Glaring Shadow - A Stream of Consciousness Novel BS Murthy ISBN 81-901911-2-8 Copyright © 2014 BS Murthy Cover design Gopi’s water color painting by Lattice Advertisers, Hyderabad. Self Imprint F-9, Nandini Mansion, 1-10-234, Ashok Nagar, Hyderabad – 500 020 Other books by BS Murthy Benign Flame – Saga of Love Jewel-less Crown - Saga of Life Crossing the Mirage – Passing through youth Prey on the Prowl (A Crime Novel) Stories Varied – A Book of Short Stories Onto the Stage – Slighted Souls and other stage and radio plays Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife Bhagvad-Gita: ...Read More

Chapter 2 Pains of Regret “Not to speak ill of the dead,” he began as I readied to take notes, and continued after a pause, “what to make out of this social nicety when man is so much prone to speak nothing but ill of his fellow-men. Does it imply that since one should not speak ill of the dead, he should go the whole hog about it when the other is still alive and kicking! Maybe, that’s what man thinks; why he wouldn’t let go an opportunity, so to say creates one, to pour out his venom ...Read More

Chapter 3 Cradle of Life While I was still in the cradle life had signaled that it be a case of the run-of- the-mill for me,” he began delving into his extraordinary life. “You know that kids don’t mind the change of guard at their cradle as long as it was kept rocking. But I was insistent that the one who began should hold on to it till I slept off. I was not even two then and I’ve a vague memory of it. That’s not all, in those days, women invariably used to wear silk saris while ...Read More

Chapter 4 Outlook for Re-look “If not ingrained in concern, love is a flippant emotion, which is no avail to the loved ones,” he began proroguing as a prelude to his recall of his life and times. “More than the outer manifestations of love, it is one’s inner feelings that further the cause of the loved ones. But we tend to take the spendthrift spouse as a personification of love and the prudence of a caring parent as an indication of its absence. Don’t we also see families better off for the premature death of their profligate heads? ...Read More

Chapter 5 Humbling Reality “Relatives are a bother any day, more so when they die. Oh how goddamn sentiment robs man the freedom to abstain from the obsequies,” he began having wiped the tears that continued to roll down his cheeks in torrents. “That’s how I viewed Raju’s death getting into my car, that sultry afternoon. (He paused for a while as if in repentance). What an untimely death it was for him; well, as if there is an agreeable time for it, saving the ripe old age. Once into the thick of life, how we got estranged; ...Read More

Chapter 6 Orgies of Love “When Rajan joined Ruma, so to say, we became an extended family,” continued his narrative. “I admired his sense of humor and he my sense of purpose. I always tried to excel at work though my fate laid my career low, and so I became adept at all that I dabbled with. If not, instead of becoming a project consultant, at best I would have been a frustrated worker, or at worst, booted out for being sluggish. I realized that in life, as in Derby, the colt that bolts last need not be ...Read More

Chapter 7 Pangs of Remorse “Every life is unique but rarely one is exceptional,” he continued after long pause as if he was reminiscing about his own life, “and mine was rather unusual; oh, I had my first brush with intrigue when I was in class seven, then aged ten. Chandu and I were classmates besides being neighbors for our families were co-tenants. All children in our neighborhood used to flock to his place to play caroms on holidays and his mother was wont to serve us some snack or the other. Well I used to avoid those ...Read More

Chapter 8 Villainy of Innocence “Wonder how social mores affect the course of life,” he had resumed discourse at length “Won’t the American way of life that lets the teens to be on their own serve as an example? While the economy is structured for their economic independence, the society is not shaped to cope up with their youthful distractions that hamper their academic progress. That’s why the U.S has been perennially short of professionals and so looks eastwards to make up for the shortfall; but what if Parkinson’s theory about the alternate ascendancy of the East and ...Read More

Chapter 9 Couple of a Kind “Don’t they look made for each other,” he said handing me framed photograph of a handsome pair. “When Nehru was preparing the draft of his ‘tryst with destiny’, my father would’ve been penning his odes to my mother, whom he was courting then; and well before Nehru came to deliver his famous lines; my dad led his lady love to the altar. Yet it was no less a struggle for him to wed her as it was for Gandhi to wrest our country from the British yoke; while his dad had fixed ...Read More

Chapter 10 A Character of Sorts “Now back to my dad,” he continued his extraordinary reminiscences. he made me board a train to Ranchi, what a pleasant surprise it was to discover the softer side of his! Why his tears of farewell that brought to the fore the love he bore for me readily washed off my bitterness for him. Moreover, as I exchanged the domestic notes with my hostel mates, I realized that no dad did spare the rod to spoil the child, and that made me see childhood in a joint family in a fresh light; ...Read More

