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08-09-2002 Dilip Chitre final text of THE SAPPHIRE entered

THE BOMBAY QUARTET

Translated from the original Marathi

By Jayant Deshpande

And revised by the author

Author’s Note

This book comprises four novellas written between the late 1960s and the late 1980s and published in various Marathi literary magazines during that period. They were collected and published as a single book entitled CHATURANG in Marathi in 1995.

The first draft of the present translation was made by Jayant Deshpande (a native Marathi speaker who grew up in Canada and now lives in Pune) using a North American English register and a North American idiom. Deshpande’s translation was not literal though it tried to simulate the stylistic peculiarities of the Marathi original.

The effect was somewhat strained and strange for later copy editors who were not familiar with Marathi but made sincere efforts to ‘improve’ the ‘text’ and make it seem’ natural’ in English, using the British register and idiom more familiar to the Indian reader.

Although I am myself a bi-lingual poet and writer in English and Marathi, and have been a translator either way, I did not interfere beyond a point in Jayant Deshpande’s laborious work spread over several months. I avoid translating my own texts as scrupulously as a physician avoiding to treat himself. Jayant Deshpande’s version was, in fact, the basis of the German translation.

My publisher in Germany, Albert Volkmann, assigned the translation of these four novellas set in Bombay to Wieland Grommes, a young professional translator living in Munich.

Fortunately, I was on a fellowship given to me by the City of Munich to live and do my own work in Villa Waldberta at Feldafing on the lake Starnberg. Wieland Grommes and I went through the version by Jayant Deshpande and my original Marathi text in tandem while the translator made copious notes. Grommes was quick to perceive the stylistic characteristics of my prose, and he was very keen to know the cultural context of the source text. We soon reached a level of communication that was only a little short of telepathy on some occasions. Grommes scanned every phrase, image, object-name and proper noun of Indian origin that intrigued him by closely questioning me. This resulted in copious complicated notes that I kept on index cards.

The process did not end there. After my return to India, we continued to comb through the text using faxes and e-mails. A-1 Verlag, my German publisher, is a unique institution run by a small group of artists. They take care of their books from conception to delivery like a team of obstretiticians and midwives taking pride in every baby whose birth they assist in.

Renuka Chatterjee of Harper-Collins India in the meanwhile, read the English version of THE BOMBAY QUARTET. She, too, was not completely convinced about the English version and had reservations about the style of the translation. Her colleagues Sheila Reddy, Poonam Sahi, and Vikrant Mahajan---in that sequence---worked on Deshpande’s version. None of these editors was familiar with the Marathi original. They read the translation as any literary reader would read a book originally written in English. An unpublished original text can be re-written in close interaction with the author. However, no translation can be re-written without reference to the source-language text. I have worked on both sides of the divide as copy editor, translator, and as a

collaborator of translators and have conducted workshops in different countries on each of these problematic areas. However, I have so far avoided translating my own work fearing that subjectivity might interfere with the required professional discipline. After a prolonged debate with myself, I have now taken the risk. Renuka Chatterjee had suggested that to me at the very outset and, in the end, I have followed her advice. Here is why.

At first, I had refused to revise Jayant Deshpande’s translation because he had already consulted me as he was doing it. No two translations of the same text can ever be identical. For that matter, no two writers write alike, and even as a Marathi writer I am notorious for my eccentric style in both poetry and prose.

Nevertheless, when I listened to what Renuka, Sheila, Poonam, and Vikrant said I took that as a representative reaction conveyed in a constructive spirit from the publisher’s side of the fence. I have used Jayant Deshpande’s version in tandem with my original Marathi text to make a final revised version. As a translation, this text attempts to be faithful to the substance and the structure of the original and tries to simulate its idiom and diction without straining the natural resonance of the English language, as I would use it myself.

All my four novellas are divided into numbered sections. As a poet, film scenarist, and film-director, I am used to thinking in terms of ‘scenes’ and ‘cuts’; numbered sections and un-numbered stanzas or passages. This may seem a bit distracting to some readers as it did to some of the talented editors Renuka put me in touch with. In order that the structure of THE BOMBAY QUARTET does not differ from the structure of CHATURANG, I have stuck to the original order and numbered sequences because they are ‘jump cut’ the way some films are edited. After all, numbering sections is only a non-verbal device and a matter of taste in layout and typography with no obvious or severe semantic disadvantage.

I thank several people: first, my wife, Viju who has shared much of my primary labour and the pains of following up; Jayant Deshpande for his enthusiasm and tenacity; Renuka Chatterjee for her sustained interest in seeing this English version through; Sheila Reddy, Poonam Sahi, and Vikrant Mahajan for sharing their perceptions and sensitive responses to the text of the translation; and also to my German publisher Albert Volkmann, my German translator Wieland Grommes, my friends Lothar Lutze and Henning Stegmuller for their faith in THE BOMBAY QUARTET.

DILIP CHITRE

Pune

September 6, 2001

I : The Sapphire(1966)

1.

Ever seen the colour blue? You may find the question insulting. I, too, would have found it offensive. For I had spent thirty years of my life without having really seen the colour blue.

What range of tones and shades does every colour have! Just the colour blue is so unendingly varied: a one-coloured rainbow: from this horizon to the next.

Yes, it is the colour of the sky. But the sky changes colour. It can be seen in the ocean. However, the ocean changes colour, too. Some people have blue eyes. Yet, even the colour of the eyes is so fluid.

From the densest blue to bluish whiteness, the colour blue goes on changing continuously. Have you ever seen Venus through a telescope? Have you seen Saturn? Have you seen Neptune? Have you seen blue flowers? Blue plumage? Blue smoke? Blue clouds? Blue mist?

2.

Have you ever seen a sapphire? A sapphire?

3.

The stone was held between the thumb and the forefinger. The room was nearly dark. Just one window was open. I held my hand high. It was in front of my eyes. Right in front of my eyes! At first, I thought it was too dull. Then I took it close to one eye. Very close. So close that only the stone would remain in view. I gazed deep into the core of the stone. In an instant, all else became invisible. A deep stone, unfathomable. As though I held in my hand a transparent, serene explosion of light. Its many facets seemed to lower simultaneously like so many eyelids. They fluttered. At the very centre was a blue flame. It had no body. As though it gathered into itself all the blueness surrounding it and had transformed it into one luminous halo. God knows if the seed of brilliance is always faint. The brilliance of that stone was inverted like the glow of a lowered face. Its beauty had ebbed away into itself. The sapphire. Have you ever seen one? A sapphire?

4.

Reduce an ocean to the size of a crystal. Wear on your finger a star plucked by your imagination. Melt down the high noon sky, condense it and hold its pure fire in front of your eyes.

Moreover, all this has to be transparent.

Yet you would only succeed in imitating a sapphire. The crystalline pulse of light in the heart of the colour blue. Awesome in its quietness.

5.

Will a sapphire bring you luck? Now, be careful! It dupes most people. Who knows, in its blue blaze all your possessions would be razed. At first, give it a trial by keeping it under your pillow before you go to bed. If it gives you a nightmare, keep off it forever. Do not even keep it in your home.

And what if it brought you good fortune?

Your destiny would sprout wings of light. Just smile and nod in assent. Your whole life would turn into a sensuous, erotic sport.

Do you want one? A sapphire?

6.

I was ravenously hungry. Not a paisa in my pocket. Probably it was the month of May and the year 1958. I had no job. And I was full of malaise.

Ever since I graduated from college, I was stricken by a sense of guilt. I was ashamed to eat free meals at the family’s expense. I would avoid eating with them at regular mealtimes, eat my meals in a hurry and then I would go to the public library to kill time. Therefore, I went there as usual. The crowd in the library consisted of the unemployed or the retired who felt continually oppressed because they had no private space where they could heave their sighs. Fortunately, for themselves, they were at least literate enough to be able to read Marathi newspapers and tabloids. All of them wore soiled clothes, though mostly off-whites. Their necks had trickles of sweat that gave off steams of bad odour. The public library had antiquated fans with huge blades that ground in reluctant motion just like the fans one found in the waiting rooms in railway stations; and the chairs in the public library were like the railways-style, huge wooden things with wicker seats and backs designed for idlers in the bygone British Raj. Besides, there was a vast oval table and about twenty-odd chairs for the more wakeful readers. One had to read newspapers standing, as they were placed on wooden stands designed for that purpose. And as one stood reading them, one was constantly jostled and prodded by others ---sullen and impatient to grab a look--- trying to read the same page from behind one, or from one’s left and one’s right, all at once. One could easily go through the pages of ten to twelve English and Marathi

dailies in about four hours. Then one would go to the librarian’s catalogues and index cards and select a title for reading. The lists were author-wise, subject-wise, and title-wise. The librarian belonged to the tedious tribe of municipal clerks, forever weary, though at times he was helpful enough to get one the book one asked for. Then one sat in a huge armchair poring over the text printed on yellowed pages of some book that was falling apart, until one was overcome by slumber. Sleeping in the library was strictly forbidden. Unless one bribed the sepoy in advance with some loose change for a sponsored cup of tea, he would not let one enjoy a siesta. Otherwise, he would rudely shake one up and give a stern warning. It is an established fact that hunger translates easily into slumber; and a lot of starving people read books in order to forget the pangs of hunger but they fall asleep while reading or keep their eyes half open to pretend that they are awake. I did not have the habit of sleeping with a full stomach as though I had nothing better to do. I was able to induce a kind of self-hypnosis at will to calm my hunger. However, to sleep was forbidden. Even so, I snoozed for a while behind the outdated copy of a newspaper. When I woke up it was half past two.

Without much thought, I decided to visit Sumitra. The main reason was that I was extremely hungry. This woman was always a good host. Moreover, she wasn’t the kind who would act too smart, show off, or ask too many questions. She was not overly curious about what I thought or what I did; she spared me probing questions and demanded no explanations of me. She did not moralize or pontificate. She never gave gratuitous advice. At the most, she would talk to me about her own problems and difficulties. She would never embarrass or humiliate me. Although I was jobless, she would pamper me and make me feel good. With this reassuring thought, I just went to her place.

7.

The truth is that all this has been completely mixed up in my head by now. I did really go to Sumitra. I used to visit her regularly. Those days I would visit her every afternoon for several months; but I do not remember now what happened on any specific day. Details of different times, each one real, merge and add up to make an imagined day. Each detail belongs to a different time and event though the total is imaginary. Nevertheless, how could I forget? All I had then was Sumitra. True, she was a purely domestic utility: like, for instance, a water-boiler. Her world was her family that surrounded her like a full-fledged orchestra. Her two children: a son and a daughter. Her husband, his brother, his mother---the lot. In the evenings, all those people occupied the two rooms they lived in: either the living room or the kitchen. It is not as though I would not visit her in the evening. I saw her at different times of the day. Sometimes I would accompany her to her family doctor’s clinic; sometimes I would fetch for her things from the market or run assorted errands. However, my real visits were the afternoon ones. After having quit the public library with a final yawn. After feeling very, very hungry. No matter what Sumitra was really like, one thing is sure. She did not have to be told that I was starving. She already knew I was hungry, but she never humiliated me by letting me know that she knew. That is what I really appreciate about some women. They try to take care of you, no matter whether that makes you angry with yourself or annoyed with them. And they may not even have anything else to do with you. That is the best thing about such women, who are getting rarer these days, but Sumitra certainly was one of the types---habitually helpful.

8.

When I went to her, I found Sumitra in an unusual mood: grave. She did not even ask me how I was. Of course, she gave me curried eggplant to eat with a chapati and a cup of tea as usual. After that, though, she was silent. She sat down to knit a sweater. I hardly understood those things then. However, looking at the size of the sweater, I guessed she was in the family way again.

“Our brother-in-law who lived in Allahabad died all of a sudden. My husband’s gone there with his mother this morning.”

“Died?” I had known about her Allahabad brother-in-law only from her talk. What more could I say?

“It was an accident! We don’t know what exactly happened. Got a telegram yesterday.” She continued knitting for some time. Then said,

” Ruined by his own stubbornness. What else?”

I could not figure out what she meant. I asked her in astonishment, “What do you mean?”

“For the last two years, he had one misfortune after another. Yet, he wouldn’t remove his sapphire ring from his finger. You know, a sapphire is what we call ‘Neelam’. We also call it ‘Neel’ or the stone of Saturn. It has a very powerful influence. It brings good fortune to only one person in a million. Otherwise, it just causes ruin. Now take this very example---my brother-inlaw’s case! His wife became insane. His son was graduated, then got into some sort of a mess, and is absconding. He himself suffered a loss in his business. But this man wouldn’t remove that ring from his finger. Experts advised him to remove the ring of Saturn from his finger. However, he wouldn’t believe them. He fancied this stone at first sight and got it set in a ring. He didn’t consider the pros and the cons. He even defied the jeweller’s cautionary advice. See, what’s happened now! A catastrophe.”

I listened with great curiosity because I had once heard a similar story about my own grandfather.

As she continued to knit, Sumitra said, “But what a stone it was! Stunning! The entire ring was a marvellous piece. A stone as blue as a peacock’s throat--- set in a platinum ring. How can I describe that blue? I don’t think you’ve ever seen such a blue. Have you ever seen a sapphire? The blue stone of Lord Indra! The Neelam! What lustre! When I saw it, I also felt a sudden urge to possess it. But how can people like us afford such an expensive stone like that? And I get scared even to think of it. What if such a stone brought me only ruin? Good Lord, no! Don’t even think of it.”

9.

Sumitra was six or seven years older than me and after bearing two children, she had gone a bit out of shape. But she was originally a very pretty woman. Her skin was golden as a ketaki leaf. A ring with a blue gemstone set in it would have looked dazzling on her finger. As I listened, I promised myself that if I ever made a lot of money, I would buy Sumitra a sapphire ring. But what exactly does a sapphire look like? I couldn’t visualize it. I had never seen one.

10.

Seven years passed. I hadn’t yet seen a sapphire. I got married. I had a son. I went abroad on a job assignment. I wandered from one unfamiliar town to another. I forgot all about having been hungry, having been unemployed, and my visits to the public library.

Nevertheless, in an improbable place and quite out of the blue, the legend of the sapphire flashed out again.

11.

In the meantime, I heard once again the story of my grandfather. He died in 1922. My father was no more than seven or eight years old then. My grandfather died in his prime. His death was untimely, sudden, and unforeseen. Grandfather was virtually penniless when he arrived in Bombay. He found a job at a jeweller’s. It was said that he had an uncanny eye for precious stones and inborn business acumen. A wizard at making money. People believed that he was an adept in the

Cabbala and could foretell future events. Some said that he had access to the spirit-world that gave him hints of things to come and others believed that he practised forbidden tantras. What is certain is that he made millions within just five to ten years. Whether it was the stock market or horseracing tips, multimillionaire clients consulted my grandfather before they placed their bets. A supernatural aura surrounded him. His middle-class relations who had overcome poverty the hard way feared him for some reason. Grandfather moved in the richest circles in Bombay---small merchant communities such as the Bhatias, the Gujarati Jains, the Parsis, the Ismaili Khojas, the Bohras and the like. It is said that the jeweller’s firm where he worked gave him a cut in some of their deals.

