A Life Misspent by Suryakant Tripathi Nirala

Author:Suryakant Tripathi Nirala
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2016-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

Eleven

After many turns of the wheel, I became a fully formed literary person. My fame spread in the field of poetry as rats fan out in a field of grain. I became known to peasants and landlords. Within a year, Kalidasa arrived from Calcutta9 and Shri Harsha from Allahabad10 to redeem Hindi poetry. Poets of the old school joined forces and mounted attacks against the new style, but they suffered defeat after defeat. The reason was they weren’t using brain power. Their guns fired blanks. It has always been so: the old school loses out against the moderns.

I returned to my village a name in Hindi poetry, the object of wonderment among literary critics. From my village I went to Dalmau. Kulli met me there. He read the papers and knew of my reputation. He treated me with respect, feeling pride at his friend’s making a name in the world. He did not speak of the poets of his region as before; they did not rate high in the newspapers he was now reading. Besides, they were court poets, not independents like me.

‘Haven’t you married again?’ he asked suddenly.

‘I didn’t feel the need for it,’ I answered.

‘How do you manage?’

‘The way a widow manages.’

‘Widows get into all kinds of immorality.’

‘I must be doing the same,’ I said.

My answer pleased Kulli. ‘But you know it is a sin.’

‘So long as there is virtue, too, the sins don’t matter. A spark of fire can burn down a barn.’

‘What is your view of society?’ he asked.

‘The traditions that come down to us are not of equal merit.’

‘What is your view of Hindu-Muslim relations?’

‘A Hindu can become a Muslim but not the other way around.’

Kulli seemed satisfied with my answers. I did not know it then, but he was comparing his own life experiences with my views and finding that they matched. ‘There is a Muslim woman in my life,’ he ventured. ‘I love her, and for her part, she is willing to sacrifice her life for me. She wants to move in with me, but I am afraid of our guardians of morality.’

‘All the guardians need is something to occupy themselves with.’

‘So you think I should let her live with me?’

I had witnessed Hindu-Muslim riots in Calcutta. Newspapers devoted many columns to such questions. Over inflammatory articles, Munshi Navjadiklal11 had Mahadev Babu12 imprisoned for four months. I was one of those who garlanded Mahadev Babu when he came out of jail. The spirit of the times was in me. ‘You must bring her home,’ I said passionately.

Kulli was electrified by my response. ‘These impotent guardians of Hinduism want to make the rest of us impotent too.’

‘Present an example to them of how courageous people live.’

Kulli rushed away to his beloved’s house to bring her home and set a suitable example.

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