Chapter 11 Moments of Poignance “Oh, how it hurts to think that my dad could’ve behaved so with my sister I was rather fond of!” he resumed after a long pause. “I was away in Ranchi then and what I had heard of it hurts me to this day. One late evening she was lost in her thoughts, whatever they were, on the verandah, oblivious of the ogling ways of a roadside Romeo. My dad who happened to return home then got it all wrong, and paying a deaf ear to her professed innocence, like a man possessed ...Read More

Chapter 12 Enigma of Being “What would’ve been my life like had my dad succumbed to heart attack when he was barely forty-two,” he resumed his tale. “My third-rate degree was just on hand then and there was nothing else for us to fall back upon in such an eventuality; maybe, it was his will-power to avert our downslide that kept him alive. Or it could be the destiny of my own siblings that intervened with his fate to keep him going as their interests wouldn’t have been as well served by my life, and I too couldn’t ...Read More

Chapter 13 Vignettes of a Village “If city life is characterized by chaos, village life was all orderliness,” he continued. “Unlike the present-day multi-class urban societies, in the villages of yore, while the Brahmins held the high ground in agraharams and the intermediate castes occupied the middle ground, the peasants, and the artisans lived on the peripheries. So there was hardly any intra-class social interaction to speak about and that’s why I had no idea about the lives of the marginalized, but from the way they dressed and behaved, it was clear that their life was sustained on ...Read More

Chapter 14 A Teacher of Note “Landing in that town was no earthshaking moment for me the urban life then retained its rural character though not its ethos,” he began as I was ready with my pen and papers. “But still I missed my time in the green fields where I used to pluck the tender cereals from plants and pick up the ripened palm nuts from the ground. Moreover, as my grandparents stayed back in the village, my grandma’s tales were a thing of the past, literally that was, for I had no more of her clock ...Read More

Chapter 15 Brink of Incest “Once Raju and I had become classmates, what a lovely we have had!” he continued the recap of his times with his cousin. “His boisterousness proved to be the perfect foil for my adventurism, he had his finger in every pie and I too poked my nose everywhere. Though we got into trouble often in and out of school, if not his bluster, it was my wits that used to save the day for us. Whatever, to the delight of all, we were on target when it came to studies; but once we ...Read More

Chapter 16 Love-less Love “My life, so to say, became a stanza of the poem of first it’s not that my other affections were any prosaic for they were all penned in passion,” he continued. “Won’t the manifestations of first love and the embodiments of first sex stand apart from the pulsations of heart and the spasms of the body that one might experience in later affairs? And that’s why one should be choosy about the body for the first lay as anyway the reins of love are in the hands of heart. Whatever, with the newfound vision ...Read More

Chapter 17 Flights of Heart “Though I was pained by her indifference, my psyche didn’t suffer for rejection, and I owe that to the girls who buttressed my self-worth with their sensual attentions,” he began reviewing his life and times over our drinks. “Back home during holidays, I used to hang around a lot at a friend’s place; though I didn’t develop any romantic designs on his sisters, I was a hit with his cousins who were wont to visit them often; one girl was so enamored of me that she rarely let me be alone; her praises ...Read More

Chapter 18 Gaffes of Youth “Perhaps principles are the variable features of life,” he continued reflectively we began sipping the drink. “Back to Sumitra, as she rarely stepped out, I had no means of wooing her, but as hope didn’t desert me, it was my wont to obtain an update on her whenever I was in town. The fact that I have had a couple of women by then only increased my desire to possess her; though she continued to deny her body for all and sundry; but taking my fate into my hands, once I trespassed into ...Read More

Chapter 19 Pats and Slights “If love denied me the ecstasies of sex, it was sex that me the joys of love,’ he continued the intriguing account of his life. “Maybe vexed with the propensity of love to fail me at the threshold of possession, sex might’ve thought ‘enough is enough’; so, it seems to have induced fate to let Raju play his part in bestowing its final favor on me; we were in the same place then and didn’t drift fully apart still. There lived a desirable girl, a block away from his; when I told him ...Read More

Chapter 20 An Emotional Affair “If that cousin of mine exemplified the falsity of perception, the who used to ingratiate himself with her spouse was the personification of falsity itself,” he began the remarkable recap of his life. “But as the world reckons, he was an eligible bachelor as far as eligibility could take a middleclass guy; well he was an I.I.Tan with a MNC career and a four-wheeler to convey his corporate eminence-in-the-making. As my position, rather lack of it, failed to impress him, he was won’t not to reciprocate my greetings, and soon to avoid being ...Read More

