the boot. Hellish! Oh blissful suffering come, come, come I am waiting.
Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, Everything, every emotion and every sentiment is nothing! Its all bare and meaningless. Not only emotions, but people, loved ones specially, relatives, friends all mean nothing! Once we are intrepid enough to dig into them, into love say, then we realise that all emotions are nothing but makeshift processes all interrelated, serving for some purpose entirely different. As if kept merely for utility, once you excavate and go in, so in that the brim goes out of vision, if in such wise you break into the fabric of emotions, any whatsoever, then do you descend into an abyss, dark and nothing! On surface alone is beauty, meaning and mainly purpose- in the depths everything is abysmal. Faintness is what all emotions represent, nothing do you have in it to grasp, although you may grasp but that is only momentary, the mind, the spirit has no steady flotilla to sit on and pass through its unsteadiness. The dog loves its mother only because its mother is of use to it till the suckling period, after that it is all gone, finished. Everything, emotions in particular, only exist for utility and utility is only surface, in the depths is abyss, dare to venture and see! Fear is strong, from brim to abyss, it exists! That is its brilliance; fear is the mother of all living. Suffering is even stronger and hence is purer, nay, purest. If I do not suffer I shall perish. Pride is my master, my chastiser, I love him and hate him at the same time, he is the agent, the broker who brings me my closest friend, my dearest for whom I lust: suffering. How many times in the union of this my inmate, my dear one have I felt him choking my throat not allowing me air, or speech, grating my heart till it thumps, as it were, to jump off my breast and escape. Say, are these hollow, are these, my friends, surface? No, no they arent they are supreme, powerful, vindictive, deep and real! Suffering and life have almost become one. He suffers badly who does not suffer. I would have been very much luckier if you could have replied to
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my letters, if I could have actually got the impression that you were really listening to my babble and whining, but though sad the truth may be, I am luckier now than I could have been otherwise for now ensured of the fact that you wouldnt read these and of the fact that I wouldnt have to go through the shame of having to face a critic in my reader I have the liberty to write anything at all, hence do I think myself lucky. How sweet did that word feel in my soul when I wrote it! Liberty! Ah! It is more or less a physical entity in my eye rather than a mental one; it has its existence in my physiology rather than in my psyche. And I daresay that as life drags on I have been all the more faithful to Liberty for I am free, yea, even if I be bound socially or emotionally, which is the bitterest fact, yet I am physiologically free. My soul is bound, the soul is meant to be bound, but my body is free. Freedom explodes not in my soul but in my physiology. Nothing else is more pleasing. Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, The couple of days that went before were very leisurely for me; I didnt have to go for my turn of work due to lack of customers and our head mistress was kind enough not to pile us with other unimportant and tiresome works. To free my mind from worry I set myself to thought and I brag that I could amass some knowledge, the knowledge I could collect is personal, it concerns me and may be false to all else, but that is the very course of truth that it may not be true. I would catch myself a corner, mainly near the window, and act as if Im busy with something but would only be busy with thought, and it helped a great deal. Knowledge is surely a great panacea, in that it makes everything else in the world, although it may not be so, look petty and lesser and makes itself look the monarch. I couldnt catch for myself any books of the sort I would like to read. Sunil dada would leave a book or two in the main room quite often but they seem to me at the first instant too cheap to open the pages of, too lesser to compete with the ideals at work in my head. Yes, I wouldnt scruple to boast. Even if it werent true that Im developing myself in knowledge I would have to lie, and it is very important to lie, not to the world but essentially to my own self and thus alone should I find comfort, in sweet blissful delusion. It seems to me very uncertain that piety or impiety, good and evil exist at all in the world. And that is precisely why they do exist. Existence bare, naked and uncompromising would be very hard to live by, some colouring is essential; colouring alone constitutes what we mean when we say we live. For no man wishes to exist, the word creates an unabated fear and dread in his head, every man wishes to live. And to live we all aspire. In me the monarch is pride. Pride is supremely powerful, before it everything big or small must and will submit. Yea, even truth
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submits. The truth of my torment is suppressed by my pride with its characteristic brute force. Pride cares not for reason or logic, all it knows is power, its own power. I often forget at times that pride is a feeling, an emotion, although not abstract, I tend to believe that its an organ, for its so tangible in me, an organ somewhere situated near the heart and is jealous of the hearts health and wishes to grate and tear it. Like a thorn being pricked on the flesh for no reason at all such is the pricking of pride on the heart, but worse is the bleeding. Knowledge does not solve the problem, not in the least, but only aggravates it. The more knowledge you acquire the more thorny does your pride become and more masterly and you become more slavish and the heart more and more miserable. Ignorance is bliss indeed. Yet no, ignorance though blissful is not wanted at all. Knowledge, by its multiplication of pride, makes you suffer and pricks you where it bleeds most, while ignorance remains by its very nature callous and indifferent- and you know what Ill prefer.
Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, Unlike before, nowadays there is suddenly much to tell you and unlike it used to be my mind and heart isnt as empty. These days my letters arent written without purposes or causes and reasons as they used to be earlier. It may be because my suffering has grown intense and intensity is unbearable, anyhow it has some good effects. The more I fill myself and these letters with purposes the lesser am I feeling myself free, the greater is the burden of having to cram reasons and sequence which has made my tone all the more trudging and that is a sign of sickness. Without freedom there is no life! What a truism! What commonplace talk! But nobody has ever grasped it, have we? What is suitable to human dignity, my dignity I daresay is the complete and rounded tactility of absolute freedom, not the loosening of chains but the oblivion of all grabbing and tugging and pulling between our conscience and any object in our world. What we must aim at is absolute indifference, lordly and high and worthy indifference! That is the only condition of freedom. To have a womans soul is the most difficult of all challenges and it isnt a worthy challenge at all, it is folly. How deeply, deeply surface is the woman heart, how many emotions go on to make it! How dearly cheap is the endeavour for it leaves your soul rent in pieces, but can you really call that unworthy? If you are intelligent and someone calls you a fool you leave the matter as being unworthy of further concern for it isnt true. But if you are a fool and are called a fool then does it prick, then does the boiling heat of truth make your composure unsteady, your own mind and being unbearable to you. Woman by sheer nature love being insulted and hence when they are insulted its intolerable. I dont even know if what I am saying is true but it helps me hate myself and what more do I require as luxury. Oh! You dont know, you dont have it flaming your soul as it flames mine, how blissful how dearly blissful is your ignorance, it doesnt burn you. So who is the idiot you or me?
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Consider for a second of a woman. This woman say is being rounded by a man who wouldnt let her go. His strong arms are over and around her so as to make her unable to escape; she tries and exerts her whole capacity to lift his hands away and to run but in vain. Imagine the situation in which that woman is implicated, the cry, the desperation in those weak and lithesome hands trying to lift and set her free from those brute and strong ones. Look how freedom is choking, tenably trying to be and yet isnt able to. The cruelty of bondage is not as sensible as people think but is more intense than people can think. But yet this present situation is not as tragic as it seems. In her desperation, in the conflict, in the fight, in the attempt, in the struggle does freedom have more scope than in the fulfilment of independence, a criminal trying to escape prison will do anything to attain the end, anything at all, all things except escape seems to him below the worth of his consideration or scruple. The fighter will do anything, anything at all to be free and will do it better still than a free man. So what is better bondage or freedom? Freedom obviously, bondage obviously. The immediate salvation for the girl, the quickest nay the perfect solution and the most complete of all solutions would be to replace that rugged, forcing torturer with freedom itself, swapping him entirely with abysmal freedom, freedom to the point of nothing. No more the forcing away of the rugged, hard and cruel hands with those soft lithesome ones but then what is more rugged, cruel and hard than freedom? Freedom with its steely force, the force of the void itself is even harder to endure, even harder to become free from. Tell me who will then free her from freedom?
Yours, Kanchana Now I am sure I am babbling in a fit, most of what I wrote is all nonsense viewed from any given angle, it didnt seem so to me but maybe it is. Im sure Im writing more from emotion than from reason and hence absurdities are to be expected- hence not.
