CHAPTER IV. the problems people encountered are pictured in this novel. The famine is the

Transcription

1 CHAPTER IV HE WHO RIDES A TIGER The harrowing experiences left incomplete in So Many Hungers, get completed in He Who Rides a Tiger. The spectre of the Bengal femine and the problems people encountered are pictured in this novel. The famine is the valley of the shadow of death through which the characters have to pass before they attain their full stature as human beings. Of the Hero, P K.R.Chandrasekhar observes: "Kalo, in particular, chastened and purified by 3 his experiences and sufferings, learns the secret that to be true to one's own self is the greatest achievement of man".' The novel reveals that greatest achievement of man in life is to be true to himself. Kalo, a blaksmith, lived with his only daughter Chandra Lekha in Tharna town. The girl's unusual cleverness and attainments, the touching tenderness of the mutual affection of father and daughter are clearly brought out in the beginning of the story. The shadow of the Bengal famine now begins to fall over Tharna town. Food grains become scarce and unemployment becomes an acute problem. Weavers and other traders sell Chandrasekharan, K. R. Bhabani Battachar ya (Arnold Heinemann f Publichsers (India) New Delhi - 1 ) 1974, p. 9.

2 their implements for a pittance and leave the town. The author describes the dawn of the famine thus: The dark year started three or four months after Chandra Lekha won her silver medal. It was almost the darkest in the history of Bengal. A plague took the land in its grip, the plague of hunger, in the wake of war.' Bhattacharya continues to describe the war situation thus: The Japanese army stood poised at the eastern front, facing a wall of resistance. But no barricades had been put up against the enemy within the borders: no rationing of food grains, no price control, no checking of the giant sharks who played the cornering game on a stupendous scale...' He Who Rides a Tiger, (Delhi : Hind Pocket Book (P) Ltd., 1955) p.18. Ibid, p.18

3 The result was hunger, poverty and privation. Bhattacharya painfully records people's miseries thus: Barns were empty - the peasants had been induced to sell off their grain. Markets were empty - the grain was hidden away. The tillers of the soil, reduced to starvation, had no recourse but to sell land, to buy back the produce of the land. And now rice was five times the old rate. "Weavers sold their looms to traders from big cities who toured the country side for bargains. Artisans sold their tools. Fishermen's boats were chopped up for fire wood to sell. The plague washed up in fierce tides. Bengal was dying. Tharna was dying".4 Kalo is also drawn by hunger and famine to Calcutta in search of job and food. The capital is the workshop of war weapons. As Kalo's hands are strong as a hammer, he is prepared for any hard work for the sake of sustenance. He is so poverty stricken, he has no money to travel from one place to another, he travels like thousands of people ticketless and boards on running trains. There are also cries of people in distress. Hungry, we die.... Give us a few grains of food, Baba..... give us a ride to the great city. Food even for dogs and cats... Take mercy on

4 the dying ones, Baba, permit us to leave.... Give us a chance to eat, thou ocean of mercy. God will bless you." On his way to Calcutta, Kalo is jailed for three months of hard labour for stealing a few bananas to eat lest he would die. Bhattacharya remarks, "Thieving was very much out of his line: Dislocated by the hunger of all times, he was on his way to the great city in search of work and the very marrow of his bones was ashamed because he had to travel by footboard"." In depicting the life of Kalo during the period immediately following his release from prison, Bhattacharya gives a pathetic account of the plight of the destitutes in Calcutta. Hunger makes him carry dead bodies of destitutes into Municipal trucks for disposal. Still worse job, he gets in to procuring girls for flesh trade. Unexpectedly he gets a good brokerage. One day, in one of the brothels for which Kalo is working as an agent, he sees a rich customer getting into one of the rooms. Soon after he hears the plaintive, protesting cries of a woman. The voice sounds strangely like that of Chandra Lekha. Immediately, the customer leaves the room in anger. "bid, p.26 Ibid, p.33

