Ancient Indian Literature has rich tradition of short story. It has primarily two forms the fable and the folk tale. We see these forms in ―Panchatantral and Kathasaritsagara respectively. A considerable change was seen in the genre short story with the advent of the Britishers in India. Some of the Indians made an attempt to write short story in English. Like their counterparts in the west, they wrote the atmosphere-dominant short stories and the character dominant short stories.
R. K. Narayana and K. Nagarajan in their tales showed a strong streak of autobiographical element in their short stories. In the west, we find Catherine Mansfield and Irish Mordich introducing Metaphysical element also by creating eerie atmosphere in some of their stories. It may be a little exaggeration to say that they may bee categorized under Ckafkesque. In India Raja Rao was the first creative writer to introduced both Metaphysical elements in his short stories. The Police man and the Rose is one such. It is a powerful story of Raja Rao with strong element. We find in 'Autobiographical story the narrator is fore grounded, Cultural symbols are perplexed by personal symbols and the protagonist himself in a complicated obscure metaphysical sense and the writer endeavors to put into it man‘s aspiration and destiny towards the realization of God himself. The theme of the story is primarily metaphysical and is introduced with the quotations from scriptures and other sacred writings of India. The action dealing at once with the eternal and the immediate, the universal and the individual, the cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth, moves back and forth,within as well as beyond the bounds of space and time. The reader is not surprised when he is confronted by such material. He may feel that the 'Figure in the carpet' eludes him. He may even feel that to read it through is like treading a maze. The writer finds himself fascinated by the sureness of its tone and vibrant quality of its language. To have a grasp of the story one is supposed to have a knowledge of a Advaita philosophy. The begins thus :
When I was arrested my Problem was not me but it. These lines suggest the idea of bondage and the speakers‘ awareness of it. In the next sentence, the theme is universalized. All men are arrested the moment they are born. So are the women. Two major symbols are introduced straight away. The policeman holding men and women assisting them are briefly described. There is a Rose, which is naturalistic and inevitable. The policeman remaining as private symbol. The function of the symbols will soon be dwelt upon. The narrator gives a retrospective account of his life upto his going to Travancore and living the ―retirement‖. The story develops through a series of transactions, encounters and conflicts between them and the protagonist. The narrator is ―I and the ―Policeman. All the experiences described are in the first person narrative. The narrator says!
Every living man has a policeman, And his name is your name, his Address is your address, his Dreams your dreams‖.
The protagonist feels that the story of the policeman is his own story. There are apparent contradictions in their distinctive identities. The policeman is in a way an alter-ego, another self of the protagonist. If the policeman is different person from the narrator whom he addresses, then who is he? What does he standfor? In advaitic philosophy the policeman holding ―I‖ in the state of arrest suggests the ego overpowering ―Jiva‖ and thereby hampering its attempts at selfrealization. It is the process of advaita philosophy.
The policeman is a familiar figure in the civilized world. He is usually associated with the idea of authority and arrest. To make the story credible, the policeman in this story appears often in his uniform and he is always ready to spring into action. He is given a number also. In the same way the word ―I‖ in the story symbolizes ―Jiva‖ in its empirical outfit. Other details like the upbringing, his illness as a child and the gifts given to him by his grandmother, his several travels in France and India are very graphically described. The narration draws the attention of the readers immediately.
Philosophically speaking, so long as the 'Jiva' remains bound by ego and ignorance and it remains in duality. The earth bound ―Jiva‖ grows in its knowledge of his identity and he loses his hold on it. In the absence of such knowledge and with darkness everywhere the policeman becomes monstrous. In fact, he believes that he has attained the knowledge of God and paradise. His actions are drawn by the lure for Holy paradise after death, Girls and all.
Jiva takes thee cycle of rebirth until it achieves its liberation following the annihilation of the ego. The world in which there are so many egoistic individuals, becomes the 'police state'. The policeman says that 'he is awake when I am awake, He sleep-dreams as I have wake Sleeps, and he just has no existence In the deep-sleep state‖.
The policeman continues his story 'My policeman' was born thousands and thousands of years ago. He was a native of space and his germwas the atom. The atom played at the cross-roads and created water…..your policeman is naked but he is all blind. These lines show that the policeman is in utter darkness as he doesn‘t have any knowledge of non-dualism. Absence of duality-Atman and Brahman are out and the same.
The policeman arrests the new born child. He urges his victim to seek his freedom, assures him of his deathlessness. In doing so, the policeman seems to become the benefactor of the protagonist. Perhaps the author suggests that the Jiva understands the meaning and value of freedom. Only after experiencing
bondage one seeks liberation. The narrator quotes the example of Ravana who sought death by Rama. He even calls Ravana 'the police Jamedar‘. If the policeman is the ego, the police-Jamedar becomes the super-ego which cares for values and ideals. In that case Ravana may be called the police-Jamedar. The narrator uses the Ravana-Rama myth to exemplify the urge in the self to seek the eradication of the ego through the attainment of true knowledge which alone frees the self from the dualities of earthly existence and from the cycle of free birth. This myth also serves as a means to connect the present with the past and the protagonist narrator with the mythical and epic characters in the past, since he claims to have been once a contemporary of Rama and Ravana. After giving a brief account of different places, the narrator talks about the contacts with the child :
At night policeman sits beside you and tells you, child, you know what that is – it is me. It is all me. Don‘t worry.
