Literary Vibes - Edition CIII (26-Mar-2021) - Articles
Title : My Village Path (Picture courtesy Ms. Latha Prem Sakya)
Table of Contents
01) Prabhanjan K. Mishra
MALLIKA, THE WOOD NYMPH
02) Geetha Nair G
INTERLUDE
03) Ishwar Pati
THE REAL THING
04) Sreekumar K
THE BOOK
THE PLEASURES OF PAIN
05) Dr. Ramesh Chandra Panda
GLIMPSES OF OUR HERITAGE - AN OVERVIEW OF HINDU SACRED TEXTS
06) Vishal Ram
A BODY, A MIND AND A SOUL
07) Shubha Sagar
A BRUSH WITH THE DIVINE POWER
08) Dr Viyatprajna Acharya
PASTRY
09) Dr Gangadhar Sahoo
TEACHER STUDENT RELATIONSHIP : A DIVINE GIFT
10) Lathaprem Sakhya
KANAKA’S MUSINGS:: FISHING
11) Sunil Biswal
HOW TO DOUBLE YOUR MONEY
12) Dr. Nikhil M. Kurien
FAMILIAR STRANGERS.........
13) Gourang Charan Roul
IN THE LAP OF GREAT RIFT VALLEY: AN UNIQUE EXPERIENCE
14) Madhumathi. H
CAREGIVERS
15) Hema Ravi
HAPPINESS IS NOT PEACE, PEACE IS HAPPINESS….
16) Padmini Janardhanan
IN CONVERSATION. BEING ALERT
17) N Meera Ragavendra Rao
CHANGING TRENDS
18) Sulochana Ram Mohan
ARCHIE AND RONNIE
19) Hiya Khurana
MANDY’S DREAM
20) Sukumaran C.V.
MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES
21) Mrutyunjay Sarangi
THE LIBERATION OF NARAYANGARH
THE WALK.
Book Review
01) Mrutyunjay Sarangi
LiteraryVibes 100
02) Sheeba Ramadevan Radhakrishnan
From Dulung to Beas by Jaydeep Sarangi
Saroj had broached the idea that we visit Daringbadi together that winter. He said it during our meeting over tea in my hotel room at Bhubaneswar. I was on a short visit to Odisha, my native place. I asked him to stay for lunch. We recalled years together from class nine to eleven in school and then until graduation in college, both in Baleshwar town.
It was the month of December. Bhubaneswar was pleasantly cold. After Saroj’s proposal, I was eager to visit Daringbadi, the so-called Kashmir of Odisha, mainly to experience its subzero temperature in winter. I had heard, it was so cold that the night dew on grass blades froze into hard drops of pearls by morning, breaking the sunshine into rainbow colours. Daringbadi was a hilltop plateau with prime jungles and streams, called a hill station, and attracted tourists, but in fact, the area had hardly been developed.
Next morning, we started for Phulbani in the rented car with a driver given by a travel agency. The driver was well conversant with the roads consisting of ghats among hills on the way. He also knew Daringbadi well, including its unpredictable weather conditions. Besides driving us around there, he would double as our guide in the area.
Reaching Phulbani town after a comfortable drive, we camped there in a nondescript hotel. We left for Daringbadi the next morning. The plateau was sparsely covered with the trees of its prime jungle. Saroj informed me, the jungle had been becoming more and more sparse over the years. Saroj said he had visited Daringbadi many times earlier.
As we sat down under a huge pine tree to eat sandwiches from a backpack and sip tea brought in a thermos, Saroj looked at the forest before us dreamily. Later I would know, he had selected the big pine tree for our tea-break with a purpose. The tree was dear to him for personal reasons.
While nibbling on a sandwich, and taking sips from a cup under the big pine, suddenly, Saroj became nostalgic, “Ekant, I have never spoken to you about Mallika, my dream girl I had been in love with, wanted to marry and spend life with, but could not marry.” Did I detect Saroj wiping away a drop of tear quietly? I tried to be helpful and said, “No, don’t tell me about her if it is painful.”
I could not apprehend that a hardcore businessman in his fifties would break down recalling his thirty-year old memory of a girl he couldn’t marry. But Saroj insisted, that I must listen.
By then I had grown curious. I wanted him to unburden himself also. Apparently, he had met Mallika, his dream woman, by this huge pine tree, very big even then, thirty years ago. There, under that tree they had fallen in love.
He narrated, “Ekant, do you remember, you and I had separated after our graduation? We met again more than twenty years later and revived our friendship.” I recalled, by the time we met again, Saroj had already been married for about two to three years. He had married rather late in life, in his forties. But I never had a chance to go to his bungalow or meet his wife. We always met in my hotel room, whenever I visited Bhubaneswar. Now, he was revealing that he had a serious affair before his marriage.
I learnt, Saroj who was stationed at Bhubaneswar as a petty civil contractor, a family business he had inherited from his father, had his first visit to this hilly area of Daringbadi about thirty years back. He was around 25 at the time.
Those days, Daringbadi was almost inaccessible, and especially in winter because of subzero cold and unpredictable fog. Thick fog in a dense jungle area made it inhospitable. Saroj had his first visit with a few friends in a hired jeep. They had also brought an expert driver who knew Daringbadi very well and was to work as their guide.
Unluckily it was a foggy day when they arrived there from Phulbani after a night stay in a small hotel. At eleven, the sun was not visible because of dense rolling fog. Even trees that were close by looked like vague shadows, and visibility was almost zero beyond fifty feet. They decided to loiter around within fifty feet of where their jeep had been parked.
The driver kept sitting in the jeep switching on the flickering yellow signal light in the front of the jeep as well as on its behind. The yellow fog lights would serve as beacons for them to locate the jeep if any of them strayed beyond the limit of visibility by mistake. The yellow light could penetrate the fog as far as two hundred feet, the driver said.