Grandfather died suddenly after a brief illness. People say that it was dabbling in the occult that eventually destroyed him. They say someone cast upon him the dreaded ‘death-blow’ spell. It made him vomit blood and go into a coma. It is said that he was in excruciating pain until he lost consciousness. And it is said that the spirit fist that gave him the deathblow hovered over his dead body in the crematorium until the pyre began to blaze.

All this could be fanciful. Ignorant and gullible people are easily mystified by the life of an astoundingly successful man. However, in my family, this legend has been hovering over everybody’s mind for two generations now. God knows how they work: fables have a way of hanging in the air and they have strange effects on real lives. Myths of their country, legends in their language, and fables dug out of a family’s treasure-chest shape the lives of people generation after generation.

12.

The sapphire!

My grandfather, too, had a sapphire. Is this story true? Although I have no proof whatsoever, I believe that a stone of a blue hue possessing a supernatural charisma seduced him. Grandfather was an expert gemologist, so he must have known that while this stone bestows great good fortune only on one out of a hundred thousand people, it also spells doom for the rest. Once they are warned this way, most people would spurn the temptation of wearing such gems. However, Grandfather fell for it. Perhaps because he was an adept in the occult arts of astrology, the cabbala, tantric practices, and horology he saw some signs. Or maybe was carried away by his own fancy into believing that this stone would fulfill his wishes Imagine someone pouring a deep blue liquid into a goblet and offer it to you saying, “This liquid is a deadly poison for ninety-nine out of a hundred people, but to the one for whom it is beneficial, it the elixir of the gods itself. For the lucky one, it is a miraculous rejuvenant bestowing upon him ageless youth and immortality. Suppose, you were the one who was offered such a drink. Would you accept it or spurn it? Grandfather would have accepted it. I suppose I too would’ve accepted it: not to taste immortality but to savour death-----to experience the spine-tingling thrill and the sheer adventure of leaping into the unknown with my first sip of uncertainty. The very thought of risking life! Such people must be very rare; but because they dare to take a huge chance, if they succeed, they dazzle the rest of humanity. In a way, this is the spirit of gambling. Then, there’s also what’s known as gambler’s luck! From an early age, I have been insatiably curious: always experimenting with myself; wooing danger; hazarding risk; breaking taboos; violating codes. That’s my nature. Perhaps that’s why I nursed the obsession to possess a sapphire for so many years. Yet, I hadn’t even once seen that stone!

You haven’t yet seen a sapphire, have you? Don’t ever look at one. Its blue smile will simply hypnotize you.

13.

Sometimes I think exactly in the opposite way.

What’s a sapphire after all? It’s just a piece of stone. It’s precious just because it is rare.

However, sometimes even an ordinary piece of glass sparkles in such an extraordinary way that you can’t compare its scintillation with anything you’ve ever seen bef

Up close, everything in this world is unprecedented, mysterious, and inviting. Experiences that we pay little attention to-- or as hardly worth a second glance just because they appear plain and mundane to us are ---------when we regard them minutely----like the knot of Brahman itself. Impossible to ravel. Moreover, such experiences unceasingly draw us to themselves once they become enigmatic.

14.

Why look for a sapphire?

When life gets too complicated, I often just wander on the beach to arrive at natural simplicity : to become free of all desire, to feel a twinge of regret for the wrongs done, to be grateful just for being, and to be full of feeling for life once more. At such a time, I am not attracted to the supernatural, nor do I fear God. I climb down all the steps of social status and descend from all the heights of cultural achievement. I am liberated from all sense of hierarchy that burdens behaviour. At that original sea level, I stand outside the periphery of human history and can still view all human transactions with deep empathy.

Remember, I am a human being: I can also think exactly in the opposite way. For, in my paradoxical origin itself there is an innate polarity and self-conflict.

15.

We sat on the rocks behind the temple of Mahalakshmi. The rocks were too warm. In fact, almost blistering. It was afternoon.

There was a crack in the rock in front of us and there was some water in its cavity.

We watched the crabs. They were tiny. They walked in a weird way--awkwardly---with their crooked claws making their movement look difficult. One crab energetically scurried out of the crack. It stopped near the water. I stamped my shoe and it scurried back to disappear into the crack again.

In front of us was the glittering expanse of the sea. With touches of ash grey, dark blue, brownish green, muddy; and yet on its vast, smooth, burnished surface there appeared the curled filigree of rising waves, almost molten silver, and above them the air was like a misty blue flame. Right up, directly above this, the leaping eye could catch a glimpse of a sky as blue as a sapphire.

For a long time, the two of us looked around rather than looking at each other.

Then slowly I became aware of the closeness of her presence. She wore a white nylon sari. Her breasts tightly wrapped by its end did not seem very full but they were firm and erect. Well-rounded, smallish breasts--- tight as wild mangoes. Raisin-like, but a bit more pointed nipples. Her belly was still flat, skinny. Her waist was delicate. And beneath it were her hips, fleshy and well rounded again, but still rather small and firm. Still further down,

her well-wrought thighs, smooth calves, legs, feet. As though I had sculpted her body myself with my eyes closed, and had known its every curve with intense fingers.

As I gazed deep at her I became instantaneously oblivious of the noon, the rocks, the sea, the sky---everything. A hot, steaming ring formed around my body. However, at the edge of my skin I felt an acute, overwhelming tension. Inside me, I felt the rise of a strange, new passion. I felt like seizing her right there and then, strip her naked, and push her down against the rock, under my own body, and bury her deep inside the rock along with myself, to become rock and to turn into the sand…So that the foaming bliss that lies beyond the self would wash us and dissolve us into infinity.

Suddenly, I clutched her arm.

Then I heard her voice as though the wind carried it from afar, and saying, “Have you gone crazy? You want to do it out here. In the public?”

For a while, I was almost stone deaf. Then the fever went away. At my right, I saw a dhobi laying out his washing to dry on the rocks. I could hear the garble of many voices. I saw her still face flushed by the heat of the sun. Nothing of the sort had really happened.

Then I said to her, “For some time now, I have been obsessed by a strange desire.”

“What sort of desire?”

“I want to buy a precious stone. An Indraneel---a sapphire.”

“You? You want to buy a precious stone?”

“You don’t believe it, do you?”

“I am surprised. True. Then buy one! What’s stopping you?”

“It’s a bit expensive.”

“How expensive?”

“Even a tiny one might cost a thousand or so. A better one would cost, well, anything above that according to the quality. Besides, it has to be set in platinum, or at least in silver. Silver is okay, but platinum, you know, is even more expensive than gold.”

She burst into laughter.

When she stopped laughing, she asked, “What new craze is this now? Aladdin’s magic ring?”

“Be serious now. This has been my wish for a long, long time. But it carries a risk.”

“What risk?”

“Of complete ruin.”

She burst into laughter again. Then suddenly, she fell silent.

“Listen,” I said, “I’ve toyed with this idea for seven years now. I haven’t shared this even with you. This stone has a strange aura of superstition.”

“What sort of superstition?”

“It brings bad luck to most people. It brings terrible strokes of misfortune. However, if it proves lucky for one, it makes fortune smile on him or her. One can then achieve the unachievable, attain the unattainable, reach the unreachable---with surprising ease!”

“What a weird thing to believe! I don’t suppose you really believe all this!”

“I don’t exactly say I believe it. But for seven long years, I’ve thought about it. And the more I think about it, the more curious I am to try it out myself. My curiosity hasn’t diminished. Maybe it has increased a wee bit every day.”

“Do you really mean it?”

“I do mean it. I’m serious about this. You know me. You know how I develop strange obsessions that keep growing for years. This is one of them.”

Then I told her all I knew about sapphires---all that I’d heard, all that I’d imagined.

It may have been the force of my narration, or the mysterious persuasiveness of the legend itself, but in the end, she was almost under a spell.

Moreover, she seemed to have been gripped by

Clasping my hand, she said,” Swear on my life, you won’t ever get a sapphire!”

Now it was my turn to laugh, “Look! Now, who’s being superstitious?”

“I am not afraid of a sapphire.” She said quietly looking into my eyes, “It’s you I’m afraid of!”

16.

We visited Sumitra.

I brought up the topic of sapphires on purpose. In some respects, Sumitra’s imagination has a surrealistic bent. I bet she doesn’t know it herself.

As we talked, the stone soon acquired supernatural dimensions. It defied our reason and inspired, by its own spontaneous logic, a series of bizarre tales.

Naturally, Sumitra---at her optimistic and dreamy best---painted possibilities of wild strokes of good fortune and incredible benefits. She forgot the example of her Allahabad brother-in-law.

Suppose, a sapphire brought me good fortune?

All traffic would freeze to let me cross the street at the Flora Fountain!

All clocks would wait for my move. Sighting me, all traffic signals would go green. I would be a celebrity wherever I would go. I would rub shoulders with the famous the world over.

17.

A fantastic subject. Precious stones!

The amethyst has a purple hue, a topaz yellow, a ruby red, and an emerald green.The diamond is so variegated!

Transparent white, pinkish, of a yellowish lustre, of a bluish tone! And the sapphire? What exactly is a sapphire like? Have you seen a sapphire?

Then stories of gemstones bred further stories. Gemstones in ancient temples, the precious stones set in the place of the eyes of images of deities, cursed gemstones, gemstones set in crowns and diadems, gemstones set in the pendants of necklaces, gemstones in ear-rings, gemstone-studded belts, rings, armlets, bracelets, chains, garlands, bangles, anklets, toe-rings, noserings, nose-pins, hair-clips---you name the ornament and it is graced best with a gemstone. Thereby hang so many tales.

I forgot to talk. I was drawn into a mysterious current. On the one hand, there was Sumitra, talking, laughing, and the topic making her so tipsy. She seemed to be going on a trip of her own. However, the wheels that started turning in my own mind were of a different order. The Cabbala; Egyptian astrology; the astrology of gems; all the secret traditions and lore of the occult sciences and arts; palmistry; the interpretation of dreams and signs; alchemy; the transmutation of the base into the pure; the magic potions of the siddhas---the masters of space and time. Leaves of ancient, inaccessible books fluttered before my eyes; palm-leaf manuscripts; papyri with a variety of hieroglyphs; occult symbols and signs flared up and died in my mind’s eye. In one single, spellbinding legend of a billion facets all this was being fused.

However, I could not yet visualize a sapphire---the sapphire. How could I? I hadn’t ever seen one.

One more thing. Sumitra’s talk, the strange sparkle in her eyes, the transformation brought about in her by the mere mention of a sapphire.

Now her youth was beginning to fade. But today I saw in her a mysterious glow. Her eyes were vacant. There wasn’t a trace of a human feeling in them. Nevertheless, in them I saw a unique light--- intense, multifaceted, and inverted.

I was aroused and was trembling. A spine-tingling wave went to my head. Later, I tried hard to shrug it all off. The Sumitra I had seen all these years and the Sumitra I had seen for the first time so many years ago. She must have for long wanted to possess that blue stone which brings luck to only one soul from among a hundred thousand candidates and strikes down with misfortune ninety-nine out of a hundred aspirants. I, too, must have yearned long to possess that same gem.

On the other hand, have I suddenly realized that I want to possess this woman herself whom I have found enigmatic?

I avoided looking at her until I left.

18.

It seems long ago. The three nights I spent alone in that strange hotel room in a foreign city.

I had finished my travels in Egypt in a few days. Luxor, Karnak, Thebes, Memphis, Memnon, and now Alexandria after Cairo.

By the Nile, I smelt that special odour that is a blend of the smell of fish, aquatic creatures and plants, and alluvial effluents.

In the desert, I experienced a dry, sharp, abrasive wind; those fierce waves of glaring sunlight; and that yellowish orange, whitish colour of the sand that impresses the eye and causes it to ache.

And the azure of the sky.

At one place, an Arab approached me and stealthily tried to offer me a deal. What sort of a deal? He asked me if I would like to buy a piece of a three thousand year old mummy.”, Wwould you have it for your ownpersonal private collection?”. He asked me persuasively. “Although it is severed from the original corpse, it is genuinely ancient! The price? Just seven pounds sterling or twenty American dollars! The hand of a mummy! Come on, Master, it’s a deal! You won’t get such a genuine ancient souvenir for such a cheap price! I brought it out of a grave myself.”

I said no. I wasn’t even tempted by the offer.

A strange feeling overwhelmed me as I sailed down the Nile in a small boat. The history of thousands of years that one listened to once upon a time, sitting on the bench of a Marathi school. The teacher’s voice a drearyab drone and the prose very hackneyed and crude. The master clearing his throat as his suspicious stare scanned the classroom. But, at that time, it held me under a magic spell. Just as I am now, as I sail down the Nile in this small passenger boat. In a way, everything springs from the imagination. All these are mere ruins of things worn out by time. In a manner of speaking, one still smells the odour of human bodies that have withered away thousands of years ago and yet one gets a whiff of it in the starlight and in this air. These standing columns of stone. These triangular, massive cubes. This clear blue sky above them. The stars. The strangeweird silencehush. All one can hear is one’s own breathing. Yet how how electrifying it strangeis--: suggestiveevocative, unfamiliar, yet also foreknown: the unnameable rustlings that make one miss a heartbeat.

19.

Then to this hotel.

At night, I conspired with the concierge to get a call girl into my room. She took her clothes off. But of course, she still wore rings in her ears, a necklace, a bracelet, and her signet ring.

In the light of the bedside lamp, I saw the sparkling blue imitation gemstone set in her signet ring. It was too flashy to be real.

As I tussled with her naked body in the dark, it had no smell resembling body odour. She had rubbed her skin with Chanel’s world-famous perfume: it was behind her ears, on her throat, in her armpits, on her breasts, in her navel, and in her crotch. Even in its faint fragrance, there was a subtle ferocity. How smooth was her body and how warm! Shaven armpits. The face masked with a thick make-up. Though stark naked, she wore the inscrutable armour of her profession.

Summoning all courage, I focused my mind on pure copulation, banishing all other thoughts, and went into action.

The noise of the traffic came in from the open window. So I thought about shutting it. When I heard distinct but incomprehensible Arabic shrieks from down below, I disengaged reluctantly from her body, shut the window, and switched the air-conditioner on.

Again, I coupled with her.

The whisky had gone to my head. The air was a bit sultry. Or maybe my own body was too warm. As I began to sweat ever so slightly, I felt the cooling effect of the air-conditioner; and I felt the chill touching my bare back.

