Runaway Husbands

 

And then one fine day, in the beginning of October in 2006, I decided to shed all hypocrisy, like a snake casts away its slough, to sleekly shine with the sparkle of truth. I knew that it will create multiple layers of personal, social and professional upheavals, putting me in critically sour soup. It even appeared like going naked out of the house. Clothing seems like a necessary and practical hypocrisy, saving our skin, helping us keeping the secrets safe, allowing us to pretend totally the other way around than what is really going inside.

I decided to be entirely true in my behaviour and words with my wife. She had been reasonably happy with my funny falsehoods and little lies so far. Sometimes I came very close to shatter the castle of her domination by uttering the heavy-headed truth but refrained from it, feeling it prudent to maintain the status quo.

To tell you the truth, I had started to get scared of her by now. It was no more that feeble irritation that most of the husbands feel while staying in close quarters with their wives. She was by now fully convinced that the only way to manage the household was through her iron fist and screeching voice. During the few physical scuffles that had taken place recently, she in fact gave it back the way you won’t expect even from the most fearsome of a female demon. The last skirmish earned me a bluish bump on my forehead.

‘I banged into the doorpost,’ there I went telling a lie to protect my honour.   

The life was thus turning into a big lie. It was suffocating. I wanted my freedom. I was craving for my truth to give me company right there in the open. So I prodded it out of the inner recesses where it had been hiding. 

I chose to bring my inner thoughts on parity with my behaviour in office. They held me in high esteem, so far, given my shrewdness, which I took as a shortcut to hard-work, but they viewed it as smart-work.

I resolved to be all truthful in my dealings with my social and friend circle also. So far they found me a nice gentleman to mix with. They could afford to have some expectations from me and I from them, a kind of socializing give and take in which none of the parties felt cheated.  

Then, out of the blue, the arrival of my sworn point-blank bullets of truth. Slayings happened, I tell you. In less than a month, I mean by the end of October, the world had changed irretrievably. The naked sword of truth, unsheathed from the shiny scabbard of civility, etiquettes and practicality, had cut through the moorings that had held me anchored in the bay of my life. Now I was drifting away, carried by the exciting waves of the open sea, a kind of morphed freedom.

The scene of war completely changed in the house. My wife was seen seeking escape from my barbed self. It was a sinister revolt against her sovereign entitlement to come out right regarding anything to do with the art and craft of domesticity. I immediately turned out to be the meanest fellow, the worst husband. She carried nice imprints of my fingers on her cheeks and I, in turn, carried finely patterned handwork by her rampaging brothers on my entire back. It was just on the verge of divorce.

With my fake self gone, I became the rascalest employee who comes to office to spoil the entire organisation, a severe challenger to the vast set of protocols and tomes of discipline. As if the protocols are only there to support the falsehoods! There were serious discussions of firing me outright, a kind of bloody beheading of my career.

My friend circle thought I had gone mad, insulting and selfish, my head gone into parleys with the demons. They found it advisable to avoid my bites.

Truth is a rasping slab on which the rough rusticities of one’s persona are whetted away to get a sharp edge. It then slays thoughts, emotions, sensibilities, conventions, and much more.

It soon turned into all the rest versus me. Lest they condemned me as a ‘gone case’ fit for a mental asylum, I ran away one night. The autumn was saying a gentle bye and the cotton soft flakes of an early winter lingered over the misty nights in Delhi. I sneaked away at night carrying just a light backpack stuffed with the bare essentials of a short trip in a hurry. As a mark of my freedom I left at night without informing anyone.

I don’t have any destination in mind. I am just allowing the deeper self to guide me of its own. It seems as if there are two me, one running away and the other taking me away.

I see myself reaching the ISBT and boarding a late night bus. I am not much bothered where it is heading to. Anything out of Delhi would qualify it as running away, a kind of my revenge against all of them for plotting against me. I also say ‘one Dehradun’ as the passenger on the seat in front says the same. To the hell with life’s calculations and planning, let it unfold of its own. The routine is stifling.