Dear Sir, Whatever I speak, my words, please do not take all of them seriously; most of them do not make any sense, they werent intended to. It is my wound that speaks and not me, my words are like the puss that oozes out of a bruise. Hence what I say is not correct, it is real. I enjoy myself in creating complex phrases, most of them using contrasting words, opposites that mean nothing; nothing to the reader but much to me, I dont even know if Im telling the truth at this point, Im telling what is real. How I enjoy using big words and heavy meaning phrases! It helps to make myself look smart and wise, but why do I crave for wisdom? Is it that I make any practical use of it? Not in the least, but my pride wont allow me otherwise. What more do I have than a few heartfelt, emotionally broken, seemingly wise lines to make myself look worthy. How important has this become for me and my life! This looking and feeling worthy, this looking important, this demoniac pride in me rages and dances all along trying to gush through my throat anything, anything at all that will make me get any semblance of comfort. Ah! How skilful Ive become in talking, how grandly do I leave out phrases and sentences, puns and sarcasms and what glee do they give, how comfortable the vanity of words! See how beautiful my last sentence sounded, I fear overdoing it. They are so very delusive, they delude in thinking that by using them I look something better, something more valuable, to say the least, something more than just a worthless wench. Who in the world doesnt want to be something more than a wench but I dont find myself despicable, not in the least, I greatly admire myself and would happily wish to live this life of mine innumerable times in the future. I just wish it ended quickly, to begin once again in the exact same manner. Did you ever notice one thing? One curious thing about our natures and it seems fundamental too, we love or rather we lust for repetitions, perhaps that is why we value our faculty of memory so very much, no man wants to fall on his head. To illustrate, if I have a moment of joy, even a small moment, I would never want to forget it; I would
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lust, almost, for it to come back, not better joy or greater joy but the exact same joy, exactly same in the least of details. So is it with sorrow, we somehow or other against our will want it to be back, lust it to be back, not as lesser or alleviated but in the exact same degree. Perhaps there is something distinct about every particular moment, regardless whether the joy or sorrow was small or big, which makes us attached to it, which makes us feel one with it. I dont know whether it is the memory or the moment that we are in love with, both get mixed up somehow. In person I never talk nonsense, I never talk where it is unnecessary and when I do I talk on good and important matters. Im not quite sure what is meant by good and important but nevertheless. I dont know much, Im not well read, not well bred, not educated, but whatever little I know - I know it well. I may sound bragging but I have no choice, isnt this the only sphere wherein man loves to prove his prowess, isnt this the only place where like holy water all sin is cleansed when one takes a dip in? No doubt, but what really troubles me is this: am I becoming a product of necessity, a machine that thrives by maximum utility, a person doing nothing for the sake of it but for something else, due to some inside urge, some inside wound trying to use all means near hand to heal itself? If so, can I help, should I help? Is comfort so bad that hypocrisy for the sake of it becomes a blasphemy? And am I a hypocrite? Every single thing that Ive said till now may be untrue, every one of them, but none of them are outside the orbit of my condition, my emotions, my very being. I dont know why Im finding excuses here for writing you at all, why I am justifying myself? My goodness I dont know! You are wont to ask at this point, is it worthwhile to worry oneself so thin on this, this you would say with emphasis, situation that Im in? Are there not people in the world in the same condition as Im in? Are they too in the habit of fretting their lives out and whining about their sufferings, and taking unequivocal enjoyment in it too? To cut it short you would ask in the summit of conciseness, am I not taking it too far than is necessary? Maybe I am, but what is distance in this context, what is near and what is far? No, perhaps
you are right; I perhaps am taking everything too far. Why do I feel it? Or what I mean by far? The only reason I feel myself shaky at this point and question is that I do not know what causes me my suffering. I know a lot of things that make me suffer, for I do nothing but suffer, but the cause is obscure like my boredom. In this dense network of intertwined moments of suffering I have lost the joy of suffering itself. Suffering is so everywhere that it has become indistinct, worthless by now. I seem to myself unworthy even of real suffering. But yet there is real suffering, somewhere in some distant nucleus in this far widening network of suffering. But I see it not, I feel it, but I havent got it in my nerves, in my me for the networks have created a lot of traffic and crowding. I do not know from what I am suffering and because of that I suffer the most. Maybe I found the nucleus already. Just now.
Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, Something amazing happened with me just recently, yesterday. On paper it would look just as another everyday nothing, but to me it was something tremendous and has already left an indelible scar right in the soul, such an incurable one that I wish now that it never had happened. Yes, Im earnest. Yesterday around two in the afternoon, I was sitting in this same room having no work, I was peeling peas which the head mistress had ordered. Jobs so tedious in character cannot be done in themselves without having to choke in pills of boredom and so I always prefer doing it near my window, the window shows the view, despicable in every respect you know it, of the main circle of the huge and dirty marketplace behind which our building is situated. In that circle I saw yesterday an incident, if you can call it an incident, which still grates my heart worse than you grate cheese. Near the entrance of the marketplace, beyond which the highway runs, stood a man, handsome as far I could see across in the distance, wearing a red coloured shirt, full sleeved, and a neat little blue tie hanging from his neck. His face I couldnt make out, and good I couldnt, but I judge he would have had proper facial features, and yes at least he looked fair. This young man had something, a stack of something, in his right hand, that abominable heart-grating something; I get shivers every time it comes in my memory. He had a stack of pamphlets! How sicker can the name get! Probably you are thinking, if you could, that Im a nutcase, but no, as I said before Im earnest. Crowds come in through that gate and crowds go out of it as the day wanes and dusk waxes. The time of the day is two, not the busiest hour but still enough to give you sight of human flooding, if you havent seen one. Oh why do I drape wounds with the malice
of words? Like any other day this day was no different. Crowds came in now, too, and so did they go out as a young mans hand lay outstretched holding a pamphlet. But did anybody pay heed? No, that was expected eh? But the thorn that pricks me is the boy, he looked decent, high, great (allow me) in comparison to the common herd that went in and out. And the greatest thorn is that he was silent, silent not by nature but by condition, by being smothered by indifference. Silently did he gaze, a beggars gaze, with his overtly expectant eyes at the crowd, begging without begging that they would take a pamphlet, that too for free! Like a dry, strewn grass on the wayside did he seem in the middle of the crowd, egging, begging, crying without crying that anybody among them come and take one, whats more it was free. People, everyone with a serious look, busied themselves in their work without even glancing at the boy, as if he wasnt worth it! Do they know what seriousness is! Do they not perhaps know that when you become serious in face and mind engaged in thought, as though very deep, about which vegetable is better and what to buy and what not, do they perhaps not know that when you do that it only means that you have nothing better to worry about, that you are worth no better worry? What about the worry in the face of the boy? I couldnt see it, but I know that he was intensely worried, it wouldnt have mattered him if nobody took his pamphlets but he was worried enough and serious too, struck perhaps that his worth wasnt recognised. I dont know if he is worthy or not, I have only his appearance to judge, but judge I must and so Ill go with whatever I have at hand. I could hear a small squeak from his throat (of course I couldnt) as he egged and begged internally. But does he not know that someone watches him? Someone who sees that he is worth at least a glance, yes, someone, lower than the lowest, is not indifferent to him, for we are siblings now in this long boat-ride where neither sky nor sea, passengers nor helmsmen find us, look at us, crush us, destroy us, burn us! But yet they do, very profoundly, by not doing. How easy it was, how very easy to group him with me, to make him my comrade, my associate! How fearful, how stranded does one feel when one suffers alone. Puppies sleep cuddled up, one
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over the other to get warmth from one another when the fearful night with its chill takes its toll on their bodies. Such is mans plight as well. It seemed as though I was waiting, with a finger upon the chin, finding, rummaging, as it were, to get someone to cuddle over and get warmth from. This plight, it seems, was the exact thing for which I was waiting, it seemed throughout my whole life, from childhood on to today this was what I wanted! The most comforting scene I branded as horrid only because of my shame. But now Ive betrayed it.
Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, It has started raining again. Last night was as if the sky would tear down upon us at once and destroy everything, I cant forget the thunder. Oh and if it did really tear down, would I have cursed it? Cursing it would have been the biggest curse. On the contrary, is there anything sweeter than the idea? The idea that it would all clash and destruct into nothingness, into sweet abysmal nothingness. One of the greatest difficulties of life is that it is too long and one has to bother living it. Have you noticed that our entire mind and all the emotions that entail become very acute during the rains? There is something odd about the chill you get when it rains, its different from what you get in the winter season, it works as a reminder, an instigator. Moreover it brings joy, and the joy that it brings seems wet. I dont know why but somehow I feel something wet about this joy in the heart, and because it is wet it sticks. A musical note or a distant reminiscence has strikingly odd effects in our conscience. These become persistent when it rains, and especially when it rains heavily. All our feelings mental or otherwise become intense, multiplied. And what is worse is this wet joy, unnecessary joy. The saddest of all memories, the cheapest of all thoughts, and the meanest of all actions become drenched with this glue of joy which makes everything indistinct and common in its disgusting wetness. Great joy brings great guilt. It not only brings but, as it were, creates guilt. The soundest moments of joy, wet joy to be precise, the happiest moments of the soul have in themselves, gnawing at the centre, an intense feeling of guilt. I do not know if you have felt it but never have I felt joy without feeling guilt also along with it. Does not your heart ask you, O Sir, when youre in the greatest moments of joy, when your heart has been drenched wet with this newly spawned thrill, has it never asked you whether so much joy is necessary? Has it never asked you perhaps in jest, in bad humour,
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whether youre worth it? If not then youve not lived enough, I havent too. But only joy is cruel enough, only joy is so peevish to bother making us cry and to bully us into tears. But you would call me a nutcase again. When joy has succeeded in making every emotion, every memory, every action and every word similar, equal in its region of wetness, then say what is left? Nothing, absolutely nothing remains! When all things, every single thing, become the same, if everything is equally elevated, when all becomes spirited and enthralling, what then will distinguish you from this very ant which now scurries about with the same joy, or some other idiot equally joyous? The thraldom of distinction is hard to take indeed, but is anything more worthy of taking! Joy makes all equal and so makes all base. Suffering on the other hand is the fire which does the job of testing you, of evaluating your worth as a human, and that is why I find him so seducing, yea, seducing in his spiky aridness. Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, Adjacent to our building there is another one, an old craggy building without any painting on it, it shows the bricks as well, you must not have noticed. In the room where Im kept the window opens to the market place, but if I had my window on the opposite wall then it would have opened directly into theirs. These two buildings are so near, with a small pavement running through the gap separating them, that all the activities that happen in that building are easily heard by us. The people living on this next building are mostly Bengali, and those girls are special imports from Kolkata, men love Bengali skin, thats my assumption. They arent a melancholy lot like me, they arent depressed by whatever we are depressed by, and I dont mean Bengalis, I mean our neighbours. They are a frivolous lot as well, that is obvious if they are merry and happy all the time. They are a common spectacle in the marketplace, always waiting there or roaming in the vicinity, prowling for prey. They are music lovers, too, I guess, they sing in a group. After breakfast time and during six in the evening they sing in groups to keep themselves fresh and blooming, thats my assumption again. They sing in Bengali as though purposely so as to not give us a wind of what they are saying, so as to purposely block us taking part in their joy. Yet even though, in my assumption, Im uninvited to this celebration and revelry, I cant resist trespassing. I have to, even if Im uninvited, press my ears hard enough to the wall and hear all that I can of the Bengalis singing. What a small, cheap piece of entertainment! It makes me feel less, lowly and beaten but I still go on pressing my ear against the wall. I dont know why. The song that they sang in the morning remains unshakably in my head, like a curse it does not go, it stays, its a good song but because of its persistence it annoys me. The radio was singing it and the ladies repeated it, they sounded better than the radio, partly because they are good singers and partly because the radio box is out of working condition. The tune was brilliant, energetic and robust but I cannot
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make out what the song means, it being Bengali. The only line I can make out is Ekla Chalo Re which means walk alone. This phrase is the reason why I cannot forget the rhythm, the tempo, the voice, the phrase. The phrase, the phrase, the phrase; Walk Alone. Ekla Chalo Re may mean anything, I dont know a word of Bengali but this is what Ive assumed and that assumption has given me supreme delight, yes and also supreme succour. Thanks to heaven I am not Bengali or dont understand Bengali, if I did I wouldnt have to assume. It often happens that a song or poem that you hear becomes better to you once you reshape and remould it although your transformed work may look worse than the original. You mould it as per your condition, you mould it in the way you want it and no matter what the original may never give you that perfection and exactitude. And on top of it if you dont understand the original you can do it with good conscience and justification. Walk alone does that not apply to me? Am I not all the while doing it, am I not tortured to do it? And what pride it gives when I say so, what pleasure! A wounded man always admires his wound. The same is it with me and hence do I worship my own impiety. Sufferings make you stand apart, makes you better (this is also my assumption, charming assumption) it stays with you, caressing you, running its fingers through your hair when you are alone and in grief. Hence do I always long to suffer. Tears run along my cheek as I write this, the tears of a heavy heart, a broken pride and a destructed life. Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, The head mistress called out my name in a scream from downstairs, maybe she wanted me to come down. I was lying on my bed and was too tired to get up or even move. She called my name thrice still I didnt move, my eyes were closed, and I was on bed lazily sleeping, though awake enough to hear my name being called, in an uncomely manner. Sharadha was sent into my room to check what I was doing and to take me downstairs. She came in through the door which wasnt locked and awoke me. As soon as I saw Sharadha, I quickly made proper my sari, buttoned and aligned my blouse, and before getting up I tried positioning myself properly on the bed. Oh! I was utterly disgraced, my face pink with shame for Sharadha seeing me like this, basically I dont like her seeing me in any way, because she is the only soul on earth who sees Im worthy of any honour at all! So even being commanded, so small and normal a command as coming downstairs looks repulsive to me in her presence. In a low tone, barely looking at her tender childish face I asked her to go down and tell that fat hag that Ill come in a while (of course I didnt dare to use the word; but if only I could! That too in Sharadhas presence, it would have heightened my honour). I lingered a while longer on bed, purposely, but afraid of unleashing her wrath I didnt overdo my lingering. I got up, headed to the door, descended the stairs and was shocked to find what was in store in the main hall. Sunil dada was sitting on the sofa at the further end, directly facing the staircase which I was unhurriedly descending. His eyes were intently fixed on me, trying as hard as possible to meet my eyes which struggled harder to avoid contact. Sunil dada is a young, fair, not particularly handsome but decent man. Ive been told that he is educated as well, this is the first thought which came to my mind as soon as I saw him seated on the sofa opposite the staircase. Not morally so, in morality he is my equal was the thought with which I buried the earlier one. He sat on the sofa, trying to look as majestic as possible,
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for where else would his majesty shine better, with one leg over the other and his palms one above the other placed gently on his knee. He wore a white kurta and neat pyjamas, white as well, which combined very elegantly with his swarthy complexion. To be very honest, he did look majestic! So majestic that to look at him would shoot a pang across the heart, yes the pang of jealousy. The fact that I was capable of admiring him was so intolerable that I couldnt look at his face without shame and spite. The fact that he too was worthy of my admiration stabbed me veritably in the heart, the fact that I was low enough to be able to admire him. I tried again and again to assure to myself that he is not worth it, but hardly could I turn my face away from him as I descended those stairs slowly, as if slowly on purpose. The head mistress was standing near the sofa on which Sunil dada was sitting eying me as fixedly as he was. Her brows were crossed and her eyes glaring with anger (though I cant make out the cause of it till now). Probably her pride too was broken a bit before Sunil dada as her command was not as readily answered as she expected. Oh, you dont know the feeling, the joy that rushed across my heart on seeing her eyes, the eyes of broken pride and vanity! Apparently the purpose of this call downstairs was nothing much, she just wanted me to prepare tea for Sunil dada and her. So it was not actually the tea, eh? Yes maybe it is not only I who has to grapple with the tyranny of pride pricking the heart with its spikes. She shouted me into the kitchen as I tried my best to linger longer at my place with an air of disapproval. I had to yield. Have you ever yielded to something you dont approve of? Do you know the pang of it? The pang would have amounted to nothing had it not been for Sharadha looking at me intently as I was being hurled about like a tennis ball, ordered like dogs are on when to sit down and when to stand, for the fun of it! Her much respected didi, her mentor, her model being treated like a dog. If you could only grasp the feeling! I prepared tea. I placed cups full of tea on a large tray and went back to the main hall. As soon as I entered the hall, both of them stopped abruptly their noisy conversion and restarted their eyeing
on me. The head mistress eyed me again with her angry, glaring eyes and Sunil dada eyed me with his passionate, intent eyes closely scrutinising me as I tried as hard as possible as before to avoid both of them and look at the tea cups instead with affected scrutiny. I, as slowly and noiselessly as a turtle, went to the cane table where Sunil dada was seated and kept the tray on top of it gently, I was very careful and my manners elegant as if I was impressing somebody. Even as I was placing the cups on the cane table Sunil dadas eyes did not leave me, my eyes met his in this interval. I brusquely broke the contact and flew to the stairs in agony, spite, hatred, self-pity, nausea and shame. Im shameful now as I write to you, shameful to the last fibre in my body. My shame is not because I had to submit to admiration, not because I had to submit to shame before another person (whom I consider my inferior, sorry to brag) but shameful because I had to submit to lies for that person. Yes lies to protect my vanity, lies to hide my blow, lies for a worthless nothing with a decent looking face. I cannot imagine that I couldnt be brave enough to tell the truth, brave enough to be honest when Im talking about no one else but a worthless nothing, an insect. Yes, I lied. I did nothing but lie in the last two pages. Absolutely nothing in it was true, it hadnt at all happened in the way I said it, for I wasnt man enough to tell the truth! Slavishly like a worm did I lie for the sake of both those insects and obviously also for you. Yes, from the moment I went downstairs nobody looked at me, nobody cared to look at me either angrily or otherwise. I wasnt considered worthy of their glances, a stray glance or two was all that they could reward me. When I went downstairs (and I did not linger anywhere nor did I go slowly, I hadnt the guts) both of them were discussing some money matters which I didnt bother to pay attention to and they didnt bother to stop the conversation for me. I didnt descend like a snail, noiselessly; I rather descended like an elephant thumping the stairs with my feet to signal my arrival. On the top it, my payal did all she could under her capacity in tinkling along with the feet so as to veritably increase the effect of the signal. The signal was of no use, the people present paid it no heed. Sunil dada, Im sure, didnt even know who came downstairs and who made tea.