5 Driven by strange foreboding, Kalo enters the room to find to his horror the girl is none other than his daughter. Realising the gravity of the whole situation, he locks the girl Immediately out of the hell-like atmosphere. He brings her to his habitation. She narrates how she became a vict~on to brothel, which makes Kalo shed tears and at the sametime he was indignat at the meanrnindedness and cruelty shown by the unscrupulous exploiter. He remembers the oft repeated words in prison. "We are the scum of the earth. They hit us where it hurts badly - in the belly. We have got to hit back".7 Society has now hurt him and his daughter is the worst of viction of the society's onslaught on the have-nots. He must take revenge upon the society which is hostile to his family. Totally embittered with the selfish society that turns the innocent girls into prostitutes and honest men into thieves, Kalo prepares his revenge. He creates a fake temple and makes a living for himself and his daughter posing himself off as a brahmin priest. Soon. he becomes powerful, wealthy, influential and revered. In course of time his easily acquired prosperity, opulence and social prominence show signs of corroding his true self. ' Ibid. p.39

6 But every now and then, he has a pricking in his conscience. AS a result of this, he is tormented by moral and spiritual conflict between love and suffering, power and prestige on one side and desire to be honest and true to himself. He is riding on a tiger. He has to make a right decision to save himself from the situation. He should either dismount from the tiger and get killed or kill the tiger of deceit and face the consequence. In his struggle, he is able to kill the tiger of deceit and make believe; he acts dramatically. He discloses his identity before a large gathering, a mixed gathering of all classes and castes. While the Caste Hindus fret and fume for having been cheated by a blacksmith, praises and felicitations come from other people. Biten congratulates him thus: You have triumphed over those others and yourself. What you have done just now will steal the spirits of hundreds and thousands of us. Your story will be a legend of freedom, a legend to inspire and a~aken.~ Bhattacharya focusses the tragic predicament caused by the hunger of the people, who wish to lead honest life and sincere in their work. They get caught in the hands of tragic sequences. Ibid, p.232

7 Famine and Hunger are the worst tragedies faced by Bengalis. ''The Great Hunger had struck the land of Bengal in the wake of war: The danger of the masses of people uprooted from their old earth and turned into beggars, and the hunger of the all owning few for pleasure and more pleasure, a raging fever of the times. Uprooted women with their own kind of hunger had to soothe the other hunger, had to cool the raging pleasure fever with their bodies" ". This is how Bhattacharya narratzs the bitter days of femine, the sudden sweep of disintegration, the rootlessness and the end of human decency. This bitter day found a place in the history. The poverty killed the grace of Bengalis. Kalo understands at last how four fifths of his savings has been lost. The money has been swindled from him by the city sharks. Lekha sells her... medal. She also sells all saleable things. In the famine, Kalo thinks while at prison that his daughter Lekha may have to roam the fields with hundreds of others, like a hungry animal, digging out soft wild roots and wading in pools for a few shrimps. The very thoughts of his daughter's suffering in the land of famine make him feel despair and it is a continuous agony for him. A tragic tension is built up in his mind. After his release from jail, Kalo sees the fields in Bengal are heavy with yellowing rice. There will be heavy harvest but who will own it? In the country around Tharna, the peasants have mortgaged their Ibid, p.54

8 ~addy crops months before they are grown and with that money, they have bought rice from the dealers at five times the old rates. The money is spent, the rice is eaten and the peasants continue starving or eat half stomach while their lands yield rich harvest while they cannot even see or think of possessing them. The great city is bulglng with uneinployment problem besides the agony of starvation. These are terrible scenes of poor and the pitiable condition of the people. The harrowing experience of poverty to which people are subjected to by the rulers' mismanagement and maladministration is terrible. Kalo watches a scavenger employing a rubbish can near the pavement while a few people in hunger look at hoping to have a few crumbs of food. There are agonising cries in every street, Kalo hears. "Baba,.. hunger kills me, Baba... give me one sip of rice water... I cannot bear this any more. Baba... it was a woman's wail of desperation, a wail from the bowels of Bengal".Io Even in this desperate condition, Kalo takes a greater rupee from his waist cloth and hands to the woman on the streets who asks him alms. When a sickness keeps raising in his throat, he drinks from a tap and sleeps on the pavement. '' Ibid, p.50