So to Dehradun I go by the rickety bus, its entire metallic length perilously buzzing on the not so smooth roads in western UP. The morning twilight sees me getting down to the same smoky, fried, yawning tea-smell at the bus station at the so called ‘destination’ of the bus. But to me it’s no coming home. When you are not after a particular destination, each step turns a new beginning and the next one a still fresher goal. I am not planning anything. The worried me now surrendered to the deeper me, the observer of all this drama in me and around.

I find myself having tea and a babaji looking at me expectantly. I offer him a glass of tea. Among sips of the piping hot beverage, uninteresting bits of conversation follow. I see him taking up his shoddy bundle containing few of his provisions. The deeper me sees me following the sadhu to a shared auto. He looks at me sitting by his side in the rickety three-tyred means of transport.

‘Where are you going bachha?’ he asks.

‘Somewhere,’ I reply nonchalantly.

‘Take care son, somewhere sums to be nowhere most of the time,’ he says wisely.

‘Nowhere is better than being at the wrong place,’ I say, not to win an argument but just as per the wild stream of the current of life that seems to have broken over the embankments and flow into the fields around, to taste a bigger sense of being, a kind of expansion.

I get down where he does, not with any particular intention, just that his getting down reminds me that I have to get down too. One cannot keep rolling around in a shared auto unless one has the sole motive of spending the entire purse in the fun rides in a jumping tin box.

I take the same direction as he takes and walk a few paces behind him. He is curious and even suspicious, a kind of tension creeps into him as if he is raked by the question: ‘Why is this stranger following me?’

I can sense this anxious feeling in him, so deliberately increase the number of paces between us so that he can move more freely. But strangely I know I will somehow follow the path taken by him. After all, his getting down here triggered my leaving the auto as well. There is already a kind of vague connection. No wonder, we are social animals.

He walks in a brooding manner, the surety and freedom of his steps gone. He peeps over his shoulder now and then to confirm whether I am still on the trail or not. I try to look sideways to make it appear like I have forgotten about him. See the power of habit! I have already forgotten the point-blank, naked truth. I am getting into the make-believe world where it isn’t even required.         

I read Garhi Cantt on a signboard. It clings to Dehradun’s margins like a child holding onto its mother’s lap. Now it gives me a sense of going somewhere. It’s a little peaceful world in a small market having tiny shops selling petty items. A quiet boulevard circuiting finely, almost imperceptibly. And the cutely undulating terrain at the threshold of the Himalayan foothills. It is remarkably free of noise. Maybe as travellers we are looking for likeable milestones on the sides. I but don’t consider myself a traveller. I’m a runaway husband at the most.

The sadhu isn’t now too much bothered about me. Maybe he thinks I’m someone in the initial stages of being someone like him, loitering around without any specific purpose before finally hitting the purposeless road full time.   

The place provides some solace to my impassive, benumbed senses. The houses on both sides of Tapkeshwar road, as I read it on a roadside marker, stand in a splendid isolation accentuated by vegetable and flower gardens. Small concrete houses, sheltering the cosy post-retirement world of army officials and many other decently standing civil servants. A groomed isolation so near the main hustle bustle of the capital city. One can surprisingly see wild flowers among the wayside bushes, ferns and clumpy undergrowth, the effect of the Himalayas looming over the horizon at just six or seven kilometres of crow flight.

The foothills seem to entice the journeyman from across the misty distances. I feel an urge to go running into them and surrender my bored, bruised self into their open arms. But then the great mountain seems daunting as well. It seems that I would be lost in its vastness. This little road at this small place, and someone with whom I had recently something to do—like sharing tea, having some words and then that auto ride—is also on the path. After all, the mankind is a social animal at the most. That seems a safe option for a runway husband.  

The road is named after a temple, so it must be a big place of worship, I think. I haven’t heard much about the temple.

‘It appears like Tapkeshwar temple’s majestic solitude and holy aura permeates through the surrounding area,’ I reflect.