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He saw me for one moment, that moment I looked him straight in the eye, but I bet anything I have that he doesnt know who this girl is nor does he remember seeing her anywhere before. I was like any other roadside yellow leaf, not worthy of being stamped nor picked up. Ah! Ive became that boy with the pamphlet. Neither touched nor scorched. I wanted them to beat me up, scold me, and drag me by the hair across the room. Yes, all this in front of Sharadha, all this for a confounded cup of tea. How heavenly that would have been in comparison! Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, I could never have imagined that I could write so much at a time, I believe in less of talking and more of feeling. I lied again. What a vermin I am! All I do is talk; nothing else gives me more pleasure. My condition and its exorbitant demands have moulded me into an expert speaker, so expert that by now I am capable of making the reader feel exactly what I want him to feel (so do I imagine). And if you believe me, there is no better panacea than this. Writing reminds you again and again of the pain and torment that has fallen to your lot, not only does it subtly remind you of it, but, as it were, completely explodes your condition in your soul, so much that you may choke of it. But trust me or not, that is exactly what the heart craves for. Does he know what suffering is? What a babe! Has he ever suffered as I have? Arent these the exclamations that I often use in order to show my worth? Arent these to me the only areas where I can spread at last my wings of victory? Not to prove it to others, but to myself. Oh! How does man lust to suffer! What strength, what power does suffering give the suffering one! If you think that my condition is very picturesque from the outside, dare come inside and see its even more picturesque. Yes, I repeat, I have become an expert speaker. My words and affected phraseologies can be ensnaring, badly ensnaring. And if you find even a twinge of logic in it, then dont forget to remember that such matters of depth always tend have some logic in it. Even if it doesnt the reader would try to invent some logic in it, only to prevent him the disgrace of feeling that he hasnt understood it. But mind you, they arent unreal. They are truths of the blood, not of the mind. I may not be able to tell the truth but I will never cease from telling what is real. I speak with my blood and not with my mouth. Ach! Im now fed up of continually justifying myself; obviously Im worth sparing justification. Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, Ekla Chalo Re- This according to me is the very crux of human life. Its not the ordinary case, its a rare one, but who says that rarity is incorrect, who says that popularity is the criterion of truth. Walking alone is the highest condition of freedom, to put it in a better way; it is the condition of the highest freedom. Absolute liberty, if it exists, must exist in absolute indifference. Freedom in its solidest form can only be found in vacuum. There is freedom where there isnt. Freedom and nothingness are the same. Freedom explodes in the human heart only in detachment from all objects whatsoever, and in this detachment, the detachment to the point of nothing, human life attains its highest purpose. Then in the plight of the nothing no scar stays, no stain remains, no anger, no praise, no vanity, no seriousness, where nothing touches nothing there nothing remains. This is my new knowledge; it has seeped into my life very slowly, insensibly and has now become painfully conspicuous. The lordly callousness of lordly indifference has the solution for all human miseries. Yea, for where there isnt happiness there isnt misery as well, where there is nothing there cannot be nothing as well. This, my gentleman, is called the mad squeaking of a rat stuck in the rat trap, this is the wailing of the wounded man where the wound justifies speaking anything. Nothingness, eh! What mockery! There hasnt been one moment in my life when I saw it myself; nothing doesnt exist for I havent seen it. Maybe I crave for it, maybe I long to grasp it, and to have the pleasure of oblivion but I know very well that I dont know whether I really want it or not, I cant even tell it to myself. All that I have experienced is helpless activity inside the head and also outside it. Outside activity may be easily dismissed as having no consequence but what about the activity inside? Thousands of emotions rush together stamping each other to gain dominance in the heart, every single one is a bigot and hates the other. They despise one another and struggle to win hegemony over us, to establish single ruler-ship. In me the monarch is pride, he always will be. Before him everyone else must bow
their heads in obeisance afraid of triggering his wrath. His greatest admirer, his most obedient slave is me, yes afraid that if unnerved he wouldnt scruple tearing me completely in twain I humbly with whole heart and mind (slavish heart and mind) press his feet, wipe his spittle with my hair and finally give him myself for his absurd, malicious enjoyment. I dont walk Ekla, nobody does and nobody can, I carry inside myself a large army, an army of torturers. These torturers are the reason why I am better and more living than the ant scurrying on the floor, uncaring, unwanted, indifferent and nothing! In torture I live, in it I find life and its pleasure and in it alone do I have any chance of empowerment. Great suffering brings great power. See, I have already some glimmer of hope. Ekla Chalo Re- This according to me is NOT the very crux of human life. Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, My philosophy is the philosophy of suffering, of misery and pain. As far as Im concerned, pain and misery are the acutest human emotions of all. They are tactile, hard and pricking. Yes, they prick. They are concerned about us and hence they bother making us miserable. It is in this quality of theirs that they succeed in attracting people towards them, people like me. Suffering is in reality lofty and high bliss. Few know it. Suffering gives strength, suffering gives worth, suffering above all acknowledges life. Hence men will always long to suffer. As I said some time before, He suffers badly who does not suffer. But wait! Im telling all this because Im faced with it, because I suffer. Had I been happy, jolly and merry then my ideas would have been radically different. Then happiness and bliss would have become the acutest human emotions of all. Sadly, philosophy is also another form of justification, a powerful form. Man cannot speak anything other than what he is; to him everything other than him seems wrong and unworthy of consideration. That is why there is no point in searching for truth in the words of men, wise and ignorant alike, because there wouldnt be found any. If by chance you find two truths in rigorous correlation then mind you, you arent looking at truths at all. And if truth comes from anywhere else but the blood of the speaker then it isnt worthy of the name. Even this paragraph of mine is prejudicial, conditioned and a justification. One cannot ever help it. I cannot help using big words learned by rot, cannot help making dramatic scenes and phrases, vanity demands and I yield. But I will go on; I will go on using more dramatic and unrealistic phrases, more of big words even if it meant spending the night with the dictionary, for is there anything in my control? Should there be? Using them makes me feel superior, makes me feel powerful and
I think I have the right to it. Thank goodness you wont read my letters! Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, Oh! Confound the rain! God made it as an instrument of sensitivity. It should never rain especially when the mind is troubled. The rain drops that fall on the window pane create a noise which is utterly unbearable. They seem to increase the beating of the heart, and then its difficult to control it. If you have a feeling, a secret hidden feeling, the rains help bring it out into the open, they betray them to you, rain drowns all my privacy. Or maybe Im wrong. Perhaps Im only using the rain as an excuse, as a scapegoat. Maybe I WANT to make certain feelings acute, certain senses sharp, and Im finding a way to do it by blaming it on the rain, this may be my simple, planned escape from self-censure. It is high time youd exclaim in the air that I need a mental doctor. Who obsesses ones self in such trivial matters, who cares whether rains are good for our minds or not? Who whines all day long, pitying ones own condition when there are millions of other people who do the same occupation but arent so mentally tortured as this particular one? There are many who are in the same position as I am and yet dont give a whit about their condition, at least they dont exaggerate it as much as I do. The only answer I give is that Im more demanding; Im more begging than they are and Im more proud of this than anyone else. What do I demand? What do I beg for? I beg for your pity, I beg for even a single sympathetic glance from you, from anyone. I wait for your spittle. I wait for your reproach, your praise, your command, your respect, your gesture, anything - anything which can acknowledge that I too live. Is that not a big demand? Does it not require enough whining? It does for I feel even this much is insufficient. I crave more; I crave more than anyone for pity, for thrown away pity. The joy in it would be unutterable, yes it would justify everything, my life, my sorrow, my ink and my gasps and shrieks. Justification is the only activity that we really carry on throughout our lives. But I know that you wont read these letters, nobody would. Then of whom do I beg? From whom do I crave
for pity, whose pity do I lust for? Maybe my own pity, perhaps, my own sympathy. Yes, perhaps I want to make myself pitiable to myself, I beg for my own sympathetic glances on myself. Ach! This is more difficult than winning the pity of the whole world! Tears flow, they trickle down my cheek, my throat is jammed, I cant go on.
Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, I went to the market place today. I dont get the opportunity very often and when I do get one I dont miss it. The maid is the one who is in-charge of these matters. Today, however, she couldnt go and so I took up the errand. It was exactly 11 oclock in the clock on the wall in the main hall. The market place is a dirty place, marshy too now because of the incessant rains. On the top of it, it is always crowded, always, save after midnight. There is also a peculiar humidity about the place, maybe its because of the population there. However cold the weather may be, there is it always hot and humid, wet heat. You get nothing else to buy other than fruits and vegetables, after all what else would these people demand? The sky was heavy with clouds, all dark, which is the signal of the imminent rains. Actually it was already drizzling. The ground is so wet and marshy that the bottom of the sari is sure to go brown, so one has to hold it up a little, a tuft of it just under the belly. The sari that I wore, unfortunately, was also my favourite one, so more the prudence. I went to the fourth shop from the right (there are about 10-12 shops in a row which make up the whole market place) and bought all that I needed, the purchase was a long one owing to the number of people crowding into the same shop pushing each other. After all the hustle I came out into fresh air with my bag of vegetables in my right hand and was heading towards our building, when suddenly I saw something. I saw the entrance to the market, and was immediately reminded of the boy. I stood there flat on the spot, swimming in my memory. The whole scene, as it were, re-enacted itself in my mind giving me a lump in my throat. I lost myself completely. I changed my course and headed not towards our building but towards the entrance. There I saw the exact spot where the boy had stood pamphlets in hand, I saw the very ground, the very soil where he was. I looked out through the entrance at the street connecting it. I longed to see the boy, I had an incalculable hope that he was heading this way,
that he was bound to come to this very spot once again, to this very soil which was under my feet now, to beg once more of these worthless pigs. If hed come, I swear, I would have immediately jumped into his arm, buried my face in his chest and have cried all day with my face pressing his bosom. Not because I love him, not because I long for him but because I pity him, I enjoy the privilege of having the capacity and occasion to pity someone. Oh! That jump into his arms would have been a once in the lifetime experience. But he didnt come, I waited. I waited for fifteen minutes at a stretch looking outside before I realised my awkward situation and turned my back to the gate (to the world) and hurried towards our building, heavy handed and heavy hearted. Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, My head mistress and Sunil dada have a long relationship of close affinity. Only a financial relationship though, my age is the difference between their ages. The head mistress is bound to him, debts and everything else. But Sunil dada, due to his demeanour, in our eyes doesnt look like a creditor at all. He is jolly, smiling, sweet tongued and behaves as if he owes us money. He works as a clerk in an office in some faraway place from here. He usually comes here in the morning hours and reads the morning news on that same sofa in the hall while one of our girls serves tea. I tried my best not to open his topic but I failed to restrain myself. No one will fail to like him, I bet anything. He is a resigning character, a cool clumsy man; decent looking and I should say he looks unmanly as well. An immoral can be decent looking too; an immoral man can be good in character as well. Why immoral? Why, hes a regular visitor to a brothel. You need anything else? He visits that place where I am. What do you know my fellow? You see, meeting me is immoral. My touch makes a man impure and forsaken by God. I defile the soul, I defile the spirit, meeting me is equal to selling your soul to the devil. Have you had that honour gentleman, have you had the honour of soul defilement? Ha Ha! Didnt I defile you as well; didnt my touch sell your soul to the devil? Irony! Does your touch defile anyone my dear fellow? No? Does it purify? Not even that? What is your touch worth then, nothing? Pity, pity, more pity. Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, My mother always had a long, running kumkum mark on her forehead running into the parting of the hair on her head. I dont know where she is; almost a decade since I last saw her or heard of her. Its as if she simply vanished into thin air from my life at some point of time in the past. I dont have her photograph, or anybody who can tell me about her, but she does exist! Yes she exists as the most cherished of all memories in my head. I remember her smell; yes her smell is the only thing that has stayed in my blood, the memory of her fragrance. A mix of mogra, kumkum and vegetable thats how she smelt. Ah! Never have I smelt anything better in my life. When I scour into my memory for my mother, the first thing I get is not her image, her figure, her face, her lap but her smell. The smell of my mother! That tender homely smell, the smell of heaven. Now I can go on talking about this fragrance day and night but I wish not to, not because of length for I dont care about other peoples boredom but because nostalgia comes with a price, a heavy toll on ones conscience. Unbearable is the plight of the man who longs for his past, unbearable because of the impossibility of getting it back. Living once more the past is as impossible as biting ones own teeth. But because man is ready to shred himself to pieces, because he is ready to undergo that trial just to get stray reminiscences of his past, his favourite past, its enough to prove that man, all men wish indeed to live themselves innumerably. Every moment that has gone by, good and bad, miserable and happy, is wanted once more in the exact same manner, not increased nor decreased but exactly in the identical same manner. Like going around a circle, a continual eternal circling, without end or beginning, like that is mans desire for living again, living again identically. My mother has come to my mind today; she is still there inerasable, with her kumkum mark on the parting of her hair. I touch the parting
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of my hair now as I write this, the hair on my body stand on end. This moment (yes, the last line) will stay! Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, I see that my last letter was awfully sentimental. Too much of emotion and less of meaning. I was carried away, and when one is carried away one is wont to talk too much. Yes, they talk more than they feel. This whole business of letter writing seems to me to be utterly pointless. Its inspired by my tastelessness, my idiocy, my desire to betray myself to myself. And there is nothing worse than knowing yourself completely. I dont even know if that made sense or has any meaning. But meaning is the most trivial of all cares. I try in my situation to do things others here cant or wont do. Just to make myself look better or higher. But whats impossible to bear is the fact that in my bowels I know Im nothing! I know that Im all the same. Look I betrayed this to myself. Id struggled as hard as possible to curb this truth and to squash it in the stomach. But this wretched art of writing brought it out! I wish to hide myself from myself; I want to lie, not to you, not to the world, but to myself. I want to be a hypocrite, and thatd be my supreme lifelong virtue. Yours, Kanchana
Bharatwaj Iyer 49
Dear Sir, The jingling sound made by the bangles of a woman is normally looked upon by our people as a show of tradition and culture. The meek, good, sincere, honest, cultural and moral woman of our country always makes a jingling sound with her payal and her bangles. This sound, although not especially comforting or soothing, has an element of pride in it, a boastful element jingles along. Culture is normally, always, with all people, a thing to pride about. Women take it to considerable extremes. I have a payal on each of my ankles. They jingle, they make sounds. They make my feet look beautiful. Does it signify anything? Does it make me cultural? I have bangles also, many of them in both my wrists, green ones. They jingle even more. I dont believe that their jingling signifies culture or moral standard or good etiquette. I dont want to believe. Why? Because if I do then Im not justified in wearing them. Well, removing them is no big effort, stopping their notorious jingling is no big effort. But as I say, they make my feet look beautiful. These bangles make my hands look beautiful. Beautifully cultural! Yes, no man would wish to look uncultured, no! Not even people like me. And, hence, I wear it. When I write this letter, as my pen shakes my hand, the bangles jingle in a mocking way, creating a sound that mocks me, as if asking me the reason Im wearing them for. They, these sounds, send electric pangs to the chest, they love to do that. Theyll keep on jingling and sending electric shocks till the eyes water, till guilt muzzles like a coiled up snake does, till the point of making me wear them no further. Here! Happy now? Ive removed them, each one of my bangles and both my payals. Fine, I wont try to behave like you other women. Im always below you. Happy now? Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, O, blast me for my last letter! Ive grown too negative these days, too under the feet, too crushed. What is it that I dont have? I dont of course have everything but still I can read and write beautiful letters, Im a hypocrite I agree, but can many, so-called moral fellows write as good as this? Isnt that a positive fact in my life? It is pride that crushes me! Yes, that wretched tyrant in me, that bellicose monarch bent on renting me to pieces! But isnt that itself a thing to be proud of? How many people have this thraldom of pride in them, I dont think many do, and yet Im the one whose touch is filthy. What a bane! No, I must stop, I must think (even if falsely) better of myself. Ha, Ha! What nonsense! Wasnt it I myself who considered my suffering as my destined boon and blessing? Now Im against it? Oh goodness! I dont know, I just dont know, Im confused, unintelligible and more importantly Im a fool. But I know one thing, whether it be happiness or distress what man tries to find in it is solace, whether it be joy or suffering, the reason man desires it is the solace it gives, if it does. I have found something solacing. Huh! But I dont know whether its solace or not that Im seeking. Here it is:
A butterfly that I knew, Crazily behind ulcer it flew, Knowing not its rightful place, Among the nectars and all the flowery maze. Get up be thyself! Vainly did all shout, Where to it will it heed! Crazy for ulcer alone is its mouth.