9 Kale sees a funeral pr~~ession in which two men at the end of the ~rocession stand in an open car and dip their hands into wicker baskets out of which they scatter quantities of rice in the street. Once in a while they fling a palm full of copper coins. An excited crowd of beggars push and scramble to pick up the coins. Some of them are content with their collection of rice. Bhattacharya comments on this scene thus: "The chanting of the Name was meant to propel the departing soul skyward. Without that and the complicated ritual which followed the departed soul would remain earthbound. The rice and coppers scattered on the street as well as the funeral feasts would earn a goodly measure of merit for the soul of this Brahmin and ensure its warm reception at the portals of heaven, What would happen to the departing souls of those dying on the streets? Kalo asked himself. Were they doomed to be denizens of the seven hills? For them there was no chanting of the Name, no scattering of rice, the rice that would feed their eather form. No Brahmin priest spoke in timeless words from the Veda or applied the holy fire to the fleshless faces on the funeral pyres.

10 "Would the hundred thousand dead hover in unseen shapes over the great city eternally? Was heaven meant for the rich alone?"." Kalo is made to do what he does. That is to become an agent to procure girls for brothel. For this, the police, the judge, money and the general public are responsible. Society red-eyed with rage, has branded him as evil when he has done nothing really wrong. It is a misfortune, he is engaged in a work which he hates, but no other alternative survival is available for Kalo. Is it tragic predicament? Society pushes to such a tragic situation. In He who Rides a Tiger, Bhattacharya records the misery of the poor, but also the cruelty of the rich. The situations are so skilfully developed, and ably presented the harrowing contrast between affluence and poverty, power and helplessness, goodness and hypocricy. The indignation of the novelist is all the more poignant because Kalo is forcibly dragged into the toil. That is the tragic predicament of the protoganist in the novel. Once his face is painted black he decides to take the mask off and express the real faces of the human monsters. 'l Ibid, p.53

11 He does this and gets happiness in his success, though his heart is not at peace. He is racked by qualms of conscience and beset with Lekha's gloominess. He has taken personal revenge but not remedied the wail that comes from the bowel of Bengal. Kalo, the Mangal Adikari, like the others in the city. bulges with riches, glitters with loveliness, throbs with life and joy. Kalo is unable to cast off the unspeakable misery, revolting ugliness, and creeping horror of slow death. His achievements fail to remove the child hand that lies upon his daughter's heart, (t glacial wall that has... her sprightliness. He is helpless which is nothing but his tragic predicament. He cannot overcome it nor can he find a way out from it. It is shocking to realise that he himself is not out of that prediction which he has created for the selfish and hypocritical. Despite his being placed in tragic predicament, Kalo has the courage to face the situation in order to kill the lie and explode the myth: "Evil is to be faced and fought with its own knivesu.'* The whole problem they confront is due to hunger. When the man's basic need is not fulfilled, even the honest and sincere individual becomes a rebel against the society and the rulers. l2 Ibid, p.227

12 For the tragic predicament here is food, the very essential thing, when that becomes an unattainable thing, no doubt even the docile individual becomes a rebel as it is in the case of Kalo. Bhattacharya observes: Something had seized the people so that their apathy was broken. Great demonstrations were to be seen in he streets almost everyday. They were not composed of down and outs' among the hunger-marchers were men from workshops, students from colleges, clerks from offices.'" When the entire State is under the grip of famine, the sufferings of the people is less said the better. It is a real human tragedy, still worst is, it is a living death. Everyday people lived in hope to have a morsel of food. Low and middle income group suffered greatly. Their plight is harrowing and the peasants seeing their children suffer for want of food is all the more a worse situation. They are in a tragic predicament. The solace they hoped that would come at least sometime later, is fleeting. No end to their misery is in sight. When this is the pathetic side, in the otherside of Society as Bhattacharya observes: '"bid, p. 167

