Nude before God , livre ebook

Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - K Kumar Shiv

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76 pages

English

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Ram Krishna is an artist who paints nudes. Incensed by his wife's possible infidelity, and despite his own conjugal insecurities, he engages in an adulterous liaison. Immediately, Karma strikes: his wife's purported lover pushes him to his death into a flooding river. Unclad of corporal existence, he hovers above earth and discovers that-apart from his parents, dog, and a few friends-no one misses him. Dejected, he encounters Yama, the Lord of Death, and begins a conversation that extinguishes his own airs and affectations, and makes him see that he may have been wrong about life . . . and his wife. Armed with a wry sense of humour, Shiv K. Kumar lays bare the questions of humanity's inescapable end, plying us with a story of the afterlife that gives us new reasons to live and laugh.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	17 mai 2013
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9788184004236
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Best of Faiz
Praise for Nude before God
A remarkable piece of work, combining irony, humour, compassion, fantasy and other qualities with great skill the product of a highly original literary imagination
-David Daiches, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
[A]n unusual narrative a sort of Blithe Spirit , with more profound ambitions than entertainment a fable of self-awakening a novelist who clearly deserves international attention
-Boston Globe
A canny adult fairytale graced by an engaging spiritual benevolence
-Library Journal, USA
Steadily light and prevailingly humorous
-Publishers Weekly, USA

First published in the USA by Vanguard Press, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Book Centre, Inc., Montreal, in 1983
This edition is published by Random House India in 2013
Copyright Shiv K. Kumar 1983
Random House Publishers India Private Limited
Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B
A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, UP
Random House Group Limited
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London SW1V 2SA
United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184004236
To
Manish, my son; and Madhu, my wife
that the centre of consciousness which was in existence before death does not cease to be in existence after death and that the experience of this centre after death has the same kind of continuity with its experience before death as that of a man who sleeps for a while and wakes again.
-W.R. Matthews
the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher or artist, or musician or lover
-Plato
Dear Ram Krishna,
A waspish reviewer once branded me a coy plagiarist because I had used the title of an unknown poem for one of my novellas. Since I have been stung once, I wish to announce publicly that this is your work, your fantasy, or whatever you may like to call it. Although you are a painter and not a professional writer as I am, I shouldn t like to be censured this time for tampering with somebody else s manuscript. So the title I ve proposed for your work is my only contribution, for I saw you appear from God and Yama, as though in the nude, stripped of all your defences.
I know you have been through a harrowing experience, but don t be afraid of death.
Death and rebirth, I imagine, are two facets of the same experience. If death is the failure of the body to meet life s challenge, rebirth is not just a second coming but a cycle of ceaseless homecomings to the earth to let the soul try it out again and again
God bless you!
Yours sincerely,
SKK
P.S. The way to overcome the fear of death is to prevent it from becoming a morbid preoccupation by keeping your mind immersed in work-in your case, painting. Read less, paint more, take your women in modest doses. Therein lies your salvation. But I mustn t start preaching.
1

