The Fertilized Man

The marvelous days of human life all begin on Monday. Leaving their homes, they move onto the streets of the city. Into the bustle of everyday life.
 
Sanjoy has no bustle at all. He has gone and stood beneath his beloved tree. With his satellite camera. It is not a banyan tree from whose body baskets of roots descend on all sides. Just an ordinary coconut tree. It does not provide a very good roof above his head. Yet, compared to other coconut trees, this tree is short in height. How that came to be—after much thinking—no clue could be found. A fault in the genes of its predecessors may be one of the chief causes.
 
But the roots of this tree are quite strong. They keep pressing ever deeper into the earth. A little widespread. Clinging to the ancestral homestead of forefathers. It is an invisible duel of life with death.
 
Here, every day at ten in the morning, Sanjoy stops with his camera. Whoever it may be, if one comes here, one’s thoughts, one’s movements, one’s manners—must change. This soil binds those who step on it with a tight embrace. Can one remain immutable simply by wanting to?
 
Yet Sanjoy likes it a lot. His legs feel like the trunk of the tree. As if they are gradually digging holes and entering the earth. Over there the pinnacle of the city’s tallest house is visible. Once upon a time there were only a handful of high-rises in this city, now the number of tall buildings is too many to count on fingers. On both sides medium roads encircle this coconut tree. Those roads are of many kinds. They wind and bend and arrive in front of the tall buildings.
 
By any one of them one can walk a long way with a single mind. Then again two roads come from there. Choosing one of them one can walk again for a while. Sanjoy, of course, has never walked that far. Because of his personal laziness.
 
He stands in the shade of the tree like a stationary statue. Or sometimes he sits upon the paved platform. The harsh sunlight of the road is unbearable to him. Since historical times the lazy have not been constitutionally able to endure the sun.
 
Here lies his difference from other human beings. He is on neither the plaintiff’s side nor the defendant’s. Because he has no right over even a particle of this land. He does not at all wish to leave the tree’s shade and go stand on the road. Why would he go and become a part of the great Time?
 
His task is to present events truthfully. Not to declare the victorious or the vanquished.
 
Yet there are many who walk on this road from Monday to Saturday for half a day. Even when they grow tired of walking, they keep on walking. As if they were never born to stop. These are the ones who love to walk. And then there are some who come and stand beside Sanjoy in the shade of this coconut tree. Of course, if too many arrive together there isn’t room for all. As a result many, not getting shade, keep standing in the sunlight.
 
He feels compassion for them. What can Sanjoy do? He must rely on luck or on the Deity, because Sanjoy has no power to lengthen the shadow. So to the wretch without shade he says, step a little closer to me, perhaps then you will get a bit of shade. But has he been granted permission to join the divine sport of Time? Other than describing the truth to the blind, what else can truth do? A newspaper reporter is far freer than he. The reporter has the right to mix imagination into events.
 
Sanjoy can only make the unknown know the truth.
 
The gentleman seems to wish to burn him in wrath. A great fool, sir. No work, no occupation, and you have taken up so much space under the alley of shade. Do the idle have any right to live in peace on this earth? Will you not step down onto the road and make room for others? Who will give it? No one?
 
Everyone in this city is a usurper. No one will give up so much as the point of a needle of land without a fight.
 
Sanjoy saw that the gentleman was rather intolerant. His copper-colored skin was blazing in the midday sun. Drops of sweat on his forehead. His shirt was wet near the armpits and chest. He was standing half in shade and half in light.
 
Why did Sanjoy feel he was a contemplative man, though a little dreamy by nature. The man also seemed to love to talk incessantly. It seemed God had given him an indomitable urge to know. Yet viewing him on the ground, Sanjoy was also compelled to think he was an unfortunate citizen. Because, having monopolized all the luxuries of city life, he seemed very unhappy.
 
At the sight of these wealthy, influential sickly ones he feels compassion. The compassion one long felt for blind Dhritarashtra—this compassion is of that kind.
 
The man is disinclined to sing the praises of idleness and to take in the world’s breeze for free. As a result he is forced to eat greens, leafy vegetables, carrots and suchlike. Even cabbage, radish, onion, goat, chicken and its eggs, and sometimes the carcass of a pig must be accepted as food. Therefore, at last he recognized him! This is the man of the busy city who is unwilling to return even the point of a needle of land without battle. Sanjoy’s well-known congenitally blind Dhritarashtra. At least his character matches greatly.
 
