A Sliver of Sunlight

Placed third in the Mozhi Prize 2023

MAY I sit on this bench? No, please don’t get up—I’ll sit here in the corner. You are probably wondering why I don’t go to another bench. Such a big park—vacant benches everywhere—why do I want to squeeze in near you? If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you something—the bench you are sitting on is mine. Yes, I sit here every day. No, don’t get  me wrong. My name is not written on this bench. How can municipality benches be named? People come, they sit for a moment or two and then they leave. Nobody remembers who sat where in the park. After they leave, the bench becomes vacant as before. Later when another visitor sits on the bench, he never knows whether before him there sat a school girl or a lonely woman or a drunk gypsy. Gosh no, names are written only where man stays put! This is why houses have names, as do graves, though I sometimes think even if graves didn’t have names that wouldn’t make much difference. No man alive would want to enter another’s grave intentionally. 

You’re looking there—at the victoria? No, don’t be surprised. People still use victorias on the occasion of a wedding … I see this every day. This is the reason why I have chosen this bench for myself. Sit here, and the eyes go straight to the church —you don’t have to turn your neck. It’s a very old church. To get married in this church is deemed a matter of great pride. People get their names registered eight to ten months in advance. By the way, it doesn’t bode well to have such a long gap between the engagement and the wedding. Sometimes disagreements crop up, and right at the time of the wedding neither the bride nor the groom is to be seen. On such days, this place lies deserted. No crowd, no victoria. Even the beggars return empty-handed. On one such day, I saw a girl on the bench straight ahead. Sitting alone, she was looking at the church with forlorn eyes. 

This is the strange thing about a park. In such an open space, everyone sits confined to themselves. You can’t even go up to someone and offer a word or two of consolation. You watch others, others watch you. I suppose this too is a kind of comfort. This is why, when their troubles get unbearable, people pour out of their houses. Onto the roads. Into the public parks. Into some pub. Even if nobody consoles you there, your sorrow turns fluid in such spaces; it tosses and turns from one place to the other. This doesn’t lessen the burden, but like the coolie with his luggage, you too can now transfer your sorrow from one shoulder to the other. Doesn’t this respite amount to anything? I do exactly this—I get out of my room right in the morning. No, no—don’t mistake me— I don’t have any troubles. I come here for the sunlight. You must have noticed, this is the only bench in the entire park which is not under a tree. Not a single leaf falls on this bench…there’s, of course, the added benefit that from here I can look directly at the church…but I suppose I have already told you this.

You are really fortunate. Your first day here, and the victoria right in front! Keep looking…in just a little while a small crowd will gather in front of the church. A great many in the crowd will know neither the bride nor the groom. But they’ll stand outside for hours just to catch a glimpse of the newly-weds. I don’t know about you, but I find the curiosity about some things to be insatiable. Now, see, you were sitting in front of this perambulator. My first instinct was to peep inside, as though your baby would be any different from other babies. But that’s not so. At this age, all children are the same—they just lie around with a pacifier in their mouths. Still, when I pass by a perambulator I feel a surge of desire, to peep inside. I find it strange that we don’t tire of things that appear similar. Ironically, these are the things we want to see the most, like babies in a pram, or the victoria of a newly married couple, or the hearse of the dead. You must’ve noticed, a crowd always gathers around such things. Willfully or otherwise, our legs draw us to them. Sometimes, I am surprised that the very things that help us understand life are actually beyond our complete grasp. It’s not easy to contemplate those things, or to talk to others about them. I want to ask you this: can you recall anything about the moment you were born, or can you tell anything about your death to someone, or can you recall your wedding experience to the letter? You are laughing … no, I meant something else. Can there be a man who cannot recall his wedding experience? I have heard there are some countries where people don’t decide to get married unless drunk… and later, they have no remembrance of it at all. No, I didn’t mean such an experience. What I meant was, can you recall that exact moment when, all of a sudden, you decided you will no longer remain single, but will spend the rest of your life with someone else, till death do you both apart? I mean, can you put your finger on that precise moment, when you moved aside the loneliness within—just a little—and made room for someone else there? Yes, the same way you moved aside—just a little—on the bench to make room for me a short while back. And here I am, talking to you as though I have known you for ages. 

