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‘Can you see it, there, on that rock? A picture, drawn by a man. Who knows how many thousands of years ago. Before Christ. Before the Buddha. He must have used red soil, the blood of pigs. It’s faded, but it’s still visible.
‘One thing is certain, our ancestor didn’t make this sketch in the hope that we would see and appreciate it. You see how it’s almost impossible for any animal that moves on legs to get here.’ Somanath cast an amused look at Krishnaswamy, his old college friend, who was clearly terrified for his life. ‘My feeling is the picture was created to carry out some ritual from the magical canon. Perhaps our ancestor received this picture when the mantras were being transmitted to the Rigveda sages. Perhaps in a state of frenzy! He has seen the hunter with his killer instinct and the deer with its impulse for life, both with equal vision and wonder.’
Krishnaswamy stared at what Somanath pointed out to him. The picture emerged slowly, in stages, as he gazed at it, and finally materialised: a darting deer, behind which was a man chasing it with a spear.
They were on a steep, rounded rock face, on which ran a ridge with just enough room to partially rest their feet. Their only other support was the topmost branch of a monstrous tree. The tree had its beginnings somewhere deep down. Its source was not visible. Even the massive trunk from which the gigantic arms shot out couldn’t be seen. The branches had pushed through every cranny of the precipitous stone that provided the minute bit of space for their feet, and it was as if the tree was now hoping to find even more room and grow past the crest of the rock. With his right hand, Krishnaswamy had grasped one branch after the next, and with his left he had felt his way on the rock which was at chest level, groping, as he slowly propelled himself towards Somanath’s precious secret spot. Even though he was in fear of his life, he was driven by his yearning to view the hidden location.
As the picture revealed itself to him now, he was disappointed. Had he really used his nerves only to behold such a very ordinary piece of work? Hadn’t he seen so many similar pictures at the Bheem Baithak without having to suffer such rough terrain? Why, he had even lectured about them.
He held on tight to the branch, rested his back firmly against the rock face and looked around carefully, taking care not to lose his balance. From the point where they stood, all they could see beyond was the clear blue sky. To Krishnaswamy’s rear were huge trees that came cleaving through the rocks from fifty to sixty feet below. Far behind the trees, there probably was a village. Further down, according to the map, was the Arabian Sea. The bright sun of the West was to his back.
’Except for you and me, nobody else in our time would have seen this. At the base of this tree are its guardian spirits, the serpent god. Nobody dares to climb these trees to fell them. They don’t even pick the dry twigs that wither and drop down on their own.’
Krishnaswamy was more worried about the immediate: How did one reach the jeep that was parked two kilometres away? He had been standing in the same position for a long time now, would his weary legs walk him back?
It was possible to go higher, to place his arms on the concave granite face and, with an enormous forward thrust, reach the top, which was forty feet long and fifty feet wide. But to descend, to find his footing again on the ridge, that was not going to be easy. He focussed again. Was that the rock, the black one in front of him which seemed to rise from the one on which he so precariously leaned, was that the rock which had the fading red picture? It looked like it housed a cave: smooth and upright and sharp at the top. Like a massive linga, reaching to the sky. So forbidding, one couldn’t climb it, one couldn’t see what was beyond.
Despite the disappointment of the picture, he was comforted by the fact that the experience would help him analyse the extraordinary metaphysical nature of Somanath’s oeuvre in the book that he was planning to write in English. As Krishnaswamy was formulating sophisticated, wonderful phrases – about the virtues and limitations of Somanath’s work, the flaws that were born out of his excessive merits – he thought he saw something. In the light that fell on the bare rock it seemed there was a small protuberance in the picture: it was a chameleon.
This primordial creature has been living, dying, crawling, eating what it finds, acquiring the colour of its surroundings and has existed here since eternity … How is it that Somanath hasn’t spotted it by the picture that’s been fading with time? Or has he? The chameleon almost seems like Somanath’s signature that he places at the right bottom corner of his paintings.
Somanath began to hold forth again, like someone lost in his words. Krishnaswamy listened, but was beset with anxiety – that the branch would give way or that his hands would grow weary and let go of the branch.
When he was a young boy, Somanath had been crazy about hunting bees. He would skip school, making sure he was out of the sight of his father, a man oblivious to everything except his areca cultivation, agriculture, rites and rituals. His mother, who had to attend to the never-ending stream of guests, dishing out porridge, kadubu and the rest, had no clue what Somanath was up to either. He would hide his school bag in the hollow of the huge jackfruit tree, pull out the blanket he’d left there and wrap it around his face and head. Then, looking like one of the servants’ children, he would slip a catapult into the pocket of his shorts and when it seemed to him to be an appropriate day he would set out into the forest to hunt bees. As he wandered in the forest one day, he had stepped into this very groove in the rock, and sought support of the branch of this very tree, for he could see a coil of bees, black spots on the yellow blossoms of the tree, suggesting that there was a hive around. Just like today, even that day, placing half his foot on the ridge along the rock, he had held on to a branch, moved to the next and let go of the previous one … held … let go … smoothly, slithering like a green snake to the top to set eyes upon a huge, heavy hive pulsating with bees dripping in thousands from their segmented cases. It seemed like a living, breathing creature. A step further, and the bees were behind him, buzzing and alive. And before him was the still picture that in its very stillness throbbed with the eternal motion of life. The bees were forgotten; he was lost to the world. It felt as if the spirits from down below were whispering profound secrets to him.
