Diary dates

EXTRACT

When Relationship was first published in 1994, it was received with varying degrees of shock and appreciation. This newly revised edition includes all of the correspondence carried in the previous one, with a short but significant addition: Chandigarh Diary

January 7, 1963
Whole idea of building this house began after ten years of living in flat, desperate for own house and above all, garden. Bombay would be wonderful if had a house there. Gautam decided to build house, but in Chandigarh where plot existed. This wonderful idea, only several hundred miles from Bombay.

I realize advantage of house in Chandigarh. Apart from holiday home for kids, Gautam renews friendships with old Chief’s College colleagues, friends of family, people who have known him since childhood. All this very important and I realize fulfills an inner need for him. Also remember that Gautam has led ‘normal’ life like other people, unlike mine. That is, one stage of life has prepared him for the next stage, and so a continuous patter formed that has some connection between past and future. My own life in no way resembles this. No stage prepared for next stage. Childhood and adolescence in India a different world from American life into which launched unawares at tender age of only just sixteen. Life in India on return from college again strange and unrelated both to college years and childhood memories. Marriage plunged me into wholly alien atmosphere where not only knew no one (since had not mixed in this society), but did not recognize types I met. Values wholly alien. Now, at the ripe age of thirty-five, am just beginning to understand scene, to have humour and tolerance, also firmness toward it. Hence can understand Gautam’s need to re-identify himself with his background. Above all, house here enable Gautam to breathe air of Punjab. This, he claims, makes new man of him. Evidences of new man: early rising, sitting in veranda for morning tea while mali waters roses and lawn, endless interest in garden, and details and finish of house beer every noon.

 

The only drawback of house: it is six hundred miles from Bombay where we mist live eleven months of year.

January 7, 1965
The terror and sorrow of trying to live as a whole person, revealed, oneself, true. The ugly face of anger, the distortions of jealousy, the floodtide of passion let loose, all because of this.

Don’t live like that then. Bury yourself in part, let only a little show, the rest lie hidden, festering. Only you can't. Because you were not born to lie half-buried, not born to live half-alive. You were born to a vivid awareness of the hazy purple hills, the starry sky, the evening light on the lake ...

It is a beautiful world this morning after the third night of the new moon. It must have been the third, last night for the virginal curve had thickened and the red new-born glow had changed to calm silver. This morning the wind is cold but not sharp. It is fresh and clean, like belief that comes unbidden because it is natural, like hope because it is instinctive. And somewhere in consciousness is ‘the soul’s invincible surmise’ that you will not only survive, but live with all you have; the struggle will continue and with it the hurt and the bruises and the bleeding, but for nothing - for in the process of a human being will have born, rich in faith, blessed by belied, dauntless in courage.

So much to think about: Tradition — how much of it should we carry on our backs like beasts of burden? Convention — where in all these tortuous pathways does choice lie, choice of belief and choice of action? Where does freedom lie, and integrity, and duty?

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RELATIONSHIP

Authors: Nayantara Sahgal; EN Mangat Rai
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: vii + 316
Price: Rs 395