They learnt from the driver that there were small villages in the jungle. People had cleared the jungle at various locations to settle down. The villagers did very little farming, but mostly depended on the jungle products like herbs, leaves, roots and fruits, fuel wood, honey, fresh meat etc. for their living. They used them themselves and also sold them for money.
Their driver had predicted that the fog might lift by one and give them a clear sight for two hours, probably returning by three and getting dense again by four. The area would start darkening by four thirty, getting very dark in an hour when sun would set behind the hills. Everyone should remember those possibilities and take care not to go very far from the jeep. They might get lost.
Like a prediction by an expert meteorologist, the driver’s words about the fog took effect before their eyes. By twelve-thirty fog started thinning and in half an hour, it was gone, making the distant blue hills clearly profiled against the gray sky.
After the fog lifted, the look of Daringbadi assumed serenity. The group including Saroj felt thrilled, and started exploring the woods, keeping in mind to return to the jeep before three-thirty because of the driver’s warning. They knew, the dark evening with thick fog and extreme cold would prove a dangerous cocktail.
While walking and looking at things together, yet at times a little separated, Saroj and his friends entered deeper into the woods. Saroj suddenly became conscious that he was alone. He had strayed away from others. He was not worried, however. He thought he could easily return to the vehicle. The sunlight filtering through the inter-strewn foliage overhead, the chilly breeze and the murmur of the leaves all around felt like he was dreaming.
When he looked at his watch, he realized the relativity theory of Einstein’s time-scale, how quickly the good time had passed. The watch said three-thirty-five. He should have walked back by three-thirty. But nothing seemed lost. He nosed in the direction of the jeep with fast steps. He guessed it might be parked not more than fifteen minutes away.
But after thirty minutes’ walk, there was neither the sign of the jeep, nor its flickering yellow fog-lights. He noticed thin fog had started rolling out of the forest. He was getting surrounded by rolling fog. It was an unnerving feeling.
He heard hooting of a horn from somewhere very far, perhaps from their own jeep. The driver might be signaling them about the location of the jeep. Sound in a foggy day was definitely a better signal than light. Saroj however could not make out the direction to the hooter, as the sound seemed coming from no specific direction, possibly the sound echoing from the surrounding hills and high grounds.
He panicked. The jungle might have confused him and instead of walking towards his jeep, he might have walked away. He didn’t know what to do except standing still. He stood in a small clearing with a huge pine tree for company. He hoped, the driver-cum-guide would come for him.
Exactly at that moment, someone touched his shoulder from behind. He jumped with fear. With a start he whirled around and saw her. That was how he met Mallika, the only woman who would ever occupy his heart, and haunt him for the rest of his life like an unfinished happy dream.
Saroj was looking into the face of a young woman of exquisite loveliness with an open smile. She was a very pretty girl in a simple dress. She said, “Hello, I am Mallika. Who are you? A tourist? Where is your guide? Or friends? Have you a vehicle to go to your destination? Or, are you from one of the villages around Daringbadi like me? I ask you these inane questions because you look lost and worried like the child lost in a fair.”
Saroj had the feeling of waking up from a dream. The growing fog, dimming light, shivering cold, feeling lost, and the appearance of an unknown girl from nowhere had seemed so unreal. But he did not have to pinch himself to know that at least the girl was real, for she shook him really hard. He fumbled, and sputtered, “OK, ummm, um, ..am Saroj Das, a civil contractor from Bhubaneswar. I came with friends in a jeep as a tourist to Daringbadi. We are staying at Bharat hotel in Phulbani. I seem to have strayed. I don’t know where my friends are or our jeep is. All I know is I am lost.”
Mallika gave a brittle laugh, “No dear, I assure you, you are not lost. You have found me, or the vice versa, whatever. I will be your guide from here. I will pilot you to your jeep safely even in a foggy night. I know this area like the back of my hand. I can walk around with my eyes closed. You know, I am from one of the villages in Daringbadi. I grew up here. Don’t worry.”
She continued, “This intermittent feeble sound of hooting, I can hear, must be your driver’s signal for you. I think the echo confuses you about the hooter’s location, but it can’t confuse me. Let’s follow the hooter, and reach your vehicle.” She took his hand like an old relative.
Saroj hesitated but followed Mallika. He was overwhelmed by Mallika’s beauty and genial nature. Within half an hour they reached the jeep. As soon as Saroj could detect the blinking yellow lights of his jeep in the dense fog, looking like animal eyes, he left Mallika’s hand and ran ahead.
In a minute, his friends surrounded him excitedly, chattering like a flock of distressed crows. After the commotion settled down, Saroj turned around to introduce Mallika to his friends.
Mallika was nowhere. Saroj quickly ran to the driver to see if Mallika was having a word with him. To his question, the driver asked, “Who Mallika? I didn’t see any girl behind you. You just emerged from the fog alone and ran to the jeep.” Driver shrugged and returned to the lurid photo in a cheap journal that he had been watching. All his friends parroted, “We didn’t see any girl, Saroj.”
He shouted ‘Mallika’ at his loudest repeatedly into the thick darkening fog. The fog seemed to swallow up his shouts, nothing bounced back, not even a feeble echo.
After waiting for a few minutes for Mallika, the jeep had to leave Daringbadi for Phulbani town, a drive of almost three hours. They had to leave, as the driver was getting worried for the gathering fog and growing darkness.
Saroj, the life of his group, was not his jovial self during the journey back to Phulbani town about hundred kilometers by the hilly road. He was heartbroken. He was sitting, kind of holding his splintered heart-pieces in his lap. He felt so bad, he had nothing for a memory, no means to contact his savior angel Mallika. Even he could not thank her properly for her selfless kindness to him, a stranger.
Saroj’s only consolation was that Mallika would reach her home safely as she was a local girl and was capable of finding her way, eyes shut, as she had assured him. Further, he had some hope that he would find out Mallika, his dream angel, in one of the villages at Daringbadi, one of these days.
