Silence With the Storm
Chapter 2

by Rattan Mann
 
 
 
 

João Ricardo Spagnollo -- Fogo

DEDICATION
 

To Ravindra, who is still too young and innocent to understand fully the hypocrisy  of those wise teachers and great lovers of peace, non-violence, and yoga who murder   the soul to preserve a worthless body, and to mamma and Bimla who understand them  too well, more than is necessary.
 
 

In 15000 B.C. man tamed the dog. In 6000 B.C. man tamed sheep and cattle. In 2250 B.C. man tamed the horse. Drunk with success, man made his next and greatest bid: Man tried to tame man - and failed. Whenever and wherever man tamed man, the philosophies went wild. In the smoothly expanding and delicately tended gardens of slavery, poisonous weeds and mushrooms of Freedom and Equality sprouted up spontaneously for the first time - weeds that had to be rooted out if the garden was to survive and bear fruits. Tame the philosophies, and there would be no need to tame man, destroy man's Spirit and Thought permanently, and there would be no need to destroy man from generation to generation - so reasoned in 1000 B.C. philosophers of India. 
 

But how can a philosophy be tamed? Shake it and break it. Turn it topsy-turvy and tailor it to your own petty dimensions and trivial trimensions. When this is done, blow on your finger with your foul breath, wave your magic sceptre in the thin air, and from the black depths of your shallow thoughts reel out the Big Brother, the Caste, to guard the prostrated remains, and prevent them from blossoming ever again: World is illusion. Life is misery. Desire is evil. Unity is diversity. Sex is sin. Escapism is peace. Caste is Truth. This is knowledge. This is Wisdom. This is the Final Solution. 
 

So, as the wheels of Time rolled over 1000 B.C., the Universe was divided between two brothers: The Big Brother, the Caste, and the Small Brother, the Brahmin. Law and Order tumbled down and Virtue was kicked upstairs. Never again in the history of mankind will such a gigantic attempt to tame man be made, never again will it succeed so thoroughly either. Like the other landmarks on the terrain of time, 1000 B.C. has passed into history as a pile of rubble where man tamed man - successfully. 
 

A stunned, impotent silence hung over their home. It was not the silence before or after the storm, but paradoxically, it was the Silence With The Storm. 
 

Bimla was now twenty-four. Like him she had studied in an English-medium public school, and like him she bore a rebellious spirit. She was very interested in psychology and Russian language. In fact, it was Bimla who aroused his interest in psychoanalysis, and it was from her that he heard for the first time names like Freud, Adler, and Jung. She wanted to become a teacher, and what was worse, she did not want to marry, at least not through the agency of parents and other match-makers looking for self-importance. But an unmarried daughter is a disgrace to a family in India. In time-honoured traditions, papa brought home men – handsome army officers - or their parents to have a look at Bimla and accept her as a bride. But Bimla invented a marvelous trick to prevent herself from being "sold", as she put it. Either she would be very rude to them, or strangely funny, or out-right silly, or she would turn into a stone with her eyes fixed to the ground and refuse to look at the visitors at all. And the trick always worked. Some thought she was a little demented, others assumed that she was one-eyed and so dared not look up into anybody's eye. Still others felt insulted and walked off almost as soon as they arrived. And it was always bad for everybody except Bimla. To her great satisfaction nobody would marry her. After the visitors were gone, there would be terrible scenes at home. Papa would call her mad, neurotic, a disgrace and a burden on him, and forbid us to talk to her. But he was helpless before the weapon she wielded. She became the hated one. Everything she did was wrong, every word she spoke was neurotic nonsense. Ironically, papa had heard of his favourite word "neurotic" for the first time from Bimla herself. 
 

"Did you hear it, Vijai? A marriage that would cost me half of my life's savings this neurotic girl calls "selling on the marketplace"! She must be put in a mad-house....When your turn comes, Vijai, will you also trouble us like her?" Papa would try to console himself by talking to his second and favourite daughter. 
 

And in desperation, mamma too would join him. 
 

"I am fed up with her. I can't stand her anymore. I wish she dies soon. And if she does not die, I will jump into a well and be free of all this. We spent so much on her education, and are willing to spend even more on her marriage so that she does not have to bow her head down in shame before taunting fingers of a greedy mother-in-law not satisfied with the dowry, and this is her thanks for all our troubles and sacrifices." Mamma too would feel a little better after spitting her guts out. 
 