Well-crafted coitus: impersonal, in a slow tempo, gradually accelerating. The whisky made it easy for me.

Why did I remember it now? All because of that blue stone. Even at that time, I’d felt like asking the woman if what she wore in her ring was really a sapphire. But I didn’t have enough language skills. However, the hand that wore the ring flashed supernaturally in the dark. Then she pressed her hand against my bare back. Very tight.

Then, at the very instant of climax, just as I was about to burst into spurts of pleasure, the stone in her signet ring pricked my back. It pressed deep.

It was an extraordinary sensation. It reversed the flow of my semen.

Very strange.

Very, very strange.

20.

If one wants to have a sapphire to improve one’s luck, one must give it a trial before deciding to buy it. One has to take into account certain omens. One has to pay the jeweler the full price of the chosen stone on the agreement that it would be fully refunded if the stone were returned within the trial period.

After bringing it home, one has to observe minutely the sapphire’s influence on the turn of events.

The first effect to observe is on one’s dreams. If one has bad dreams or nightmares following the bringing home of a sapphire, one must get rid of the stone. If one’s dreams are happy or fortunate, one must keep the stone.

Wrap up the stone in a piece of paper or cloth and keep it under the pillow before going to bed. Once this is done, one has to keep track of one’s dreams and make a note of them. One must remember all the details of every dream. One must ascertain whether one’s dreams suggest a turn for the better, favourable tidings, a happy augury, and so forth. One must assess whether the dreams fulfill one’s wishes, realize one’s ambitions, and satisfy one’s aspirations. Only then, the stone is proved propitious and fit for use. Evil, inauspicious, sinister, foreboding, ominous, frightening, disturbing, unnerving kinds of dreams mean that one should avoid the stone. In such a case, one should promptly return the stone to the jeweler.

Another way of assessing the influence of the stone is to wrap it up and carry it all the time on one’s person. If one carries the stone on one’s person on a particularly important mission or on a very special occasion and if one meets with success or good fortune, one can be sure that the stone will always bring good luck. If one meets with failure, the stone must be returned.

Once one perceives the positive influence of the stone, one must set it in a signet ring to be worn all the time. However, the stone should be set in the ring in such a way that it is in constant physical contact with one’s finger.

This is a fundamental point in occult science: The stone must be in constant physical touch with the wearer’s body, however minute such contact.

For, through the medium of the stone, specific vibrations from the outer universe, specific frequencies of light-waves, magnetic fields, currents of energy and resonances connect with one’s physical body, and through it reach the inner sphere of one’s self. The stone receives and filters in waves beneficial to us, vibrations that promote our well-being; it absorbs these good influences, is charged with them, and in turn re-charges us with them. Whatever light the stone absorbs from without, it injects or releases such light through its point of contact with our skin, thus infusing our being with the special quality of that light. The light that enters us, the energy that charges us, the vibrations that resonate within us touch all aspects of our being: they enter our perception, our thought, our memory, our creativity, our imagination, our intuition, our motivation, our inspiration, our action, our self-reflection. They become our whole being.

Some people say that one’s personal stone ought not to be exposed to other people’s sight and therefore it should not be set in a signet ring. One may tie it to one’s armband or one’s waistband so that it will remain covered. It should be hidden from the evil sight of others.

Some others say the exact opposite: they maintain that a stone must remain exposed so that it receives light. The sparkle of its invincibility must be seen by the whole world; all who witness it must feel the presence of its protective power.

The sparkle of the stone attracts and deflects, too.

It is a sparkle that would help you seduce women, attract wealth, charm people; and your enemies would not dare to hurt a single hair on your body.

21.

Some people say that the occult science of gemology has its roots in esoteric interpretations of the Cabbala or the Quabbalah. However, where did the Quabbalah itself originate? And when did it come into being? So. There was this continent called Atlantis. It used to be where we find the Atlantic Ocean today. In a sudden cataclysmic upheaval on the earth, it was swallowed up by the ocean. On the continent of Atlantis dwelt a highly advanced human civilization. The tradition of the Quabbalah as well as many other occult systems of which only fragments survive today belong to that vanished civilization. Now the remaining fragments of these traditions and systems seem covered by layers of superstition and obscurantism. What was once empirically proven, scientifically researched, and theorized became corrupted and distorted later.

Some others say that the Quabbalah has nothing to do with Atlantis; its origin was ancient Babylon. Still others maintain that this is an ancient Egyptian tradition.

I know nothing about this myself.

Since ages, people have assumed that there is a correspondence between man and the world surrounding him.

Man has believed in a relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm: events in the one and events in the other are connected. He believes that constellations in the sky and the processes and events in his own life are both bound to the rhythm of a vaster wheel. Man is the same whether he tries to connect the uniqueness of the individual body with the original mystery of the unsurpassable being that simultaneously pervades and transcends the universe; or whether he looks for law-governed patterns in what seem mere coincidences with the least probable connections. And it is the same man who tries to understand the universe beyond his sensory grasp and its extra-sensory realities. This latter type of man developed the occult arts instead of natural science: from such inclinations stem traditions such as astrology and palmistry.

Even about these, I have nothing of my own to say.

Practitioners of the occult gave every colour a specific meaning. They connected each with a specific planet and with human destiny. They connected colours to astrology, to numerology, to yoga, to music, to tantra, and to mantra.

I have nothing to do with any of these beliefs and practices.

Yet, I am a relative of the same humans who first conceived numbers and formulated out of sheer imagination complex theorems, problems and their solutions. The inborn needs and capacities of mankind, the different regions of the human brain and their varied workings, the expression of human potentialities--- all these are parts of a vast spectrum in which there is a place too for folklore, for prophecies, for mythologies, for myths, for epics, for primitive poetry, for primitive art and so on. Man’s original awe, his primal desire, his intuitive aspiration, his instinct for ecstasy gives different things a place in different systems and categories.

In the womb of the earth, in the depth of caves, mines, and river valleys, and inside rocks as well, man found gemstones. In actuality, gemstones are nothing but minerals of a special kind. They get their unique hues and attractive glow from the traces of different elements and their crystalline form is the product of natural processes. However, man was amazed when he saw these luminous stones. They seemed fabulous to him: he connected these marvellous stones with all the other marvellous things in the universe. These stones seemed to him like the sun, the moon, and the stars in the night sky. In their lustre he saw fire, sunlight, moonlight. He connected them with miraculous happenings, with inexplicable phenomena, with sudden, unforeseen events. He connected gemstones with his deities, with gods and goddesses, with ghosts and spirits, with elves and fairies and goblins, with the yakshas and the gandharvas and the apsaras of the ethereal world. In the same way, he connected them with monstrous creatures: snakes and cobras, rock-birds and eagles, whales, and elephants too. He connected precious stones with rare herbs and plants.

The meaning given to gemstones by man is neither right nor wrong. It is only meant to mean, to signify. The truth that it is connected with is not related to the particular gemstone itself but it is related to man’s inherent capacity to spontaneously connect any object in the universe in the context of his own being.

One such entity given a unique meaning is the sapphire or the Neel, the Indraneel, the Neelam. Its colour is blue as the sky. Then, is the colour of the sky forever the same--- a fixed blue?

22.

The sapphire, then. Some people say that this is the stone of Venus. Some believe it to be Jupiter’s stone. But then the stone of Jupiter is the topaz and its colour is yellow. The blue of a sapphire is very distinctive. Moreover, some people associate it with Saturn. And I say that this stone belongs to Neptune. Its blue is the blue of romance and mystery.

However, this should not be taken to be true.

Venus is the planet of erotic love. It is associated with the arts, with amorous sport, and with beauty and the enjoyment of pleasure. It is connected with femininity. The qualities of Venus are tenderness, softness, sensitivity, delicacy.

Jupiter is the planet of prosperity, expansion, and abundant growth.

Saturn is the planet of strife, of hard effort, of grief, of restriction, of burden, of paying dues, of settling old accounts, and of hard-earned success. Saturn’s gift is a relentless ambition and its strenuous pursuit, and success in the end but at an enormous cost. It grants wisdom in lieu of happiness, philosophical satisfaction instead of the fruits of one’s labour, and detachment rather than joyous bliss.

And Neptune?

Neptune is a distant planet. Neptune is Varuna, Lord of the Ocean. In Greek mythology, he is armed with a trident. The King of the Ocean is blue and unfathomable. Now calm. Now tempestuous. Often veiled by a mist or obscured by a fog. Romantic, inhuman, awesome, cruel. In addition, just as inviting, boisterous, unfettered in its freedom--- tempting, and mysterious. Neptune lures some people away: sometimes to strange lands beyond the seven seas, sometimes to the deepest end of hell. I say, suppose for a moment that the sapphire is the stone of Neptune. I mean, think of this stone as you think of the role played by fate in a Greek tragedy. Fate is an independent force in itself and so is this stone. It is an independent force free to act by its own logic. You may have a nature of your own, your own character, your ancestry, your place in life and your status in society, your friends and foes, and all those who have stakes in you. Fate is something that exists outside of all these; it is an alien force, something that is a bolt from the blue.

That is what a sapphire is.

23.

Have you ever listened to a symphony orchestra? You are in your seat in some remote corner of a darkened auditorium. In front of you the entire orchestra and rising above it, on a podium, the charismatic conductor with his all-powerful sceptre--- the baton--- held in his hand. He creates, by his command, music. He is the Almighty One then. He rules the auditorium as its sovereign ruler. The orchestra responds to his tiniest gesture. The mesmerized audience watches with rapt attention the movements of his baton that make the music rise and fall, sound or cease and they are all awed and dazed. At that time, the audience marvels at the human form of the conductor who gathers in his charisma all the powerful and mysterious forces that rule the universe. On such solemn occasions one is supposed to remain oblivious of the possibility that this all-powerful, superhuman being resembling ordinary humans could die of pneumonia, or may be found buying meat in a butcher’s shop, or is required to make a cup of tea for himself. Such mundane details of material life are supposed to stay out of one’s mind on occasions of this kind. Likewise, you must imagine this blue gemstone--the sapphire---in the place of the conductor of an orchestra. Only then, you will be able to see how trivial and small-minded all the arguments against it are. Only then will you be able to set aside all other notions of natural law, all theories of reality, all practical considerations, and all dogmatic insistence on commonsense to be able to visualize your own life in the context of the sapphire: its primordial and spontaneous, self-governed universe and its absolutely sovereign logic.

So now, turn to the colour blue.

Look.

See.

Look.

Seen it? That’s what I mean: In the beginning was the Blue.

24.

After this, I could no longer contain my obsession to possess a sapphire.

Normally, I do not crave for money. I have never dreamt of becoming a billionaire or even a millionaire. Nor have I ever dreamt of lording over a huge harem in order to enjoy making love to a woman. I am not tempted by power, success, popularity, or fame. I do not wish to have a windfall without any effort or labour on my part. I want no unearned happiness or prosperity. I do not wish that every attempt I make met with success. I do not divide my life into portions of good and bad fortune. I do not constantly measure or weigh my life in terms of success and failure, satisfaction and frustration. In the end, what happens to one is the freakiest possibility of all. That is what my own experience so far tells me. So far, so good. Nobody can take away one’s right to interpret whatever that happens to oneself. I have reached this conviction on my own. That is why, in the end I am at peace with myself despite the worst strokes of luck that I have suffered.

However, once I got obsessed with a sapphire, everything started being distorted. I lost my sense of flavour while having a meal. Once I fancied eating out in my favourite restaurants in Bombay and occasionally indulged in what I fancied. Now I seldom thought of eating with any relish. I no longer enjoyed my booze. I couldn’t read a book. I couldn’t focus on my work. I lost sleep. Acid ate into my guts. I couldn’t stand friends and relatives. My usually exuberant behaviour became dull and withdrawn. It was as though something had cast a shadow on me. My life itself seemed to have darkened.

Repeatedly, I thought of only one thing. Won’t all this suddenly change for the better once I dared to buy a sapphire and wore it on my finger in a ring? Won’t the light radiating from its mysterious blue core completely transform my life? So what am I waiting for? What signal do I expect now? Or am I frightened by something? Am I cringing? Am I hesitating?

25.

Is sin what one feels like doing? I was experiencing the deep doubt gnawing inside oneself in such a state. Once, when my son was about to be born, my wife was in a maternity hospital and she had to have a caesarean section surgery because she had some complications. The child was not likely to survive. Nor was she likely to conceive again, if she lost the child, she was carrying. At this time, one evening---when I was under terrible stress---I ran into my old friend Yaquoob Khan. He said to me in Urdu, “Come on, friend! I am meeting you after such a long time! Let’s celebrate!” Yaquoob’s treats were a feast hosted by a

Nawaab. He took me straight to his den at Walkeshwar. Yaquoob was the proprietor of a brothel that would put a five-star hotel to shame. His customers came from such high circles in society that their names were a well-guarded secret. One could enter the place through three or four separate entrances. Each had very tight security. Then Yaquoob treated me so royally that I find no words to describe it. What with thirty years old Scotch, an assortment of kebabs a la Avadh and Hyderabad Deccan, almonds, pistachios, cashews nuts to munch… Finally, what should Yaquoob offer me as the hallmark of his hospitality? So he calls someone on the intercom. Five minutes later, a girl opened the door and walked in. She was covered from top toe in blue. She wore a blue sharaaraa and a blue dupattaa. As she entered, a whiff of the French perfume Magie Noir filled the air--- Black Magic! Even her eye

make-up was blue. Her eyes were large, round, and sparkling; and their colour was hard to identify. She was statuesquely built, giving an impression of being tall and slim. Her mouth was full and lively. She was fair but her fairness tended towards a darker complexion. She had a straight nose, and a manner that was as delicately courteous as commanding. “By the grace of Allah!” I whispered into Yaquoob’s ear, “Who is she? A fairy from paradise or a princess?”

“Miyan! Dear friend! Would you like to have her? What is the English word for the last service that tops a feast--- as dessert? What do you say Miyan? This chance won’t come again! Her name is Heenaa and she is just about to make a beginning!” Suddenly, I remembered the hospital. I remembered my wife. I remembered that her operation would have to be performed any time now. I was troubled. It would not only have been poor taste but also ingratitude to decline Yaquoob’s generous gift. It would amount to hurting him permanently--- for Yaquoob was presenting to me his favourite piece of ass and in so doing, he was offering me the highest status in friendship in his book. But more than that, I was absolutely mesmerized by Heenaa. Finally, my inner conflict was resolved in my thanking Yaquoob for his hospitality and bidding him goodbye. That same night, my wife was operated. A son was born. She had to be kept in an intensive care unit for the next twenty-four hours. And during that time, the thought flashed in my mind: what if I had spent that same night savouring the fragrance of Heenaa’s flowering youth? And what if, at that very time, my entire marital life had been blown to pieces? If such a thing were to happen, what Sufi fakir would have salved and healed me with his mystical message?

