Sound and Fury
Telugu original by Ampasayya Naveen

Kamalakar rang. He had been my classmate when we read for our M.A., and like me, he had worked as a lecturer before retiring.

“Raghu’s in a bad way,” he said. “He’s in the ICU at City Hospital. Shall we go and see him?”

“Raghu—seriously ill?” I said. “My God. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Be ready.”

Kamalakar lived close by. Fifteen minutes later, I stopped the car outside his gate, and together we drove to the hospital, about five kilometres away.

We went straight up in the lift to the third floor. When we asked the nurse which doctor was treating Raghu, she told us it was Dr?Sharath.

“Where’s he now?” I said.

“He’s in the ICU,” she replied.

Inside the ICU, we saw Sharath standing by a patient’s bed. He looked up at once. We had been friends for years. He loved literature, had read my books, and often told me, half?joking, “I’m your fan.”

“Sharath!” I called.

“Sir! What a surprise—you in my ICU! Who’s your patient?”

“Raghupal Reddy. An old friend.”

“Him? He’s in bed number six. Come with me.”

We followed him through the ward. When I saw Raghu, I stopped short. His body, wrapped in a green hospital blanket, had shrunk to skin and bone. Tubes ran in every direction—one for oxygen, another for saline, another recording his pressure on a monitor. He was motionless, his face wax?pale.

Sharath studied the chart at the end of the bed.

“His condition’s critical. Multiple organ failure—liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart—everything’s collapsing. His throat’s blocked with phlegm; he can’t swallow a drop of water. We’re doing what we can, but there’s been no change. Only God can help him now.”

I could find nothing to say.

Sharath glanced at me kindly. “You can sit here for a while. He may regain consciousness for a moment, though he won’t be able to speak. His throat’s gone. I’ll come back after I finish my rounds.”

I nodded, and he moved away.

A middle-aged man stood by the bed, hands folded.

“Are you staying with him?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. I’ve been here all night. No one else has turned up. I haven’t even stepped out for a bite.”

“He has a big family, doesn’t he? Has no one come?”

The man sighed. “What’s the use of a big family if nobody turns up when you need them? If I could just go out for a quick meal—will you stay till I’m back?”

“Of course. What shall I call you?” I said.

“Venkataiah, sir. His son-in-law told me to stay. He admitted Raghu last night and disappeared.”

“All right—go and eat,” I said. He went out quietly.

I turned to Kamalakar. “How did things come to this? Raghu never spent an evening alone. There were always ten of them around him—drinking, laughing, making merry. He scattered money like confetti, throwing parties for whoever turned up. He lived grandly, and now look at him.”

Kamalakar shook his head. “That crowd ruined him. Day and night with the bottle, pouring drinks for himself and everyone else, stuffing them with food, cracking filthy jokes. He burnt through the wealth his forefathers piled up. Remember how often we warned him? Even a mountain of gold won’t last long if you chip away at it. His younger brothers were children then. Wait till they grow up—they won’t tolerate it.”

I said nothing.

Seeing Raghu lying there sent me back twenty?five, perhaps thirty, years.

He had been my classmate in the B.A. course—not much of a scholar. Yet people gathered around him. His gang of ten used to slip out the moment attendance was taken. They made noise in the corridors but never disturbed the lecturers inside.

Raghu was strikingly handsome—tall, broad-shouldered, with a fair reddish complexion, hair that curled back from his forehead, and large eyes that seemed to drink everyone in. He dressed expensively and smoked imported cigarettes.

One afternoon, he came up to me.

“You look rather innocent,” he said. “Where d’you get that intelligence of yours?”

I was startled. In those days, I was painfully thin, and perhaps my seriousness passed for innocence. Our lecturers treated me with special respect.

“Can’t you spare me a bit of your intelligence?” he went on.

I smiled but said nothing.

“You won’t object if I call you my friend, will you?” he said, stretching out his hand.

“Not at all,” I said, taking it.

From that day, we were friends. He would drop into my room now and then, and although I protested, he dragged me to cafés and cinemas. When I refused, he’d laugh and say, “I’ve no policy of corrupting good people,” before walking off.

In time, I saw that he had a generous heart. When he heard that a poor student was short of money, he slipped a few notes into the boy’s pocket. Twice or thrice, when I was unable to pay my exam fees, he paid them for me. “If you keep your nose to books all the time, you’ll go blind,” he used to say. “Once in a while, you should come out with us and enjoy yourself.”