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Plod the other way you drunken butterfly, Drink no more of this sorrow, When fountains of nectar wait, Will thou still have ulcer as thy bait? Your plight makes all cry, One day you have in hand, The next day youll have to die, And still will you towards nectar be so shy? Will thou O butterfly, Make thy mistakes into your life, Live on nectar, O on nectar please thou thrive, We live for a day, the next day we all shall die! Where does it go now? Again to the centres of gross ulcerous filth? Anxious in itself the heart grew, Nay, nay, the butterfly saw its truth, To nectar again it now flew! (Its not mine, obviously.) Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, The rains finally will depart after a fortnight; they say they go after Ganapati festival. After this goes then comes the winter, the hard, unforgiving winter. The winter does something curious to the soul. Its a torturing season as we all know; our bodies have a natural dislike of coldness. But Ah! What more succour can you give the tortured one than more of torture? How conveniently do we hide ourselves, our mistakes and our guilt under the cloak of suffering! How instinctively lovable does that condition looks to us! Isnt it always that man in his attempt to live life looks only for justification and pity; from the world and from himself? Yes it is so. It will always be. Thats how it has been for me. If it has been thus for me, I can assert, give it ear or go away I dont care. What is life? Me. What is man and his nature? Me. Every question of the kind hitherto answered has always been answered personally. The answerer only talks about himself and feels that he is describing the world. Talking solely from ones own point of view may be wrong but that is the only point of view we have, and we must adjust with what is available at our disposal. Hence do lies become truths and truths become lies. Yours, Kanchana
Bharatwaj Iyer 53
Dear Sir, It often happens with me that I tend to change my convictions. They change according to my situation and they change into those that are beneficent for me. Am I the only one who is opportunistic with myself or is man as a whole like that? Its certainly not hypocrisy for then I wouldnt have betrayed it right now. Deeper convictions remain static but ancillary ones change with the wind. But isnt life itself like that? Isnt it the property of nature to change, mutate and thus preserve itself? I too change my convictions to preserve myself from the onslaughts of the dragons encaged inside my soul. But isnt this appeal to the laws of nature too a sign of justification, justification itself? This course of affairs irritates me a great deal, and makes me feel as though Ill verily stand up, throw my pen and ask in the air, Who am I? Am I just question marks and exclamation signs embodying a mass of flesh? Am I just vanity, broken pride and hopeless sighs? Am I just lies, or am I just a lure with motley coloured words, untrustworthy and cheap? Perhaps I am disintegrated to my last bile, and thats it. The questions themselves have bled me enough; the answers will do what I dont know. But maybe I know the answer, the reason for all my problems. It is insult and dishonour that rakes my soul into shredded rags. Yes, insult and dishonour! When you are insulted none of your convictions and beliefs would have any stability to your own eyes, theyll all look unworthy of being yours. Then will they be shuffled time and again and your whole being in the process would be dishevelled. I think integrity is the privilege of a few, those few that are honoured and respected in the eyes of all people. Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, Lathika is a unique girl. At least unique among those Ive met. I have seen many listless people, but her listlessness is beyond any comparison whatsoever. No amount of calamity can trammel her joy and carelessness which has become to me her most lovable character. She is one of those Bengali girls of the other building I mentioned to you earlier. She is a splendid singer and she is the one who, I guess, takes the lead in the Bengalis morning and evening choir sessions. Her passion for singing grows day by day and will increase a great deal in the future, so much that shell even make plans for singing in the cinema. She holds her singing as her unquestionable pride, her unquestionable achievement. Yes, how correct I was when I said that no man can live without having something to be proud of. About pride I know best, I know pride better than anybody can know or does know. Pride is my conqueror, my master who rips me day by day, but this has become an old story by now, and causes boredom too. I have no great acquaintance with her but she usually comes to our building and Ive talked with her on many occasions, but with whatever little I know of her I like her, she is the perfect picture, so far as Ive seen, of tender, youthful bliss. In contrast she never whines as I do, she never chokes her throat with lumps of pain and sorrow. I can give various excuses by saying that she hasnt seen what emotions are, or what suffering is, or what pain is, but I know very well inside myself, and it hurts when I write it down, that she is in my eyes and in my mind a grand, gory and yet an elegant statue of lordliness. Perhaps there is a lot of lordliness in her carelessness, in her playfulness and joy, which I dont possess a whit! Maybe shell reply to me with an air of lordly mockery that I havent seen what happiness is, what bliss is, and most importantly what this, her, lordly mockery is, or what its like to be victorious in self-satisfied carefree universal mockery. Lathika deserves my worship; she is born to be lord and I to be slave. I think its better if we remain true to our natures, her nature
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of lordliness and my slavishness. But is it not true that whole life is a struggle? That its natures law to rebel, to become what we are not? So isnt it correct for me to become Lathika and she to become me? Every condition and character is despicable and has to be changed radically. The lord must despise lordliness and become a slave and the slave despise slavishness and become lord. So, everywhere therell be left nothing but continuous, radical transformation. (Please do pardon such nonsense.) I think I leave such footnotes of apology only to protect myself from criticism. Not a bad stratagem. He, he! Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, All good literatures are also fundamentally good lies. Who gives me this authority to go on asserting things without providing along with it a good reason for doing so? This you, my dear fellow, will fain ask. I dont have the authority, for I am ignorant, I dont know anything. Therefore, do I snatch. Therefore, do I rob and aggressively posit myself authoritative. Only because I am not! If you make such lofty things the possession of only a few, wouldnt then we agitate, for arent you showing thereby what we are deserving of? Yes, we deserve nothing more than what you show, but we cant have it shown to us, therefore well start agitating like this and make for ourselves things we dont deserve and possess. All good literatures are also fundamentally good lies. Yours, Kanchana
Bharatwaj Iyer 57
Dear Sir, Boredom and pride, both when combined can give deathly blows. The rains act as catalyst in increasing boredom, boredom to the point of absurdity. Absolute blankness where every other emotion is stifled defeated and kept quiet. When you are bored try writing and see what miracles youll make. Youd have this enormous temptation to put the pen down, and also an enormous temptation to hold it in your hand. What is it? Mental stalemate? Ha! Nothing goes out or comes in. A total closed vacuum. This is the highest hell imaginable. What if the master of the soul, pride, swells up in the midst of this? Will it have any vent? No, it wont have ways to gush out and manifest itself, for the vent to pride are our actions, but how will pride pass away if we stand in a physical and mental shunyata. It will rip the heart in two, thats it! How much have I suffered in such situations! And such situations are not rare as well, they normally happen. Such instances, Im sorry to say, have also a peculiar beauty in them, they must be experienced, yes they are torturous, but who told you that that which tortures is never to be experienced? In the pursuit of living life entirely, both good and bad, the beautiful and the abysmal form equal parts. Thats what Ive learnt by living these many years, I dont know much, actually I dont know anything, but of this Im sure. Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, My nature, my me has become to me most tangible, most grabable to me than anything at all. In my me everything mine is included: my pride, my desire, my vanity, my anger, my sorrow, my thinnest hair even. All these things which make up my me have coloured my surroundings. They have made for me my world. They are inseparable from me and everything with which I have even the slightest contact. When I say that pride is my monarch, I dont have pride as something different from me but I myself am pride. What I mean by it is that the noun has become equal to the verb, my nature and my function have united and become one. So much so that I remain nothing more than just a bundle of emotions, just united nature performing functions, where function and nature have become one. More than I nothing counts, me and mine are the world, and the world outside that orbit is to me mere gibberish. I suffer, silent and stifled suffering, but that is me now, thats my function and nature and to redeem me from it would be equal to killing me. Yes, the one desire always present in our consciousness is the desire for prolongation. Yea, prolongation of the desired and the despised, prolongation of everything, of life, of death, of joy, of suffering, every human heart must and does yearn for the eternal. But in the heart of my hearts I know as well as you that I dont want to suffer, nobody does. I too want to be able to taste bliss, sweet, wet happy bliss. I cannot, hence I make my own that which I cannot defeat. Yours, Kanchana