Whatever little he had said about the girl to his companions, it became the hot topic of their discussion all the way to Phulbani town. It ranged from attributing Mallika with angelic goodness and beauty, magical powers of a hill-nymph, besides being a selfless soul who did not even wait for the thanks from Saroj. They joked, “Are you sure, Saroj, she is not a spirit of the woods?”
“I am in love. My first love ever, may be my last.” Saroj admitted to himself in secret. His heart sank when the driver, after listening to all the oohs and ahs, spoke aloud, steering in hand, like a great oracle, “I confirm, she is not human. She is a wood nymph.”
I noticed, Saroj was almost in tears while narrating to me so graphically his thirty-year old secret memories of his love story. I asked him, “Did you meet Mallika again? Why do you look so sad?”
He replied feebly, “Yes, I met her the next morning.” I was taken aback, “How? At Phulbani? Then, where is the point of being so sad? Was she a married woman, or really a spirit of the jungle?”
Saroj talked like he was in a trance, “I had a sleepless night. We had to leave Phulbani for Bhubaneswar by afternoon. After breakfast, we fanned out into the township, not much of a place for marketing except a few shops and eateries, most of them in ramshackle huts. My intension was to look for some memorabilia, characteristic of Daringbadi, or a curio, a local textile, or a stone figurine, I wanted to name after Mallika, my darling.”
He continued, “In the bazar, I was directed to a specific shop that sold the best selection of curios. Surprisingly, I found Mallika standing behind the counter in that shop alone. There were no customers. She stood looking forlorn and lost, staring unfocused. She brightened up to see me approaching.”
Saroj paused and added, “My happiness overflowed. But anger took over my happiness as it should be the case in an intimate love affair. I shouted at Mallika, ‘How could you do that to me, Mallika? Leaving me like that? Being so cruel to me? Why did you save me, if you wanted me dumped immediately to die? I could have died of heart failure. I haven’t slept a wink the whole of last night. I missed you badly, it never happened earlier to me. Your thoughts never allowed me a minute of peace. How cruel could you really be to dump me like that after coming to my life?’ I gasped for breath after my long speech in one breath.”
Mallika had given an apologetic smile, made a sorry face, took Saroj’s hand cajolingly, and started her story by mouthing a popular dramatic line from a Hindi movie often used for new-lovers, “Aag to dono taraf se lagi hai, Saroj, the fire is burning at both the ends, in two hearts, yours and mine. I also spent the last night without a wink, I couldn’t put you out of my mind. It was a torture, but a sweet torture, night-watching with your memory. It was like the vigil that you know, the brides of Jesus, His followers, keep for Him, a symbol of their adoration of the divine.”
She hesitated, and continued, “I admit, I repented after leaving you with your friends without taking your contact number or address, because I thought I had done my duty, and rest would be only formality.”
She turned serious, looked into Saroj’s eyes, and added, “I didn’t realize when I left you that I was in love, in love with you, my first love ever. I realized on reaching home that I could not afford to lose you in my life. I knew, by then you might have left for Phulbani. The night, the fog, and the distance of quite some kilometers between Daringbadi and Phulbani was separating me from you. I brooked no delay for any reason what so ever. At the sound of the first crow this morning, I started for here. In fact, I went to your hotel and your driver told me you had left with friends to buy curios. I came running here, my curio shop, to wait for you. This is the only authentic curio shop in Phulbani town, and I knew people would direct you here.”
Again, Saroj seemed lapsing into a sad mood. I insisted, “So, you must have exchanged contact details and whispered sweet nothings, as you said no one except you and Mallika were there in that curio shop. Might have, I mean both of you, fallen in love properly etc. etc. Or did you goof it up again?”
Saroj went back to his narrative, this time, in a rather tragic voice, “Yes Ekant, we exchanged our contact details. We had hardly finished those basic formalities; a few under-teen ugly giggling girls entered the shop and made the atmosphere most unromantic. Mallika told me in an undertone, ‘Go upstairs. There is something for you.’ She gave me a secret little wink.”
Saroj went upstairs. He found Mallika following him. Without any preamble, she took him in a bearhug and kissed him on the mouth. They continued in their lip-lock for minutes, repeated their show of affection intimately. They declared their love, and sealed it during that intimate exchange. In Saroj’s words, “I felt being in the seventh heaven, the top of the world, drinking manna from her mouth.”
Saroj paused as if collecting his thoughts, then: “Mallika slowly detached herself from my hug, looked at her watch, and said, ‘Saroj, I am sorry, but I gave to hurry to Daringbadi as guide to a tourist group. Bye. Keep in touch. I will come to Bhubaneswar soon. We are to talk a lot, marry and live together, have children, and get old together. Handing me a photograph of her she continued, now carry me in your wallet always.’ She put the small photo into my wallet, and walked out of the shop when I was looking at her lively photo. I looked up, and found her gone.”
Saroj returned to the lodge without buying any curio, as he felt, he was carrying away the best curio of Daringbadi in his wallet, Mallika’s photo, contact number, and her address.
On my prodding, Saroj said, “Yes, that had been the happiest day of my life. I showed Mallika’s photo to all my friends and the driver. The driver confirmed, ‘Yes, this pretty girl, I mean your wood nymph in this photo, had come to the lodge asking for you. I tell you: her beauty is not human. She is a wood nymph without doubt.’ I and my friends teased the driver all the way to Bhubaneswar about his blind beliefs and making Mallika a wood nymph. They also pulled my legs on Mallika’s Hindi movie dialogue, ‘Aag to dono taraf se lagi hui hai’. Surprisingly, I enjoyed their rustic joke.”
To my urging, Saroj showed me Mallika’s photo from his wallet, an old sepia of a very pretty woman. She looked in her twenties. The photo was discoloured by staying in Saroj’s wallet for thirty years. Then I heard the most heartrending story.
Saroj said, “We never met again. I tried to ring Mallika, wrote letters at her address. I repeatedly visited Daringbadi and its villages to enquire about Mallika, but to no avail. It appeared, Mallik’s address and telephone number had no existence."