13 Kalo had thought over a curious contradiction of the tones; while men died of hunger, wealth grew and while kindliness dried up, religion was more in demand. It was only the outward fotrn of religion, the shell of ritual, empty within." Bhattacharya draws the attention of the reader through his artistic medium to the misguided faith. The evil outgrowth and dogmaticism which have crept into the lives of the Indian mass in consequence they also fail to see the realities. In order to drive home that the famine in Calcutta is manmade, he turns the reader's attention towards the hoarding of food grains by the unscrupulous rich businessmen and they revel to see the people paying through their nose heavy price for the purchase of a day's rice. The agony of the have-nots and happiness of the "haves" and in between the innocent poor people are caught. It is their tragic predicament. But Kalo stands a man apart from this social order. According to Shiv.K.Kumar, "It is through this low born but honest and magnanimous blacksmith, Kalo, that Bhattacharya presents his humanistic philosophy". I" l4 Ibid, p. 113 Shiv.K. Kumar, "Indo Anglican Literature", Literature in Modern Indian Languages. V.K. Gokak, ed. (New Delhi : Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1957), p.284.

14 The main concern of the novelist in writing He Who Rides a Tiger, is partly political and mainly economical and social. The Quit India Movement, people imprisoned for the sake of loving their country, defiance of bans, hunger strikes in jails are the reminds of the socio-po!itical and economic situation that prevailed during the pre-independent days. The tragic predicament that is focussed into the novel is not only due to the Bengal famine but also the cause of 11 World War. The casual attitude of the thoughtless British soldiers to the spectacle of hunger and suffering and their enjoyment of boys fighting for food, reveal the image of India and the sorry state of affairs that prevailed during the colonial rule in India. Kalo's own experience shows the nature of the ordeal endured by the thousands of people. Bhattacharya sketches everything within the resources of his art when he gives us a view of the plight of the destitutes in the city. We see the hungry men beaten up by the police. Men die in such large numbers that the bodies have to be taken away by the truck loads. He Who Rides a Tiger is a novel that focusses the real problems the poor confront in their day to day life. Day in and day out their survival becomes an ordeal; food is not within their reach to acquire, shelter is beyond their reach, education unthinkable, dress less said the better - that is the way of their existence. That is their tragic predicament. The caste Systems come in for chastisement in the novel.

15 The symbol and agent of protest against the tyranny of caste is shown in how Kalo's sister Purnima, is hastily given away in marriage to an elderly widower when the parents discover that a young man of low caste, Basav is in love with her. Her unhappy married life leads her to comrnit suicide. When Basav taunts Biten about the cruel incident, he renounces his caste forthwith, he says that he is no longer a Brahmin and removes his sacred thread as well. Here again casteism played the havoc and each individual faces the tragic situation because of it. As the denunciation of the caste system is one of the purposes of the novelist, he alludes to it in sensual places in the novel. The system is so well entrenched that Chandra Lekha's attending school meets with severe criticism both from the high caste and the low caste people of Tharna. The point emphasised by Bhattacharya here is that caste became a habit of thinking as much as a way of life and it is not that much easy to eradicate it. ffl According to K.R.Chandrasekhar, the objective of the novel besides h showing the tragic predicament, it portrays: Two evils - the evil of exploitation which results in hunger and degradation and the evil of the caste system. Two characters symbolise the