After a little while he saw the man had, by shoving and pushing, made a place to stand. He was breathing with his face almost against the neck of the woman standing beside him. Then suddenly he began muttering to himself. This was the speech of his mind.
 
The blind have this habit. Great sage Sanjoy had heard it many times, unjustly. Sanjoy has long had the bad habit of peeking into the windows of the minds of those who come to this tree at odd times. He knows this is not lawful. Yet what is to be done.
 
For a man like Sanjoy, trying to find a purpose in life through discussing others is not an altogether unnatural affair. He said, around ten on Thursday night I went to bed. Entering the bedroom I shut the door properly. After checking the wardrobe and such I peeped under the cot—these days I have grown very timid.
 
Anyway—I was pricking up my ears to hear whether the sound was happening.
 
How strange, the sound of a human body. Very much like the sound of friction. Not one—seemed like two beasts. As two jackals fight over a lump of flesh. For a moment it seemed the sound was so loud. It is not surprising that in the heart of the city there would be two or four beasts. Not two or four—perhaps many more beasts roam about. But has his rational understanding been ruined? Is it not a primordial war-game? As is shown in Hollywood cinema or in science-fiction tales.
 
Stealthily I opened the door and entered the corridor. I went to the door of Binita’s room and called once. Binita, can you hear? A sound is coming from this side.
 
Where, there is no sound. Saying this, Binita opened the door and came out.
 
Did you bolt the outer door? she asked. Her eyes were red with sleep. Her dress was disheveled. The round neck of the nightie had slipped quite far from one shoulder. Her middle-aged figure is still rather robust. She listened a bit with her ear cocked. Then said, what sound, what sound? Have you lost your mind?
 
Shouting at night like this. You’ve started searching under the cot again, have you?
 
The people in the nearby flats will wake up. Go, go to sleep. Binita stood holding the door.
 
As I turned and moved toward my room she said again, take your sleeping pill, dear. If one doesn’t work, take two. Otherwise you won’t sleep.
 
Binita shut the door.
 
With a restless mind I returned to my room. Now I was not hearing the sound so much. It is my own mistake. The result of not taking the sleeping pill. Still it felt as if I should sit on the bed the whole night. An attack could happen at any moment.
 
But you know, sir, in the end nothing happened. After staying awake half an hour, I could no longer hear the hot sound of breath. Then, taking the sleeping pill, I fell asleep. Affairs like this will go on and on. It is the confusion of my terribly tired mind.
 
The gentleman paused now. The shade of the tree was slowly deepening. Noon had passed into high afternoon.
 
Sanjoy found the matter very astonishing. The strange story clung to his mind. Though he could not understand the head or tail of its character. Not a lunatic, is he? But can lunatics wear such gentlemanly clothes? Of course, maniacs with ties around their necks and shoes on their feet roam in plenty these days.
 
Who knows. On such a blazing noon do these madmen come out on the road and bite someone. Now Sanjoy felt a little fear.
 
The man said, surely everyone thinks I am mad. Those who have no work, who are merely lovers of fancy, who have no knowledge of householding, they think normal men mad when they see them. This is true madness. It seemed the gentleman turned his face and on the opposite side asked Sanjoy a question.
 
At first he was astonished. Wondrous—how did he know the thought of his mind? After steadying himself a little, Sanjoy observed him longer. He said, in fact I loathe this life of merely eating and surviving. If a man cannot do some higher work for mankind, life itself is futile. I wanted to become an industrious man.
 
Laziness is a great antisocial thing. The logic of the idle. I do not like idleness. My wife says, until the age of sixty either you live in comfort or you die. All rest and pleasure you will do after retirement. The gentleman said with a faint smile.
 
The matter of his wife wasn’t quite comprehensible. He seemed to obey his wife’s words very much. He proclaimed quite grandly that his wife is a learned woman. Only his theory of working till sixty did not quite please Sanjoy. If one does not enjoy youth, what is left to do in old age? Sanjoy felt he should make clear his difference of opinion on this point. Of course it would not be right to try to explain that to a man like him.
 
He said in turn, what more shall I explain to you. My wife’s character is like an otherworldly thing. She is a person of a different temperament. The wealth of her mind and soul is greatest to her. She is also very steadfast. Only know this: she cannot tolerate even a bit of idleness. Sanjoy saw that as he spoke, the man seemed to lose himself somewhere within himself.
 
Muttering to himself was a habitual instinct. Just now he had been speaking normally. Now again he went into a trance. This time he was speaking to himself. Not to Sanjoy.
 