The seductiveness of a sapphire was as persuasive as Heena’s ethereal charms. It was as intoxicating; as adventurous; as voluptuous; as lusty; as dare-devilish. My middle-class upbringing, the deeply imprinted god-fearing view of life, a puritanical sense of staying clean must have come in my way then. However, even there the idea of fate, the idea of karma, the idea of having to reap as one sowed, remained fixed somewhere in my mind. I was afraid of the law that if I sinned, I was doomed. The law that I would have breached had I made love to Heenaa that night was the same law I would violate if I wore a sapphire in a ring. I would have to pay a price for such transgression. It was a hazard. Nevertheless, it was an attractive, tempting, seductive sort of risk.

26.

That same night, my temptation to have Heena evaporated forever. By a coincidence, I lost touch with Yaquoob too after that night. Two years later, he was murdered in front of the Novelty Cinema in the midst of a crowd. I do not have a clear memory of when, where, and how my obsession to possess a sapphire took root and grew. I did not even realize that the desire to have a sapphire had been secretly evolving in my subconscious mind all those years. Now, all of a sudden, it had gripped me like a consumptive affliction and seized my entire being. I was disturbed, restless.

Professor Parkhi was one of my close friends. He perceived this change in me. My health became a current topic for the grapevine among my other acquaintances as well. In the event, one day Professor Parkhi called me to his office and asked me,

“What’s worrying you?”

I opened my mind to him and spoke very freely without mentioning the sapphire I was longing to possess. After all, how was I going to convince any rational person that my obsession was justifiable? How could I explain myself----a thirty year old man who was intelligent, capable, respectable, popular, successful, and happily settled with his own family---being obsessed to the point of being possessed by the desire to obtain a precious stone? Though I believed that the mere possession of such a stone would completely transform my life at every level, in what way would I be able to prove my point?

As a matter of fact, is this not the sign that the person described above has gone completely crazy? This fixation for a sapphire, this obsessional neurosis---was this a symptom of a deeper psychological disorder that perhaps had no prognosis?

27.

I would have needed to raise at least a thousand rupees to buy a sapphire. It would have been probably an act of idiocy to do so. In those days, my total take-home salary was just one thousand rupees. To spend the wages of a whole month on a gemstone that promised good luck? I was already in debt. I was unable to lay aside any savings from my salary. How could I borrow money on top of the debts I already had, and hope to repay? But I could not shake off the thought.

28.

I have a Marwari friend. Being a friend, he never refuses to lend me money; and being a Marwari, he never forgets to collect his interest every month. I approached him. He agreed first; but then he started evading the issue. On the other hand, as each day passed, I became more and more impatient. Every person I approached for a loan seemed to have one difficulty or another.

29.

Now I started visiting jewellers’ shops every day. Anyone who watched me browsing for a sapphire through their show-windows would have become suspicious of me. But I did not find a sapphire displayed in any show-window. Not in Dadar, not in Girgaum either. Finally, I visited a big shop in Jhaveri Bazaar. For a long time, I was ignored by the salesman. After about half an hour, he came to me.

“Are you looking for something, Sir?”

“Do you have sapphires?”

The man gave me a stupefied look. He studied my clothes, my face. After a couple of minutes, he said,

“Please excuse me for a couple of moments, Sir!

He approached the elderly proprietor sitting on a traditional mattress. As he talked to the old man, he pointed to me with his finger. The owner turned to look at me and nodded. The salesman returned to me and said,

“Please follow me inside into the ‘Diamonds Section’.”

“In what price range may I say?”

The first salesman was asking.

There was no sound in the ‘Diamonds Section’. A fair complexioned, light-eyed Gujarati gentleman past fifty stood before me. The salesman said to him in Gujarati,

“Bhai, this gentleman wants to purchase a sapphire!”

The Gujarati turned his eyes on me. He looked at me as though he was holding a gemstone against the light. Then said in Gujarati,

“Is that so? Why not? Of course! Bring over that case containing stones! Have a seat, Sir, have a seat please! What can I offer you? A cola? Lemonade? Orangeade? Coffee? Tea? Yes Sir. Now, would you like to set a sapphire in a ring?”

I just smiled and said, “Let me take a look at the stone first!”

The man’s expression turned a touch grave. He laid in front of me the case brought by the other and said,” Don’t set it in a ring in a hurry, Sir! Please give the stone a methodical trial first. Find out if the stone proves auspicious for you. I have spent no less than thirty-two years in this business. A ‘Neelam’ is no ordinary stone. Most people cannot cope with it. Many people are smitten by its unexpected blows. Treat this with caution. Do test it with extreme care before you decide to wear it.”

“I know!”

“Consult an astrologer to confirm. Do you have your natal chart?”

I panicked a bit. I never had had my horoscope cast. After my grandfather’s death astrology, palmistry, horology and all such things were taboo in my family. What else would you expect when a man whose star is ever on the rise dies of a sudden, vomiting blood, at the peak of his career?

And he, who suffered such a fate, was supposed to possess occult powers to boot! Who knows, but he might have been the victim of some sinister black curse! We do not want the shadow of such things to fall upon our home! --That is how my god-fearing, devoutly religious grandmother reacted to it. Others had no other way to respond.

“Here, Sir! Take a look. How do you like this sapphire?”

It was a bluish grey stone, the size of a grain of corn, so finely faceted that the slightest movement made it sparkle and scintillate.

“Not bad at all. But… Could I see another one, please?”

Stone after stone passed in front of my eyes and I kept telling myself---the way the Upanishads speak about transcendental reality----‘no, not this’, ‘no not this’!

Finally, the salesman brought up another velvet box. The Gujarati gentleman opened the box and held it before me to see, and---

There it was!

30.

The sapphire!

I narrowed my eyes. My sight fell on the stone. From a distance the stone had seemed a bit dull. As though mesmerized, I picked it up between my thumb and my middle finger. I held it close to my right eye. It was perhaps a little larger than a grain of wheat. Its size was unimpressive. Then my eyes met its core. Light turned like a knife inside the transparent heart of that blue flame. At its centre was a tiny fiery glow. Then I realized that the blue that had earlier seemed pale to me was not pale but it was an intense transparent blue. My heart began to palpitate rapidly. I was beside myself like a lover moved to kiss his beloved for the first time ever. But the amazing thing was that my hand remained absolutely steady.

“Fabulous!” I whispered.

The Gujarati gentleman regarded me appreciatively. Our eyes met. I felt inebriated. I said,

“I’ll come back on Thursday! Please keep this one for me till then! Do I have to deposit any money?”

“It’s not necessary, Sir. See you on Thursday, Sir!”

The man smiled. He gave a slight nod. Then he said,” Do come again! Good day, Sir!”

The box was closed.

31.

I was at home. Madhavi had gone out shopping.

For a long time both of us were quiet. Tinku has the habit of playing with himself. When he is at it, he plays the roles of different people. He speaks to himself.

At the moment, he was just sitting on a wooden stool staring into the distance. For a long time.

Then he slowly walked up to me scratching one ear.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Is it possible to go to Venus in a spaceship?”

“It is. But Venus has a poisonous atmosphere.”

“Is it always Friday on Venus?”

I had no answer for that one.

“Are there people on Venus?”

“No. How can there be people where the air is poisonous?”

“But if they are born in poisonous air, won’t they get used to it?”

I kept quiet again.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Will you tell me a story?”

“Now?”

“You haven’t told me a story for a long time!”

“All right. I will!”

I tried to make up a story.

Before I realized it, precious gems made their way into my story. It had a secret treasure in it. The story started to weave itself around a magic sapphire in a hidden treasure-chest. As I began to describe the magical powers the sapphire possessed, Tinku found himself completely wrapped in the web of my narrative and the sapphire at its centre. He readily accepted the reality of the supernatural.

“Dad?”

“What?”

“What is an ‘Indraneel’ called in English?”

“Sapphire!”

“Will you get me a sapphire?”

That gave me a jolt.

Without realizing it, I had planted in the mind of my child my own obsession--and that too, through the seemingly innocent medium of a fairy-tale! Now what will this lead to? Will he be as obsessed as I am now, say, twenty years from now?

I changed the subject. I said,

“Hey, Tinku! Let’s go down to the Irani restaurant for a Coke!”

“Yes! But Dad, don’t forget about the sapphire!”

That really scared me.

32.

All my fears were instantly exposed. Suppose, I got a sapphire, and if it brought me misfortune, will anything happen to Tinku?

What will happen to Madhavi? Like wildfire, weird and melodramatic ideas flared up in my brain. Fires, accidents, illnesses, robberies, burglaries, violence, and deaths---everything that is a bolt from the blue and strikes at one’s very sense of security---each such probability bared its fangs before me. What if Madhavi fell in love with someone else and left me taking Tinku along with her? What if I were fired from my job? What if I contracted a terminal disease that gradually spreads all over the body and cripples it bit by bit?

I suddenly realized how vulnerable I was.

But then I thought all these unfortunate events could occur even without having a sapphire in one’s possession. The only difference being, if they took place without a sapphire then they would be considered sudden calamities; and if they happened with a sapphire in my possession, then they should be attributed to the sapphire!

Being is so fragile. A small push is all it needs to be smashed in a flash. And one is so helpless---unable to protect anything at all.

But if this is so, why should I be tempted by a piddling stone?

33.

A piddling stone?

Once again I had a vision of it. A yonder less, beyond less blue. Luminous. Moist.

This was no question of fortune or misfortune. I had been in love since long. Without knowing it. I wanted that stone. In any which way. Even when I continually argued for it and against it, it was only an excuse not to let that stone go of my mind.

I needed to play with that stone forever.

How to exorcize it now? How to free myself from its spirit-possession? I found myself lost in the labyrinth of its blue spell.

It is said about Neptune that it is a planet of romantic obsessions.

A Neptunian person, once possessed by anything, is totally obsessed. Others find that person, too, mysteriously attractive. The Neptunian person is equally unpredictable.

Neptune’s calm is the calmness of the ocean just before a storm.

Neptunian eroticism is the foreplay of rising waves, growing tidal and going beyond control, frothing and foaming in their fury. That’s what a Neptunian love-affair is like.

Just as at ebb-time, the ocean loses its oceanic nature, Neptune’s love-affairs recede and fade away.

People connect a sapphire with Jupiter, with Venus, and with Saturn. But I thought that it was probably the stone of Neptune.

I remember reading in some book on Western astrology that Neptune signified sudden tempestuous love-affairs, romantic imagination, deceptive calm, toxic substances, death by poisoning, fatal attraction, qualities of occult pull, that which is difficult to comprehend, eccentric personalities, intuitive people who can see the future, charismatic and mesmerizing persons, and individuals who have extrasensory powers of perception.

Its influence is often malefic. Neptune proves beneficial only to the very few. The powerful influence exerted by this planet is not quite understood yet. In this respect it is as unfamiliar as the planets Uranus and Pluto. It seems to me that these three planets are regarded as malefic only because we know so little about them at present.

Sign, symbol: Neptune’s symbol is the Trident.

The Trishoola.

Neptune’s Trishoola.

All of a sudden, I felt convinced that the sapphire was the stone of Neptune. It contains at its core a luminous trident.

The very next moment I burst into uncontrollable laughter. I couldn’t stop. Tears streamed out of my eyes.

Nonsense!

Nonsense!

What complicated nonsense!

34.

The following day was a Tuesday. I repressed the thought of the sapphire. I spent the whole day mechanically doing my routine. I had to make great efforts to go through my simple daily chores.

That day passed.

But early on Wednesday morning, I suddenly remembered that I had made a commitment to the jeweller that I would complete my transaction on Thursday. Which meant that I had only one day to raise funds to pay for that tiny stone, and silver---if not a platinum---ring to set it in, and the setting charges?

In this one day! Or else, forget about possessing a sapphire!

I telephoned friend after friend as though some assassin were breathing on my neck. “I need a loan desperately! How much cash could you spare? Don’t ask me the reason. I’m up to my neck in a bloody situation”----something to the effect.

One of them said his sister was getting married, implying dowry. Another one said his wife was to give birth. A third one said his father was ill. The fourth one pleaded he was broke but would try to manage a small bit by the end of the month. And so on and so forth.

Eventually, by one o’clock in the afternoon I managed it. A friend treated me to lunch in a restaurant and thinking that I was in dire distress, gave me a thousand rupees in cash, too. I also wisely refrained to explain to him what my ‘difficulty’ really was. After all, in a man’s world, do people ever share their real problems? Real men understand a mere hint.

In the evening I said to Madhavi,”I’ll bring home my sapphire tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow? Where did you find all that money?” She seemed stunned.

I told her. She did not appear pleased to hear what I said.

“How will you pay it back?”

“Let’s see!” I said, “Who knows, the sapphire may bring me luck! If it does, just watch how the money flows in from all directions!”

“That’s a gambler’s style of thought,” she said heaving a deep sigh,” I don’t like what’s coming over you. I don’t say you won’t make a lot of money. I am sure you can. But you’ll make it through your own ability, through hard work, and using your skill! If you go after a gemstone to get lucky, I’m afraid you’ll only go crazy! When did you become such a fatalist? Till now, you used to say that believers in fortune are sick. What’s happened to you now all of a sudden?”

“Just a fancy!”

“Oh yes, a fancy indeed! If you want to indulge in a fancy at all, get a couple of pairs of trousers stitched! You need to get some new clothes. Your old trousers are getting worn out.”

“Tch! Tch! Why don’t you try to understand, Madhavi? I’ve been wearing pants every day ever since I started growing up! I don’t walk around the town stark naked these days! One buys a thing like a sapphire just once in a lifetime maybe and I’ve never had one of my own so far!”

“And whatever happened to your rationality and your modernity?”

“Come on now, what’s the contradiction in this? I am in love with sapphires. This is a basic and non-discursive truth! This is a kind of truth that cannot be expressed in words, like love! It is directly felt.”

“Do what you like!”

“Won’t you come with me?”

“Should I?”

“But of course! You must!”

“Oh yes! I must, indeed! After all, this is a great event in your life! Shouldn’t I be your witness? Come to think of it, even if you were bringing home another wife, I’d have accompanied you and brought her home with pomp and show. But don’t ask me to go with you in this case. I don’t find it acceptable. I can’t accept the fact that you want to do something like this. This just isn’t like the you I know. It frightens me because I find you acting like a stranger. You seem like a distant and an unknown person to me.”

“Oh come on now, Madhavi. Do you really want me not to have a sapphire?”

“Go ahead! Have it by all means if you fancy it so much. What right have I to stop you?”

“Don’t be sarcastic. Do I really have your permission?”

