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The Truth About Dragons - A Novel
Synopsis and Chapter 13
As a child, Antara the protagonist, is ill-treated by
her mother, and this drives her to perceive her mother
as the fire-breathing dragon of fairy tales. However,
she is nurtured by her relationship with her paternal
grandmother, as well as her father, Siddhartha. Her
mother's preference for her younger daughter Meghna,
causes a rift between the two sisters who are entirely
different from each other.
When Antara is fifteen, and her suicidal and violent
mother leaves in a mysterious manner, Antara is
relieved. Siddhartha then sends her to live with his
parents in Panani, where she proves unmanageable
because of her escapades with her boyfriend, Aries.
The nuns in her convent school find her interest in
the opposite sex disturbing and she is packed off to
boarding school in another city. But her boyfriend
follows her, and later when he plans to elope with her
during her holidays, the nuns discover the plan and
inform Siddhartha who is grieved and frustrated by his
favourite daughter's boy-craziness.
On her next holiday, Siddhartha insists on meeting
Aries, but Aries avoids the meeting in a most dramatic
manner, by allegedly getting intoxicated, attempting
suicide, and finally leaving town. The disillusioned
Antara decides to end her relationship with him. Being
naturally resilient, she knows there will be others,
but Aries is heartbroken and accuses her of
callousness. Thus Antara discovers her power over men,
and revels in it. Her subconscious desire to prove
that she, an unwanted child, is indeed lovable, drives
her on.
In Darjeeling, where Antara begins college, she meets
Rohit, a poet and a brilliant mountaineer who she will
measure all her lovers by for the next ten years, but
being innately flirtatious and curious about other
men, her love affair with Rohit is tumultuous. She is
thrown into confusion when Aries turns up on a visit
to his girlfriend, Nadira, a student in Antara's
college. Antara is triumphant when Aries attempts to
meet her secretly, and although, the meeting goes all
wrong with Nadira being present, Aries and Antara
manage to meet in secret in a restaurant. However, it
is over for Antara who has no intention to steal him
from the love-struck Nadira.
When Meghna writes to Antara about her meeting with
their mother in Ramera, Antara is suddenly plunged
into gloom and seeks out Rohit's comforting arms
again. Late from a date with Rohit, Antara is expelled
from college, and travels to Bangalore to join her
father and sister.
Here she meets the model maker Arvind, and wows the
city as one of its most popular models. She plunges
into a life of partying, glamour, and ritual magic,
worshipping the moon goddess, Isis, who reveals
herself to her in a dream. Meanwhile, Meghna also goes
to college in Darjeeling, but gives it up to marry a
worthless young man, whom she divorces after a few
months. Siddhartha is disappointed by Meghna. The
family had expected brilliance from her.
Antara then embarks on a love affair with a rock
guitarist who brings about her sexual awakening as she
loses her virginity to him. Siddhartha detests the
guitarist, just as he detests her late nights and her
revealing clothes.
After breaking up with the guitarist, the twenty
two-year-old Antara meets a fashion photographer,
Crabby. News arrives of her grandmother's fatal
illness, and she travels to Panani to visit her, after
which with a heavy heart and mixed emotions, she
travels to Ramera in search of her mother, wanting her
blessings for her coming marriage to Crabby. But her
mother's sister tells her that she has disappeared,
and although her husband Ajit, goes looking for her to
a nearby town, he fails to find her.
Antara marries Crabby, despite his tendency to beat
her, believing he will change as he promises to, and
enchanted by the idea of a honeymoon in Hong Kong. On
Lan Tau island, in the Po Lin Monastery, Antara feels
strangely drawn to a Buddhist nun who smiles at her.
She feels that destiny is at work.
On her return to India, Rohit comes looking for her,
but misses her because she is out of town. Antara is
devastated. Her husband continues to be violent, and
she ends her six month marriage with him.