Saroj broke down, “I feel bad to say, I suspected my beloved Mallika to be a hoax. Possibly, the driver was right. Mallika was a nymph of the woods.” I had goose bumps to hear Saroj’s last statement.
We sat silent for a long time. I didn’t wish to break his sad meditative silence. When Saroj seemed to have collected himself sufficiently, I ventured to ask, “What finally happened, Saroj?” Crestfallen, he replied, “The whole life I have waited to have a third glimpse of my Mallika, the wood nymph, or whatever. After more than fifteen years of that incident, I had to marry my present wife, under parental pressure. Mallika was the cause of my late marriage. I admit, I have lived fifteen years of happy life with my wife. I still wait for Mallika. I don’t know what I would do if I meet her again. I may chase her to the world’s end.”
Without my urging, he went talking, “Why do you think, I ignited your curiosity for visiting the subzero Daringbadi in winter, and brought you here with me. The same driver, who had taken our group to Daringbadi when I had met Mallika, informed me three days back that during his latest visit to Daringbadi with a tourist group, he saw Mallika in Phulbani bazar. I thought why not hit two birds with one stone, show Daringbadi to my friend Ekant, and meet Mallka?”
He paused and continued, “After I found and lost her, Daringbadi acquired the status of a pilgrimage for me. Every year I would visit here more than once. Spending quality time here has been a pretence, the real reason being Mallika.” I felt bad that Saroj had, kind of, cheated by dragging me to Daringbadi for his own purpose. But I found nobility in his action and pardoned him in my heart of heart.
Ironically, however, with my semi-urban taste for a pedicured and manicured forest, I liked that sparsely dense jungle before me. It was still thick enough to have its sublime charm and serene mystic. It was no more threatening to swallow the traveler up as Saroj had felt when Mallika rescued him.
Further, Daringbadi having a good net connectivity, and most tourists having GPS system in their smart mobile phones, one could go home without the help of mysterious Mallikas. I felt a bit sad that the thirty years of machinery progress had ruined the romances involving wood nymphs. They were no more needed to pop up from nowhere to rescue lost pilgrims.
Before returning we had made discreet inquiries at villages in Daringbadi, and the markets in Phulbani town about Mallika showing her photograph. But we returned empty handed, and clueless. Saroj wore a dejected expression as if he had lost his Waterloo. I, also, felt an induced depression in my core.
The jeep stopped at a medium size bungalow, Saroj’s home, before it proceeded to leave me at my hotel. I got down with Saroj. I apprehended that his wife might not be of much help in those hours when Saroj had been floundering in his secret Mallika’s muddy morass.
Saroj showed strong reluctance to my going to his house. I was surprised. Earlier, he would insist that I must stay in his house during my short visits instead of staying in hotels of Bhubaneswar, but I would stubbornly refuse quoting my non-interfering principles. Today it was the opposite.
But I attributed his reluctance to his wanting to keep his sorrow to himself. Alone, he perhaps would weep his heart out in the bathroom. He did not want a witness to his abject poverty in the quarters of love. Yet his protest increased my desire to give him a shoulder to cry on if he needed one in the middle of night.
The bungalow had a well-kept and tastefully planted garden within its medium height boundary wall. I wanted to sit in the lawn for a while. Saroj instructed a man servant to put a portable coffee table, a few lawn chairs and a smoking mosquito coil under the table there. Saroj with his lost look went indoors for arranging refreshments.
I walked among the flower beds. The most beautiful were the rose-laden bushes standing dense and tall, sometimes as tall as six feet. The rose beds occupied the entire east flank of the building. A light rose fragrance filled the air. I ambled leisurely among the rose bushes. The sun was setting. The wind was growing chilly, carrying the winter’s shiver in its scarf, heady with rose smell.
Though I enjoyed the pink hours, yet the vacuum in Saroj’s life left by Mallika, weighed heavily on my mind. Darkness was slowly creeping out of the bushes as the evening progressed. The gaps between tall rose bushes were getting dark. The lights inside houses and the lamps in streets were coming alive. The gloom of my mood and the dark sky created a ghostly ambience in that diffused luminance.
Suddenly, a woman materialized by my side from a gap between two rows of rose bushes, and extended a hand with a steaming cup towards me. My nostrils were suffused with the faint fragrance of an exotic female perfume dabbed with the steaming tea aroma.
My jittery nerves were settling down in the soothing evening, but that sudden appearance of a woman by my side as if from nowhere wearing an exotic perfume startled me to my roots. Taking the cup in shaking hands, I looked up. Did I see a ghost?
It was Mallika, the wood nymph of Saroj’s sepia photograph, turning away after handing over the cup of tea to me. No, it couldn’t be. I rubbed my eyes, and looked up. No one was there. I ran along the gap between the rows of rose bushes from where she had stepped out, but found none.
But some woman had brought the cup of tea to me? The bearer of the cup could not be a chudel (a female ghost). I had seen in the American movie ‘The Sixth Sense’ by M. Night Shyamalan that ghosts could not pick up a solid thing. But perhaps a nymph could? Hadn’t a wood nymph led Saroj by hand from the fog?
But the epiphany in the garden after half an hour that very evening superseded all earlier epiphanies. It challenged my sanity. Lovely Mallika, the wood nymph, in an exquisite kaftan, carrying her elegance in easy ambulation, entered the drink arena in the garden where I sat with Saroj, chatting over drinks, he sipping his whisky on rocks and I, my chilled cola. I was so stunned that no words escaped my mouth. I stood up, insane amazement in my eyes.
When I got my voice, I stammered, “Saroj, see, the wood nymph!” I pointed at Mallika. Saroj, giggled, “Have you gone crazy? This is my wife. Are you hallucinating?”