“Permission? How sweet it sounds to the ears! As though you have never ever satisfied any of your urges without my consent. Let’s forget this, please! I don’t feel good.”

“Madhavi!”

Then I had to appease her.

35.

I was in an aquarium. It was a forlorn place. Dark. All I could see was the enormous illuminated glass container before me.

There was a fish inside it. It was studded with gems. It was motionless. It had human eyes. On its body were a variety of stones: diamonds, emeralds, topazes, rubies, and garnets. I looked at it closely again. Where is the sapphire? Where is the ‘Indraneel’?

There was no sapphire to be found anywhere.

I climbed up the ladder. I dived into the water. The water was vaporous like camphor. The fish was immeasurable. Its body shimmered. It was stone-still. Only its scales seemed to flicker a little. I dived and the closed, dark jaws of the fish suddenly opened up. I was terrified. I found myself drawn straight into its mouth. I could not resist it. I was being sucked in, pulled by force.

And then those jaws clammed around me. I was being swallowed up into an unfamiliar living darkness.

Gradually, I found myself looking at a glow-worm. A blue stone. I moved slowly towards it. Yes. It was a sapphire. Glowing in the belly of the fish.

Sumitra! I’ve seen a sapphire---The Sapphire! Even you haven’t seen this one! Madhavi! You haven’t, either! This is that blue fire. This is that mellow, inverted, blue fire!

The palms of my hands!

The palms of my hands!

The palms of my hands were bleeding and slowly the colour of my blood turned cobalt blue.

Everything became blue. Deep blue, dense blue, a blue darkness. Blue spiral stairs. At their lowest, deepest blue step the stairs themselves had vanished. The ocean melted and turned into a piano. The Piano dissolved and became a fish. The fish withered away and in its place stood a blue lighthouse. But the ship was already wrecked. The heart still ached with the pain of its crash among the rocks. I cried, “Skipper! Skipper!” But there was no answer.

A one-man ship. Who the Skipper? Who the crew? Who the passenger?

The fish. The ocean. The piano. All these contracted into a triangle. A triangle? Was this Madhavi, or was this Sumitra? There was a slight tremor in the belly of light. A deep red, cavernous tunnel rolled out of the triangle. I entered it. Deep. Deeper. Deeper still. I grew larger and larger in the deep. The walls closed in. The walls folded up.

The fish. Again me outside the fish. In its eye a clock---- like the ones found in railway stations. The clock shed its numbers like tears. The dial became blank. The fish became blind. I touched it. Where were all those gems studded into its body? All its body had were empty sockets. Like those left after eyes are plucked out. And those sockets were the colour of lead.

The deluge.

What I spoke in Marathi came out of my mouth as Arabic. The girl laughed. Her blue stone blinked superhumanly. Her ring touched my bare back. I kissed Madhavi for the very first time. Her lips were blue. Sumitra’s eyes were open and deep.

I could not make out whether the sapphires inside were still ablaze or burnt out.

36.

The palms of both my hands tightly clasped Madhavi’s thigh.

Down below in the street a truck drove away.

I was very thirsty. I got up and drank water.

Herr Doktor Freud, I dare you to touch my dream!

Madhavi was fast asleep. I covered her with a blanket. Tinku’s sleeping face looked more innocent than ever. I opened the door and went into the balcony. I looked at the sky. As usual. Expressionless. Yet brimming with stars. Just a human foible on my part. What else!

One’s own ancient fears. One’s own prehistoric desires.

And we imagine that the constellations in the sky hold up a mirror for us to look into---just take a look and groom your hair!

As a matter of fact, there remains a discontinuity between man and the universe. And yet he occupies it as though it were his personal mosquito-net.

A mosquito!

Almighty God.

37.

Someone divided the sky, all this space, into twelve sections. He imagined a circle comprising three hundred and sixty degrees and distributed it among houses of thirty degrees each: Aires, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. And then he arranged all the planets and the stars and the constellations into an arbitrary and imaginary but very complicated system. Then, no sooner than a person called ‘x’ was born, radiation was beamed upon that person from a million directions and from a distance of several light-years. And even before this infant person gave out its very first cry, all those shades of cosmic light stamped themselves upon its ‘pinda’ or palpable form. That is how its original personality was formed and thereafter, as the planets went about casting their variously malefic or benefic shadows on that person, it triggered the unfolding of his or her biography.

Could there be a more hollow-headedly proposed theory?

And yet how poetic all this is! If we didn’t have all these innumerable cosmic connections, what difference would there be between ourselves and pieces of rock?

Don’t we search for far-fetched significances in nature’s ‘order’?

When you think through all your thoughts, see how they leave the world just as it is! Not even a sapphire can change it.

After reviewing the cosmos thus, I went back to sleep as deep as ever.

38.

On Thursday morning, I got up very early and went through my toilet routine. I shaved; I showered, and put on a silk shirt.

From the morning, Madhavi pin-pricked me with subtle mocking humour. Which means that she heated up water for my bath as though treating me with royal respect; and she asked me, as though it was the beginning of some festival such as Divali, if she should massage my head with oil and anoint my body with aromatic, emollient pastes?

All this certainly had an element of tender irony; but it had a tinge of regret as well. Perhaps, she envied the sapphire, resenting that I should be so much in love with a mere stone.

I forgot my early morning reflections that were so deep and yet so detached. That is my nature: ambivalent, ambiguous, and polymorphous. My mind seeks to simultaneously reach different directions. Sometimes, they are opposite directions. However, at this juncture it was inevitable for me, as per my nature, to take possession of the sapphire.

At nine, I said to Madhavi,” What’s this? Aren’t you getting ready? Won’t you go with me?”

“What about Tinku? He’s got school.”

“Let him skip school today.”

“What about lunch?”

“We’ll all eat out today.”

“Why today? Tinku’s got a test tomorrow!”

“So? May I go?”

“Who’s holding you? Go. Or do you want me to find you a cab?”

“Don’t make fun of me. Once I get my sapphire, you’ll see for yourself what I mean!”

“I want no part of that sapphire of yours; and I want none of its benefits!”

“Okay. I’ll be back soon!”

I was a little peeved as I stepped out; and sure enough, I did hail a cab.

39.

This time the shop had fewer customers. The salesman recognized me and he led me straight into the ‘Diamonds Section’ inside.

The Gujarati gentleman I met on my previous visit was showing some diamonds to a couple. Sheer stupidity! And now I only have to put on my sapphire ring and head directly for the Mahalakshmi Race Course to instantly become the sole punter to hit the jackpot!

I remembered the anecdotes about my grandfather. He must have been occupying a position in a similar jeweller’s shop forty or forty-five years ago. And the series of stones that must have passed his eyes: those diamonds, those emeralds, and those rubies; those topazes, those ‘Indraneels’…the ‘Indraneel’!

Its blue-throated glow.

40.

I thought I was getting entangled in a vast web. I was about Tinku’s age when my grandmother and others told me about my grandfather’s legendary life and exploits. He would bring home stacks of currency wrapped in cloth piled up in baskets that coolies carried on their heads. The jewels and ornaments he bought during festivals and ceremonial events such as weddings: diamond ear-studs; opulent pearl necklaces studded with rubies; emerald-studded bracelets; the nine-planets-gemstones chokers; the ring of ‘Saturn’.

The ring of Saturn.

An esoteric tradition that ran in the family caught me in its invisible noose and led me on to the path of an unknown destiny. I was about to be sacrificed to narratives and obsessions authored long ago by someone else. Someone had to stop this chain at some point or another.

This stream of thought came to a halt. In a flash of self-awareness I told myself,” You are a fool! You are completely free to choose your own way! You are not the scapegoat of a country, or a language, or a family. You relate to them at will. You’ve come here because it was you who were tempted by a sapphire! The enigma that you sense in it is for you to resolve on your own! It is for you to experience its effects! It is for you to determine what it means!”

“”Yes Sir! Welcome!” The old man was saying to me in Gujarati. Then addressing the salesman he said,” Ramanlal! Please get that sapphire over here! Remember the ring for which this gentleman placed an order the other day? See, it’s been kept separately in the case. This gentleman’s name is written on a piece of paper inside the box, too!”

41.

It was as though I was on a drug trip. Cannabis, hashish, opium, dattura, mescaline! Or it was as though I was physically entering the world of ‘The Arabian Nights’ that I had read--- in an unexpurgated edition--- clandestinely in my childhood. Persian carpets, chandeliers, urns, mahogany carvings, marble trellises, ivory tables, assorted fruits in silver platters, wine-jugs, perfumes, the burnt aromatic fragrance of frankincense and myrrh, music swaying to a serpentine rhythm, sexy slave girls with their bellies bared, their waists curving, their hips swinging and one of them with a sapphire in her navel! At the very centre of the swirling, aphrodisiac, intoxicating, provocative movements of a belly-dance: a sapphire’s hypnotic sparkle!

Frankincense, holy basil, rustling black silk, Hebrew and Arabic calligraphy, blue smoke!

He opened the case.

And once again it was before me---

The sapphire!

42.

It was a mysterious sense of bliss.

The sapphire reclining upon a velvet bed!

The veiled princess hitherto hidden from my sight---now fully revealed in her autonomous form: stretched out stark naked in front of my eyes!

The blue belly with the poison-glow of Halahala on its tender skin.

The delicate drop of a luminous blue sky shimmering in the form of the quintessence of deadly loveliness.

It was as though a feeling as mysterious as love was compressed in the belly of the Earth and crystallized under tremendous pressure; and that crystal was kept in a box; and that, someone with invisible hands had opened that box, and held it before me.

See it. Take a deep look.

This chance is only once in a blue moon.

Mine was like an experience of sex: at a slow tempo; impersonal; superhuman; frenzied. It had a golden mane in a churning motion; it had a pitch-black plumage; it had cheeks brushing against cheeks; it had wet lips; it had lightning dancing on the tip of the tongue; it had an overwhelming flow that braided all the limbs together as it swept along; it had the silence of waterfalls; it buzzed like millions of bees at once; it had the body of monsoon clouds rolling in thunder; it had seasons of intimacy; it had the self’s innermost awe and marvelling.

Mine was like an experience of music: someone had unfolded before me a primordial symphony of light that lies beyond the day and beyond the night in a visible form. The incandescence of that blue was without a colour of its own. One could not call it white, for it was profoundly deep. It was like a prolonged legato wave of sound, a continuously modulated resonance, returning to the luminous root-point of its register and, in the process, illuminating each microtonal interval.

It was as though, after long years of courtship, I was unexpectedly offered the opportunity to make uninhibited love the very next moment.

I vibrated like a tuned tamboura that has found its resonance. I was involved.

“I’ll take it!” I said,” Make me a receipt for the payment, please!”

43.

I was still reeling under the impact of its incandescence. I hailed a cab and said, “Marine Drive; Nariman Point.” I could not control the storm of feeling I experienced; I could not ride my unfettered imagination. It was such a transcendent crescendo that I did not desire it to ever come to an end.

I was now the conductor of a great philharmonic orchestra. And I was the composer of the work to be performed.

Opus 99: The Sapphire Symphony.

By now its Third Movement had commenced.

All bows instantaneously fell on the strings of the violins.

There was silence when they stopped.

Then that great wave rose on the piano. It raised its hood like a millionmouthed cobra. At once, all the instruments rose with it: the flutes; the horns; the trombones; the trumpets; the saxophones; the drums; the cymbals; and the cello. The wave touched the sky and vanished, leaving behind a vast void of silence.

Then only a violin and the piano remained.

The sapphire spun in space. Its blue facets rotated as though they were the visible rim of a wheel.

The Blues.

The heart of the colour blue.

The endless throbbing of light from the beginning to the end, round and round. The coitus of Shiva-Shakti.

44.

I was walking the reclamation from Nariman Point in the direction of Church Gate.

Through the fierce brilliance of the afternoon.

But around me was a cool blue halo.

I was not walking as a matter of fact. I was being carried in a palanquin of moonlight. The Bhoi-bearers of the palanquin were invisible.

I had only a fleeting, intermittent awareness of the few people that were around. But I had nothing to do with them. Over on the one side, breakers crashed against the reclamation wall. Over, on the other side, cars sped in either direction. However I, who went floating in the air between the two sides, was neither of here nor of there.

On an impulse I felt that all things were now within my reach. I could go anywhere. I could do anything. And yet I was myself beyond the reach of anything or anybody. I was in a unique blue dimension.

Today, I had nothing to do. Today, I was just going to move around as I liked.

Free, free, free.

For the first time in my whole life, I was so very free---inside and outside me.

45.

When I returned home it was already seven. Madhavi opened the door. There was silence in the house. I was sober and sombre like a person hung over after hours of inebriation.

The usual yellowish haze of a sixty-watt bulb lit my home. It had the same stupid furniture, the same everyday pots and pans.

Suddenly it all seemed alien to me, even Madhavi seemed distant. Her cotton sari was worn out, the sleeves of her white blouse seemed too loose for her skinny forearms, and her drawn face lacked lustre.

I found my entire home dull and ill.

I found Tinku asleep.

“Hey! Why’s Tinku gone to bed so early?”

“He’s running a temperature,” Madhavi said,” You went out and I found him with a rising fever. It was 102 degrees in the afternoon. Now it’s come down to 100. I’ve given him aspirin. Let’s see if it gets back to normal tonight. If it doesn’t, we’ll take him to the doctor in the morning!”

Suddenly, I became apprehensive. Oh no! It wasn’t possible! It just couldn’t be true! Why did it have to happen today, of all days?

“Will you have some tea? I’ll just have to warm it up.”

“May I go down to the Irani Restaurant to make a phone call to the doctor?”

“Why phone him? He’ll tell us to bring him over to the clinic!”

“I’ll request him to pay a visit.”

“A visit home for just an ordinary bout of fever? Are you crazy? Are we rolling in wealth to squander money on the doctor’s visiting fee? There’s no need. It’ll get back to normal soon. Seems it’s just flu. He’s already begun to sweat.”

Madhavi kept the pan of milk on the burner to warm it up. She pumped the primus stove vigorously to make its weak flame stronger. The hiss of the stove now became clearer and louder.

I sat in a chair and stared at Madhavi. Droplets of water sparkled on her bare forearms. And I thought to myself, how hard she has worked for me to become so jaded at the peak of her youth! I must do something to bring her back to life. She needs a rest. She needs a holiday from home and a breath of fresh air! She must recover her lively zest for life!

I continued to sit in the chair.

“Have you brought the sapphire?”

I flinched as though from a pang of guilt.

Have I committed a crime against these two?

“Yes, I have.”

“Can I see it?”

Madhavi came close to me and stood there. Silently, I dug the little box out of my pocket and held it in front of her.

“Not this way! Open it and show it to me yourself!”

I opened the little box.

How its splendour could be gauged in the light of a mere sixty-watt bulb? Even so, Madhavi gazed deeply at it. I couldn’t tell from her expression what exactly went on in her mind.