The devotees are trickling in. They come slowly without shooing away the temple’s cool silence in this first week of November. Starting at a distance from the stone gate—biscuit coloured with dark strips of paint running artistically—the path is lined with tiny tea stalls and the vendors of puja provisions. In front of the main gate, at both ends, there are two massive trees, the trees of Indian spirituality and mythology: banyan and peepal. The peepal has given a good chase to the banyan in its many-trunked, mossy rise into the sky.

The sadhu tugs at my sleeve under the banyan tree.

‘Are you sure you aren’t following me?’ he asks with distinctly visible traces of irritation and suspicion.

All of us have something to run away from our past. Even on the free path of mendicancy, we prefer to avoid those past milestones coming hurtling from behind. He is worried. I can feel I have already given him enough reasons to smell something fishy in my walk that looks a pursuit to him. I deny to the capacity of my shake of head and reticent tongue. He doesn’t seem convinced though. He moves on and I try to appear absorbed in the tree’s canopy.  

The peepal’s radius has reached several meters. Its trunks, sub-trunks, branches, sub-branches and boughs shelter a horde of supposedly good and bad spirits. The main trunk is surrounded by a brick and concrete circular platform—the tamed religiosity. Little alcoves around its perimeter are used as the shrines of devis and devatas. The trunk has lost its colour and acquired a strange pigmentation, the colour of faith and prayers. People have smeared their offerings here. The colour of prayers is criss-crossed with red cotton threads, the mauli dhaga, the string of faith, holding the kite of prayers to keep it flying at a manageable height. My mind is reading all this information about the sacred tree.

On the platform, an old bespectacled sadhu, bearing a silvery beard, wearing a woollen cap, sits in half-worldly, half-contemplative mood. He finds me suitable for some free time and easier purse strings that can be opened with a bit of pious cajoling. He beckons me and slaps a hearty blessing on my back as I bow down to him.

‘You have a wife who prays to God to have you as her husband in the next hundred births. You have a job where they say the office will fall to pieces without you. There are friends and relatives who won’t be able to survive without your help,’ he expects a handsome big bank note for the glorification of the false in me.

I cringe under the impact of his verbal as well as physical strike at my back. I offer him a one-rupee coin and his eyes turn red and he takes away all the glories and I stand exactly as I am in reality.

‘No wonder, not many people like you,’ he summarises after deglorifying me.

For one rupee I get my truth but for hundred rupees I would have collected a bagful of lies about myself.    

The babaji whom I have followed to this point is standing under the banyan tree at the other end of the gate, keenly watching all the happenings taking place under the peepal tree.

The banyan tree has an ancient charm about it. It looks old and wise, its sturdy leaves carrying ears that can hear what we cannot. In the majestic hunky dory of its beard, it looks like a bridge between this and the other world. It has a squarish curb around the base of its main trunk. A vendor of puja provisions has managed to pitch up a tent on it. His little shop is stacked with framed images of Gods and Goddesses, puja thalis, flower garlands, ritual offerings, religious trinkets including cheap amulets, rings having glassed images of Gods and scores of small-time religious souvenirs. Nearby, on the curb itself, a crouching clay lion roars, its tail half in air, just about to jump at any other encroacher on the holy platform. It seems to be tamed by the vendor. And now by the babaji as he puts his hand on its back as the conqueror of all worldly desires and fears.

I don’t have the heart to just cross over and enter the main gate, especially as the much worried babaji is staring at each movement of mine. So to allay his tension and undo what I have done, I take the role of a firm believer in Gods and go to the vendor and purchase a full puja thali. Seeing me buying the thali, and a bit relieved, the sadhu sneaks into the temple premises.   

I walk in tow, I mean I don’t mean to follow him, just that his choosing of the twists and turns comes to precede my time and space by just a few seconds and some paces. Just marginally ahead of mine. Idiosyncrasies of the power of coincidence is all we can say about it. Now if that comes to confine my endeavour to be viewed by him as a deliberate following of him then I cannot help it too much.

One thing is pretty clear now that both me and him have become very conscious of each other’s steps. The onus is on me to make my presence here just like any other pilgrim moving around without any motivation other than seeking God’s blessings.