Mallika, the wood nymph, smiled at me, “I am no wood nymph, Ekant babu. I am Mallika, Saroj’s lawfully wedded wife, in flesh and blood. You are not going crazy. Your naughty friend has played a prank on you. He told me all about it just a minute ago. He told me it was his ploy to bring you here against your reluctance. In fact, I had wanted to meet you, and Saroj claims he has played the trick on you for me.”
In mock anger, I said, “It is a pleasure Mallika devi to meet you. Thank you. Are you from Daringi Badi?” She looked at her husband with a mixture of affection and irritation, and replied to me, “No, Ekant babu, I am from Cuttack. We had met by that big pine tree at Daringbadi for the first time, the pine tree Saroj showed you. There I had pretended to be a wood nymph that Saroj swallowed hook and sinker until the next day when we met again in Phulbani bazar. He used that old story on you to pull your legs.”
I felt utterly foolish; a noble fool, with good intentions, being fooled by a nobler cheat with better intentions. I looked at Saroj with pretended anger in my eyes. Saroj looked at me with a sheepish ‘sorry smile’.
Prabhanjan K. Mishra writes poems, stories, critiques and translates, works in two languages – English and Odia. Three of his collected poems in English have been published into books – VIGIL (1993), Lips of a Canyon (2000), and LITMUS (2005).His Odia poems have appeared in Odia literary journals. His English poems poems have been widely anthologized and published in literary journals. He has translated Bhakti poems (Odia) of Salabaga that have been anthologized into Eating God by Arundhathi Subramaniam and also translated Odia stories of the famous author Fakirmohan Senapati for the book FROM THE MASTER’s LOOM (VINTAGE STORIES OF FAKIRMOHAN SENAPATI). He has also edited the book. He has presided over the POETRY CIRCLE (Mumbai), a poets’ group, and was the editor (1986-96) of the group’s poetry magazine POIESIS. He has won Vineet Gupta Memorial Poetry Award and JIWE Poetry Award for his English poems.He welcomes readers' feedback at his email - prabhanjan.db@gmail.com
When the stranger opened the gate that morning and walked up our shady drive, I was watching from the upstairs window. He was tall and slim, dressed in a dhoti and kurta. He carried a suitcase in one hand and a file in the other. When I came down to breakfast, I found him seated opposite my father. "This is my daughter, Aroopa," my father said to the stranger. To me, "And this is Kumar; he has come for some help with his research work." Kumar looked at me and I was startled to see that his eyes were gray-green. Like a cat's, was my instinctive comparison.
They went back to their discussion while I ate a leisurely breakfast. Janu made the fluffiest appams. She was our cook-cum-housekeeper-cum carer. A tough one. After Mother had passed away seven years ago in an accident when I was eleven, Janu had stepped in to run the house. She ran it like a well-oiled machine.
Of course, visits like Kumar’s were a fairly common occurrence in my home. My father was a renowned folklorist and many flocked to him for guidance and help. Volumes of "Lokaratna" adorned his shelves. But the visitors rarely stayed with us. Kumar apparently had journeyed from very far; my father had invited him to stay at our place. Kumar was half-way through his research. Every morning till lunch was served, the two were shut up in my father's study. After lunch, Janu rested awhile in her room. Father took a long nap.Though even when awake, he wouldn’t have noticed if I were in the same room or not. This was when Kumar and I talked. We sat on the open verandah, trellised with flowering vines. Perhaps it was his eyes that did it. Soon I was lost in their grey depths; often I would not speak or respond for minutes.
We progressed to spending long night hours on the same verandah. He spoke of folklore - of demi-gods that were believed to shadow the environs. They almost came alive as he detailed them - the dreamy Gandharva,that heart-stoppingly handsome celestial singer who seduced young virgins; the dangerously lovely Yakshi, clad all in white, long hair left unbound, who lured men to drink their blood; the raucous, pint-sized Kuttichathan with his painful practical jokes; the nondescript-looking Kummatti who was oracle, medicine man and magical entertainer of children… .The list was long and enthralling.
"You make them so real, Kumar," I said in awe.
"They are real; as real as you or I," he replied. His strange eyes glinted in the dim light. A shiver ran down my spine.
On such nights, it seemed to me that he spun the silver rays of the moon.
There he sat, spinning them into a lustrous web into which I, entranced creature, lured by the shimmering light, crept closer, ever closer.
One night, his abrupt words broke the spell.
"Aroopa, don't fall in love with me, I am not a nice person to know. And I have nothing to give you."
"I want nothing except to be with you," I replied.
“But I am a wanderer, a loner; I have no home, no family,’ he urged, looking earnestly at me.”You are almost a child. Be sensible, my dear Aroopa.”
A woman in love is as adamantine as diamond itself. All I knew was that I loved him and wanted to be with him. Always.
I dreaded the day he would leave.
But the day did come. The night, rather. A full moon night. I spoke, I pleaded, I wept. At last I won; strange words flowed from him and his arms reached out … .
When he left, the moon was sinking in the dark western sky. I followed. Much like the archetypal wife of our epic, I was willing to undergo any hardship, endure anything so long as we could be together.
We walked through the forest; miles and miles it seemed to my poor legs. There were numerous insects and little birds dancing before us but we did not stop.
Finally we reached a settlement An old man came out of a hut. Kumar spoke to him. Apparently, he knew their strange language. In minutes, we were shown to a little hut. Bare and rather dirty. But I was grateful for the rest and for the cool water and the food that was brought to us.
It was amazing how fast I adjusted to my new life. There were hardly any of the comforts I had been used to all my life. But with Kumar to cuddle to, I was supremely happy. He would go out most mornings to interact with the people around us. They were the tribal folk he was researching on. I would accompany him and sit in a corner while he spoke or listened. I soon picked up some of their language and could understand their simple requests or commands.
A week after we reached the settlement, two policeman came trudging up to its border. I had just woken up. I was filled with fear but Kumar soothed me and told me to stay on the straw mattress on the floor. He covered me with a dhoti. Then he went out and spoke to the two men. Later, I heard how they had inspected every hut. They were looking for me, of course. But they did not find the girl they had come looking for!