“It’s beautiful!” She said heaving a deep sigh,” I should see it in daylight!”

“Do you really like it? Would you like to wear it in a ring?”

Madhavi seemed suddenly to shiver, “Gosh, no! I don’t want to wear a lucky gem ever!”

“Why not? You think it’s a blind superstition, don’t you?”

“I don’t want it for me. It’s you who fancy it and it’s you who’ll wear it!”

Just then, Tinku woke up. He opened his eyes and said, “Dad? You got the sapphire? Show it to me! To me! To me! To me!”

And that made him quickly sit up in his bed, too.

46.

This was between Tinku and me.

Tinku said, “Shit, Dad! You got cheated by the jeweller! This isn’t what a sapphire looks like!”

“What does it look like, then?”

Tinku was trying to enact something difficult, using both his hands to express what he meant to show. His eyes were twinkling.

“It…it...It. It’s blue…I mean not just blue but a magical blue…It gives light. I mean, if we had a real sapphire with us, and if we switched the light off, the sapphire will give us a blue light!”

I laughed.

“Hey, come on! This isn’t a sapphire from a fairy-tale! This is the real thing! The sapphire you have in a fairy-tale isn’t real! Do we find monsters, fairies, and magicians in real life? They are found only in fairy-tales. The same with a magical blue gemstone. It’s found only in a fairy-tale!”

“Don’t you lie to me, Dad?” Tinku said getting angry. I had banged on his fond belief in the reality of magic.

“Just close your eyes now, Dad! You’re going to find a monster right there! I can even see fairies! I’ve seen a sapphire! It isn’t at all like the one you’ve got!”

Tinku seem thoroughly disillusioned by the sapphire I had brought. He did not seem to think that it had the right shape and the real brilliance he could so easily imagine. Just so as to cheer me up he said in a sympathetic tone of voice,” Let’s wait and see, Dad! Maybe this one is magical after all, though it seems so ordinary!”

47.

At night, Madhavi said, “You don’t want me next to you tonight, do you? You are going to keep your sapphire under your pillow!”

I said,” That’s too much, now! Don’t we have anything else to talk about?”

“We didn’t till yesterday,” Madhavi said,” Are we back to other subjects from today?”

At last, just before turning myself in, I kept the little box under my pillow and, with a racing heartbeat, switched off the light.

48.

That woman, her back to me, naked, sits on the ground with her legs close together, as though in an oil painting, remaining very still. In one hand, she holds a comb. The bun of her hair is loosened.

From behind her, I put my arms around her neck. In my right hand, I wear the sapphire in a ring.

“What’s the use now? I am no longer young. And you too are no longer the inexperienced adolescent with those intense eyes full of emotion. Now you too are a fully grown man, absolutely a male---calculating, selfish, cold-blooded, aggressive, and egoistic. Why have you come now? It’s too late. The moment we should have met has been bypassed forever.”

My eyes get entangled in the bun of her hair. The flowers---there were champak flowers in her hair--- where have they gone?

49.

The car raced along the tarred road. There were neon signs everywhere, vast rolls of illuminated letters, unfolding one after another.

50.

I opened the door and stepped out to be startled by the afternoon. In front of me was a ruined temple. I entered it. A bundle of joss-sticks lay on the floor. There was a freshly smashed coconut there as well, and a garland too, choked with white flowers. There she was--- her sculpted image before me, one foot raised just a little, the breasts fully blossomed, her thighs flowing curves. Only her eyes were wide open. There was an enigmatic smile on her lips. She held a scimitar in one arm. A blue glare made my eyes sleepy. I saw strange geometric rangolis, like fluid patterns in a kaleidoscope. Then the words rang in my ears, “Have you seen the colour blue at last?”

“The colour blue!”

‘The colour blue!”

The words continued to ring and resonate. They seemed to spin around me like a sapphire. Faceted with their own echoes, the words went on unfolding themselves one by one. I saw a luminous blue star. I saw blue heat.

Blue?

I have been blinded by this blue! Now I can’t even find darkness!

The rich whiff of the scent of joss-sticks chokes my nostrils.

The coconut bursts open. Its two halves fall open before my eyes. Inside those shells is sheer, mysterious white laughter.

51.

I was lost in a fair. However, the fair itself suddenly vanished. I stood on stone steps wiping my face with the loose end of my shirt. I was terribly thirsty. I looked at the steps: I saw grains of puffed rice, oven-roasted chick-peas, and pieces of jaggery scattered there. I just went up the steps, right into the temple that stood at the top.

Inside, there was a huge brass bell. I tried, but my hand could not reach it. I jumped and caught the rope attached to its tongue. The bell rang. I fell down. The bell rang only once. But it was dark everywhere. I was frightened.

I looked in front of me. Out stepped the Goddess Herself! Without a stitch on!

I collapsed and sat in a crouch.

I had seen Her in the form no human eye should see.

She said, “You are still too young! Grow up! Come back again!” She stretched out her arms. The bell started tolling, and now it would not stop!

52.

Egypt again.

Abdel, my guide and I.

An evening in Luxor.

Egyptian blue.

However, the blue stone you see here is called lapis lazuli.

This is not a sapphire.

A sapphire is the materialized throat of Shankara that turned into a luminous blue after he swallowed up the deadly Kalakoota poison.

53.

Sumitra?

How come you are suddenly here in the afternoon, and all alone?

Have you come to see my sapphire?

Do you want to have it for yourself?

I meant to give it only to you! Remember the afternoon when I came to you from the library? You know, the day your brother-in-law died in Allahabad? Do you remember it now?

Why are you silent, Sumitra?

What’s come over you all of a sudden?

No! Oh my God!

This is sin. This is sin. This is sin.

All this is terrible and it’s happening by itself!

The sapphire!

54.

Before the red tinge of dawn breaks out of the night, and before the darkness of sleep turns into a milky white, the notes of that ‘ovi’ wafted over to me from a great distance:

“Through the blue canal flows the glow

Of a pearl: I have sown in my courtyard

The gemstone of fulfilment.

What a magic world of illusion

Has the Lord woven! We escape its snare

For our leader is Krishna Himself.

Darling! There’s a diamond mine

In my very own courtyard. This gemstone

Is the source of heaven’s halo.

I am the Moon and He the splendour

Of the Sun that I reflect.

The tree of Being fulfils all my wishes.

In this gemstone I find my blissful Self.

Lightning-like, the heavenly creeper bends

And Jnandev reflects how the ripe fruit

Splits by itself!”

Whose voice was it? Again, the darkness of sleep stirred into light. Then, once more, I sank into a deep sleep and lay still.

55.

I am waking from a deep blue sleep.

I have known all this long since.

The sapphire was made of everything that I could never find in a material form.

One can hold it in one’s hand. One can see its light.

And that is the reason why.

One does not see God. Leave God, one cannot even see human feelings. One can see only languages and gestures. One cannot see the colour blue by itself. One can only see things that are blue.

56.

I turned on my side.

I saw Madhavi’s face. She had never seen a sapphire.

She was asleep, innocent and at peace.

Have I gone insane?

57.

It was asleep in the belly of the Earth where forests of carbon have turned crystalline white. All these mysterious precious stones will come to light only if the Muscat

pomegranate of the Earth bursts open.

A blue pomegranate: studded with sapphire seeds.

I am insane: it is sapphire-mania that I am suffering from.

In the blue-flamed tone of a solemized ‘ti’ there is a naked woman. Her sharp and flat fragrance stings my masculine nostrils. She has shut her eyes.

58.

One night, she came to me and sat on my bed at my feet. Her hips touched my feet. I caught her by the arm. I could feel her whole body coming alive.

I was seized by a superhuman impulse. I sat up. I brushed my lips against her arm that I had gripped.

On either side grew instant papillary forests; they spread out. And then, the Earth burst and lava sputtered out. Those papillary forests were swallowed up by the lava; and were compressed and buried. Then the lava froze and turned into igneous rock.

59.

Once again, after thousands of years, I was digging into the earth. Suddenly while digging I found one blue stone into which that same papillary forest had been transformed.

I picked it up and held it in my hand.

They said,’ it is evil! This is sin! This stone will bring you misfortune!’

I looked at it.

It was a sapphire.

What once was warm and moist and alive had now been turned into this cold, luminous, diamond-hard crystal!

60.

Friday morning.

I was woken up by the loud noise of people talking at the milk-kiosk in the street down below. I tried to remember dreams if I had had any. Was it a good dream or a sinister one? I could not be sure of anything!

61.

Saturday.

Nothing at all happened.

62.

I went to the horse-races at Mahalakshmi Race Course because Sambhajirao Pagar insisted I went there with him. I won a Treble Pool and made two thousand seven hundred and fifty rupees.

And I did not even know the names of the horses I betted on.

Sambhajirao said,” What a start! This is what I call ‘beginner’s luck’! Now, Sir, you must come to the races with us a bit oftener. We’d have the pleasure of your company.”

Sambhajirao was an old ‘princely state’ hand in the same courtly tradition. He took me from the race-course to his club, ‘The Willingdon’. We had dinner there.

Before dinner he offered me Scotch. At the bar, we ran into an old friend of his---Behram Balsara. He must be of the same age as Sambhajirao’s. He seemed past fifty. His protruding teeth were somewhat hidden by his huge, canopy-like moustache. Bulsara had not married and his banter with Sambhajirao concerned his comic and repeated pleas to the latter to find a suitable bride for himself.

During the course of our conversation, Bulsara casually found out from me more about myself.

It was small talk, but absolutely delightful. At one time, Sambhajirao used to be an excellent polo player. He was a regular in the Maharaja of Baroda’s polo team. He was an outstanding horse-rider. I did not ever ask him what he did for a living after the legal dissolution of all the princely states; neither did he ever tell me what his business was. He was actually a childhood buddy of my mother’s brother. Therefore he knew me since I was a toddler. Whenever he happened to be in Mumbai, he would call me at the office and would invite me over. Groomed in the company of the great Gaekwar of Baroda himself, Sambhajirao had a lively, wide-awake curiosity about everything. He was very fond of gossip. However, even in the wayward course of a gossip, if I ever mentioned a book or an article, he would immediately note down names and sources. I found in Behram Balsara too an extraordinarily delightful companion. He owned a farm at Panchgani; he had an ancestral house in Bulsar and a bungalow at Cuffe Parade. He lived in that bungalow with his ninety-seven year old demented uncle, Bomanji Bulsara. There were no other kith and kin living with them.

“The best thing about my uncle,” said Behram,”Is that he can’t remember even himself. So how would he find out who I am? What do you say to that, now! Eh? He’s forgotten everything! He remembers nothing! What lucky bloke, eh Sambhaji? Not a victim of memory like you!”

Sabhajirao looked far into the distance. He seemed hurt. Only the two of them knew between themselves what memory of Sambhajirao Behram was precisely referring to.

Some time later, suddenly Behram asked to read my palm. Sambhajirao said to me, “You are lucky! Usually, Behram doesn’t read palms of people who pester him to do so. He has an amazing insight!”

“Oh come on now, Sambhaji don’t you flatter me!” Balsara said,” Though I am trained to be a chemist, I am more inclined to be a palmist!”

Then, after looking at my right palm, Bulsara asked to see the left one. Having seen both my palms, he said to me,”You are a lucky man! A very, very lucky man indeed! But never stretch your luck too far young man----or you’ll drift too far from yourself.”

63.

Monday.

She surrenders herself to me. Intensely. But even this was expected.

Expected?

Not really expected. But after having a sapphire in my possession, I have ceased to be surprised by anything.

Who is she?

La Muchacha?

La Muchacha.

Meaning a chick.

A chick?

How could one call a girl a chick when her hips and breasts are already swelling into womanhood?

Muchacha.

I used to call Claudia ‘my muchacha’ to express my fondness for her when we were alone and together. Now ‘muchacha’ is really a Spanish word and Claudia is a native of Goa, at best remotely Portuguese.

She was my secretary in the office.

I work for an American corporation and naturally all the top bosses in my company are American.

And the answer to who will eventually get on top of Claudia is provided by this situation.

However, today was different. Today, while talking to me, Claudia suddenly fell into my arms and cried.

And then she just surrendered her entire body to me.

Claudia? Are you caught in the blue web of the sapphire at last?

64.

Tuesday.

I left my house still hung over with the wine I had had with Claudia at her flat in Bandra the night before. Tinku was sleeping. Madhavi was surprised to find me up so early and ready to go to work. But she also knew that in my office there were such emergencies every now and then.

65.

The Managing Director of the company I worked for, Joseph Silverstone had asked me to see him at nine in the morning. As is common in Indian subsidiaries of American multinationals, the boss was known to the employees by an American-style nickname---Big Joe.

When I entered the M.D.’s suite, Silverstone---who was 6’3’’ tall and formidably built----was looking out of his window. Without turning to face me he said,” Good Morning! If you care for some coffee, please press the buzzer for Phyllis. I don’t care if you don’t want your coffee, I’ve had mine! So? What are you up to these days?”

In the next half hour, Silverstone briefed me about the company’s plans for me. The next month, I would have to visit the company’s U.S. and World headquarters in Chicago where I would spend two weeks. Then I would be sent for two more weeks of training to New York. After that I would get back to Mumbai and prepare myself for a possible two-year posting in Hong Kong. After two years in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Jakarta, or Manila---any of these four branch operations----I would be sent on a higher position to a zonal office: Asian, Pacific, Latin American, or African.

All I was required to do on my part now was to give a bond to the company that I would not leave its services for the next five years. In Big Joe’s own words,” This company believes in two-way robberies. You rob us only if you let us rob you in return. Fair deal, don’t you think?”

I said,” I’ll have to give it a thought.”

Silverstone said,” That’s okay. But don’t think too much. Stop thinking by Friday evening and act, that’s all!”

66.

Wednesday.

Madhavi does not speak with me for the whole day. She cannot comprehend the idea of my visit to America, my proposed transfer abroad for two more years, and the possibility of having to spend many more years in a foreign country. She is extremely disturbed by this. Tinku says, “Dad, you don’t tell me any stories these days!”

67.

Thursday.

We visit Sumitra.

The moment she heard about my company sending me to America, and then to Hong Kong, Sumitra was excited as though she was herself going abroad. She began to fantasize about prosperity and riches the way all middle-class people in poor countries do when they are given the slightest of hope and encouragement.

“I knew it all along. You’d rise to the top some day! You’ll make everyone’s dreams come true!” Sumitra said.

I was flattered not by what she said but by being reminded once again that Sumitra had been my champion since long.

“I think you should decline the company’s offer,” Madhavi said in a cold and clear tone of voice, “To sign a five-year bond is sheer slavery! Even if we don’t like it abroad, we’d have to lump it and get on with it!”