T he scarlet flames crackled, spat, hissed and spurted into the air; they swayed like a multihooded cobra charmed by the priest s sonorous chants to Indra, the rain god:
O Lord of Water Our purifier Our preserver Our destroyer- Forgive us our sins!
If I was present at the Shiva Temple for the fire ritual, it was more to please the chairman of the Andhra Social Welfare Brotherhood, a devout Hindu, than to participate in this propitiatory puja. For me it was a mere business engagement: the Brotherhood had commissioned me to paint some of the gruesome flood scenes for an exhibition at the Jubilee Hall as part of their programme to stir the public conscience into action .
But, though prayers were also held in all the prominent mosques and churches in town, the rain kept pouring down relentlessly. The swollen Moosi river inundated several houses along its banks, spreading devastation all around. Hundreds of corpses, bloated to bursting, lay on the riverside waiting to be cremated or buried.
By the time I reached home, after the ceremony, it was already evening. Hardly had I stepped into the living room when the phone rang.
Who is it, please?
No answer.
Hello, who is it? I repeated sharply.
A brief silence.
Is Mrs Ram Krishna at home, please?
It was a man s voice. It quivered and I heard him swallowing his saliva.
She s not at home right now, I answered. Can I take a message?
Another pause. The man was breathing heavily, like a sprinter knocked out of a hurdle race. Well, I d much rather he trailed off.
A dark thought, like a septic mist on a winter morning, rose within me. Had Mary picked up a lover?
May I know who is speaking, please? I drawled out the please , hoping to hook him, though I was roused to some inner fury.
Kenneth George. The phone chilled into silence.
I recalled how a couple of times before, someone had hung up as soon as I had picked up the receiver.
I felt a taste of cold ash on my tongue, a cramping sensation in my stomach. A strange emotion-acerbic as margosa.
I slumped on the sofa in the living room, my mind caught in a maelstrom. Outside, the wind howled like a wraith and the rain pounded against the windowpanes. As I turned on the lights I saw the chandelier above my head, hanging like a corpse from a gibbet.
What s in a name? I said to myself. Everything! So Mary had returned to a fellow Christian And how strange, my father naming me after Lord Rama-Lord Krishna!
As I heard a car pull up at the gate, Mary walked in, flushed.
Where have you been? I asked.
Shopping.
Who brought you home?
Someone gave me a ride.
Someone? I asked derisively, fixing her with a steady gaze.
Yes.
Who was it?
A shopper at the Jain Store, she replied casually. Wasn t it rather nice of him? Otherwise the rain
There was a phone call for you, I interjected, my eyes still probing her face for some clue to the mystery of it all.
Who was it?
I alerted myself, like a cameraman who steadies his hand before the flash goes off.
Kenneth George! I exclaimed.
Oh! she murmured, without any sign of discomfort or guilt. What did he say?
Nothing.
I see, she smiled.
Who is he? I nearly exploded. The nonchalant tone of her voice cut me like a lancet.
Someone you don t know.
Ah, the mystery is deepening, I snickered.
What s come over you, Ramy? she asked and walked out of the living room.
What brazenness! I said to myself, and bolted the door. I felt as though the roof had caved in, burying me under the debris of cement and girder. When Mary knocked at the door an hour later to ask me to supper, I snapped, I m not hungry. Leave me alone, please.
Then it s one of your moods, she grunted, and went away.
Agitated and perplexed, I began to pace up and down the room. My suspicion began to worm itself deep into my psyche. Had I been a double fool-for marrying a Christian, who was one of my art students as well? She was not a professional painter, just sketched now and then. Still
And now she d picked up a lover-a Christian!
Maybe it never worked if both husband and wife belonged to the same profession. It was a sort of inbreeding. A painter should marry a salesgirl, an engineer, a nurse, a doctor, a lady typist In fact, the best thing for an artist was just a housewife-a simple, beautiful creature to feed him, scrub his back in the shower, sleep with him and then leave him alone with his work.
I caught myself gazing at a wet patch on the ceiling. It was the shape of a wide-jawed reptile dragging itself on its dappled, scaly belly.
During the past week I d been toying with the idea of doing an oil painting of death-just for myself. I had thought of representing it as a black vulture perched on a battered parapet, holding in its beak the entrails of a man or a beast. And now, there on the ceiling, I felt as though some uncanny spirit had already produced it for me.
Watching this grotesque figure, I sank into sleep.
The next morning, as I opened my eyes, there it was-the reptile, staring at me with its weird, beady eyes. Putting on my shoes, I shut the image out of my mind and paced into the bathroom.
Still brooding over the phone call, I nicked myself while shaving and nearly punctured my gums while brushing my teeth. In the shower, I turned on the wrong taps-hot for cold, cold for hot.
Since there was no sign of Mary anywhere around (was she still in bed?), I asked Ramu to serve my breakfast on the rear verandah. As I sat down to it, Peter, my white Pomeranian, curled up beside me, his muzzle between his peewee paws, as though scared of my stern countenance.
I looked out and noticed the rain had stopped. I saw the sun climbing up the horizon, its tenuous orange glow gradually deepening into the copper glare of late July. As the light filtered through the grille, it splintered into tiny squares on the mosaic floor of the verandah.
Another coffee, sir? asked Ramu, looming behind me.
Yes, I replied as I glanced at my watch. There was still time for a second cup before I took off.
As I finished my breakfast and stood up to leave, Ramu gave me the morning newspaper.
Why didn t you bring it earlier? I said testily. I could have read it over my coffee.
I m sorry, sir.
Will you put the paper in my car? No time to read it now.
Yes, sir.
And will you tell memsahib that I may be late tonight? No supper or anything. Understand?
Yes, sir.
There was an omniscient glint in his eyes, as though he knew about the rupture between me and Mary.
As I walked out of the verandah, Peter followed me with a wistful, droopy look, as if saying, Angry with me too, master? But I was in no mood to fondle h