After finishing my B.A., I went to Hyderabad for my M.A. Raghu stopped there. He joined the ruling party and was made a committee president, but that position lasted no more than a few months. He carried on spending wildly, and politics required intrigues and compromises he simply could not manage.

By the time I was teaching, he married. He sent me an invitation, and I attended. The wedding was an extravagant affair. For three days, a crowd of twenty of his closest companions drank whisky and brandy without pause. Raghu sometimes joined them for a glass or two before slipping away again.

His extended family thronged the ceremonies. There were banquets and musicians, fireworks and garlands. I learnt that his father had died when Raghu was a boy and that the household revolved around him and his mild-tempered mother.

During one ritual, I caught sight of the bride. She looked shy and delicate, her innocence giving her an almost unearthly beauty.

When I congratulated Raghu, he said, “I’m delighted that a man of intellect like you has come. Don’t leave without eating. And what about the party? Do you drink?”

“I’ll eat, but only water for me,” I said.

He roared with laughter. “You neither eat nor drink properly? What sort of writer are you?”

Everyone laughed, and I escaped to the dining hall.

Years later, I met him again at Kamalakar’s housewarming.

He was the same Raghu—just broader, heavier, puffier. The smell of smoke and liquor hung about him.

“How long do you think you can go on like this?” I asked. “You’re married now—you ought to think about your health.”

“And your wealth,” put in Kamalakar. “You can’t keep feeding and drinking with two dozen people day and night. You’ll finish everything you own, and when you fall ill, none of them will be anywhere near you.”

Raghu laughed. “This is my way of living. I can’t change it. Didn’t you once quote Kaloji? ‘Let’s be loyal to our vices.’ I’m only following that wisdom.”

“Then don’t expect help from anyone,” said Kamalakar.

“I never have, old friend,” Raghu said cheerfully. “I live as I please. That’s enough.”

Months later came shocking news—his wife was dead. No one knew how exactly. Some whispered it was heartbreak. Her husband was always away, drinking and joking, leaving her alone in that large, echoing house. When her brother arrived for the funeral, he shouted at Raghu, accusing him of murdering his sister.

I went to see him. He sat crumpled in an armchair, a glass on the table beside him.

“She begged me to change,” he said in a low voice. “But I couldn’t. We never had children—that was the real curse. If there’d been a child, she’d at least have had someone to brighten her days. When we were tested, the doctor said the fault lay with me—drinking and smoking had ruined me. After that, she lost heart. It just happened.”

People said she had taken her own life.

Even then, he did not alter his ways. The bottles remained, the companions came and went.

His brothers grew restless. The wealth was draining away on alcohol. One day, when he was deeply drunk, they brought in papers, had him sign everything over, moved the property into their names, and threw him out.

He still had two lakh rupees in cash, which he had hidden with a friend. With that money, he left Warangal and went back to his ancestral village, but his health broke soon after.

Those memories ran through my mind as I sat by his bed. Then he made a faint sound—“Ooh”—and his eyelids fluttered.

Slowly, he looked at us. Tears slid down the sides of his face. He tried to lift his hands in greeting; I caught them and held them gently. His lips moved. No words came.

He gestured for a pen. I took out a sheet of paper and a ballpoint and placed them before him. His right hand shook as he wrote, the letters crooked and wavering. He pushed the paper towards me. Kamalakar and I bent over it.

The lines, written in a trembling scrawl, said:

I never thought I’d end like this. My friends left when the money ran out. None of them has come. Only you two are here, and that’s enough for a wasted life. You once said that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That’s what mine has been. Will you write a story about me?

We stood silent. His breath rasped in his throat.

Sharath returned, checked his pulse, murmured that the pressure was falling, and gave an injection. Raghu’s eyes moved once towards us. Then, gazing helplessly, he exhaled softly and lay still.

* * *

“Sound and Fury (also titled in Telugu as “Sound and Fury”) by Ampasayya?Naveen was published in Navya Weekly, 2?June?2014.

Translated into English by Rajeshwar Mittapalli.

Ampasayya Naveen is an accomplished author and Sahitya Akademi laureate who has to his credit more than 30 novels and 100 short stories in Telugu. The most well-known of his novels are Ampasayya, Antasravanti, Kalarekhalu, and Premaku Avali Teeram. He is a pioneer of the stream-of-consciousness mode of writing in Telugu. His fictional works have been widely translated, including into English. In recognition of his contribution to Telugu fiction, apart from the Sahitya Akademi Award, he was conferred at least two honorary doctorates by universities.