“Madhavi, what are you saying?” Sumitra said,” In those five years you’ll earn so much that it would easily take twenty years here to reach that level. I say, what’s the use of getting such an opportunity if you aren’t inclined to grab it?”

“What about Tinku’s schooling? Will he go to a school in Hong Kong--- or in Singapore, Manila, Bangkok, or Jakarta? And after being brought up this way, in which country will he feel at home? Money can’t buy everything! If you ask me, I won’t be tempted by this kind of change!”

“The world’s moving ahead very fast,” Sumitra said, “In what world do you live Madhavi? Our people are going everywhere: even to Canada and the U.S. And they are doing pretty well there too.”

“I don’t care if our people land on the Moon or on Mars! I am quite comfortable here among our own people,” Madhavi said.

“Listen, Madhavi. If I were in your place,” She bit her tongue feeling awkward and confused, wondering whether her words could be interpreted in some other way, “I would---“

“If you were in my place, he’d certainly be happy,” Madhavi said with a yawn, “You would have happily shared with him his restlessness, his nomadic nature, and his constant need of novelty. I can’t cope with it though! Shall we go home now? Tinku has school tomorrow morning!”

“I’ll decline the company’s offer tomorrow,” I said, “I am supposed to make up my mind and tell them my decision anyway!”

“Come on now,” Sumitra said, “Take it easy! Why are you getting so annoyed? Don’t be so rash! And you, Madhavi, you too should give it a serious consideration. You don’t get such chances often!”

“We should be getting on,” I said, “Thanks for your advice Sumitra! And the eggplant was delicious! I’ll remember the taste for a long time!”

68.

Life is simple.

The only problem with it is that it gets boring at times.

The easier it becomes the more boring it gets. Where there is no danger, there is no adventure. Where there is no difficulty, there is no effort necessary. Where there is no frustration, there is no inspiration. Where there is no failure, there is no experiment. Where there is no defeat, there is no wisdom.

Life should remain forever difficult and complex. It should be always decisive and critical. There is a unique, heady excitement when life is in crisis and when one has to fight furiously for survival.

I did not acquire the sapphire just so that my life would become simpler and my desire for it easily satisfied.

I got hold of a sapphire to try its supposed influence---to find out through personal experience how the stone might influence me and how I might interact with it.

As a matter of fact---

As a matter of fact I can’t explain to myself why I got a sapphire.

Was it fated to happen?

The word ‘fate’ makes me cower. I cannot tolerate the very idea of ‘fate’. For if there is such a thing as ‘fate’, man is helpless. He has no power over his own pleasure or pain; and he cannot change the meaning of his world.

69.

Though I turned down the company’s offer, Big Joe Silverstone was not upset with me. On the contrary, he invited me for cocktails at his luxurious apartment at Little Gibbs Road on the Malabar Hill. While sharing a drink with me, he assured me that the company would give me a top placement in India in the next couple of years. They would send Bannerjee to the States and then to Hong Kong instead of me; and I would be considered for the number three position in India which Bannerjee would have got otherwise. The top two positions were always held by Americans by an unwritten convention. But the company was going to be ‘Indianised’ soon because it had an inkling of the forthcoming tough policy towards multinationals being formulated in New Delhi by the Union Government.

I heaved a sigh of relief. Silverstone said, “Don’t quote me, but I think you are at least ten times smarter than that poor guy, Bannerjee! He just fell for the trip to the U.S.!”

70.

The company at once gave me a promotion, a raise, and several perks. Ever since one of our Marketing Managers called Ahuja died, the flat given to him by the company was vacant. It was at Worli. It had two bedrooms and was fully furnished, and with a telephone connection in place. I was given that flat. I was also given a grey Ambassador car from the company’s fleet, and from this year on I would be entitled every year for an expenses-paid holiday with my family anywhere in India for three weeks.

These abrupt changes were too confusing and overwhelming for Madhavi and Tinku. Tinku’s school was too far from Worli; and as I had very little time left at home, my impression was that both Madhavi and Tinku found the new place strange and alien.

71.

And the climax was my winning the jackpot of Rs. 3.75 lakh when I went to the races the very next time in the company of Pagar and Bulsara!

72.

The first thing I did after cashing my jackpot was to go to the shop in Jhaveri Bazaar from where I had got my sapphire on a trial basis. I got the sapphire set in a platinum ring.

Then I went to the famous ‘Indian States’ sari emporium near the Marine Lines railway station and bought for Madhavi a Rs.2000 natural-coloured Banaras silk sari with a blouse-piece to match. Then in the same shop I purchased for Sumitra a silver-bordered, deep blue Kanjeevaram silk sari. Then from an expensive toys shop on Marine Drive, I bought for Tinku a model airplane that could really fly. I had already purchased six bottles of champagne. I arrived home tipsy with my triumph.

73.

Madhavi opened the door. One of our company chauffeurs, Reddy, followed me with my gift packages and he was followed by the lift-man carrying the carton containing the bottles of champagne.

Madhavi’s face was grave. She asked the lift-man to keep the carton in the kitchen, and took from Reddy the gift packages he was carrying. Then she said to me, pointing to the living-room,”Mr. Ranjane has been waiting for you. He is dead drunk. He was tottering when he came in.”

I flinched.

74.

Baban Ranjane used to be my chum at school. Though our paths have diverged since, he still visits me once or twice every year. Baban is doing rather badly of late. He had a clash with the proprietor of the garage at Tardeo where he worked as the master mechanic. Having lost that job, Baban hit the bottle. He would consume three-quarters of a bottle of booze, sometimes even a full bottle, and every day. The booze, too, was hooch from some horrible illicit bar at Sat Rasta. Then he would go home to Prabhadevi, and maul his wife which would bring all his neighbours to his door. “Enough now, Babanrao!”, “Mr. Ranjane, let go of her, please. You’ve hurt her a lot already!” ---and so on the neighbours would clamour. He would then go in along with his wife, slam the door shut, howl, holler, cry, curse, and weep uncontrollably, and finally pass out. I was given this account by Raghunath, one of the peons working in my office. He lived in the same tenement house as Baban and when once Baban came to see me in my office, Raghunath was shocked to learn that he was my childhood chum. I was Raghunath’s boss, in a manner of speaking, and as he knew that his boss’s friend was his neighbour, he would bring me news of Baban every now and then. The worse the news, the greater was Raghunath’s wicked glee in bringing it. A peon working in an American company in India is no ordinary peon: he has class. He is a taxpayer. He takes his wife to the movies and they take seats in the dress circle, no less. He then dines her in a classy restaurant such as ‘Delhi Darbar’. Our man, Baban, was an auto mechanic who got smeared with grease and oil. For one half of his life was spent under the chassis of a car loosening what was fitted and fitting what was loosened. Baban’s life had taken a wrong turn after he got married. Baban’s wife Arundhati was an exceptionally good-looking woman. She would stand out among a hundred thousand women. She had no education beyond high-school, but she was very sophisticated in her grooming, spoke and carried herself with grace. She was educated in one of the better convent schools from where she got her manners. Arundhati was the eldest of her parents’ four daughters, and if her father had not been killed in a railway accident, it was unlikely that she would have got married to someone like our Baban and lived with him in a shabby tenement house in Prabhadevi. They had

been married for seven years but Baban and Arundhati had no children. His doctor blamed it on Baban’s low sperm count. Baban himself told me this in confidence. Baban was not exactly impotent. But he was a little undersexed than the average man and it was his acute sense of inferiority that made him lose his nerve when Arundhati and he were together and alone. Therefore, when the mechanic Ranjane--- who used to sing in his squeakily hoarse, highpitched, falsetto voice among a chorus of Bhajan-singers before he married--started getting drunk on hooch and bashed his wife regularly soon after he was married. That was his way of proving himself a man. Soon after, he started becoming suspicious of Arundhati’s fidelity and with that as his excuse routinely beat her up. Baban could not stand her popularity among his neighbours, her spick and span lifestyle, her charming ways and speech.

75.

Madhavi had already alerted me about Baban’s condition. I tiptoed into the living-room.

I was shocked to see Baban. He had a growth of a beard and at least a third of it was grey. He had lost two of his front teeth and his mouth was askew. He wore soiled khaki drills that resembled a cabby’s uniform.

Baban was sodden drunk. The entire room reeked of cheap booze. Baban’s mouth was open and drooling. I was afraid that he would, any moment, vomit on the brand new carpet provided to me by the company and splash it with his puke.

His elbows rested on his knees and the palms of his hands were pressed against his cheeks. Baban sat in that posture with his neck drooping forward.

I approached him hesitantly and with great trepidation, stopping about three or four short of him.

Sensing my shuffling presence, Baban raised his neck very slowly, and gathered up his collapsed shoulders and his arms. He opened his large eyes like a grievously suffering dog and looked deep into mine.

The voice that emerged from his mouth was not that of a drunk. It was a clear, clean, controlled and sad voice. Addressing me by my nickname in school he said,” Chinkya! Our Arundhati has left us. Oh, she is gone, gone forever!”

I froze. “What the hell do you mean?”

“She got burnt!” Baban said shaking his head,” Remember those items we read in the newspapers about women who get burnt by accident while cooking on a stove? That’s how my Arundhati caught fire and got burnt! The last time I came to you, I needed to borrow a thousand rupees. Now I’ve come only to tell you that Baban’s life is finished---he’d need to borrow no more! Arundhati’s dead! Chinkya, it’s I who killed her! I killed her Chinkya! Oh my God, I killed her! It was I who turned out to be impotent, Chinkya; it was I who was proved to have no balls! I fucked my own mom, Oh God, I fucked my own mother! Where will I pay for this crime, Chinkya, how will I pay for my sins? It was I who destroyed me, Chinkya, it was I who destroyed it all!”

I who had just hit a jackpot worth Rs.3.75 lakh was totally at a loss to witness a grieving prickface---good old Baban.

76.

A promotion in the office, a jackpot at the races; a female like Claudia ogled by thousands of pairs of hungry male eyes falling into my arms by herself; a new flat and a chauffer-driven car at the company’s expense; partying every day; dinners. Altogether a life of pleasure and success; the good fortune smiling on me, everything desirable falling in my lap in a heap. Moreover, even Sumitra’s attitude to me changed. I gained a special position in her life, distinct from her own children’s and her husband’s place in it. Every traditional Indian woman, a wife and a mother wrapped in her family’s life, secretly cherishes and hides away ‘the other man’, a ‘consort’ like Lord Krishna. I emerged as Sumitra’s special secret ‘companion’. She subtly let me know that, too, as though it was she who was courting me, wooing me.

77.

Madhavi and Tinku, however, did not participate in the swift current of my life. Tinku even stopped showing me that he was cross with me. Madhavi barely spoke. The two of them formed another world of their own, the world of a ‘family’ that was together. My life, on the other hand, became once again the life of a well-endowed, freewheeling bachelor, full of confidence and verve, with no lack of resources, raring to go and daring to do.

Of a sudden, like Madhavi and Tinku, all my old friends and colleagues seemed to have retreated from a boundary that separated them and me. They were awed by my unexpected fortune. They felt awkward and withdrew from me. They were afraid of me the way people are scared by a magician, a necromancer, a dervish, a mantrik, a tantrik, or a fakir.

78.

Did something of the sort happen to Grandpa?

The very thought made me recoil.

I recalled the stories Grandma used to tell me, I remembered the faded photographs kept in a rusty old trunk with the ageing documents there.

Grandma used to be reminded of Grandpa by something in me.

And Grandpa was a philanderer. He had a mistress whom he maintained separately from the family. It is also rumoured that he was an aficionado of courtesan-style singers and nautch girls.

Then there were apocryphal anecdotes about a young female performer in Tamasha---our bawdy folk-theatre---on whom he squandered tens of thousand rupees in those days.

I shut my eyes and sat still.

“Honey, the moon-shaped crescent is green;

Honey the green spot you wear on your forehead looks splendidso graceful!

Honey, the emeralds that lace your throat so dazzlingly green!

The sweet marjoram leaves tucked in your bun are a heady green, too!

Oh Honey! Just looking at your verdant beauty, our own soul turns a lush green!

This garden is green! Green is this bungalow!

These mattresses green, these curtains too green!

A green for me to bed now!

A green canopy over it, with a green frill!

Green the pillar, the green lamps lit on a green post…”

Her body is lightning-swift. Her feet dazzle. Her eyes sparkle. The dance. The song. The spinning top dancing from the throat to the guts.

Beside myself in bliss, I began to rock and sway to the music. Obliviously, my right hand that was closed into a fist was raised to my lips, and the sapphire flashed.

79.

This afternoon I looked at it when I was alone.

The sapphire!

It was smiling.

“You are worth nothing without me! See, how I have illuminated your entire life!”

I just looked at it. I said to myself,” Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. All these were invented by man. I am the one who is playing; you are just the plaything. It was I who brought you luck. You were lying inside a box like a girl pining in a harem! I brought you to light!”

It just continued to smile at me in sheer arrogance.

80.

Evil! An inauspicious occurrence! An ill omen!

Did that blue sparkle spell my good fortune or did it foretell my doom?

Every genealogy has one marked or branded member. He is the individual who violates the code held sacred by generations of the family before him. He does things that have been taboo to his ancestors.

This is natural and inevitable.

My grandfather used to gaze for hours into a glass sphere. Not only he but others too believed that the glass sphere revealed to him time in all its three aspects: the past, the present, the future. It is obvious that he could imagine things happening. Nevertheless, the sole faculty he placed his entire faith in was his ability to imagine. It gave him the power to discriminate between the past, the present, and the future and divine them. He saw time as a continuous spectrum, separating its seven colours.

I have neither the kind of crystal sphere that he possessed, nor the kind of faith he had in it. But I have one thing that he did not have.

I have this sapphire!

81.

As one gazes into it, its blueness becomes an awesome halo.

Time is annihilated.

The Blue Thunder of the Absolute!

Absolute Being.

Being-in-itself.

Whatever we are not separated from is beyond time; it has no shape; it is perfect; it has no beginning; it does not cease.

The sapphire!

82.

This wicked blue glint! It signals me to follow itself!

To nourish life, a new element emerged in the human species: selfconsciousness. But as it grew, it crossed the limited needs of life. As it became larger, it straddled life itself, and became autonomous. It reached where the body cannot reach. Consciousness emerged in order to compensate what the body lacked; and it took the human being away from the body.

83.

This blue stone!

This is a symbol of my total annihilation, the symbol of my self-alienated

genius! And despite of this am I extending the borders of consciousness right across the limits of death’s domain?

No.

This sapphire is like the libido: it has no traceable root, no stoppable limit. The blue fire! A fire of Varuna! A firestorm raging in the ocean!