16 protest, Kalo against exploitation and Biten against Caste. IG Forced by circumstances and inherent compassionate feelings. Kalo becomes a rebel against social atrocities. The development of Kalo as a rebel is described in a way as to suggest that the rebellion in him is a product of a pernicious system which has to be challenged. Bitcn's imprisonment is the price he has to pay for protesting against the callous treatment given to the hungry by the authorities. The agitation to which men desperately resort to when they are no longer able to bear the pangs of hunger. When Kalo and Lekha are comfortably settled in the temple, they witness a procession of destitutes carrying a banner and shouting "Food! we demand food for the hungry!" Viswanath, the old gardener, joins the procession though he himself is now safe in the protection of Mangal Adhikari. The trustees of temple discharge him from the service for action of rebellion. Bhattacharya indicates the protest against hunger becomes a broad based movement with which all patriotic people begin to identify themselves and also that it becomes merged with the larger movement of national freedom. l6 Chandrasekharan, K.R. p.70

17 Besides the patriotic fervour. He Who Rides a Tiger focusses that the individuals suffer because of social customs and political apathy to remove the existing social evils. The selfish motives with which people offer worship at a temple are brought out in the novel through a few episodes. We also get a glimpse of the motives with which most of these people make their offerings to the deity. Among them there are people who refuse to give priority to the sick man whose object is the salvation of the soul. Bhattacharya seems to suggest that ritualistic worship even in a false temple with a faked image can be of help to a dedicated worshipper by serving as an anodyne against sorrow and by avoiding the growth of mental powers through concentration. The Bengal famine forms the backdrop of He Who Rides a Tiger and constitutes the mainspring of Kalo's action. The emphasis shifts in the later part of the novel to the characters of Kalo and Lekha and to the manner in which they react to their situation. Lekha's character is steady and of a piece, and her action shows her consistency despite ups and down she faces in life. Lekha functions throughout as the keeper of her father's conscience. The case of Kalo is different. He experiences a moral and spiritual conflict between love of ease, power and prestige on one side and desire to be true to himself on the other. He is finally able to kill the tiger of deceit and make

18 believe when he acquires the moral strength to be himself. The struggle of Kalo is a struggle for integrity despite the tragic predicaments he faces. As for the problem presented in the novel it is one of identity, and ironically, the problem of ident~ty is Kalo, which is not physical but social. But the social problems he encounters results in the tragic predicament. Kalo's tragic predicament starts with the death of his wife while giving birth to the baby daughter, his aspiration for a change in life style, finds expression in his naming the daughter Chandra Lekha. We can even say that Kalo's aspiration for a new status with money, is an unconscious indication to a problem which ultimately leads to his tragic predicament. He thinks that people in his area should come and congratulate his daughter for having secured a medal in an essay writing competition. So slowly he becomes conscious of a new significance to be attached to his family. Bhattacharya observes that the father in him "sat expectantly on his verandah, waiting for the great ones of town to visit his house and pay compliments to the girl who had put to shame even the great Calcutta city'' but 'no one came'. It was as though nothing had happened in Tharna town". l7 l7 He Who Rides a Tiger (Bombay, Jaico Publishing House. 1955). p. 1.

19 Kalo gets so much upset when the people in the area fail to recognise his daughter's achievement. It soon becomes a sore and gaping wound in the wake of war and specter of famine stalks the wholz of Bengal. Bhattacharya sums up the crisis of 1943 : "the plague washed up in fierce tidss. Bengal was dying. Tharna was dying". '" The tragedy that strikes the whole of Tharna is so intense that people are evacuated from the place. It is a ~nisfortune and for Kalo it is a blow to his high aspiration. He is placed in a tragic situation all of a sudden which he has least dreamt of. He is forced to leave his town in search of work, any work, any where it is offered, what he wants is food for himself and to his daughter. Kalo is forced to leave his town in search of work and food. The great exodus begins from Tharna as well as other villages. The hungry marchers are beaten up mercilessly by the police guarding trains to Calcutta. To kill his hunger, Kalo steals three bananas and lands up in prison for commiting the offence. Bhattacharya achieves at this point a vivid and dramatic development in the portrayal of Kalo's character. l8 Ibid, p.16