Look, now a few cops are also standing in front of the church. If the crowd continues to gather this way, the thoroughfare will soon be blocked. Well, the sun is out and shining today, but even on winter days, people stand there, shivering. I have seen this for years… sometimes, I get the feeling that those are the very people who had congregated on the occasion of my wedding fifteen years back… the same victoria, the same patrolling cops… as though nothing has changed over the years. Yes, I too got married in this church. But that was a different time. The road wasn’t so wide back then that the victoria could have stopped right at the church door. We had to stop it in the back alley… and I walked up to the church with my father. People had assembled on both sides of the road and my heart was beating in my ears; I was worried I might slip and fall in front of all those people. I wonder where those people who were watching me from the crowd that day are now.  Do you think if someone from that crowd were to see me today, he would recognize that this woman sitting by herself on this bench is the same girl who, fifteen years ago, was walking towards the church in white? Tell me the truth, will someone recognize me? I don’t know about humans, but I have a feeling that the horse that drove me that day will definitely recognize me. Yes, I am always astonished by horses. Have you ever seen a horse in the eye? It feels like they have lost something very dear to them, but haven’t quite got used to the loss yet. That is why, in our world, they remain the saddest. Not being able to get used to something—there’s nothing more unfortunate than that. People who remain unused to a thing until the end of their days either become sad like the horses, or meander from one bench to the other, like me, in search of a sliver of sunlight.

Pardon me? No, you’ve probably mistaken me. I don’t have any kids, it’s my good fortune. If I had had a kid, maybe I’d never have been able to separate. You would have noticed, even if there’s no love between the man and the woman they stick around for the sake of the child. I never had such a constraint. In that sense, I am very happy—that is to say, if happiness means that one gets to choose one’s loneliness. But to choose it is one thing, and to get used to it, entirely different. Each evening, at sundown, I go back to my room. But before heading back, I go sit for a while in that pub where he used to wait for me. Do you know the name of that pub? Bonaparte—yes, the legend goes that when Napoleon first came to the city, he went to that pub—but in those early days of dating, I never knew of it. When he told me the first time that we’d meet in front of Bonaparte, I stood that entire evening in the other corner of the city, where Napoleon is seated on a horse. Have you ever spent your first date this way, where you are standing in front of a pub and your fiancé, under a public statue? With time, though, I took a liking to his interests. I even got habituated to them. Every evening we would go to his old hangout spots, or wander in those parts of the city where I had spent my childhood. Don’t you find it odd that when you start liking someone very much, you not only want to share your present with him but also devour all his past, right from when he wasn’t with you? You become so greedy and envious that it becomes unbearable for you to think there was a time when he used to live without you, love without you, go about his day without you. And then, when you spend a few years with that person, it becomes impossible to say which habits are your own, and which you osmosed from the other… yes, they get mixed-up like a pack of cards, so much so that you cannot pick up a card and say this one is mine, or that one, his.

Sometimes I think we all should get a chance at self-dissection before we die. Peel the layers of your past one-by-one like the skin of an onion. You’d be surprised, everyone—parents, friends, husband—will come along to collect their share. The skin belongs to others; the dry stalk at the core is what you will be left with. The stalk is of no use, it remains to be cremated or buried after one’s death. It’s often said, every man dies alone. I don’t believe this. He dies with all those people within him with whom he used to fight or whom he used to love. He goes bearing an entire world within. Which is why the sadness we feel when someone dies is a selfish kind of sadness; we are, in fact, mourning that part of us which is gone forever with the dead.  

Oh look—he has woken up! Rock the perambulator a little, keep rocking it slowly. He’ll quiet down by himself… He is holding on to the pacifier in his mouth as though it were a wee little cigar. Look, how he’s staring at the clouds overhead. When I was a little girl, I used to wield a stick at the clouds in such a way that it appeared as if they were coursing along in the sky on my signal.  Do you think people remember the things they saw and heard when they were young? I think they do. I suppose we all carry forth some voice, some vision, or an inkling of some sound from our childhood, which, with time, we lose in the web of life. But unbeknownst to us, at the slightest of triggers, déjà vu washes all over us; we get a distinct feeling that we have heard that sound somewhere before, or that this incident or something similar to it has happened sometime before. That’s all it takes, and soon enough things that, for years, lay ossified within, begin to spill out; things that never came to our attention in the daily grind. But they are ever present. They stand there stealthily, in the corner, waiting for the right opportunity. And then, all of sudden while you’re walking down the street or waiting for the bus or in the liminal zone at night between sleep and wakefulness, they pounce on you. That is it! Then however much you flail your limbs, however much you struggle, they don’t let go of you. Something similar happened to me one night…