Even when Somanath went to France, Italy, Mexico, Africa, America, many other places to promote his art, this spot was the object of his contemplation, this tranquil, serene spot throbbing with life, hidden in nature.
With its body that mimicked the rock, the raised head of the chameleon appeared to nod approvingly. It was so slight a motion that Krishnaswamy began to wonder if it stirred at all. In the background, was Somanath’s drone-like narrative.
’I am a thief, a thief of the divine. This is my sacred, secret haunt from my childhood. This is the source of my inspiration.’
Staring at the chameleon, all that had been left out of Somanath’s magical account came to Krishnaswamy’s mind.
This great artist, who is apparently above all worldly obligations, married his maternal uncle’s daughter in accordance with his parents’ will. With or without the marriage, the girl was his mother’s responsibility, her daughter-in-law. And didn’t this become so convenient an arrangement that he was free to indulge in the life of a drifter? And didn’t his mother lovingly nurture all the family heirs he produced in between these wanderings, and look after his wife who bore his progeny with such tender care and responsibility? Now, with a long, flowing beard that’s turned pepper-and-salt, and hair spread carelessly over his back, he is stylish in his worn green kurta darned many a times by his unadorned beauty of a wife. This Somanath, this lean, attractive man wearing head gear like the Byaris and looking like a sage of ancient times, is undoubtedly a thief.
Somanath is not only a thief, but the rogue is also deceptively astute in his worldly transactions. From his looks, from the manner in which he speaks, who would guess that he belongs to a traditional Brahmin family from Malnad. If I know it, it is because he was my friend right from college days itself. I became conscious of his many duplicities only when I began to envy him. But the rascal lives happily as if he is oblivious to my sceptical view of him. He seems to float forever in a state of emotional well-being, as if all my doubts and accusations are wrong.
The thought liberated Krishnaswamy from Somanath’s spell and it felt good. He felt a surge of affection for his friend rise in him. Now when he looked at the picture, it did not seem so ordinary anymore, it offered new meanings. The chameleon, with its bulbous eyes and raised head, was saying something very different; it was whispering to him that which it had whispered to primordial man …
He sensed a spontaneous, surreptitious laughter breaking within him.
Somanath continued as if he was speaking to himself, to nobody, ‘I got to know my parents were ill, bedridden. I returned, deciding to live in the village. My wife, that poor woman, was taking care of my parents and the children and was waiting for me to come back. I may not be a principled, dignified gentleman like you but I am not a scoundrel either. My parents died. I appointed people to take care of the lands. I come here every day, spend some time and then go back. I have been coming here since my childhood and nothing has changed. But I keep changing, in the sense that I move closer and closer to the picture.’
It seemed like the chameleon was staring into a vacuum. It opened and closed its mouth slightly. Perhaps it had swallowed something. It breathed, its neck rising and falling. Stoic, it almost seemed to mock the urgency of life in the picture of the charging hunter. And the instant the thought flashed across Krishnaswamy’s mind, he felt an urgent impulse to climb onto the rock against which he so precariously leaned. Somanath’s animated avowal on the worship of the life force was so amusing that Krishnaswamy wondered if a spirit from the hollows had entered his bamboo-like body and was charging him up: the rock, inanimate yet infused, it seemed to him, with just the right amount of life, and the still chameleon that yet was animate seemed to embody an extraordinary peace, cognisant of everything and the desire to achieve this state of being was so overpowering that his fear vanished and he let go of the branch, and transferred his weight on to his torso. Resting both his arms on the rock, he slithered forward like a python. He felt a huge sense of relief for having shed thus his dry dignity, his fear for life.
Somanath was standing in supplication as if hoping to achieve the state of being of the bare-bodied primitive creator of the picture. Krishnaswamy wished him good luck and yet again, felt exhilarated by his furtive laughter.
Somanath was about to continue with his epic. But Krishnaswamy suddenly stood up with a sloppy carelessness, and seeing this, Somanath said, ’Kittu, never do that again. I’ve never climbed on the rock like that. My legs never come in contact with the sacred surface. I cannot bear to walk around where the great man who created this picture meditated, where his every step was intense and engaged. Call it my fallacy if you wish.’
Krishnaswamy felt that Somanath was being silly, but said, ‘Sorry’. The next minute Somanath was laughing lightly and saying, ‘I suppose it’s okay for you. I’m a worshipper of this place, but you aren’t. You are a worshipper of civilisation, and a thinker. And yet, how strange, you are my close friend. And I have let you into this secret of mine for safekeeping. Be warned though, if you ever write about this, it will be the end of our friendship.’
’Let the epic continue,’ Krishnaswamy said, making his promise to Somanath. Floating in the spirit of camaraderie, Krishnaswamy didn’t in the least anticipate the divine dimension the story would lend to him.
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