Siddhartha approves of his daughter's next boyfriend,
Boule who is an Egyptian dental student from
Mauritius. He dotes on her and showers her with
expensive gifts. She tires of him, but he refuses to
leave her. At this point Antara suffers her greatest
bereavement - the loss of her forty- seven-year-old
father to lung cancer. Boule tells her that he has
dreamed of Siddhartha who has asked him to look after
her. Antara is comforted by Boule's love and his
gifts, but she wants to move on. She tries to drown
her sorrow over her father's death with partying, and
receives a series of letters from a Swiss man who has
spotted her in a restaurant and procured her address
from the restaurant owner. The Tarot Reader Antara
frequents, warns her of something sinister in the
coming relationship.
Antara meets the stranger, Martino, and discovers that
he is a masochist. Antara is challenged by his sexual
orientation and determines to initiate him into the
joys of 'normal' sex. They celebrate the New Year
together (while Boule fumes and frets), and he leaves,
promising to return. After a few weeks, Martino turns
up and falls more deeply in love with her when she
manages to get him to make 'normal' love to her. He
has long wished to escape from his sexual malady.
She soon discovers that Martino is a smuggler, and
this unnerves Antara. When he laughs at her practice
of ritual Egyptian magic, it is the last straw for
Antara who plays the callous, cruel goddess. Martino
leaves, but writes to her again. She also receives a
letter from his acquaintance who claims that Martino
has inherited a fortune and Antara is the only woman
for him. Antara ignores it.
By the time she ends her relationship with Martino,
six years have elapsed after the death of her father,
and she is now thirty one. She has been living alone,
something an Indian woman rarely does. The two sisters
decide to stay together, but they fail to get along.
Meghna is insecure, believing that her lover, Mike,
might find Antara attractive. This attitude Antara
finds paranoid, for she would not dream of flirting
with her sister's boyfriend. Antara then decides to
embark on a relationship with the intellectual Nigel
who is a fellow -actor in a musical. The relationship
is an experiment for her, for he is not particularly
good looking, and it's his mind she finds attractive.
And then things take a dramatic turn. Rohit invites
Antara to Darjeeling, and she accepts. He had promised
her that they would meet again after ten years, and
the ten years are up.. After an adventurous journey,
Antara finds that Rohit is no longer the man she
loves. Exorcised from her feelings for Rohit, who is
impotent after a bitter marriage, she returns to
Bangalore and the waiting Nigel.
Meghna reveals to Antara, that she has attempted
suicide in her absence. Antara advises her against it,
and comforts herself with the fact that Meghna is
already seeing a pychiatrist. Meghna decides to move
out. They have never loved as sisters should.
In a final meeting, Boule tells Antara about his slum-
dwelling new girlfriend, Sherry. He pities Sherry, for
she is anemic and poor and has a boyfriend who beats
her. Antara is amazed at his bad choice, but agrees to
help Sherry out. Antara gives her clothes and
cosmetics, gives her the money for an abortion and
warns the violent boyfriend. Sherry, however, ends up
marrying a Chinese restaurant owner.
Antara must vacate her apartment again. She finds a
quaint place, makes a new friend who is gay, and is
chased by cops at midnight while returning from a
discotheque. The cops tell her that the house she
lives in used to be a brothel, and when a man climbs
up to her window and insists on being let in, Antara
begins to wonder whether her independence is worth it.
She then meets Jay, a 'gentleman of leisure', who
invites her to live with him, and Antara happily
agrees. He is younger by nine years, but this does
bother the lovers.
A few months later Meghna kills herself over her
unrequited love for Mike. Antara has not the courage
to identify the body, for the last image she has had
of her father is not the one she wants to recall him
by. Jay takes care of things for her, and Antara waits
outside the crematorium while her relatives who have
come over for the funeral, attend to the body. She
cannot bear to see Meghna in that state. Now Antara
feels truly alone. With the help of her best friend,
Minoo, Antara arranges a sacred ceremony in Meghna's
apartment, hoping that it will bring peace to her lost
and tortured soul. She is chilled at the sight of two
beheaded statuettes of Infant Jesus in Meghna's room.
Meghna would sometimes visit the Infant Jesus church
but lately seemed to have grown disillusioned with the
faith.