A very old sadhu is somehow managing his shaky steps with a crooked stick. A bright red cloth with golden trimmings at its borders is tied around his neck. An open-fronted soiled-grey woollen jacket is keeping him safe from the traces of early winter. He does not look homeless here. He can claim his ownership just by spreading a raggish cloth on the floor and lie down on his back for a cool, solid support for survival mouthfuls, rest and even respect. The shade of religion saves many a homeless soul.

I stop by this sadhu and have a few words about Gods and prayers and puja so that the other sadhu, I mean my sadhu (see how effortlessly our sense of belonging evolves), would find it normal. I just forgot that my sadhu had done exactly the same in order to while away time as I bought the puja thali. Now I also do the same to bide some time, expecting him to move in the mean time. Too much of coincidence, agreed. Now he has stronger reasons to spot me as a black sheep. He doesn’t move and waits for me to approach as I move on a bit guiltily now.

‘You have been asking about me to that old sadhu, mister! Whatever you have to ask, ask me directly!’ there is tartness in his voice.   

Nearby, at the head of a little row of stalls, there is the Tourist Information Centre. Neat, clean and whitewashed, it’s a cotton imitation of Victorian architecture. There is a perfect replica of the red-tiled sloping roof of the British Raj period. The interiors are clean. Surprisingly. More surprisingly, it has internet facility for the visitors. Internet access was a rarity during those days. 

I have hardly any words in reply. To evade him, and make it appear the case of an educated but lost soul from the cities who is grappling between faith and reason and doesn’t have much clue about temples, I take brisk steps to the tourist information centre and thrust my head into the peep window, contriving serious inquiries about the place.

It’s a big temple complex. An institution of faith of its unique kind; a holy trade of its own type. Near the both sides of the main gate, there are two little shrines. The marble tiles inside add to the spiritual respectability. A better seat of God in comparison to those outside on the platforms. As the sun peeps through the misty morning, some taxies come to halt and groups of tourist-devotees troop out. The day has begun.

I know that the baba and I can have our own separate ways without causing much inconvenience to any party. All it needs is a bit of common sense and support from the coincidental factors. So with my puja thali in hand I loiter around the information centre, waiting for the baba to move on his path. Little do I realise that I appear more of an ill-advised detective, holding puja thali and standing near the information centre with ulterior motives. 

Things take their own course. Presently he has a serious business to stop now and then and look suspiciously. I have the business to avoid a perception that I’m following him. I expect him to go, he expects me to cross over and move ahead. Neither happens. I see him standing at the end of the steps, keenly observing each of my movements.

From the main gate, a flight of broad marbled steps descends to again rise to the better parts, the main parts, the shrines of blessings. On the side walls, each step has a marble plaque bearing the names of the devotees who donated money for building that particular step. Each step has a name. I have read books and know that these commemorative plaques make a nice reading. So I simply start reading the names and dates and years. The puja thali is still there in my hand. The little backpack is on my back.

‘There is something really fishy about this chap,’ the sadhu must have thought.

Above the commemorative slabs there is a series of covered terraces having cement floors, with shelves along the back walls. Anyone bearing the invisible coupon of mendicancy and beggarship can take a free shelter here. Almost all the places have been claimed. Their humble belongings bundled in sack-clothes are put in the shelves. Proper houses in order. They have a common roof but no partition. Lines of trust hold the domesticity. Violations lead to verbal and sometimes physical fights. An iron hand-rail runs through the middle of the broad flight of stairs, separating those to-be-blessed from the blessed ones coming the other way.

My reading is over and he is still waiting at the end of the steps. So I decide to talk to a few of the mendicant friars resting under the sheltered terrace by the side, looking at him now and then to see if he has moved on. He but is now rooted to the spot. He isn’t even bothered about any alms that people offer. Finally, I myself decide to cross him and melt into the crowd of the pilgrims.

‘You have been asking those beggars about me! Ask me straight I tell you!’ he is nervous.

I pretend that I haven’t heard him.