After being silent for a while he began again. Do you know what she did one day. After returning home at the end of the day, exhausted, I lay sprawled on the bed. Binita suddenly came and said to me, come, give me a little tenderness. I have tolerated her demands like these many times. But I had no desire at all at that moment. I no longer like flirting with a forty-five-year-old woman.
 
And this cannot be explained to her in a normal way. Seeing the open of the blouse at her breast, I moved it away with my hand and said, there is much work this week. Don’t you remember our project is still not finished. I will have to stay up nights and do the work.
 
Binita now twisted the matter and said, will you sleep now or else let us go somewhere for a drive. Hearing her, I was first astonished. Where will we go at this hour of evening? Then it seemed this is not reality, but a dream. She readied me and took me outside. Driving for almost an hour—who knows where we went?
 
Was it somewhere in the suburbs? In the dark nothing could be understood. When the car stopped, she took me by the hand into an open space. Three houses on all sides. Tall, large shadows. On one side a road. In the middle a strip of land. The place seemed like a tremendously filthy garden. It was, in fact, a dustbin. All the city’s refuse was piled there. And into that dustbin, wonder of wonders, Binita and I entered hand in hand!
 
Binita said, look! look! over there. What beautiful white mist. Moonlight has intoxicated the whole atmosphere. She held my hand. Then, like plucking a rose from a thorny branch, she began lifting trash from the dustbin. Seeing her doings I was stupefied. She said, you never understand me at all. This is my sorrow. Greater than all the pains of my body. If you could love me, then surely our world would have been different.
 
In Binita’s hand were now many carefully picked bits of refuse. A twisted, crumpled toothpaste tube, parts of a liquor bottle, syrupy sweet wrappers, eggshells, blood-smeared rags, a used condom— and who knows what else.
 
I said in great astonishment, what are you doing with these, the stench makes me retch. Where have you brought me!
 
As if she could not even hear me. She sat down right there, leaning on my knee. Said, well then, tell me a love story. Great Master, do not be astonished. I am not fabricating anything, nor telling a fairy tale at high noon. Truly this is what happened in reality. Unless the whole of it was a dream. These days I see no difference between dream and reality. Though my words have no coat of counterfeit upon them. Human life, in truth, has no form. What it is you could never imagine. For this a circumstance for imagining is required. Those tall houses you see, and not only those— in every house in this city, in every office, in every public and private place there lies such a dustbin.
 
What—you have not understood? In truth, this city of ours, or this whole country, or this world— you could say this entire universe is one enormous dustbin. The refuse-pit of humanity. Look at me—look toward me— I know you would prefer to look at my wife’s middle-aged, fleshy body. I have not lied.
 
Look me in the eye and say truly— what did you take me for all this while, a devil or a god? Or a demon in the guise of a man.
 
Before us flows, along an endless road, that torrential river. Between it stand colossal buildings. To the south some green fields, and to the left only a forest of black heads.
 
At the sight of the gentleman a pain suddenly writhed and twisted in Sanjoy’s chest. It had never seemed to him that the man was bad. Rather it seemed he was a very realistic man. Life spent in the shade of this tree is not a useless life. Perhaps upon the sun-scorched road is written his address.
 
Bravo—nicely you have twisted your hand to touch your nose. See, it would have been good to say at the outset, I am a very ordinary man. Almost like average men. I do not fall into the camp of the fortunate of the world. And fortune is a relative matter. He began waving his hand toward the road.
 
“I do not fall into the camp of the fortunate”—that sounded like a lie. In this world, are the fortunate the happy ones or the wealthy ones? If the happy are the fortunate, then why does everyone yearn for the unhappy life of wealth and influence? It is for riches that all battles are fought. For the point of a needle of land Kurukshetra took place. Yet neither side made the land fertile and cultivated it. Perhaps the land, in truth, was not necessary to them. Therefore it is better not to call it a battle of truth and falsehood, or of justice and injustice, or of land, but only a battle of self-respect. Dhritarashtra said so, but no one accepted it. Because he was partial, his speech of truth carried no value!
 
Sanjoy can be far-seeing. Dhritarashtra is the seer of thought. There is none to equal him in thinking the mind. The man now began to laugh to himself. His face looked quite fine. His white teeth flashed in the daylight. He said, there is no happiness or peace for me in the householder’s ashram. It is as if since birth I have been observing impurity. This great mourning no longer suits me. For that reason I am prepared to go to the forest. In the quarrel of truth and falsehood, I have suffered much. This birth is stinking—heaps of refuse.
 