20 As Ihab Hassan points out that "The disparity between the innocence of the Hero and the destructive character of his experience define his concrete, existential, situation^".^' This reveals Kalo's encounter with conventional values - makes him recoil from the reality of inhumanity. He sees that he is caught in the whirlpool of problems for no fault of his own, from where begins his tragic predicament. Bhattacharya shows a good control over the delineaation of Kalo's character, namely the moral aspect - that is, the way a person reacts to a situation and translates his reaction into action and the mental process - that is the way a person thinks about himself and the relevant situation are well manipulated by the author in the novel. The novel can be studied as a well ordered and artistic structure of individual experience in a specified circumstance or how the individual faces chain of problems which places his tragic predicament. The novelist takes care to portray the individual's reaction when they are caught unawares or they undergo agonising problems because it is their tragic predicament caused by man made situation. l9 Ihab Hasran, Radical Innocence (Pornection : University Press. 1961).

21 Either it is Bengal famine or Kalo's imprisonment or for that matter his daughter's landing in a house of ill fame - all show that the piquant situation each one is placed in is not in his hands. The complex urban problems, urban vices, the presence of mass movements, thc faith in superstitions, belief in fate, all contribute to tragic situations. According to Syamala Rao in: He Who Rides a Tiger, Bhabani Bhattacharya gives us a pathetic picture of innumerable indignities and cruelties to which human beings are subjected during the famine.20 The famine caused untold havoc in the lives of innocent people and pulled down the mankind to a despicable level and honour was its easiest target and it did everything possible to crush it and destroy it. It caused not only the influx of people into the cities but it made them do anything for the sake of survival. Because of poverty and hunger for food, people were involved in various kinds of perverse activities and exploitation. The human essence was squeezed out and in consequence only a debased human frame was left out. " Syarnala Rao, B. Bhabani Bhattachrya (Blackie & Sons Pvt. Ltd., Madras, 1988), p.74

22 Taking advantage of the situation the unscrupulous elements in the society began to leave, catering to the temptations of the flesh and eyeing up village damsels in order to sell them for flesh trade. Everything was reduced to mere bestiality and the law of jungle prevailed. As Syamala Rao observes: Bhabani Bhattacharya since he deals with so calarnitious an affair, makes use of every possible artistic device to ensure the reader's reaction and his compressionability. He lays before the evil that come to prevail without any restraint at all and the concentration of evil on the limited canvas of the novel has unfathomably profound impact. " Bhattacharya has skillfully structured his novel He Who Rides a Tiger and exploited the plot in an excellent manner. The theme of the novel touches the core of the human heart. The novel not only pictures the naked horror of the famine but also reveals the ruthlessness of the society and above all the psychological and superstitious nature of the people. Despie *' Syamala Rao. B. Bhabani Bhattacharya (Blackie & Sons Pvt. Ltd.. Madras, 1988), p.74

23 of the economic and social injustices meted out to the innocent people especially the poor. According to Balrarn S Sorot: Through the story of Kalo, the hero of the novcl. Bhabani Bhattacharya illustrates that neither a rigid adherence to the estahlished social code nor abrupt break from it is beneficial to man. The true happiness and the fulfilment in life can be attained only after a moderation of temperament with a due regard for the established conventions and equal awareness of the requirements of the modern age." As regards Kalo, he has a firm faith in the traditional values of life. The caste hierarchy is sunk deep in his spirit which corrodes his finer sensibilities. Though unable to understand the validity or the utility of the established order in society, Kalo never questioned its relevance. His is a simple set of values. Honesty, hardwork, and faith in law and justice are the core of his being. His only question is why there is so much of injustice and 22 Balram S. Sorot, The Novels of Bhabani Bhattacharya (Prestige Books, New Delhi : 1991), p.75.