My life was as free of drudgery as it had always been. They brought us our meals, the friendly women of the settlement. To them and to the brown-skinned, near-naked children, I was a novelty. My whiteness was like nothing they had seen before. I enjoyed their lively company, even playing with the children as I had done not many years ago.
On some days Kumar would set out for still-unvisited parts of the forests, tribal settlements that had barely felt the brush of civilization. Often he returned after a day or two with his notebooks filled in his sloping hand. I would try to make sense of his squiggles, looking over his shoulder as he sat outside our hut the next morning.
I sometimes thought of the home I had left and wondered whether my father missed me.
I knew it worried Kumar terribly, the way he had acted. One full moon night, the third we were spending together, he said to me, stroking my head as we sat together outside our hut,
“I have to go to the town for a day. Come with me. This can’t go on,my dear. I shall leave you at your father’s house.” My eyes flamed and he quickly amended his words, “Stay here, then. I will be back by evening.”
I uttered no sound but my mind was uneasy. Was this the end of my fulfillment? Was he leaving me? I decided to accompany him.
There was a bullock-cart going early the next morning to the town. It was loaded with roots and spices that tickled my nostrils as I found a little space among them. Kumar was perched right on top of the pile, swaying as the cart moved along the rut-filled path. I enjoyed the sights I had missed that morning when we had trudged to the settlement. Great green trees that seemed to touch the white clouds. Many-hued birds and butterflies that swooped and darted this way and that. Huge, bright flowers I had never seen before in my life. I dozed off after a while.
A jolt and a crash. A bike had ignored the lights and come screeching, hitting the bullock cart on its side. Kumar had been flung off the top of the cart. He lay spread-eagled on the tarred road. I went up to him, called out, and tried to make him open his eyes. They remained closed. He was bleeding from the head. I felt my heart would break. I followed as he was carried to the hospital that was just a little distance away from the junction.
I gathered from the nurse’s words that Kumar had suffered a serious head injury. I hung around the place all day and night. No one paid me any attention. How could they possibly know my heart was breaking ?
The next morning, I saw my beloved, his eyes still closed, being carried into an ambulance. Painted on its sides was the name of a renowned hospital in the distant city.
I made my way to my home. There was nothing else I could do.
My father treats me with kindness. Janu feeds me well at my father’s behest. On moonlit nights, I perch on the verandah where Kumar and I had once sat. Memories lap me. My heart aches for my beloved who transformed me with his magical hands and words. For my Kummatti, my strange lover who worked his magic on me only for my happiness. Has he recovered? Where is he now? Will he come back, looking for me, to turn me back to my former self?
One night, when the full moon rises in a shimmer of gold, I cry aloud. Janu comes out to shoo me away.
“Stop that caterwauling!” she shouts. I run into my father’s study and sit at his feet.
But how can I make him understand that the white cat who walked into his house a few weeks back is his daughter?
Geetha Nair G. is an award-winning author of two collections of poetry: Shored Fragments and Drawing Flame. Her work has been reviewed favourably in The Journal of the Poetry Society (India) and other notable literary periodicals. Her most recent publication is a collection of short stories titled Wine, Woman and Wrong. All the thirty three stories in this collection were written for,and first appeared in Literary Vibes.
Geetha Nair G. is a former Associate Professor of English, All Saints’ College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
I wanted to observe a quiet silver jubilee anniversary. It was not something to create a great fuss about, certainly not deserving the illumination of 25 candles. A solitary lamp was a more appropriate decoration for the occasion.
After all, I had only one article to show for all my literary efforts in 25 years. It was long ago, April 1976 in fact, when Mr Ruskin Bond found my piece on ‘Oranges and Oranges’ good enough to be published in ‘Imprint’. That was the heyday of that literary magazine, before newspapers flooded the market and swamped ‘Imprint’ out of existence.
A sad but inevitable consequence of what economists tell us about survival of the fittest. Markets are driven by economic forces, even in matters of literature.
So I meant to keep the celebration, when April 2001 rolled around, down to a low key. Telling others about it would only invite their mock laughter. What a silly fellow I was, to be remembering such an insignificant event and commemorating its silver jubilee!
Yet, to me such a lone achievement was worth savouring. To have one’s spot in the sun, even for a moment, was worth living for, and worth celebrating as a silver jubilee.
So I put my feet up and pondered over what to do on 1 April, apart from pulling other people’s legs on All Fools’ Day. I would bring out my old issue of ‘Imprint’ and go over the article again. I cold buy 25 oranges and make orange juice, which I would then pour into a champagne glass and raise it to the skies with a cry of ‘cheers’! I may…
A storm blew into the room, unsettling my legs from the tea-table on which they had been resting comfortably. It was my wife, who was in the habit of making stormy entrances.
This time she barged in waving The Statesman of 2 February excitedly in my face. “Have you seen this? Have you read it?” she pointed at the middle of the folded newspaper, thrusting it under my nose.
I followed her index finger which finally pointed out a middle called ‘The Pulse of the Pen’. The next moment I was jumping out of my chair, the byline said it was ‘By Ishwar Pati’.
My mind was in a whirl. I was joyous, and at the same time confused. I could think of no other Ishwar Pati, but I had definitely not sent anything with the title ‘The Pulse of the Pen’ to The Statesman. So how was it that it was there in print in my name?
I started reading the piece and found it familiar. Then it dawned on me that the editor had used not only his scissors but also his correcting fluid on my article I had originally labelled ‘The Joy of Writing’. I was not annoyed with the editor, though. He knew best. In fact, the changed title seemed to pump more life and rhythm into it.
My wife and I did a jig of sorts. We felt like a couple of school kids who had scored their first century partnership in junior cricket, each contributing to it in his or her own style.