As one steps down the descending entrance way, religiosity seeps in through chiming bells, murmuring crowds and buffets of incense smell. There are sadhus on both sides, very poor semi-mendicants asking for alms, and scores of plain beggars. Well, in reality all of them might be simply beggars, just sadhus in the name of having some saffron colour on their clothes, haggard looks, long beards and flying locks of hair. I hope to be lost among their hackling voices.

I have already mentioned about the absence of destination in my journey. I am footloose and no destination binds me. I just try to move on with hurried steps. I find myself near the holy stream that gurgles through the temple complex. There are raised covered platforms running along the staircase. Idols of Gods line the wall to draw attention of the visitors to turn them firm believers and pilgrims. Some alms or donations are expected to be the kindest act. It is about salvation. Donation to the poor brings salvation. It is a huge belief.

I increase my pace. I know he is following me. On a wooded slope, visible through the break in the series of terraces, a sadhu is cooking something on a coal stove. He is rubbing something on his palm. Fraction of a beneficent smile is visible on his bearded face. His clay smoking pipe is awaiting a fill. The smoke of liberation waits in anticipation. Nearby, on the back wall of the series of terraces, the framed pictures of Gods stare down at him. Close at hand, another sadhu, wearing cheap thick-framed spectacles, is engrossed in chanting hymns from some scriptural pamphlets. He seems to be practising some mantra recitation. Probably some assignment is at hand for a private religious ceremony.

I take refuge in their company. The babaji waits at a distance. I have forgotten to use the puja thali in my hand. He must be sure by now that I am a detective who is after him for some reason. After a while I cannot see him, so feeling it safe I move on.   

Further on there is a little marble shrine by the side. Through the grilled opening the mythical writer, the ancient writer sage Balmiki looks at you. It does justice to the reputation of the revered writer of Ramayana. It’s a full bearded face in spiritual trance. The eyes are very big and look at you with curiosity. The lips are painted red and a smile lurks with a know-all aura. His full squarish face is pinkish. Nose is perfectly straight, cheeks are healthy. The face of a very handsome man, indeed. His long locks of hair are tied at the top of his head with a string of holy beads. Time is frozen around him as he sits there in a meditative posture, a silky yellow robe covering his torso. There is a garland of wilting flowers around his neck. The flowers are few days old possibly. Flowers are mortal. So they cannot stay in the loops of frozen time in the little shrine. The shrine has been dug into the hillside along the flight of stairs. Its roof seems to be hanging in antiquity as mossy, muddled outcroppings of stones stare down, suspended in time to maintain the mythical aura of the holy figure.

I feel faithful enough to offer my puja thali to the revered writer. After all, I also once wrote to the extent of gathering a few dozen rejection slips from the publishers. My wife then saved the pile of rejection slips from acquiring further thickness by ordaining no more foolish scribbling as long as she was there in the house.

I respect the great sage writer, so genuinely do the best I can manage in performing the rituals. Life seems better without a suspicious baba peeping at you from around the corners. Coming home it feels, I tell you.

The flight of steps comes to an end at the doorstep of a towered shrine. It is built on a raised platform emerging from the bed of the stream cutting through the tiniest of a valley. The main complex overlooks the stony, rippling course of the water channel chiming musically, as if it is boosting the holiness of the place. The path reaches a fork. To the left, it goes along an almost vertically cut slope. Stony, mossy crags and boulders jutting out amidst the roots and the trees holding onto their perch almost miraculously. There are tiny shrines in the awnings below the overhung cliffside. In the maze of the stony roofs, one can see pigeons perched upon the littlest projections. There is a huge clay statue of Lord Hanuman in a meditative posture on the floor, His head almost touching the hillside. The expression on His face evinces an effort as if he is supporting this dugout like a mighty pillar. The alkaline rocks have bleached and look whitewashed.

And here my hopes are dashed. He is also trying to make it appear like he is busy in worshipping Lord Hanuman. He must have thought that I’m playacting to offer prayers to Sage Balmiki. Why would someone simply pray at the Balmiki shrine bypassing all the greater Gods of Hindu mythology, he must have thought.