Chapter 21 The Harlot Zone “As if to show me the darker side of the flesh-trade, life me into a harlot zone of the city I had reached,” he said as I refilled our glasses with the drink. “It was so unlike the pleasure streets of our town dotted with decent joints that I frequented; the crowded lanes of that red-light district, lined with girls in garish make-up and the dungeon of a brothel that I landed in were clear put-offs; so when the madam wanted to know about my kind of maal, I was all set to ...Read More

Chapter 22 A Lingering Longing “I’m no Gandhian and I don’t intend to be one,” he continued where he had left. “But as is being done, I see it’s a disservice to his legacy to deify him; it’s when I approach him as man that I value him as a human being, but in his picture of mahatma, I see many a wart in his atma. Credit him for cleaning up the public toilets but why not condemn him for having forced his spouse to do the same; why laud him for his quixotic abstinence unmindful of his ...Read More

Chapter 23 Smallness of Bigness “But as my child grew in Ruma’s womb, the devil gained ground my head for the second time; earlier to possess her I even thought of killing Rajan,” he continued as I returned. “Maybe I wouldn’t have brought myself to that, but the fact that I went to lengths to perfect the plan means Devi was right about my getting swayed by women. Had not death pulled him out of the scene, my ever-on-the-raise passion for Ruma might have tripped me at the threshold; let me tell you my plan for that perfect ...Read More

Chapter 24 Disown to Own “How the glaring shadow of my life came to distort my he continued in lament. “The grandiose ‘Imperial Infrastructures’ was the stilted idea of my fucked-up psyche, and as if man’s fate factors the times he lives in to shape his life, Harshad Mehta came onto the scene; can one ever fail to recall the euphoria he had helped generate in the bourses? Hadn’t business magazines, all and sundry that is, goaded the public to sell the family silver to invest in stocks? Oh, how the public issues of never-heard-of-entities without a factory ...Read More

Chapter 25 Sentiment of Ruin “It was my wining and dining with the rich and the powerful had hastened my moral fall,” he said wryly after a while. “Didn’t Rousseau observe that ruthlessness is the common characteristic of the successful; maybe I insensibly turned insensitive in their infectious company. Whatever may be the rationale for my twisted vision of love, the reality of my life was that I allowed myself to slide into the abyss of immorality. What with the materialistic veil shrouding our love life, I tried to fill my emotional void in an extramarital affair without ...Read More

Chapter 26 Enigma of Attraction “The beginning of my end was when Anand parted ways with he said resuming his remarkable tale. “But much before that, his destiny brought Anitha, a peach of a woman into his life. When he wanted to marry her, he made me privy to her poignant past that she had revealed to him, that is to let him decide whether it mattered to him; here’s her tale of betrayal and retrieval.” He paused for a while as if he needed time to retrieve himself from the sense of her betrayal. “As is the ...Read More

Chapter 27 Veneer of the Vile “Don’t we find women carrying their paternal baggage into their married he continued. “By and large, they tend to stick to their parental roots than sowing fresh family seeds in their matrimonial soil; it could be the natural weakness for one’s kith and kin or it may be individual inhibitions for integration; whether or not the environment at the in-laws’ place is conducive for camaraderie. Ruma opened her heart and home to her people who had shunned her when she needed them the most and as they wormed their way into her affections, ...Read More

Chapter 28 Swap for Nope “Here is that fact beyond fiction,” he began to narrate with a pride that didn’t escape my attention. “What a handicap it was to be divorced, thought my son; self-service at home and harlot-solace in a brothel; what service and how much solace! Women were ever scary of even wealthy divorcees as if divorce underscores one’s incompatibility once and for all, and a whore was no answer for a wife. Surely some featureless young thing could be willing and that’s no choice of a wife any way; but a lucky guy could bump ...Read More

Chapter 29 Goring Syndrome “Once we could remove our indignant blinkers,” he continued, “we had seen what wonderful woman Sarala was. As our son and his spouse doted upon each other, Ruma and I reminisced over our own times, and soon as Sarala delivered Ramesh, we gloated over our grandson, and well before his second birthday as he had Ramya for his sibling, our cup of joy was seemingly filled to the brim; as if to meet the future needs of the growing family, our ventures too began yielding in their bountiful. After all those inimical twists and ...Read More

Chapter 30 Back to the Basics “When Anand came to console me, Ruma’s relatives had a he continued with apparent sadness. “Afraid of my passing on the Imperial crown to him, they even moved the courts, but when he turned down my offer, and even as they withdrew their plaint, I began to brood over their greed; and as a couple of Rajan’s relatives too called on me with their lawyers, I felt as if I was face to face with the ugliness of wealth. Ruma’s people at least had the good sense to take her back into ...Read More