~ ~ ~ ~
In part two of the novel, Antara is forty five, and
married to George who has a problem with alcohol. Had
it not been for her unplanned pregnancy at thirty-
six, and her desire for a family, she would not have
married him. At this time, Antara, who has tried to
transform her abusive marriage with the powers of
reiki in vain, is dedicated to a spiritual path which
is the foundation of Buddhism. She hopes it will help
her dissolve her karmic bonds with George. They seek
marriage counselling which fails, and George who
initially practises with Antara in the Temple, soon
gives it up. He is not courageous enough to stop
drinking and learn to control his temper.
Antara's Reiki Master who has introduced her to the
Temple, takes her to see an American couple who have
made the news as 'seers'. The woman claims to channel
the goddess Isis, which Antara finds intriguing.
Antara has given up her worship of Isis, since finding
her true spiritual path, but she is curious, and longs
to know whether she will be free from George. She
finds the experience interesting, but no predictions
are made.
A few months later, Antara travels to the main temple
in Japan. Her Sensei promises her that a dramatic
change for the better will occur in her life because
of the trip. To Antara the temple is heaven on earth.
She spends two weeks in the head Temple and has
amazing experiences that strengthen her faith even
further.
When she returns to India, she is finally able to
legally evict George from her home, and find a better
job. Her son chooses to live on the farm with his
father, and this she does not resent, for life in the
countryside will do him good. She takes in a paying
guest, Sabrine, who asks her to write a play for an
amateur theatre competition. This Antara does, basing
the play on her college life. They scout around for a
white man to play the role of one of Antara's
boyfriends in college, and find the twenty five year
old German mathematics student, Anselm.
Antara's play is short-listed as one of the three
chosen for the finals and is staged. It does not win,
but Antara has found her great love, Anselm, and has
had her first play produced. Anselm spends his last
two weeks in India with her. It is his complete
understanding of her, his pyschic ability to read her
thoughts, his love of her spiritual path that makes
him her Great Love.
After a short while in Germany, Anselm returns to
Antara. He decides to move to Bangalore, and this time
spends a magical month with her.
The next time his return takes six months. But this
visit turns sour, and the relationship is almost
destroyed. Anselm no longer sees any future for them
when he discovers he has no job opportunities in
India. Besides this, he is struggling with a very
difficult diploma thesis. He breaks down before Sensei
who advises him to take one step at a time. He refuses
to make love to a devastated Antara, and leaves
suddenly when he gets an urgent call from his
university. She is not to write to him, and he is
uncertain about his return. Antara, who has never
loved so deep before is shattered. Yet she is
supported by her spiritual mentors, and according to
their advice, decides not to pursue Anselm.
Her nun friend Sae shows her a photograph of the
gentle cloud dragon, the god of the river that flows
by one of their temples in Japan, and Antara is filled
with wonder. She remembers her dragon mother, and
thanks her for helping her evolve spiritually. Sensei
always says that all enlightened beings become
enlightened because of their tragic circumstances that
help them to look within. Antara is now the being she
was meant to be. Wise, detached, compassionate,
empowered, and celibate. She is finally a truly
liberated woman. She has understood the truth about
dragons: both the fiery and the gentle are necessary
for spiritual growth.
THE TRUTH ABOUT DRAGONS
Chapter 13
1982
Father hid his illnesses from us, but Meghna and I
could hear his coughing, now grown incessant and
violent in the nights.
It was the Reddys who persuaded father into a medical
test that revealed the possibility of tuberculosis -
a `patch on his lung'. My stoic father confessed it
was a painful process. He had to be rushed to the
U.S. for treatment.
My fear grew every day in the two weeks that elapsed
in organizing his trip. What was this 'patch on his
lung'? Why wouldn't they tell us in detail? Meghna
spent more time than I did in the hospital with
father, and although he was always surrounded by
friends, it was not without guilt that I accepted his
suggestion to watch a movie. Father knew me well.
He knew hospitals depressed me. He joked with us, he
smiled.
He drank the healing water I gave him every morning.