24 inhumanity in society especially based on caste, power and money. When he is at loss to find an answer. he gets disillusioned. The oppressive awareness of his low birth, poverty, hunger, three months's rigorous imprison~nent for a neglibile offence, his work as a brothel house agent. are the factors which make Kalo, a social rebel. Kalo thinks that for his tragic predicament social injustice is responsible. He throws away old values by which he lived, now he wants to rise in rebellion against all such values because they gave him nothing, rather made him a slave to those oppressive ideals, As the tension mounts in his mind, it becomes unbearable to him. When the opportune moment comes, Kalo has to make a manly decision "to kill the tiger" and thereby descend to solid earth from his lofty seat. Chandra Lekha is bent upon destroying herself for the sake of Kalo : further forces his decision, and finally, he reveals the astonishing truth that he is not a Brahmin and the crisis of his spirit ends and Kalo attains his real self again. His outlook has been broadened. He feels now neither superior nor inferior to any class or caste. In consequence, Kalo comes to synthesise the old and the new in his personality. He gets the equanimity of mind with an equipoise to see things life in good perspective.

25 When tragic situations in sequences strike him one after another, he becomes rather mentally upset and curses his stars. But at one stage he understands that his tragic predicament is nature-made more than man-made. Of course, human beings with their greed aggravated it, but thc possibility of seeing the light after passing through the dark tunnel of' tragic predicament, he consolidates his position; he now believes that in life, sometimes a big compromise has to be made, for the sake of survival. Bhattacharya despite focussing his characters enmeshed in tragic predicament, fuses the traditional and the modern values in the most conspicuous feature of his writing. At one stage, he tows with the idea of the integration of approaches and the blending of values, by far the most significant idea that Bhattacharya conveys through this novel. In He Who Rides a Tiger, all the characters are complex, torn by competing loyalties, precariously balanced between antagonistic forces within and without. But Kalo becomes the protoganist of the novel who sees the realities, passes through conventions, lives through agonising episodes ultimately gets into tragic predicaments. Sometimes he thinks that the entire cause of suffering he faces is because of certain individuals in the society.

26 Kalo's fight is not with an individual but with life that make such people. He is avenging himself by forcing perdition for all who are nurtured in that life, perdition from which there can never be any escape. He also presents the theme of trial and error and ultimate realizatio~,. Kalo starts the drama at the temple purely with the motive of revenge, acting the part of the Brahmin, Mangal Adhikari, out of necessity. In due course of time, he experiences a moral and spiritual conflict between love of ease, power and prestige on one side and desire to be true to himself on the other. He is finally able to kill the tiger of deceit and make believe when he acquires the moral strength to be himself. Often we get the feeling that the entire tragic predicament in the novel is due to society and its inherent foibles and beliefs. Belief, in this country, could be likened to its rivers, he said. The swollen water burst the banks and flooded the country side, destroyed lives, eroded the soil and went to waste, while great areas of dry cornland thirsted and crops failed; harnessed, put to proper use, the rivers could irrigate, produce power, add to the country's riches. In the same way, the people's belief was a great force which could be guided in good ways, made creative. When this great force has ceased to go to waste, it would no longer be a

27 curse. blighting lives. It would be the country's truest a~set.~' sometimes we come across in He Who Rides a Tiger, not a mere passive suffering. A protest and rebellion also we witness. Even thc simple and innocent Lekha approves of the idea of rebellion against certain social atrocities. Though they meekly accept that they undergo suffering. it is their tragic predicament. When they think that they can overcome the predicament, they get emotionally excited and want to rebel against the society, that made them suffer thus. Superstitious people, rigid rituals and orthodoxy have made the people. The development of Kalo as a rebel is described in such a way as to suggest that the rebellion in him is a product of pernicious system which has to be challenged. A small rebel was born when he sold his tools and set off for the big city. The rebel grew eyes and ears in court and prison, with the help of B-10, gave it a mouth and a protest. Out of the protest he had ached mutinously, challenging man and god.24 2"e Who Rides a Tiger (Jaico), p.173 He Who Rides a Tiger (New Delhi : Hind Pocket Books. 1973), p.117.