Indeed you have spoken truth. Sanjoy agreed.
 
Consider this: I am a man of pure principle, a vegetarian. I eat and drink with much care— for many people eating and drinking is the only delight in life. Who said—man eats to live, does not live to eat. In my case it is the reverse. The finest moments of my life are those when I sit to eat. It is as if I had no other sense than taste. Pouncing on a plate whether good or bad. That very I—by turn of fate or in a trance of dream—how shall I explain it— I began picking and eating from the dustbin’s filth.
 
Abandoning the kingdom of prestige—this is a shameless exile to the forest. When Binita, from a crumpled leaf-plate, put into my mouth those leftover rice lumps with care, it felt like ambrosia. A half-eaten, refuse-rich stale bread seemed like a royal sweet. I thought myself God. Binita seemed a goddess herself. As if she were placing nectar in my mouth. I had not known that food from a dustbin could be so delicious, sir. Binita as if intoxicated me. Just as when a man once touches woman, wine, or money he becomes addicted, so too the addiction of refuse. From that day onward I ate every day like an addict. Binita kept pace, eating too. After witnessing a refuse-heap like Kurukshetra, this then was its destiny.
 
He paused a little.
 
Surely you are thinking I am a certified lunatic. That I have just escaped from the madhouse. But I think that all of you are mad. Grandsire Bhishma, war-lord Sri Krishna—are they not mad? Only I am the sane man.
 
Why? Ha ha ha! Who does not utter absurd things. Did God not say? Did Grandsire not say? Show me one great man of the world who has not said such things. Do not your stories, your novels, your poems say them? Does not your history say so?
 
Do not fairy tales and the lives of great men say so? You do not call today’s businessmen, intellectuals, film directors and artists mad, do you.
 
At election time when politicians say, eradicate poverty, I have not heard you call them certified madmen either? To protect civilization and society, gentlemen have arranged certified madmen in show-cases.
 
No one is believing these words. Isn’t that so? Whether anyone believes or not, everything I have said is true. Letter for letter true.
 
A stillness descended around the tree’s base. On the road the movement of people began to thin. Who slipped away which way at what time—no one noticed. Absorbed, Sanjoy only kept staring at the gentleman’s face. Suddenly, as if his consciousness returned. At the tree’s base the gentleman was still standing.
 
And another unknown woman. But it did not seem that the woman’s mind was concentrated in any particular direction. I only understood she was staring far away with a vacant gaze. The man now leaned a bit more over the woman’s neck. Perhaps the two muttered something to each other.
 
The gentleman now needs to regain his senses. It is getting late. For a householder it is time to go home. Has his story not yet ended!
 
He now turned his neck and gave a wide smile. Story? This is not a story. It is life. The fallen—time gone to hell—its tale. Or the tale of our conjugal life. Are the matters of life or society not a story? I am asking all the writers of stories.
 
How can that be. Life is life. Society is the holder of life. Story is separate; story means fairy tale. In a story there is no pain. A story does not have feeling. These happen in the case of life. Besides, a story can be made as one wishes. But can you make or change life as you wish. Suppose you are told to mate in public like dogs. Can man do it? Man cannot do this. It offends self-respect? Such a simple act.
 
Yet he can drop a bomb and blow up a city. Self-promotion? Some, because they are human, cannot do such things. Again some, because they are human, can do such things? All around there are many who can, and in the same around there are many who cannot. I have been able. To pass from man to more-than-man.
 
Then will all humans become like dogs.
 
From birth they will be born with the traits of dogs. They are dogs, and honorable dogs. Their condition is still fine in human society. They eat the filth of dustbins and sing the song of life. They are first-class dogs. There is yet another kind, who after birth are inseminated and turned into dogs. They eat the filth of dustbins. Not only do they eat, they fight over eating. Therefore they are not exactly dogs. They are humans with the traits of dogs—kutta.
 
The gentleman drew in a breath with a full chest. Then with a faint smile said, well now you have received my correct identity. You could say the second-class dog. Yet never before in the history of the world has it been seen that a dog has spun out a day-long tale with a tree. This too is a kind of science-fiction!
 
He fell a little silent now. So dramatic were his words that Sanjoy was so overwhelmed he noticed nothing around him. Immersed, he only kept listening to his words. In a short while he began again, with double the previous vehemence. He said, consider me: from the very first day I picked and ate filthy food with Binita, since then I have been intoxicated. I no longer count anyone.
 
