Having stared at the painting for a while Rajnikant said And what is its name?

Rajeshwar laughed simply; said It is in the subject of names that Ive remained weak. Some reflections (bimb) surface within me, and helped by them a painting makes itself. The painting is done, and I cant find a name for it. To search a name you must be a poet, not a painter. Whats the harm, be a poet for while Rajeshwar laughed again in the same manner. He said I cant become a poet, my words are weak. Thats why I lean on colours and lines. Rajnikant thought, why not have an argument about the difference between the poetry of words and the poetry of lines. But he suppressed this desire. Every year some intelligent students from the engineering college come to his (maathati) as engineers. The ones who get a <mahvaari> salary dont have their traditional gentleness anymore. They give opinions on everything; they are able to argue everything. To silence them, Rajnikant has invented a serious smile armed with which he can answers many a debates. Spreading that smile on his face now, he said, Even so, you must have thought some name for it. Rajeshwar said hesitantly, Sir, if it is necessary to tag a name then it can be called Anonymity. What is your view? Saying this he turned to Prabha. Prabha eyes were fixed on the painting. She thought of something and said to Rajnikant, What can be a better name than this, papa? On his face that dramatic smile of social life fogged away. Directed at no one, he spoke slowly and questioningly, Anonymity? The picture that was being talked about had no great speciality in it. Just a dense forest of (gajhnaar) trees. Those trees were a dark green and in the background they turned black. Inside the circular space between the two-three trees in the front, evenings spreading noir was ambushing the (lohit) shadows (aabhaon) from earlier. But there were no shadows behind it. Instead of shadows there was just an unruly spread of dense trees darkening in a sequence. Nothing else. Looking at this painting a melancholy of losing something, of forgetting something, of getting lost somewhere spread in his heart. As if he were in the club, drinking whisky and playing billiards amidst melodies of laughter (keh-kahe) and dance from the neighbouring room, and at that very moment someone was to call him outside and take him away from the light, warmth, frolic and guffaws, and was to leave him stranded at some barren and shivering road; and he just stood there with sleeves folded, cue in hand, unable to grasp what was happening. He himself did not know what he felt after looking at the painting. As if in the closing hours of the night someone was to see, from the window of a shut room, (shukara) in the open independent sky; as if while accounting for the day with a tired heart someone was to hear the stifled sounds of a raagini swerving in from a distance. As if a random line from a poem heard many days ago was to flash, suddenly, in a mind buried under office files. Like this? Maybe not. This experience was of a different kind. Rajeshwar had come here from the city to sell his painting. Notwithstanding the many colourful rainbrows that were pulled in his mind before the painting, at its completion he experienced his pocket, and with it his mind, as empty. Upshot was that he who did not have the worldliness (vyavahariktka) to even name his painting was forced to search his patron Rajnikant at the latters kothi. It was tracing him that he had reached this canal-side bungalow in the deep hinterlands. Evening approached. Rajeshwar said, If you allow I shall leave. I will return with the 10 P.M. train. He wrote a check and put it in his hands. Dont think of this as the price of your painting. I cant pay any price for it, and this is a certificate of that inability. Saying this he tried to laugh. Then he called Prabha and said, Prabha beti, the car for Gangadhar must be leaving, why doesnt Rajeshwarji leave in that same car?

After Rajeshwar had left he lifted to painting from the verandah and carried it to the room. He rested it on a small table in a corner, against the wall. Then he lied down on a large armchair. Its title kept striking the walls of his mind, like a honeybee lost in a shut room. He kept thinking: Today someone has been lost in these thickening jungles. Today this life is roaming directionless, without an aim. It was like this earlier too. But then it was attractive like a teenaged girl. One who is untouched by the fingers of affinity, one whose present has curiosity, one whose future has an unclear intoxication. Each emotion would come to tease her. Would want to own her. To look attractive it would come after putting on the mask of principles. But now even that crowd is dispersing slowly. To these emotions that are distancing themselves, this aimlessness is running mad. Or it is sitting silently annoyed with itself, like an unmarried middle-aged woman. The window of this room is open and (agahan)s wind in entering inside. The western wind. Caressing the blue and purple flowers of flax and pea plants. Whistling through brakes of bamboo. Sighing on the wilting lotus forests. Doctors say, save yourself from this wind. I want to close the window. But I dont want to get up, dont want to call anyone. Ive always been like this. Wanting to do a lot. And then, despite facing no obstacles, I dont do it. When I do do something I think of that as what I wanted to do. And what I did not do, I want to think of it as never having wanted to. For the satisfaction of my creativity, I search and bring no wonder how many (naganya), praised (upekshit) creations from the dark caves of my past, the achievements of memory! Still something keeps pricking somewhere. Sometimes it feels as if Im trapped in all four directions. There was brightness ahead. Where Ive come after leaving it, there is darkness, dense stands of trees all around, and not even space to think. Black forests there as well. Some space I had reserved for thinking; that too is being assailed by the forests. Some thickets have shot forth. Cactuses thriving. Thinking so, he became (ud-dwign). Then he started thinking more. Like when the sharp burn of pushing ones own nail in a wound can give a little-something; like when someone rods ones own palm