A turn in the path goes along the stream’s upper course to pass over a tiny bridge over the stream and then continuing its course on the other side over an elevated platform erected on pillars raised from the stream bed. It has almost a roof of the overhanging thick foliage of trees. It then leads to the main temple shrine overlooking the gurgling brook. On this side of the path, leading to Tapkeshwar Mahadev temple, concrete is being dumped in huge foundation holes to erect pillars to support further construction.

I run among these modern ruins of continuous construction.

The mountain stream has cut its course almost vertically. Its channel is narrow and if you look upwards into the slim valley, you see trees on both sides almost shaking hands in spiritual unison.

The main shrine is dug into the hillside. Massive blocks of the stony hillside have been cut to make a path leading to the shrine. The path circuits the overhanging ledge of the upper slope. It looks dangerously overhung. But I look more restlessly behind to confirm whether he is following me or not. Now I feel only our faith shelters us from such pitfalls. I pray to the God that he gets lost in the maze somewhere. Given a choice, I would prefer meeting my wife at that moment but not him. Life is full of challenges. And not meeting him is the challenge now.   

Just opposite the main shrine, a huge block of bedrock creates a small waterfall in the course of the stream. The water falls with a murmuring thrill which mixes with the chimes of temple bells ringing nearby. Incense-dipped air blows across the channel and kisses the lapping water-drops. The air seems to have a dewy sip before moving heavenwards carrying the prayers and many a message for divine intervention. It’s a peaceful little world. But its meaning has lost its feel now as the mind is occupied about the pursuit by the sadhu.

The riverside foundation of the shrine complex is made of roughly hewn stone blocks. Further downstream, there is a pillared veranda at a height of one storey from the streambed. It serves as a balcony to the temple. The main shrine is visible through grilled doors and windows along the inner side of the veranda. The floor is cool, made of clean marble slabs. Atop the pillared veranda there are series of rooms for the resident friars. A row of glassed windows overlooks the stream from the residential dormitories. It is two-storey high and the view is great.

His eyes are peering at me from one of the windows. I see him clearly. I decide to set it square with him by talking out straight, just like I had talked it square with all those whom I knew before my escape. But before that I feel like bowing my head in full reverence to the Lord.

The main shrine comprises a low-roofed cave complex. The finely undulating roof has been artistically painted and seems like a cavity to the known and the unknown at the same time. The devotees need to keep their heads low against bumping into some jutting stone and lose faith there itself with the arrival of a bump. One is supposed to be humble, head bent, remember God and look at the ground.

The innermost part on the side, deep into the hill, is quite low-roofed. Along the inner recesses, small niches have been further dug into the sides to portray different aspects of Lord Shiva and Ma Adi Shakti. The flooring is made of exquisitely polished marble slabs. To the other side of the shrine hall, a flight of two steps leaves one with the roof hanging a bit higher. Here one can move without caring for the head. Two massive brass faces of Father Lord and Mother Shakti are indeed godly and draw reverence just from the mere look of it. There is a third plush section as well. Its roof is manmade after projecting out from the dugout. Here the priests rest, taking a nice break from their ritualistic labour.

With a far lighter heart I move now slowly without any effort to hide. I am sure he will come following me and then I would beckon him. He is but nowhere to be seen.

I am near the place where I had met the babas, one holding the chillum and the other reading scriptures.  There is a sobbing sound.

‘She wouldn’t allow me the peace of my soul! Now she has sent a detective after me!’ he is crying among the stormy hiccups of sorrow.

I present myself and he jumps in agony, brandishing his finger at me.

‘He is the one. She has sent him to track me and catch me!’ he seems to be at the sharp edge of a nervous breakdown.

I hold a parley with the sadhus and now it comes to light.

‘He was a well-to-do man but his wife is a tyrant so he ran away. She keeps trying to catch him,’ the easy-spirited, chillum-holding sadhu informs me.

‘I’m nobody’s wife’s ambassador. In fact, I’m myself running away from my own wife,’ I say in all seriousness.

But they cackle with laughter, taking it to be a joke.

I walk with slow steps and marvel at the coincidence, ‘Two men running away from their wives end up running away from each other as well.’