What you repressed was crystallized beneath the rock-crusted layers of your mind. Under the puritan rock lay these unopened pomegranates of diamonds, of emeralds, of topazes, of rubies, and of sapphires. Now the repressed desires themselves remain no longer in their original form. Under tremendous pressure they have turned into crystals lying there. Carbon turned into diamonds. Human beings do not have anything like an original instinct. Mankind’s instincts are all under the excessive pressure of his surfeit of consciousness and his conscious efforts: they have turned into strange

crystals. Green forests burned into coal; and the coal turned into diamonds! Is it the same with this blue hue? What was in its place before?

Suddenly, that luminous blue sting will be raised to strike and it will sting every tender spot of me. It will rock the very foundations of my security. I will be hurled into the void. My future itself will vanish. Tremendous awe. The fear of awareness expanding beyond all limits.

84.

The fear of expansion!

The sapphire spins at a great velocity in space. It emits a blue radiation. Blue sparks fly out of it! Before it I turn black; black as soot in this vast and fierce light!

And then I too am transformed into a crystal under that immense pressure. The blue. The sapphire blue…

In the coital dynamics of a primordial couple…

On the extreme anvil of Shiva-Shakti…

My eyes are smashed into smithereens…Blue…Nebulae…Stars…The solar system…The stellar wheel.

My body assumes the shape of a head, the form of a brain. This imaginary body becomes my new limbs. My arms reach out millions of light years and I have no time in which their tactile sensations may reach the body I am.

I die in an instant. Without touching or barely touching billions of years of time.

85.

On the other side is the whole world: between us is this blue stone.

The colour blue is the very solitude. It is serene. It is poison. It is luminous but forever asleep.

Blue is the colour of Krishna. The colour of Vishnu is blue. The colour of Mahadeva’s throat is blue.

The colour of Mahadeva’s throat is blue: it turned blue when he drank up the poison Halahala.

Blue is the colour of love.

I am suffering from a blue jaundice. Do you realize what’s happening, Madhavi? I feel utterly deserted. My luminosity grows. But now you avoid me. The whole world avoids me. And suppose I did not prove lucky to any of you?

Tinku is avoiding me too.

Shall I destroy this sapphire?

Or else---or else, I will lose you all.

Shall I destroy this sapphire then?

86.

It is not as easy to destroy a sapphire as you may imagine.

First of all, none of you have ever seen a sapphire.

Suppose, you had fallen in love with Cleopatra, would you have been able to destroy her then?

The sapphire and I: Desdemona and Othello. Put out the light, and then put out the light. Quench it? This light. May I put it out? The light must be quenched. This light. Must this light be quenched?

How to quench this sapphire?

Why should I quench it?

87.

Nothing hinders my freedom. I am as free as the fallen Lucifer. I will not tolerate God’s aggression against my will---even if I am deserted by all. Hell, no! This sapphire will remain with me. From tomorrow on, I will live as normal. But I will not destroy the sapphire.

Madhavi! You get adjusted to this! Tinku! You are still too young! Attend your school without any protest! Enjoy yourself!

Me and my sapphire: how I find myself becoming luminous as I gaze at its facets!

Is this self-love?

Should I give up the whole world for the sake of one blue stone?

Forget that stone.

Hurl it into the sea; or give it to a beggar; or throw it down below on to the railway tracks from over the Tilak Bridge; or sell it to some gem-dealer.

No! No! No!

It was not easy to acquire it; should it be thrown easily away?

88.

I had to find my own method to destroy the sapphire. I would need to demonstrate it to the whole world.

Few people have to shoulder such awesome responsibility. It happens only once in many ages. All of you were under its influence, whether you knew it or not. You regarded it as taboo. You were anxious to know whether it was beneficial or unfortunate. I obtained it. I held it in my hand. I wore it on my finger in a ring. I moved in its extraordinary light. It was the sapphire that made me sharply aware of good and evil, fortune and misfortune, and so forth. All of you are still only sleepwalking. You are cowards. You have not understood it. You have never really seen a sapphire!

89.

The ophthalmologist examined my eyes once again. He examined them again, and yet again. Then he sat in his chair and said,” You are colour blind. You can’t see the colour blue!”

I screamed,” That’s not possible! That’s impossible! I can see only blue, if that’s what you mean! Just blue! Am I right?

The doctor only shook his head. He said,” I have never seen this before! A man blind to blue! Blind to blue! Blue-blind!”

He burst out laughing. His chair revolved so fast, it kept spinning.

Then suddenly the chair froze. He said, “Don’t lose heart, my dear chap! There are still all the other colours in the rainbow! Don’t feel too bad about it! Even if you lose the blue in a rainbow, there are still six other colours left!”

“You’ve gone mad, doctor! Nobody else has ever seen blue! I prophesize blue! Nobody else has ever seen it before! I am the one who predicts that there shall be blue!”

90.

I now understood how difficult it was to destroy the sapphire. I would have to perform all its last rites before I destroyed it.

One night I put leather gloves on my hands. I put on a black suit. I wore dark glasses on my eyes. And I went out.

I had a bunch of crisp one hundred rupee notes in the pocket of my jacket. On the finger of my right hand covered by a glove was the sapphire ring. As soon as I reached the street down below, I hailed a cab. I entered it and said, “Take me to the Juhu Beach!”

The cabbie seemed a little alarmed by my dress and my tone of voice. He said,” Yes, Sir!”

The taxi picked speed. From Worli Naka it reached Prabhadevi, from Prabhadevi it came to Mahim via Shivaji Park. Then it took the Mahim Causeway and shot up to the Bandra Masjid where it slowed a bit. After passing the lake at Bandra it picked up speed again on the Linking Road. It left the Khar Telephone Exchange behind. It went past Santa Cruz. At Lions’ Garden the taxi turned for Juhu.

I sat stiffly: I felt very tight.

We arrived at Juhu.

I paid off my bill and going around the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, I walked into the dark.

91.

The first thing I did was to take the gloves off my hands. Then I removed the dark glasses. I took my jacket off. I kept all this, including the cash I carried in my jacket, in the sands. In the pockets of my trousers, I still had fives and tens. Later, I even took off my trousers, my socks, and my shoes. I removed my shirt. I was wearing pyjamas inside. I had brought along a tunic too; as well as a pair of chappals. After changing into casual clothing, I surveyed my surroundings. There was no one in sight. And if there was a pair of lovers in the dark out there, they would obviously avoid being seen by me.

I sat down.

I took off my ring and held it in my palm.

Once again that blue sparkle---invincible!

I felt acute grief.

92.

The cop said,” Well, Sir, whose clothes are lying here?”

“A friend of mine is practising suicide over there! I’m just taking care of his clothes over here!”

The cop seemed flabbergasted for a while.

“Sir! You must be joking! This isn’t a good time to sit here all alone. Nor is this the right time, Sir, to make fun of the police! You don’t perhaps know, Sir, how dangerous it’s become all over the city these days…Tell me, please, whose clothes are these?”

“You think this is fun, Bhai! I’m telling you the absolute truth. Now tell me, do you think anyone can learn in broad daylight how to commit suicide? My friend had an urge to take a swim, so what can I do about it? How could I stop him? Would he listen to me?”

The policeman looked at me with extreme distaste; and he shrugged his shoulders, and strolled off.

93.

I looked at my watch.

It was past two.

It was hard for even lovers to survive this long.

I threw my suit, my shoes, and my socks into the sea.

But the ring still remained in my hand.

94.

Sad, I just sat there. I could not throw the sapphire away.

Low tide seemed to have started. The wind, too, had fallen. The coconut palms were not rustling. The hush had expanded.

I heard a sound behind me. I turned to see. I could not believe my eyes for a moment.

A lone young woman was quickly shuffling over the sands towards the sea. She was about fifteen or twenty feet away to my left, just about twenty paces from the sea.

A flash of a sinister apprehension made me leap up and rush towards her.

I gripped her arm tight. Surprised and frightened, she suddenly turned to face me.

“Leave me alone!” She said in fluent English,” Aren’t you ashamed to manhandle a girl?” There was a tremor in her voice.

I had only a fleeting view of her face in the dimness. She was hardly twenty. Her face could have been swollen; her eyes were swollen.

“Where are you running to--- in this place and at this hour?”

“For a swim!” She said,” Let go of my hand!”

“Swim? At this hour? All alone?”

“This is a free country!” She said in a voice close to tears,” Who are you to stop me?”

“Sure! Sure! But if someone noticed you?”

“Suppose, someone noticed you grabbing me by the arm, then?”

“Even then, the question what you are doing here at this hour will still remain. How will you answer that?”

“Please! Let me go!”

“I won’t let you go! May I hand you over to the police? Committing suicide is a crime in this country!”

“All right. I’ll offer you bribe! You’re a man! I’ll give you my body; do what you like with it! Then promise to let me go! I want to kill myself. I’m through with life!”

I was appalled. I said,” Listen! I won’t be in your way! Be my guest, commit suicide if you will. I don’t even want this body of yours. All I want you to do is to have a little talk with me. I suffer from insomnia. I can’t sleep. I’m very restless. Please! Talk to me for a while. After that, I go my way, you go yours.”

She became silent. I released her arm from my grip.

“All right! It’s a deal!”

“Come, let’s go sit over there!”

After sitting down in the sands, I said to her, “Listen, I have a problem too. You are out to destroy yourself. I am here to destroy my sapphire!”

“Sapphire?”

“Yes. A sapphire. Now listen carefully to the story I’m going to tell you!”

She listened. I talked.

95.

We should not tell fairy-tales to our children at a very early age. Though they are pretty on the surface, they contain terrible things.

For the same reason, young children should not be told mythological stories. They should not be sent to temples; for they may have a hard time in the future.

In other words, the human imagination ought to be terminated in its earliest stages. Young children ought to be given only sums to solve. Solving sums is the only kind of the imagination that has worldly uses.

But it is hard to fit a human being into a groove. Man is a solitary creature from the outset.

‘X’ is a clerk. His fairy tale takes place in the government’s bureau. ‘Y’ is a housewife. Her fairy tale is woven out of embroidery and sewing, household furniture, newly purchased articles, relatives, friends, and neighbours.’Z’

is a politician. His politics are his fairy tale. ‘A’ is an atomic physicist; ‘B’ is a philosopher; ‘C’ is a poet; all these types have their own kind of fairy tales. Human beings cannot cope with one another’s fairy tales. They keep their own fantasies for themselves; as for all the others, they impose upon them a flat and uniform reality. Moreover, we are always more intelligent than we need to be: you are condemned to invent, to destroy, and to reinvent.

96.

I told her about the sapphire.

First, I told her about its blueness; then about its legendary influence.

Finally, I told her about my own experiences.

As she listened, she was wrapt in the narrative. She was no longer in a hurry to end her own life. It was dawn.

Light came from behind our backs.

I stopped talking.

I said to her, “If you want to commit suicide, go ahead and do it by all means. But do me a favour, please! Take this ring with you into the sea! I can’t throw it in with my own hands.”

But the girl smiled very sweetly. She said, “I was wrong. I won’t ever do it again. I don’t want your ring. You are a very nice person. I won’t forget you ever in my life. You’ve given me back my life!”

And she quietly rose and walked away.

97.

I continued to sit on the beach.

I was sad.

98.

Once again I removed the ring from my finger and held it in my palm.

The sun had already risen. My eyes searched for the luminosity that that pale stone contained.

The sky above was blue too. Clear. Before me was a grey-blue sea.

In my palm was the platinum ring and in it had been set the sapphire.

When I first brought it home, Tinku had a fever. What made me flinch then?

From the very next day, Madhavi started drifting away from me. Why did I then remember the blue sparkle of this very stone?

Why did I connect with it every single event that took place after it was brought home?

Fortunate or unfortunate things had been happening even before.

All right, then; this is neither lucky nor unlucky. Then why is it that I feeling like getting rid of it? And why is it that I find it so hard to throw it away?

Is it only because it is so beautiful?

But is it really beautiful?

Tinku thought it was a fake! Others too did not find it so irresistible!

Suddenly, I remembered: I had experienced a strange state of hyper excitement ever since I brought home the sapphire. And at the same time, without realizing what was happening, I was slowly getting tired. This new insight into my own strengths and weaknesses, gained by me when I was only thirty years of age, was sapping all my potential.

What my involvement with the sapphire is doing to me is no different from what happens to me when a person or a thing fascinates me and lures me deeper. I strike quick roots and they spread rapidly. Then, when I am uprooted, I feel as though I were felled.

To destroy the sapphire would be destroying a part of my own personality.

What is so excruciatingly gut-wrenching about eliminating a non-living external object or its cherished mental image?

Suppose there were a lover in the place of the sapphire?

99.

I am not really one who loves to perform heroics.

What was needed at this moment, to destroy the sapphire, was sheer heroism though.

Which simply meant that one had to hurl it into the sea over there; just what I did with my clothes the night before.

I rose. I closed my fist around the ring and I did walk in the direction of the sea.

100.

My heart beat fast.

Murder: I was about to commit murder; the murder of my own involvement; the murder of my love. My relationship with the sapphire was absolutely clear. It was as though the world and I were still separated from one another by a blue curtain or veil. I still moved in a fairy-tale world. I was aware, at some level, that all of it was an illusion.

I thought I should now free myself from this obsession; free myself from these meanings. Perhaps, the instant I throw this sapphire away, I would start ageing. I would dissuade people from wanting to possess a sapphire. I would tell them,” Even though one wants to believe that a sapphire brings one luck; in the end it brings no luck. It is like love: it brings luck only by chance! But Children! Love is not that dire a necessity. It is more important to be good. For, one can never be sure if what one loves is only oneself, or whether one can love the other as well. As a matter of fact, ‘love’ is a confusing word. It is intrinsically indescribable. To take an example, I did not possess a sapphire until I was thirty years of age. It was then that I obtained it. I felt as though I had fallen in love with it. What was the proof of this? The proof was that I could never bring myself to giving it up at any cost! You will say that there is a difference between giving up a living love-object and a giving up a sapphire.

No value of life is involved in giving up a sapphire. I would argue back,’ how do you know? I am alive. My mind is alive. Every image in my mind is alive. It

is imbued with the life-juice of the self; it is the quintessence of self-interest. I threw that stone way. I hurled it into the sea. However, its mystery, its thrill, the laughter of its magic hues is now a part of my personality as a whole. The sapphire has influenced the very structure of my life. I have seen its light with my own eyes! And that light illuminates me inside out.’”

101.

I stopped.

I looked at the sea.

It was quiet too.

I threw the ring in my fist into the water.

102.

There is a poem on the colour blue by Rafael Alberti. The original is in Spanish.I remembered two lines from it:

“The shadow is bluest when the body

that casts it has vanished.”

Did you get it?

103.

Have you seen the colour blue; blue?

Have you ever seen a sapphire?

A sapphire?

(ENDS)

81.

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