We were both sleeping when I heard a strange sound—exactly like the one which used to wake me up with a start, in my childhood, filling me with the fear that maa and baba were not there in the next room, and that I’d never be able to see them again. That was the point when I’d start screaming. But, that night I did not scream. I got up from the bed and walked up to the threshold of my room. I opened the door and peeped out, but there was nobody there. I turned around and looked at him. He was sleeping with his face turned towards the wall, just as he used to sleep every night. He hadn’t heard a thing. It was then that it struck me—the sound hadn’t come from somewhere outside, it had come from within me. Correction: not exactly from within me. Akin to a bat in the nighttime, it had just grazed past me, neither without nor within, but still fluttering all around. I came back and sat down on the bed. I ran my hand gently over his body, touching all those nooks of his body that used to comfort me long back. I found it weird that I was touching him and yet my hands returned empty.  The reverberations from long-ago that once found their way  from his body into my soul were nowhere to be felt. I was touching his body the same way some people run their fingers over old ruins, in search of the names they had carved there long ago. My name wasn’t there. But there were other signs. Signs that I had never seen before, signs that had nothing to do with me. I sat by his side the whole night. My hands lay dead on his body. It terrified me that I could not talk to anybody about the emptiness that had crept in between us. Not even to my lawyer, whom I had known for ages.

My lawyer thought I had gone insane. What sound was that? Was my husband having an affair with another woman? Was he cruel to me? He kept bombarding me with questions, but like an idiot, I could only stare at his face. It was then that I realized for the first time that to get a separation, it wasn’t necessary to go to a court. People often say that by sharing our sorrows with others we feel light. I never felt light. No, people don’t share sorrows, they only judge who is guilty and who is innocent. The terrible thing here is that you separate from the very person who could once read your aching soul…that is why I left that part of the town and came here; nobody knows me here. Here, nobody looks at me and says, this woman lived with her husband for eight years and one fine day, just upped and left. Earlier, when someone talked this way, I’d want to get hold of them and tell them the entire story, from the beginning to the end. I’d want to tell them how on that first evening we kept waiting for each other in different places—him in front of the pub, me keeping company with the statue. I’d want to tell them how he kissed me the first time with my back pressed to the trunk of a tree, and how I touched his hair for the first time, fear coursing through my veins. Yes, I used to think that unless I explained all this to them, I’d never be able to talk about that night when for the first time I was completely shaken inside, and years later was gripped by a feeling that made me want to run to my parents in the next room…but that room was empty. Yes, I had read somewhere that growing old is when you wake up in the middle of the night, screaming, and no matter how much you scream, no one comes from the next room. That room will always remain empty. See how I have grown since that night!

Still, I don’t understand this thing. Reports about earthquakes and bombings are splashed in newspapers, and the next day everyone knows that where there stood a school for children, there are now ruins, and where there were ruins, only flittering dust. But when something like this happens with people, nobody suspects a thing… The morning after, I kept roaming the entire city, and nobody even glanced at me… When I came to this park for the first time, I sat at this very bench where you are now seated. And yes, I was very surprised that day that I was sitting in front of the church where I had been married… Back then the street wasn’t wide enough for the victoria, we both came here on foot…

Do you hear that, the music from the organ? Look, they have opened the doors. The strains of music are audible. As soon as I hear this, I know they have kissed each other and exchanged rings. Just a little while more, they are about to step outside. People aren’t patient anymore, they can’t stand quietly. If you want to see the newly-weds, do carry on. I’m here, anyway, I’ll keep an eye on your baby. What did you say? Yes, I will be here until the evening. After that it gets cold here. All day long I keep looking for the sliver of sunlight. It flits from bench to bench, and I follow suit. There is no nook in the park where I haven’t sat, if only for a moment. But I like this bench the most. Firstly, no leaves fall on it, and secondly… oh, you’re leaving already? 

A Sliver of Sunlight, by Nirmal Verma, translated from Hindi by Sangeetha Balakrishnan

Translator’s note: A woman with her eyes peeled for sun-illumined park benches. An entire story based on a conversation with a stranger; a conversation with no dialogues. Short sentences that make one sit up and take notice. A literary style that holds things in abeyance – the doing of the ellipses in the text (but not just that). A deep dive into the protagonist’s mind, a tumble into her past and a resurfacing that holds a mirror to one’s own self. If I had to give you a sneak peek into Dhoop Ka Ek Tukda, what forewent would be my attempt at it.And what’s not to like in the things that constitute the story? Aside from the fact that I too delight in the sun peak-a-boo-ing me from between the branches of a tree as I search for that ‘perfect’ park bench, I am convinced this story is a great illustration of paying attention to life. And what else, really, are we all required to do but pay attention to life? 

Dhoop Ka Ek Tukda is a short story, no doubt, but it’s a capacious one. It shapeshifts to hold the deepest and wispiest of our thoughts for as long we need, and then delivers them back to us – the better for that abstract residence. This is a short story that has not just a room, but palatial mansions for reflection in it. I invite you to step in, saunter around and see what you come up with.