The protagonist protests that he does not understand his meaning. The policeman urges him to give up the travel. The protagonist makes a long journey to understand 'self'. He gets his major experience of duality when he gets involved with a woman whom, he has to marry. In a bid to free himself from this bondage, he 'jumps the wall‘, flees his country India and goes to 'the western world,-world of honour and liberty‘. His self enquiry begins. He comfortably reaches France, the crown of flowers, on the Queen of Reason a rock dear France of liberty. Perhaps this suggests his search for release from the dualities through a strictly rational, intellectual inquiry.
The protagonist experiences his dualities on he marries a woman. In self inquiry, he goes to France. With the growing of the policeman two inches small, he feels that the policeman lost his hold on the protagonist. No doubt he accompanies the narrator even in France. He becomes a divine person receiving
recognition from all. Suddenly he grows bigger that the narrator and goes back to India. His Virtue would now have confirmation, my miracles have rupee value, my mouth world smell of fresh roses.
For the first time there is a reference to ‗rose‘. It is here that his spiritual quest in its second phase is to be seen. He makes his way to Travancore,‘ the sanctuary of the Beacon‘. It is here that he falls ill and goes through‘. Unexpectedly a nightmarish experience which helps him to move a step towards his final spiritual enlightenment. He wakes up from his sleep and finds himself surrounded by crowds and lizards. This extraordinary experience makes him realize that he is neither a 'divinity‘ nor 'God‘, but only a policeman who is under arrest‘ and who would be discharges when the time came. The policeman accompanies the protagonist in Paris. This is described through the eyes of the protagonist sees in Paris and elsewhere. The irresistible fascination and its variety exert on him. Again the distinction between the two gets narrowed down and even becomes blurred for sometime as the protagonist who happens to acquire certain occult powers in his practice of ―Yoga as a means to spiritual enlightenment. He performs miracles, effects, cures, deals in portions, foretells the future, listens to confessions from virgins and promises enlightenment. God becomes his business and he thrives remarkably in this trade.He becomes famous and also wins recognition. He is called ‗the policeman of God‘. Soon this policeman of God himself becomes 'a legitimate divinity‘. This marks the Ultimate ………… reached by the protagonist, when he is hardly distinguishable from his policeman. No wonder that the policeman who had grown 'small‘ now grows bigger. The policeman urges the protagonist to grow up and travel. One notices the travel ‗motif‘ here which symbolizes his quest for knowledge.
With this realization he goes back to Avignon to sell his 'shop‘ and clear his 'debts‘. He appears to his former disciples and admires as a different person. 'You smell differently, you are too funnily clothed for words'.
He notices a perceptible change in him. He finds his followers to be ignorant. To his dismay they make him offer flowers to his own statue. So he leaves France for good, thoroughly dissatisfied with the role he has played so far. While most other seekers would have stopped with the attainment of occult powers, the protagonist continues his quest. Even after returning from America, Japan and France, he comes back to India once again and pays, a visit to Travancore. The protagonist asks the questions, ‗why Travancore‘? and immediately gives an answer :
For there you have Two Feet and a Rose‖. Travancore is not a very big city. The significance of this place can be related to Raja rao‘s own preoccupation with it and his own pilgrimage in 1943 to Trivandrum to meet his spiritual mentor, sage Atmananda Guru. The protagonist journey to Travancore is no ordinary travel but a pilgrimage earnestly undertaken. In a metaphysical fancy towards his journeys end he grows 'Two Feet', not as a mere intellectual inquirer or a miracle man as he was at one time, but as one who would surrender himself in humility to his mentor. The need for a guru felt with a extraordinary urgency brings him to Travancore. Appropriately, he places the rose of realization he has brought alongwith him at the ―Feet in Worship which suggests his surrender to the Lord‘ through whose meditation he has to free himself of all attributes of his ego which have clogged his soul. There is a need for an explication of the use of the two roses. At one level the red rose is a medieval symbol of romance and its chivalric aspects of passion and compassion. The ―white rose‖ symbolizes an aesthetic Indian corollary of a European ideal of love or beauty or truth.
For an aesthetic enjoyment of the story it is not necessary to fix any single meaning to the story. Though the story has number of advaitic echoes, we enjoy it even without reference to the advaitic matrix, philosophically, the dual narration the ―I and the ―Policeman‖ is a cultural specimen of an Indian kind. Both his aspects are products of Godhead and or in quest of God here. Perhaps their duality is intended to reflect the truth of illusion. The ―I is a confident advisor of God. The policeman‘ is one becoming many. His account of the past includes his vegetable incarnation in the think of Rama. So, ―it illustrates the victory of ideal truth over impermanent beauty.
Raja Rao has received due acclaim for his infusion of metaphysical element in Indian short story in English. His ―India- A Fable and ―The policeman and the Rose‖ are fraught with the metaphysical concerns. In these, he experiments with language, symbolism, cross cultural narratology, philosophy and romance. One is naturally reminded of the dictum :
Literature as anything but a
Spiritual experience is outside
My perspective‖.
These two stories illustrate not only the oldest of themes (The enigma of Truth) and the Paradox of Paradox (the nondualist School of Vedantha) they also focusOn the Philosophical faith which Constitute an essence of metaphysical Fiction. These two stories appear simple but they are very deep.