I would charge it in a cardboard pyramid Boule had
made for me. The pyramid had amazing powers. Meat
turned to `jerky' inside it, razor blades regained
their edge, tomatoes on the brink of rot turned into
mummies, their colour and the flavour still intact.
And because the pall of my father's unknown and
sinister illness hovered above me like a cloud, I
believed the pyramid could only affect his illness
partially. Father was very touched and drank the
water willingly, as though the power of my concern was
more potent than any elixir. He believed he would be
fine; he would come back to us soon.
He gifted me with three tiny brass pyramids imported
from Cairo.
The house was filled to overflowing with well-wishers
from father's office, bringing him flowers and tears.
He did not speak much. All he said to them with a
smile was, "I'll come back." Tughlaq, sensing his
illness was unusually silent and sat at his feet, his
Boxer frown deeper, bushy red tail down.
At the airport I gave father a red rose from our
garden. He went through security check, clutching it
to him, looking back at us, as though for the last
time. I believed he would hold the rose on the
flight; he would treasure it till it withered and
crumbled away. He had often spoken to us of dying
young. He had suggested I find a place for myself and
he would furnish it for me. He wanted me to be
independent. But I did not take him seriously. I
thought he would always be there for me.
Father was away three long months and spoke to us
regularly on the telephone. As time passed, his words
grew fewer, his breath shorter.
"What is this spot on his lung?" I asked Aunt Reddy
who was living with us, giving us 'support', and
constantly rummaging through father's cupboard.
"Lung cancer."
"Cancer!" Meghna and I cried in unison. Cancer was an
unfortunate thing that happened to other people.
"Why didn't you tell us before?" I asked. "You always
knew!"
"We couldn't tell you children," said Aunt Reddy,
choking on her words.
Meghna began to cry.
"You made us hope, you made us believe he'd be back!"
I
said. Many were the things I would have told father
if I had known it was perhaps the last time I was
seeing him. I would have told him how much I loved
him.
"He's getting treated at Sloan Kettering - famous for
its cancer treatment."
"You mean he might survive?" I asked.
"We all must hope for the best. and pray." She broke
into tears then and held us close. The jasmine in her
hair smelled stale. Nothing, could soften the grief
of father's death, not my friends, not God, no one.
I tried not to succumb to depression. I pranced and
pouted through fashion shows, I danced the nights
away, but the fear was always there, sprouting new
shoots every morning.
A couple of months later, Aunt Reddy called me in the
middle of a fashion show rehearsal. We were to travel
to Delhi as soon as possible. Father was being rushed
to our step aunt, Bindu's home. The doctors had
warned that father had just a few more days to live.
He could barely sit or speak. He had pneumonia in his
remaining lung and the cancer had spread to his spine.
They feared it would spread to his brain and he
wouldn't be able to think clearly. I couldn't
breathe. A trance-like feeling overwhelmed me at the
news. "If he dies," I thought, "I will be truly
alone. I'll be more like a rock than ever before."
If I could overcome his untimely death at forty seven,
I could strangle any sorrow that would come my way.
Minoo, her eyes full of tears that threatened to
spill, said she would do anything for me: look after
the house and my beloved dog.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"I'm so upset about your father," said Arvind, playing
absent-mindedly with the ancient tiger tooth charm
round his neck that he claimed a sorcerer from Haiti
had given him. "He's such a wonderful gentleman . I
shall do a special ritual for him, Antara, and I'll
miss you in the show. But when you come back, you'll
be a star and I'll bring you something nice from my
trip to Singapore."
Tearful, devoted Boule could barely speak. He had
dreamed father would not return to Bangalore.
On our long journey to Delhi, I saw lilies blooming in
the pools we passed, and I thought father would soon
go to a place far more beautiful than the one I knew.
Aunt Bindu's house was filled with family - my ashen
grandfather, Uncle Uday from the U.S. who had tended
father, Uncle Pratap, and my cousins. The oxygen
cylinders waiting for father in the guest room laid
icy fingers on my skin.
Aunt Bindu was sarcastic as she had always been with
Meghna and me. "Your grandfather is worried about the
future you girls have," she said. "He's afraid you'll
turn out to be society girls."