While I had penned the article in a moment of heightened creativity, it was her labour in painstakingly selecting this one out of several pieces and pursuing with the editor at Statesman House that had been rewarded at last.
I have started making mental notes of how to celebrate my new celebrity status. A middle in The Statesman means that I have arrived, though for the editor it might have been too routine a matter to inform the writer beforehand.
What about my modest plans for celebrating a silver jubilee of my first published piece? Well, suddenly oranges seem to have gone out of season. I don’t have to squeeze them any more to get my ‘fake’ champagne. I am now after the real thing.
I was sure that the book had a life of its own, for no matter where I left it, it clamoured for attention. Lucky for me, it was never noticed by my family members, my wife and my son. At least that was what I thought.
I came by that book by chance.
I was on a train, going home straight from my office, a journey I had to take every weekend and there was this man sitting opposite me. He was not exactly reading this book but was admiring it, kind of hiding it from all of us who sat around him.
He was not one of the regular travellers, I knew almost everyone who took that train on weekends. We were like schoolmates, trainmates. I don’t know if there is such a word though. And that day the train was very late. There was some derailing on the way the night before. It had got fixed but there was tight security everywhere because there was a suspicion that that was no accident but some kind of an extremist activity. Maoists, probably.
Those days every non-Muslim riot was attributed to the Maoists and no one, including me, had any idea who a Maoist was. We use the term without even thinking much about that Chinese leader. What came to my mind when I heard the term were the skinny sooty faces of the casual labourers from the north-east frontier. Everyone the police had arrested so far definitely looked like those labourers.
So, back to the man on the train.
At some station on the way he disappeared leaving the book behind. I noticed it as soon as the train started moving and ran to the door with the book. I saw the man on the platform at a distance but he soon merged with the milling crowd who were all waiting for the delayed trains.
I didn’t go back to the sear but stayed near the door to see the derailed train and the rails. No one had died though several were seriously injured. The accident site was something to see. Obviously there had been an explosion there. As we slowly moved through one track, everyone crowded near the window and the doors to observe the details.
I didn’t know that there were so many things under the tracks. Someone told us that the broad pieces scattered around were called fishplates and the big logs thrown around were called sleepers. Who named them so, I wondered. Even then I was still holding the book. I had been holding it for some time and when I got out of the train that day, I took it home with me.
I had gone through the book and had found it highly inflammatory. A sense of adventure prevailed over me as I decided to read it thoroughly. A firm believer in God and Fate, I was sure that the book had come to me for some cosmic reason.
I had no idea my life was about to go for a toss.
I smuggled the book into my home but had no idea where to hide it. We had no secrets among the three of us and so, nothing was under lock and key. After shifting the book from place to place though highly clandestine operations, for which my wife thought I had gone nuts, I finally left it on top of the almirah.
But as soon as I left it there, my son came in bouncing his basketball. He made it bounce so high that it landed on top of the almirah, exactly where I had left the book. I was sure that he would see the book when he tried to retrieve the ball the next day.
That night I removed the book and left tucked it under my wife’s old saris. Guess what I saw under those discarded saris! A hefty money purse, her secret treasure. No way was the book going to be safe there either.
Finally I thought it could be hidden in plain sight. I left it on my small book shelf, right between two of my very old engineering text books.
Two days later, again by chance, I spotted the owner of the book very close to my office. I secretly followed him to his den. The next week I carefully brought the book back from my home and went in search of that man.
He was right there in the same place I had seen him the other day. In a long kurtha, he looked like a village school master from a Tagorian novel. He was very happy to see that book and he took it from my hand.
“That was so nice of you to bring it all the way here. Thank you!” he said.
I purposefully didn’t acknowledge his gratitude. I kept mum.
He browsed through the book as if he was seeing it for the first time. T hen he asked me, “Did you read it?”
“Yes, of course, I went through it, but could not understand it.”
Like a small child, his face fell. He took out his pen, autographed the book and gave it to me.
A chill ran down my spine like how a smooth knife slashes a chicken.
He was the author, a most wanted Maoist.
I wanted to get out of that place as fast as I could and in no time I was on an autorickshaw, trying to make it to the railway station in time to catch my train.
That was not going to be the last of our meetings. Before I knew what was happening, I was a regular presence in the meetings he convened. I stayed back in the city on weekends to listen to people I had only heard about in thriller movies.
It took me only a full year to be one among the core activists. I read most of what they had published but was very careful not to engage in any political discussions at my office or on the train. Instead I talked about gazals and gardening as I was told.
We decided to blow up another railway track by which the minister’s special coach was sure to pass. Everything was meticulously planned and arranged. We didn’t miss it this time.
Everything went as planned and the corrupt minister lay dead amid other collateral damages.
That evening, I caught a train back to my village. Due to the riots that followed the sabotage, the trains were unusually late. Police and police dogs came into our compartment several times. I went on chatting about zodiac signs and how reliable horoscopes were. I read a co-traveller’s palm and told him he was a good man spoiled by friends. From my experience I knew that those were the kind of things people wanted to hear.
I reached home by midnight, expecting my wife and son to have gone to bed. The whole place was rather quiet. There was not much light. I had a spare key in my bag and I got in without bothering to wake up my wife and son.
Once inside, I found that my son was still studying. I sneaked up behind him and found that he had gone to sleep with his head on the open page of a book.
That book!
He had found it and was reading it.
Wild with an unfamiliar rage, the like of which I had felt only when I pressed the remote switch to blow up the railway track, I grabbed the book and ran out into the darkness as far as the river. Standing on a boulder that stuck up on the bank, I flung the book as far as I could.
Farther and farther into the darkness which was flowing by like water.
My uncle died a couple of months ago. He wasn’t much alive for quite a long time. In fact, I once thought that he had never lived at all.
I spent my college days at his house. I was a weak student, a bother, discarded by parents, almost an orphan when I was sent to them. At least that was what I thought about myself. Had it not been for my aunt who passed away soon after my college days, I would have taken to drugs or something.