Bharatwaj Iyer 59
Dear Sir, Nothing is happening. Nothing, absolutely nothing is happening either inside or outside of me. A dead muteness, a dead silence of all activities. The stomach realises that first before the head, the stomach becomes the receptor of the sulkiest hours of nothingness. Raw non-activity, raw because it is so sensible, the situation can only be described by the word dread, yes, absolute nauseating dread is what I feel. When you feel dread you feel nothing, nothing: I mean it! Its not a word, its not simply a word, its THERE its HERE its everywhere, the nothing pervades the all! When I say nothing is happening I dont intend to say it negatively, Im asserting that Nothing, The Nothing is happening. Even if a burglar breaks into my room and tries to rob me, Im afraid Ill let myself be robbed, I wont move for I cannot move, I cannot feel and I cannot not feel, yes, I dont wish to do anything nor do I wish to do nothing! The positive and the negative have become nullified, in a Superior NEGATION, in abysmal Nothingness. Life is impossible without this feeling, yes; it is as if this life of activity and vitality is being painted in motley colours on this stable wall, the nothing. I realise now, my life has not only one thing, this thing: the nothing. There is nothing called nothing, thats why its called nothing. I dont possess nothing; I only possess unstoppable, ephemeral, relentless activity, activity without peace. Only in such momentary phases of despair and dread do I have any hope of respite. Any hope of escape from this self-inflicting torture of my restless conscience. In nothing, a makeshift nothing created by dread, alone is there any solubility of me, and my torturers. In the eternal nothingness of death, life will spawn new, in relentless, unshakable rest. Till then, the mind must be satisfied with this momentary aspect of it, namely the nothingness of dread and boredom. I wrote what I felt suddenly, immediately, like a spurt did this
thought occur in me; hence it is backed with more of brute force than reason, the brute force of psychology. Anyway, what I spoke is not something otherworldly, nothing strange or fictitious but can be experienced and felt immediately by anybody in the right conditions. But you cant live it very long, however exceptional you may be. The longing to dive again into the vortex of eternal motion muzzles in the heart like a coiled snake, like a long awaited longing. The desire comes back to have everything opposite to peace and quiet and tranquillity. The desire comes back to not have this constant stillness, this muted inactivity, this nothingness! Yes, the desire comes back, the desire for suffering. Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, One thing Ive noticed, a very humorous thing, that we tend to admire or love something from the depths of our hearts only when that thing (that which in our eyes is great and grand) is exclusive to us, only if it is uncommon. When something is exclusively reserved for us it becomes all the more precious, lovable and important in our eyes. But as soon as this single ownership of ours is disturbed immediately the thing becomes common and thus unimportant and even sometimes despicable. If tomorrow Sharadha starts writing letters too or begins writing a diary that day will I write my last letter. I write because only I here write. This to me proves that we do not love a thing for itself but only because it heightens us, makes us special and especially because it makes us better. Better than others. Without these others I bet no man would have done anything for no one does anything for its own sake, men do things only because they are surrounded, if not then not. I dont wish to be like others. That doesnt mean that I love myself, no I hate myself as much as an infected man hates his sores. But yet I dont wish to change, I dont wish to be not-myself. I want to go on hating myself as much as I can, eternally spiteful of myself, eternally wanting not to be, and there is nothing more beneficent than that, than continual lifelong self-pity and self-hatred. I want to go through torture because it makes me feel distinct and worthy, I dont know why but its true. Even this present action of writing is paining my fingertips but the pain of not writing and thus becoming the normal, unworthy, unsuffering (in my eyes and in my eyes alone) would be unbearable. Not suffering is for me, precisely, the highest suffering. To live a life of suffering, to wear suffering out is the noblest achievement and the best test for the human self. To not want to suffer is itself suffering. Oh! The untold misery of the blissful and the listless, the unconsciously happy, the likes of Lathika! What an unminded wayside leaf does
one become hence, neither crushed nor picked up! Oh, thank God for what he has given and damn him too! Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, Life is an exaggeration. Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, There is a pallid, hard, holdable chill in my room. It reminds how my mother found the approaching Ganpati festival in this chill. Its amusing to think of it now, to think how the past looks like a toy to us, how it is enjoyable, spectacular, changeable and mouldable, and completely at our liberty, our control and dominion. The present has a thrusting and malicious attitude in the face of it. But it is Gods blessing that it quickly fades and becomes stale. In the blink of the eye the present becomes the past, the playable past, in a second the potent becomes the impotent. Our sufferings become things of play in retrospect. Nothing persists; everything is evanescent, momentary and playable. And that is why it does harm; I for myself want every moment to exist till eternity, every dot to be extended into a never ending line. I wish and pray for monotony, every act, every movement must exist for ever, a monotonous ever. Such a form of monotony that it must somehow be offensive to the onlooker, a malicious continuity should be the monotony that I beg for. The wound must be most monotonous, never healing, never ceasing- harmful, torturous. But why? Because it brings pity into the eyes of the onlooker. Yours, Kanchana
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Dear Sir, Today, I say truly, Im happy. I and Sharadha had a wonderful time. We were sitting by my window at about 5 in the evening and the sun was giving its last pink hazy light for the day and making way for the moon (I enjoy doing this so much!). We sat there for more than an hour and I tell you I spent the best hour of my life. A good one hour love affair! She was sitting before me with her kneels on the floor, that too for a whole hour, as if she were sitting before a teacher. She got a very bad one though! He, he. The last soft light of the sun fell directly on her face and showed the real colour of her eyes- they were light brown. Her gorgeous face shot an unusual form of love through my heart and also along with it an unusual from of sympathy, sympathy so deep that Id have jumped over her and grabbed her tightly to my breasts and strangled her to death. I was telling her the story of how Arjuna went to the Matsya kingdom disguised as a eunuch and defeated all the great warriors of the invading Kaurava army, it was a story my mother loved repeating to me and I too would sit in front of her like Sharadha was sitting in front of me with the same inquiring, innocent- far too innocentcountenance that Sharadha donned today. There followed discussions and counter questions and the whole session seemed on the whole educational. As Ive mentioned before the word education has to include within itself an incredible feeling of pride and vanity, heightened self-complacency and a malevolent disposition that all the others are fools, and also a soothing justification of whatever one is. A magical word indeed! What made the evening so great and enjoyable wasnt so much Sharadha or the story or the love that we exchanged but the feeling Sharadha gave me, the emotional power I gained, the supreme victory of pride inside me. All the conditions and problems of my position vanished for a second and I felt extremely free; so free and powerful that Id have burned the whole building with Sharadha
and me in it, without an itch in my conscience. But the feeling was too momentary to be able to bring about any real effect. A person who has suffered insults and dishonour is capable of being freer than you think. I meant the letter to be sunny, to be able to cast the same pink, hazy light of the evening, for at this moment Im really happy indeed.