Then one summer night, Bimla took the sleeping pills. Why should someone else die for her convictions? If somebody had to die so that others could live in peace, “let it be me,” she must have thought, though later when everything was over, nobody considered it worth his while to ask her what she thought. But even as she was preparing for death, she thought of the other children, and that saved her. 
 

In summer the whole family slept on the roof. The children slept on the floor next to each other. Usha and Ravindra were just kids, and Bimla, well-versed in psychology, did not want to disfigure their lives with the trauma of having laid a whole night besides their dead sister. So she kept on asking them to go and sleep somewhere else for once. Everybody was on edge those days and Bimla's "funny behaviour" aroused mamma’s suspicion at once. Bimla was forced to vomit, and thanks to mamma, Bimla is still alive. But nobody talked about this incident again. 
 

Through his books he watched it all without a word. He was puzzled and confused and saddened by the changes talking place all around him. What had happened to Bimla? Why wouldn’t they let her alone? Why was papa suddenly started to treat her like this? She was still the same old gentle sister she always had been. She still brought books on pure mathematics and philosophy for him from her college library. Their love and attachment to each other had not changed. They never quarreled as brothers and sisters often do. But papa quarreled with her the whole day. Why? To want to remain unmarried is not a crime. It doesn't make you insane or neurotic. If somebody had asked him, he would have sworn on his life that his thoughtful and caring sister was neither insane nor neurotic. But nobody bothered. And for no earthly or heavenly reason, a beloved sister and dear friend was made into a devil - a cause of all the misery and evil in the house. He could do nothing about it except watch helplessly. 
 

Helplessness produces bitterness. The seeds of bitterness, if scattered on fertile soil, produce the kind of change and revolution so dreaded by men. But bitterness, if marooned on a barren island of hard rocks and sword-sharp cliffs shrivels into silence. He hardly spoke and days passed before even a few words were exchanged between him and the rest of the family. It was a veritable Silence With The Storm. 
 

He did not yet know that a man can be murdered without being killed. The day he knew it, his whole body and soul leapt into flames and were burnt, and out of his ashes I was born. He had not yet heard the word "emancipation", but I heard it, for the first time when I was twenty-five and in Germany. Whether Bimla had heard of this term or not, even to this day I do not know.
 

Sometime when I was in Germany, Bimla was finally tamed after almost four years of struggle to preserve her dreams, and was married to an army captain. People said they had never seen such a lavish show in the history of the village. The air echoed and throbbed with laughter and music, fire-crackers and blank gun-fire. There was happiness and joy in everyone's heart. My father could at last walk with his head high and heart puffed with pride because now the friends and neighbours no longer thought that he had no money to marry his daughters. Even professors Heisenberg and Gottstein in Munich received invitations. Whether Bimla's heart was throbbing equally with joy nobody was interested to know. Nobody was very concerned either when mamma cried a lot because I could not attend the marriage. Such are the dynamics of mass hysteria and mass celebration. 
 

How Bimla was tricked into this marriage is a classic case of deceit and deception. Aunt Kailash was a very experienced match- maker who knew all the tricks and secrets of arranged marriages. So she was given the responsibility of somehow solving Bimla's problem. 
 

One day, aunt Kailash casually asked Bimla to come with her to a neighbour's house to see their son's new bride. And equally casually she added, " Oh dear, wear your best sari because there will be a lot of women there." Bimla fell into the trap. Instead of a new bride sat an old woman waiting for her - her future mother-in-law. It was too sudden and too late to make a scene, so Bimla simply sat down on a chair without speaking or looking up. As usual the old woman thought she was one-eyed and tried to peep into her bent face. Aunt Kailash was fully prepared for such a crisis and had a contingency plan. She quickly went and stood behind the old woman and said, " Oh Bimla, something has into my eyes. Dear, can you see what it is". That did the trick, but after that Bimla was quickly hushed away before she exploded. 
 

At home there were scenes again, but this time the only person making scenes was Bimla. Everybody else was laughing and enjoying because someone had selected her at last and there was plenty of time before marriage to brain-wash her into accepting her fate. 
 

The day Bimla got married I walked alone a long time in the English Garden of Munich. Maybe, besides Bimla, I was the only person who was not very happy about this marriage.
 

About two years later Vijai was married to an army major without the least trouble or complications.
 

If God gives somebody a daughter, she must be like Vijai" papa often boasted to neighbours," She does not know how to disobey her parents." 
 

And everything could have been so wonderful from the very beginning if Bimla had never existed - a real fairy-tale if only there were just fairies and no human beings in the universe. 
 
 

Copyright 2004 Rattan Mann
Oslo, Norway
 

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