"If he means career women who get around town a lot,
what is wrong with that?" I said. "It's better than
being a mere housewife." I meant it as a barb, for
that was what stepaunt Bindu was - a mere housewife.
"Indian men go out with modern girls but they don't
marry them," Bindu said.
"That's unfair!"
"It's a man's world."
I hated her smugness, the self righteousness in her
eyes.
I could not stop trembling when I saw the ambulance
drive in with father. I dreaded seeing him, yet
longed to see him. I wanted to be the first person
he'd set eyes upon for wasn't I his favourite
daughter? I wore a sari because he liked me best in
that `most wonderful garment in the world', as he
called it. He was thin as a sheet. Much of his
hair had fallen out, his cheeks were sunken, the skin
stretched across the bones of his face, like the skin
on a drum. His claw-like hands rested on the sides
of the stretcher as they carried him into the house.
He smiled feebly and blew me a kiss. I turned away to
hide my tears, my fingers shaking.
His eyes, wide, vacant, staring, full of death, and
Mama, where was she? Would she have come to him if she
had known?
Yet cruel hope took root in me, for father did not
want to die.
Ranje, a moose like man from his office in Bangalore,
brought him a magical betel leaf, partially dry,
encased inside a frame. "Sir," he said, sitting
beside father, "I have been to a solar yogi in whom
I have great faith. He has traveled astrally through
your body and says your remaining lung has begun to
go too..." he paused to watch father's face which was
sad and calm, the eyes staring into a future only he
seemed to see.
"Go on," said father.
"Sir, he says that there is not much hope; he said I
have come a bit late for his help, but he takes it as
a challenge to heal you through his solar energy
rays."
"Energy rays?" I asked. Anything seemed possible in
this unreal hour.
"They radiate from the leaf when sunlight falls on
it."
"I am willing to try anything," said father, who had
never been a superstitious man. When I spoke to him
of the supernatural, he would say, "Why worry about
other worlds when you have enough in this world to
worry about?"
The eager Ranje hung the leaf on the wall above
father's head where the sun shone in a patch of gold,
and father suddenly reached out for Ranje's hand and
clutched it, his eyes afraid. I had to hold back
my tears. Beneath father's pillow, Ranje placed a
green leaf in a white envelope, as treatment for
fifteen days. He said it would save his remaining
lung.
The smell of father's cancerous lung filled the room.
I did not sit with him for long stretches of time
like Meghna did. It was the first time I felt that
Meghna loved him more than I did. Yet I could see it
in his eyes that he understood me.
"Stop looking so depressed," said Uncle Pratap to me.
"Siddhartha 'Bhaiya' was so glad to be coming home, he
refused the oxygen on the flight."
The ache in my throat grew. He was brave, my father.
When they noticed his breathlessness and suggested the
oxygen, he said, "I don't need it. I don't need to go
to the hospital."
Mrs. Naidu, my boss at the agency, who was then in
Delhi, visited father. "Show him your work," she
said, handing me the calendars that featured my
poetry. "Ah Lover of Ruins, gaze long!" she quoted,
from my poem on Hampi.
Father smiled and nodded at me. "Very good."
"Don't worry about Antara, Mr. Singh", Mrs. Naidu
said.
I could see the pride on grandfather's face. Surely,
he no longer believed that I would turn out reckless
and crazy like Mama. A member of the Royal College of
Physicians in England, grandfather was a curious
mixture. He was at home in both his English and
Indian clothes. "You write so well!" said he,
grinning broadly and showing his teeth stained with
betel leaf.
Even the sarcastic Bindu seemed to have new respect
for me. "I didn't know you could write so well!" she
said, looking at the calendars.
"I know Antara can take care of herself," father said
breathlessly. "It's Meghna I'm worried about." Then he
turned to me. "As her elder sister, Antara, you
must take care of Meghna."
But we never loved as sisters should.
