Of Leaders & Losers 3. The Man who was Loyal to a Shadow

We live in a changing society (now, does that sound dumb?) . The definition of the words, family and relationship, may be getting metamorphosed.  ‘Open’ relationships and ‘Friends with Benefits’ are talked about.  While I leave it to the choice of the advocates of such relationships, I DO NOT endorse them.  Did extramarital or clandestine relationships never exist?  No, they did exist.  Despite them, Lord Rama became the icon of loyalty to wife or Ekapatnivratya (Women were always expected to follow their husbands, though).  I vote for loyalty between the spouses for it differentiates humans from their ancestors, the apes.

Anyway, the discussion is not about the way society was, is or going to be.  Each one of us has known of couples who were loyal to each other despite challenges like familial pressure to separate, inability to beget children (which is a valid ground to file for divorce), chronic ill-health of one of them or politics, plain and simple, to inherit property, so on and so forth.  If there were a re-incarnation of Rama in the 19^th – 20^th centuries, he would have been called Ramakrishna Rao.

I have never known how this gentleman looked like, but he was my grandfather’s teacher.  This is, as usual, a fictionalized account of the loyalty of a man who lived in times where every educated man considered it as a matter of prestige to take a concubine.

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          Ramakrishna Rao entered the class meant for the students of the Intermediate Class.  The students stood up and wished him.  He greeted them back, took out his watch, and placed it on the table, and began his class.  He held the attention of the students not by the force of his voice, but by his teaching prowess.  It would not be an overstatement to say that those who were fortunate enough to be his students, had the privilege of being spell-bound.

          He was a hard task master, and ensured his students were prompt in doing the work assigned to them.  If he found a spelling mistake in the composition book of a student, even if he were the topper, the teacher would make him write an imposition of ten times to ensure that the student never ever misspelt the word.  Sita Ram joined the P.R. College, Kakinada for his Intermediate Course.  He was already married but stayed with his mother in Kakinada – his wife had not yet come of age.  He was a keen student, and was drawn to Ramakrishna Rao like the fly towards jaggery.  The teacher was lean, of medium build, and wore thick glasses; he was a Brahmo (there was a rumour that only Brahmos could get employed at that college, which was one of the seats of progressive thinking during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries).  He led by example – and, no wonder, Sita Ram became his disciple.  In due course, Sita Ram was allowed access to the teacher’s home for additional sessions (not just about English, but about becoming a better human being as well).

          Time for Dussehra vacation.  Sita Ram returned from his village, rejuvenated.  ‘How did you spend your time?’ asked Ramakrishna Rao.  ‘Very well Sir’, replied Sita Ram.

          ‘Other than eating mouth-watering food, what did you do there?’

          ‘We played cards with my cousins, Sir!’

          ‘Shame on you.  You give in to a vice?’

          ‘This is the only time-pass activity in our village, Sir!’ 

          ‘Don’t you feel like continuing as you go on?’

‘Yes, Sir’.

‘That is why it is called a vice.  There are innumerable ways to pass time.  You should cultivate hobby which you can pursue with great passion.  For instance, you can tend to the garden.  Or you can read books, and expand the horizons of knowledge’.

‘I think I’ll take up reading, Sir’.  And, ere long, Sita Ram had read annotated editions of all the works of Shakespeare, Keats, Shelly and others.

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          The students were whispering something amongst themselves.  At the approach of Sita Ram, they became quiet.  Sita Ram asked them, ‘What’s the matter?  Why did you all become silent all of a sudden?’

‘This is not meant to be discussed before you’, said one of his classmates.

‘Oh, is it about me?  Fine.  Then I’ll leave.  You carry on’, Sita Ram was about to continue on his walk.

‘No, Sita Ram, it is not about you.  It is only a bit of gossip – we just learnt that a very famous litterateur of our village has taken a new concubine, within three days of the demise of the current one.  We know you are a protege of our English teacher, so we thought you won’t relish it’.

‘Let me carry on with my work’!  Sita Ram resumed his walk.

* * * * * * * * *

Sita Ram had just recovered from a double-bout of typhoid, so was trying to cover lost ground even during lunch breaks.  On one such occasion, he overheard a fellow-student calling out to another, ‘Hey Sundaram, I saw your sister at the temple yesterday.  She looks like a female version of you’, while others giggled.  Sita Ram looked up and asked the caller, ‘Are you not mistaken?  Sundaram has three brothers and no sisters’.

‘Oh, sorry, Sita Ram, I did not notice you.  I was only pulling Sundaram’s leg about the child his father bore out of his mistress’.

Sita Ram felt distressed.  On the one hand, the college proactively taught progressivism, while there were regressive thinkers by his side.

