Out of India. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

      Last week Rahul went on a hunger strike. He didn’t have to suffer long—his family got very frightened (he is the only son) and by the second day they were ready to do anything he wanted, even to let him marry me. So he had a big meal, and then he came to tell me of his achievement. He was so proud and happy that I too pretended to be happy. Now his father and Daddy are friends again, and they sit downstairs in the study and talk together about their university days in England. His mother too comes to the house, and yesterday his married sister Kamla paid me a visit. The last time I had met Kamla was when she told me all those things on their veranda, but neither of us seemed to have any recollection of that. Instead we had a very nice conversation about her husband’s promotion and the annual flower show for which she had been asked to organize a raffle. Mama walks around the house looking pleased with herself and humming snatches of the national anthem (out of tune—she is completely unmusical). No one ever mentions M. any more.

      It is two years now since he went away. I don’t know where he is or what he is doing. Perhaps he is meditating somewhere in the Himalayas, or wandering by the banks of the Ganges with an orange robe and a begging bowl; or perhaps he is just living in another town, trying to start a newspaper or a school. Sometimes I ask myself: can there really have been such a man? But it is not a question to which I require any answer.

      The first time I saw M., I was just going out to tennis with Rahul. I hardly glanced at him—he was just one of the people who came to see Daddy. But he returned many times, and I heard Daddy say: “That young man is a nuisance.” “Of course,” said Mama in a sarcastic way, “you can never say no to anyone.” Daddy looked shy: it was true, he found it difficult to refuse people. He is the Director of Education, and because it is an important position, people are always coming, both to the house and to his office, to ask him to do something for them. Mostly there is nothing he can do, but because he is so nice and polite to them, they keep coming again. Then often Mama steps in.

      One day, just as I was going out to Rahul’s house, I heard her shouting outside the door of the study. “The Director is a busy man!” she was shouting. She had her back against the door and held her arms stretched out; M. stood in front of her, and his head was lowered. “Day after day you come and eat his life up!” she said.

      I feel very embarrassed when I hear Mama shouting at people, so I went away quickly. But when I was walking down the road, he suddenly came behind me. He said, “Why are you walking so fast?”

      I said nothing. I thought it was very rude of him to speak to me at all.

      “You are running away,” he said.

      Then in spite of myself I had to laugh: “From what?”

      “From the Real,” he said, and he spoke so seriously that I was impressed and stood still in the middle of the road and looked at him.

      He was not really young—not young like I am, or like Rahul. His hair was already going gray and he had lines around his eyes. But what eyes they were, how full of wisdom and experience! And he was looking at me with them. I can’t describe how I felt suddenly.

      He said he wanted Daddy to open a new department in the university. A department for moral training. He explained the scheme to me and we both stood still in the road. His eyes glowed. I understood at once; of course, not everything—I am not a brilliant person such as he—but I understood it was important and even grand. Here were many new ideas, which made life seem quite different. I began to see that I had been living wrongly because I had been brought up to think wrongly. Everything I thought important, and Daddy and Mama and Rahul and everyone, was not important: these were the frivolities of life we were caught up in. For the first time someone was explaining to me the nature of reality. I promised to help him and to speak to Daddy. I was excited and couldn’t stop thinking of everything he had said and the way he had said it.

      He often telephoned. I waited for his calls and was impatient and restless till they came. But I was also a little ashamed to talk to him because I could not tell him that I had succeeded. I spoke to Daddy many times. I said, “Education is no use without a firm moral basis.”

      “How philosophical my little girl is getting,” Daddy said and smiled and was pleased that I was taking an interest in higher things.

      Mama said, “Don’t talk so much; it’s not nice in a young girl.”

      When M. telephoned I could only say, “I’m trying.”

      “You are not trying!” he said; he spoke sternly to me. “You are thinking of your own pleasures only, of your tennis and games.”

      He was right—I often played tennis, and now that my examinations were finished, I spent a lot of time at the Club and went to the cinema and read novels. When he spoke to me, I realized all that was wrong; so that every time he telephoned I was thoughtful for many hours afterward and when Rahul came to fetch me for tennis, I said I had a headache.

      But I tried to explain to Rahul. He listened carefully; Rahul listens carefully to everything I say. He becomes very serious, and his eyes, which are already very large, become even larger. He looks so sweet then, just as he did when he was a little boy. I remember Rahul as a little boy, for we always played together. His father and Daddy were great friends, almost like brothers. So Rahul and I grew up together, and later it was decided we would be married. Everyone was happy: I also, and Rahul. We were to be married quite soon, for we had both finished our college and Rahul’s father had already got him a good job in a business firm, with very fine prospects.

      “You see, Rahul, we live in nice houses and have nice clothes and good education and everything, and all the time we don’t know what reality is.”

      Rahul frowned a bit, the way he used to do over his sums when they were difficult; but he nodded and looked at me with his big sweet eyes and was ready to listen to everything else I would tell him. Rahul has very smooth cheeks and they are a little bit pink because he is so healthy.

      One day when M. telephoned he asked me to go and meet him. At first I tried to say no, but I knew I really wanted to go. He called me to a coffeehouse I had never been to before, and I felt shy when going in—there were many men and no girls at all. Everyone looked at me; some of them may have been students from the university and perhaps they knew me. It was noisy in there and full of smoke and smelled of fritters and chutney. The tablecloths were dirty and so were the bearers’ uniforms. But he was there, waiting for me. I had often tried to recall his face but I never could: now I saw it and—of course, of course, I cried to myself, that was how it was, how could I forget.

      Then I began to meet him every day. Sometimes we met in that coffeehouse, at other times in a little park where there was a broken swing and an old tomb and clerks came to eat their lunch out of tiffin carriers. It was the end of winter and the sky was pale blue with little white lines on it and the sun was just beginning to get hot again and there were scarlet creepers all over the tomb and green parrots flew about. When I went home, I would lie on the bed in my room and think. Rahul came and I said I had a headache. I hardly knew anything anyone was saying. I ate very little. Mama often came into my room and asked, “Where did you go today?” She was very sweet and gentle, the way she always is when she wants to find out something from you. I would tell her anything that came into my head—an