~ ~ ~
"There is so much I want to tell you," father told
Meghna and me, pausing to breathe painfully in
between. "In the midst of my worst despair and misery,
I dreamed of Lord Venkateshwara. He raised his hand
and promised that I would achieve my desires before I
die." He smiled tenderly at them. "Ever since then,
I've had peace and hope and the will to live."
I stroked his chest to ease his breathing. Meghna,
eyes brimming, was fanning him.
"It is rare to have a darshan of the Lord," said
Bindu, holding his hands. "It is a privilege."
"I suffered so much in the States. The pain was so
intense I had to take three doses of morphine every
day, and a lot of oxygen. All I wanted to do was
return home. Now the will to eat is coming
back...Seeta, will you make me some of that delicious
rasam?"
"Of course." Aunt Reddy rose from the foot of his bed
to go to the kitchen.
~ ~ ~
"The dream your father had," said Aunt Bindu to me
later, "It's a definite sign your father is a god.
Miracles can happen. "
"I wonder," I said, "is it faith that makes a god
appear in a certain form? Why does God have a form?"
"Even people without faith have experienced god. The
forms don't matter."
It was the second day since father's arrival. He was
beginning to find it difficult to swallow. There was
a tumour growing inside his throat and the cancer had
invaded his bones. Because he could not walk, I
massaged his aching legs and feet. His wasted thighs
were frightening in their thinness. I remembered the
days of my sad childhood that father had tried so hard
to make happy for me; when I would walk over his back
to ease the ache of the office.
"You can't be as extravagant as you've been before,"
Uncle Uday told me.
"I don't mind not being extravagant," I said. "I've
had a good time and my millionaire boyfriend, Boule,
won't let me feel the pinch. I'm lucky."
He smiled at me as though I were a mischievous child.
I was glad we could sit in the garden with father, and
watch the barber shave his cheeks. I recalled the
times he would playfully rub his stubbly cheek against
mine. I was grateful we could laugh together for
those two precious days before his illness worsened.
Back in bed, he told me, "Be careful, my daughter,
slow down your pace. Don't burn yourself out. Don't
die young."
"I don't want to die ancient either," I said. "They
say poets get consumed by their intensity."
He answered me with a sad smile. How ironical it was:
my wonderful, strong father, who had always been in
control, lying immobile, struggling to breathe.
On the fourth day I woke in tears from a terrible
dream. I dreamed of the sacred seven-headed cobra,
heads severed from the giant coils, charred to a bone
whiteness. Having little knowledge of Hindu
mythology, I was both surprised and terrified. I had
heard father coughing violently late into the night.
"You have dreamed of Lord Vishnu," Bindu said. "Lord
Venkateshwara in his cobra form."
"That's uncanny," I felt the prickly sensation of
gooseflesh on my arms.
"Don't tell anyone about it; it's a bad omen. Had the
sacred cobra been living, it would have been a good
sign."
Grandfather, who appeared to be in a daze throughout
his stay, wept. I had never seen his tears before.
"I am old and useless," he sobbed, "it's the reason
I'm alive...and my son, in his prime, is going away.
Why am I still alive? What right have I to life?" He
left that morning for Panani to make arrangements for
father's stay. The rest of us were to leave for
Panani the next day.
Towards noon, I saw panic in father's eyes. He said
he felt disturbed; his breathing was more laboured.
"There's a smell in the air," said Uday.
"It was there yesterday too," I said.
"It may be the lung infection spreading. We'll have
to get him back on the oxygen. Don't gasp," he told
father, "breathe through your nose and stay calm."
The cylinder was rolled into the room, the oxygen tube
inserted into father's nose. He looked ashamed, as
though he had disappointed us by going back on the
oxygen. "It's getting worse," he whispered.
I sat beside him, stroking his hollow chest, the agony
dull and numbing inside me. I no longer believed in
the solar yogi. I never really had. I had indulged
Ranje because he had said father was his closest
friend, the most humane, the kindest man he knew.
Uday's lips twitched in an attempt to fight back
tears. "Calm down, panic will make things worse. I'll
give you a shot." He inserted needles into father's
wrists.
"Something's happening in my lung."
"Bindu, call the hospital for the X-ray!" called Uday.
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