One evening, Sita Ram expressed this regret at this dichotomy to his guru, Ramakrishna Rao, who said, ‘Disloyalty to wife has existed from time immemorial.  That is the reason why loyalty to wife, or Ekapatnivritya, becomes such a desirable ideal.  Understand that whatever challenges you face while living up to your ideal, you have to countenance by yourself, perhaps even without encouragement or despite active discouragement’. 

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One day, there was a discussion about a person who is overly interfering in others’ lives, chutzpah, for short.  Ramakrishna Rao pronounced it correctly as ‘hoospeh’, and spelt it as ‘chutzpeh’.  One student, Adinarayana, stood up, ‘Sir, you have misspelt chutzpah’.  ‘Spell it correctly, then’.

‘Please call for the dictionary, Sir’.

‘Venkateswarlu, go fetch the dictionary from my table’.

Venkateswarlu returned with a copy of the calico-bound Oxford Dictionary.  ‘Yes, I stand corrected.  I misspelt chutzpah’.  ‘That isn’t enough, Sir.  You need to write an imposition for ten times’.

Sita Ram was shocked.  What was Adinarayana up to?  Should he disrespect his teacher like that?

‘All right.  I shall write’, and the teacher wrote the imposition on the black board, and added, ‘I’m glad that you, Adinarayana, ensured Rule of Law in my class’.

After the class, Seshagiri congratulated Adinarayana.  ‘Our English lecturer is always full of himself.  You taught him a good lesson and he dare not make us write imposition in future’.  Narasimhulu chipped in, ‘When I complained of our teacher’s dictatorship to my elder brother, he only retorted that strict bachelors are shrews who can’t be tamed, as they don’t know the difficulty of bearing the weight of ‘Samsara’ (family)’.  Everyone laughed.

‘Listen, boys, what do you know of your teacher to talk ill about him?  He is loyal to a shadow’, the students heard the commanding voice of the Principal, Sir Raghupati Venkatratnam Naidu, who was an active Brahmo and a pioneer in the rehabilitation of the Devadasis.

The students dispersed.  Sita Ram, who heard the Principal, wanted to know more.

* * * * * * * * *

Ramakrishna Rao was born in a pious and traditional family.  His father wanted him to take up Western education so that it can earn him a livelihood in the then present scheme of things.  The boy had his ‘Upanayana’ (initiation into Brahmanism / sacred thread) at the age of eight.  Before he could be touched by Western liberalism he was married to Sita, when he was fourteen, and she, eight.  There were no photographs at the wedding, and the only memories of the five-day event were the anecdotes recollected by relatives and friends long afterwards.  In deference to the customs of those days, he pursued his education at his parental home, while she grew up in hers.  Ramakrishna Rao had joined the Intermediate course at the Noble College, Masulipatnam and come under the influence of Sir Raghupati Venkataratnam Naidu’s Brahmo spirit.  When she was ten, she was down with cholera.  She was too weak to resist the disease.  She passed away within ten days of contracting cholera. 

Ramakrishna Rao was studying Intermediate, and was greatly grieved by the loss.  He could not clearly recollect her face, but she was gone before he could even picturise her in his thoughts and dreams.  But, he felt he was widowed.  After six months of her death, his in-laws offered her younger sister, Venkata Lakshmi, then eight, to him.  He made it clear that he was a widower, and that they should offer her hand to a bachelor.  ‘But, your marriage was not even consummated’, said his father-in-law.  ‘No, uncle.  I promised myself to Sita’.

‘You have an artistic hand.  Can you sketch her face, at least?  I bet you cannot!’

‘You are right uncle, I cannot paint her picture.  But I cannot see any other girl in her place in my heart’.

His mother-in-law just returned from the kitchen, and had a sorrowful look on her face.  ‘What do I hear about you, Ramakrishna?  Your mother tells me that you insist on eating only bland food, and that you eat light food at night.  What’s all this?’ she asked.

‘Aunty, what does a woman, who has lost her husband, do?  Does she not eat bland food, and take rice only once in a day?  I’ve lost my wife, so I am doing the same’.

‘But, the rules apply only to widows.  Moreover, you are a Brahmachari (bachelor)’.

‘Your daughter, Sita, was married to me, so I’m not a bachelor.  I believe in gender equality.  If you feel what I do is wrong, then widows should not be thrust with this enforced austerity.  I have taken my decision.  May Venakata Lakshmi be blessed with a happy married life’.

His father-in-law walked out in a huff, and his mother-in-law followed suit, wiping her tears away with the edge of her saree.

Ramakrishna Rao’s parents got the message that their son was firm in his views on this issue, and never thereafter brought this issue up.

Even after his parents’ demise, Ramakrishna Rao continued to live the austere life, while initiating his pupils into the path of progress.

* * * * * * * * *

‘That’s the greatness of my guru’, my grandpa concluded.  He looked at me.  I was silent.  He understood what I was going through.  He lifted my head, and wiped the tears which were overflowing from my eyes.

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