28 ~alo has the courage to face threatening ordeals which confront him in every sphere of his activity and forces him to ground. According to Syamala Rao: Kalo has the courage to dismount the tiger and it is this dismounting that is the core of the novel. Caste is only the scaffolding and famine is subsidiary. The main things are riding and dismounting.'5 Inspite of the ordeals and tension, Kalo gets transformed to be better and humane towards the end of the novel. The transformation in Kalo is the result of his daughter Lekha's constant endeavour to bring her father from the ethical void to luminous road wherein he can find a new vigour in life and purpose in living. She knows that she cannot imbibe the spirit of the masquerade and so comes out of its clutches and is prepared to incur the displeasure and hostile reaction of her father, instead of being a fish out of water in the strange world. In a way Lekha is a liberating force to Kalo and she opens up his eyes to see the truth. The supreme sense of belonging overwhelms her. The daughter effects a sea change towards the end in the life of her father. 25 Syamala Rao, p.78.

29 REcO~.tiw?~g 101 He Who Rides a Tiger can be studied on various levels of understanding. It is an ordered and artistic structure of individual experience in multiple facets of life. It is also the individual's reaction in specificed circumstances; as a legend or a moral fable of freedom trom kar, {lf hunger for power and glory. According to Premananda Kumar. the theme of the novel is "public and individual morality". The novel is also a saga of naturalistic prqjecrion of natural consciousness in the specified era where the whole psyche of the nation had suffered. Besides this, it is a novel set in romantic tone and the growth and development of individual conscio~sness.~" The success of the novel is due not only to its theme but also for its interesting and well sustained portrayal of the characters and situations. He demonstrates fine control over the delineation of the characters comprising of two elements - namely moral aspect - that is, the way a person reacts to Prema Nandakumar's article on "English in Indian Literature since Independence", Ed. by K.R.S. Iyenger (New Delhi : Sahitya

30 a situation and translates his reaction into action, and the mental process which is nothing but the way a person thinks about himself and the relevant situation. These are all well manipulated by Bhattacharya deftly throughout the novel. Bhattacharya believed that creative literature should be constructive to humanity. He believes that there should be a fusion of the ethical values in literature. These values must be presented in such a way that the creative art expressing them does not become purely didactic. He thinks that if a work of creative art with a plea for moral values is dubbed as a propoganda, the writer need not take it too seriously, he can as well ignore it. He observes: Art must teach unobtrusively, by its vivid interpretation of life. Art must preach, but only by virtue of its being a vehicle of truth. If that is propaganda, there is no need to eschew the world.27 Bhattacharya maintains throughout the novel the tempo of life as witnessed in the most populations of Indian cities - the complex of urban vices and the thin veer of urban sophistication, the presence of mass " "Literature and Social Reality", The Aryan Path (Bombay), XXVI, IX, September 1955, p.395.

31 rnovernents, mass hysteria, all found full expression in He Who Rides a Tiger. Besides this, the novel depicts the rebellious temper of the people of India who, enraged by famine and inhuman atrocities perpetuated on the innocents and have-nots. The novelist here is compelled by his crea!ive urge to bring to focus the innocents caught in the social onslaught and their tragic pedicament. As Bhattacharya himself observes: It has been agreed that a novelist should not draw his material from contemporary reality, since he is too close to it to be able to read its meaning and assess its inward nature. This is absurd. The creative writer has a well developed sensitivity, though this does not mean that he understands or shares all emotions. The things he witnesses, the things he experiences are likely to move him more intensely than what may be called recollection at second hand.

32 Even the historical novel relies as much on the writerms personal experience as an imaginative evocation. Tolstoy's War and Peace is a good example. A second point is that a true novelist writes because he must: If the events of the day have mo~ed him so deeply that he must have a creative outlet for his feelings, why should he put those feelings in cold storage, as it were., and leave them there until the present time has slipped into the vistas of dion yesterdays.i" Being a creative artist, Bhattacharya works spontaneously, covering the naked realities as he had seen with an artistic touch. In the hands of the deft writer, the tragic predicament becomes a lucid narration without any illogical sequences in the novel. " "Literature and Social Reality". p