Yours, Kanchana
Bharatwaj Iyer 67
Dear Sir, A visit to the marketplace gives me more knowledge than I could have got from any course in the university. I write to you after a fresh discovery. I cannot convey it to anyone here, I wouldnt be able to explain and nobody would be able to understand. You are the best confidant. You dont need to be explained, nor do you need to understand. This particular letter is a dire necessity; if I dont write this my heart wouldnt be able to stand the turbulence in me. No wonder writers have no other option but to write! On the way back towards our building I saw a young child of about 7 or 8. I think it was a gypsy child and I dont know what mischief it did but when I saw it, it came running from near the vegetable stalls and immediately behind it came a middle-aged ill-tempered drunken man holding a slipper in his hand. He overtook the child, caught hold of the childs tender neck with his massive paw, abusing it too, and was about to hit it directly on its face with the slipper. He made a great deal of noise in the whole chase as if to attract the eyes of the dirty crowd around him. The slipper is raised and may fall any moment exactly on the childs face; its face contracted like a shapeless mass of dough and it gave out a noiseless cry in despair and fear. Oh! I swear upon your head, I cannot forget that face! What a guileless desire for escape was reflected there, on that contraction, on that doughlike modification of its skin. I tell you, Ive today glimpsed utter desperation. Like the desperation of air to get out of an air-tight box. That face had all the apparatus needed to bring at once pity, love and sympathy but it wanted nothing but escape, escape from the THIS to the next, from the present to the future- a worse future wouldnt matter too. For all its negative qualities this desperation had a positive side. It was utterly FREE. It neither leads nor points towards freedom, neither acts as a catalyst, it itself is FREEDOM. The conscience in desperation has no bondage, it has reached its liberty; nay, it itself is liberty.
The child was nothing different from its desperation, nor was its desperation anything different from the child. The child had at that crucial moment entered into an abyss, a vacuum without any substance around, it had lost its relations and relationships, kith and kin, moral and social scruples, the world with its varied and varying environments, most of all it had lost its conscience; its conscience now was desperation itself. And at that crucial moment it was capable of anything, it was capable of all forms of cruelty and all forms of kindness, it was capable of anything at all for the sake of its escape, unburdened and unstopped by anything whatsoever outside or inside of itself. It could have even murdered him without a thought if it could. I had just glimpsed at an embodiment of freedom. And yet, freedom is a condition and not something hidden inside the conditioned. I saw the state of freedom not only a free child. It would be difficult for you to understand me, obviously it would be. Im cruel, I enjoy creating confusion. But this is all that I could infer from my visit to the market today. To say in a word, I believe that freedom is possible only in desperation.
Yours, Kanchana
Bharatwaj Iyer 69
Dear Sir, I looked at my face in the mirror for quite a long while this morning, as I did it I realized how seldom I do it, not that I dont look into the mirror but I rarely ever scrutinize myself so much as I did today. My face has hardened than before, it has got now a rough and battered look, though I dont look old, actually I should say I look younger. My eyes are cold and my hair is accurately parted in the front but quite untidy and dishevelled in the back. On the whole Im not aging. My face shows that there is in there somewhere a secret yearning for happiness as opposed to pleasure, happiness in the sense of contentment, a noble yet impossible yearning. Happiness is nothing but contentment, but this contentment has to be understood in a more immaterial sense. If I were the only person living in this world, I wouldnt have found much difficulty in finding joy, provided I were given all the basic necessities for survival. But the problem starts when we as individuals are put in the middle of a large crowd, and each unit is always referred to in terms of others. Here is the basic problem of man. So dissatisfaction arises due to difference and not only difference but the notice of this difference by oneself and by others. There arose in me today a sort of sweetness that seldom comes, but when it does it reminds one of the wet lotuses in the virgin dawn. The sentiment suddenly softens, the heart becomes cooler and more benign, life suddenly seems easy and pleasing, and there is this unstoppable joy in breathing in the cold morning breeze, their tingling in the nostrils. All negativity was broken and there arose a solemn and earnest love for life, not this life nor that, but a love for life in general, of life in abstraction- all life, even the daily life of this non-living pen. My face beamed in the mirror and gave me a perfect rapture. The thought of suicide is a parasite in every person, it lodges itself
safely in the mind and dons on itself the name- the last hope. Wretched bugs, worms with no courage, those that dont know what beauty life can provide, beauty even when it provides the ugliest provisions, they have this wretched piece of cowardice as their last straw. Those that cant view life in the whole but just wish it to provide exclusively to them only the ripe and juicy oranges, those that cant find beauty in the rotten, green and unripe orange; they stagger and fall at the feet of this horrible enemy of human dignity. The feeble bodied and feeble minded that cant bear the brunt of suffering and insult with a glad and gracious temper- the glad temper often guised as deep and pitiable distress and sorrowthey deserve no better last hope. Those that cant accept suffering and pride as their masters and teachers, what other hope can you hope to give them? Those that dont know that knowledge involves deep suffering. When one cant struggle all through life without rest and respite to find justification, from every niche and corner of ones self , for ones existence, what can give you better pleasure than this your damnable last hope. I pity those that have to traverse the globe in search of this and that for the sake of happiness when happiness exists so very near them, those that cant be filled with love and joy at the sight of ones loved ones face pinked by the last rays of the setting sun, those that cant realize ones love of life by merely scrutinizing ones own face in the mirror, those that cant find relief and reprieve in pouring out ones ignorant heart onto ignorant, meaningless letters! Happiness is such an easy commodity lying in such close vicinity, love of life is unstopping and never-ending. So much so that even in times of extreme peril and suffering, insult, dishonour and self-hatred one finds happiness and love of life, so much so that I would say that it is precisely at these moments of extreme peril that real happiness and love of life shoots up in the heart. Suffering moulds you, beats you and shapes you like the potter shapes the clay, only to make out of you a great and living character, living in the most profound and comprehensive sense. It trains you up to be capable of receiving real joy of living, it justifies you entirely, justifies you for all your acts and errors, all your missed opportunities and failures; it justifies you for being alive. Those that are cowardly and step away, those that are afraid
Bharatwaj Iyer 71
of the potter, so afraid that they find the last hope less horrifying, they dont allow the potter to display his skilled craftsmanship, they miss the supreme resultant joy and spend their lives fretting and worrying for this and that, for all sorts of meaningless knickknacks that life occasionally throws at them. The cowardly cant rely but on the last hope, it is their sleeping pill without the thought of which they cant sleep through night. Awful sufferers! Ignorant of the beauty of life in every single of its varied phases, ignorant of joy, ignorant of the golden laughter that follows in the face of every golden sufferer who has passed through it all with supreme effort, courage and enjoyment.
Yours, Kanchana
Dear Sir, The Ganapati festival has begun, the streets are all lit, and the trees are covered with tiny light bulbs. People are all in a jolly, pleasant mood, our head mistress included. She has this habit of boasting about her modaks, she somehow thinks no one can make them as delicious as she can, I dont find them so special after all. The market place is lit in yellow, green and red bulbs strung on long wires hanging from pole to pole like a necklace around the neck of a bride. Maybe Im a kind of a trickster who plays games on her readers, but I never lie in the real sense. Even today as Ganesh Chaturthi is in its full swing all over the place, I ask for only justification from myself, my guilt cannot ever rest in peace. Life has become really difficult to live. I wont tell you what all happens with me inside this brothel, no my pride wont allow me to tell, ah! I cant tell that even to myself. Mans fear of others is lesser than his fear of himself, he alone can tear himself into shreds, no one else is necessary. The head mistress has kept an icon of Lord Ganesha in the hall. Its a beautiful, small idol, she has also garlanded it with the costliest flowers from the neighbouring market place, and I for myself admire that womans courage. Whenever I go down to the hall for an errand, I shudder at the sight of the Lord with his sharp tusks. When I look at him the only thing that comes to my head is the idea that among all things the only thing He wants to do at THIS very moment is to punish me, as if He is thinking what a futile creation of mine chanced into the world to burden it, as if He is thinking Whats the point in keeping her alive?. With this I rush down to His feet and implore mercy only to get guilt, for isnt life only guilt and justification? All of mans worries, all his struggles, all efforts, all gestures, all movements, all thoughts, even the slightest movement of his hair has been for this one thing. To live means to find a reason to live. This reason is not to be given to the world but to yourself, and if given to the world
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that is also to give it to yourself. Now Ill go on forever repeating these things as Ive been repeating them till now. It hurts me when I make that recognition but then Ive no choice, Ill write on and on until Ive any breath left at all, until my fingers crease, and get old and withered by it. Ill go on telling the exact same things without change, for this is all that I know and this is all Ive experienced and felt, this is all I have to justify myself and my life and to somehow if possible to prove that to me, Whats the point in keeping her alive?, could have been spared...
Yours forever, Kanchana
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Letters from a Brothel

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4 Letters from a brothel

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He can be contacted at biyer11@gmail.com

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Dear Sir, Life is an exaggeration. Yours, Kanchana

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Yours forever, Kanchana

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