At the office I am a living Yama. I cannot behave well with anyone. I cannot think of anyone’s good. Other than using people, I have no respect left for them. I understood what I had become from what I was. Now I cannot manage without eating filth. Without rummaging in filth I find no peace. Unless I sniff the smell of thrown-away things at night I cannot sleep. Above all, unless I bite this one and that—meaning I want to say normal people—the day seems not fulfilled.
 
Then in the middle of the night I wake up. Cautiously I see everything. I am very afraid. In the darkness of night I hear screaming. Sometimes it seems Binita has shouted out. As if someone or someones are continuously raping her. Yet in the morning, when I ask my wife anything, she says everything is my delusion. That she is in such peace that such rubbish thoughts come only to my head. Again the same fabricated story, is it not? Else how shall I explain to myself.
 
This evolution! Your dear Kesto Thakur—leave him— even Mr. Darwin himself could not have imagined it. This change is not mythic, nor scientific. Perhaps it is ghostly.
 
Even thus it was going quite well. Finally one day do you know what happened. From the dustbin Binita found a rubber pouch. I do not know what was inside it. It lay among the filth. While searching for food, she picked up a condom. When I saw the rubber pouch in her hand, she had already sipped and swallowed the liquid inside. Perhaps some humanity still remained in me, some human quality— quickly stopping Binita I said, shame, what are you eating? That— I went to snatch the pouch from her hand. But Binita did not listen to me.
 
Nor did I say anything to her; I turned to my own work. So much leavings lay scattered there. If we can eat more we humans want nothing else. Eating and fighting over eating—this is the synonym of our civilization. It seemed my hunger would only be appeased after chewing and eating the entire universe. As if my stomach were so vast that even if a nuclear bomb exploded inside it, this limitless appetite would not be appeased.
 
But the most astonishing event happened four or five months later. You know the proverb—he who commits wrong, he who tolerates wrong—then what— I noticed Binita’s belly was swelling steadily. And at that time she looked exactly like a pregnant woman. I felt a kind of suspicion. Looking at myself, I saw my skin had become rough. A coarse feel. An itch and burning over the whole body. Like a skin disease. I told Binita of this strange torment of mine.
 
Binita was silent. She could not say anything. These days her speaking had much decreased. The attitude being such as if this was to be our fate. In the kingdom of sin, thus she hid her head in my chest and cried. And then one day the puppy was indeed born from her belly. A simple, normal, and social puppy.
 
The man stopped now. Sanjoy saw tears glittering at the corners of his eyes. And even more astonishing—the woman in front of him too was crying.
 
He stared at the man’s face in extreme astonishment. He could not quite bring himself to believe. Man and dog—such social coexistence of corruption and animality—Sanjoy had never seen before. Even imagining in his mind a scene where a dog wept out of pity for a human— yet the seer of three times, Sanjoy, still could not fully believe the gentleman’s tale.
 
The man perhaps understood Sanjoy’s thought. He said, do you wish to see proof whether I am speaking truth? Saying so, he turned toward Sanjoy. Then slipping his hand inside his trousers below the spine, he brought out a hairy thing. Sanjoy cried out and jumped back. Suddenly a western wind struck his body. He saw from the man’s trousers a live tail of a four-legged creature had emerged.
 
In fear and excitement Sanjoy trembled. The man did not look back at him. He only said calmly to the woman beside him, Binita, let’s go. It is very late. I am very hungry. The woman said, so am I.
 
Sanjoy saw the two of them moved along a most busy highway of this busy city. This gigantic road seemed a symbol of the world’s neo-classical culture. There, once more, they became busy—like civilized people— for the sake of civilization itself—in various inauspicious tasks. Which never had any meaning, never have had, and never will have. They would even forget their own identities. This place cannot at all be said to be any less than the sacred field Kurukshetra. The sharing of sin and virtue, and the battle for it, is no small thing.
 
Although this story has no existence of its own, the tradition of the shade of that coconut tree in the city’s work-restless quarter still remains. A great tree; beneath it people come and stand regardless of caste or creed. At the threshold between humanity and animal impulse. The story that exists in the unvarnished truth— that it accepts.
 
It reveals itself in detail. From the height of the great man to the baseness of the worm. In this city, those civilized people who come and stand under its shade— some of them, again, have tails.
 
This is a very unpleasant truth. Sanjoy speaks: Dharmakshetra, battlefield, Kurukshetra— in essence, a vision of the world entire.