Later in life when I got a new job at the city near where they lived, I went back to the same house, now totally deserted except for my uncle. Both his children were abroad and they had already told the relatives not to wait for them, in case something happened to my uncle. In fact, my uncle had no one and that was why I declined a good accommodation offered by the bank I worked for and decided to stay with my uncle.
He had not been exactly nice to me while I was on student’s visa at his house decades ago. Now I was on job visa, with enough money to give a reasonably comfortable life to this old man.
To my surprise, he was a changed man. Instead of me taking care of him, the roles were reversed. He was now a replica of my aunt in his manners and behaviour.
He would not allow me anywhere near the kitchen. He declined my offer of a kitchen maid whom I had arranged through a friend. Like the young man in Chekov’s story “The Bet”, he seemed to have followed an upward inclination in his spiritual growth after the death of his wife, my aunt.
He had developed a keen interest in arts. I could not check his progressive growth of interest in music or painting not only because I was not equipped to do so but also there was no evidence to go by. But I could check his interest in books as he had a habit of writing down the date of purchase and reading on the last page of every book in his small library. The trajectory showed Shiv Khera at one end and Zen Budhism at the other. His choice of books showed a growth from the material to the spiritual, from the gross to the sublime, from this worldly to the other worldly. He had become highly disciplined in his daily activities like exercises and yoga in the morning to an hour of deep meditation before he went to bed.
His attitude and behaviour towards me had changed drastically and I thought the poor old man repented how he had treated me when I was with him decades ago. But soon I realized that I was wrong to some extent.
The first few days with him were heavenly but soon I realized that hell was right on the outskirts of heaven. I was trapped. I could neither leave him nor be defiant.
His days (and mine) started with a cold concoction of water with ginger and lemon rind, boiled and kept overnight in an earthen pot. The first day I puked, the second day I didn’t, the third day I found it tolerable and from the fourth day onwards I was enjoying it.
This was mostly what happened with everything else too. The food was bland, he quenched his thirst with nauseating concoctions, and denied himself almost all the pleasures of life. I realized why his sons didn’t want to stay with him. Their wives would have divorced them if they followed this funny old man. He hated anything that came in a packet. Three of the mosquito repellents I bought disappeared overnight. He said there was no need to use them. He fumigated the entire house on such enjoyable evenings, burning my eyes for hours. I knew that smoke is nothing but fine ash up in the air and eyes burn when it falls in them. This thought made it more intolerable. No liquid cleaners were used, everywhere it was some form or ash or charcoal. Washing machine was under lock and key. Powdered pulse was used for soap and instead of the drinking water the corporation supplied, he used mud flavoured water from an old well. He looked down upon the fan over his head and carried around a piece cut out of an areca nut frond to fan himself. I missed my mint flavoured fluoride toothpaste; he kept only an ayurvedic powder for brushing his teeth. I knew it took away the enamel of my teeth. He himself had only a few left. But my own teeth became so clean and sparkling and my breath fresh that I decided to sacrifice a few teeth of mine at my old age, ie. if I lived to be old. Who knew I would be writing this at 54 with no harm to any of my teeth!
Even though I first fell for my uncle’s way of life, eventually I got free of it. I found that he was following the path of self mortification quite unknowingly. Determined to live a century, he was killing himself every day. Even though his clothes and appearance made him look very miserly, my uncle was not miserly, at least towards the end of his life. Without letting anyone know, he was giving away most of his pension to whoever needed his help. He never allowed me to spend a penny while I was there.
After a couple of months, I was in quite a dilemma. His hold on me had become more gripping and smothering. But that was only part of how he smothered himself and drained happiness out of his life. His wife being dead and his children away, he had no external reasons to be alive. Now, he seemed to have no internal reasons either.
I pretended to have longer work hours at the bank and stayed back in the city late into the night, in clubs, in theatres, among friends or simply walked around the city looking for delicious food. When I went home, I was questioned about everything and I got away by lying through my teeth, the clean sparkling ones.
“DON’T” was a favourite word of my parents and it spelled HELL for me. Both of them were conventional teachers and ‘grew me up by their own hand’ as Dickens says in his novel, Great Expectations. How I resented my bringing up! It had been such a relief to be a non-paying guest at my uncle’s home. Those days, he hardly was to be seen at the house and I basked in the love and affection my aunt lavished on me. Now my uncle was there round the clock compensating for whatever he hadn’t done for me, or rather hadn’t done to me. I could not blame him because he didn’t use any kind of forceful persuasion on me. His meek and mild suggestions were effective enough.
At the end of the year, my boss asked me if I would like to have a transfer. I told him I needed a couple of days to think it over and make a decision.
As fate would have it, my aunt’s brother, a retired air force pilot, came for a visit. That night, after my uncle went to bed, his brother-in-law came over to my room and sat down for a drink he had brought with him.
After a few rounds, he became moody and then sad and finally ended up in tears. He was talking about his sister. He told me how, after I had left that house, my uncle suddenly took a sharp turn in his life. He fought with both his sons and developed an interest in a classical singer, an old crush from his college days. Her husband came to know about it and moved his family to another city. My uncle’s life was shattered and he took it all on his wife. He became a drunkard and domestic violence became an everyday thing.
It finally led to my aunt taking her own life. That was news to me because I was given to understand that she had fallen ill and died.
“It was neither sickness nor suicide, it was cold-blooded murder. She was dead to this world long before she took her own life,” he said in between sobs.
I tried to cool him down. I told him my uncle had had a change of mind. I told him how he was punishing himself to atone for his sins.
The man flew into a murderous rage when I told him this and he asked me a single question.
“What is the point?”
He had come to get my uncle’s signature on some inheritance document and having done that he left the following day.
The very next day, I applied for a transfer. I lied to my uncle that it was a promotion and I could not refuse it. Still, he was sad and quiet during the rest of my stay with him.
Before I left I arranged a lady and her husband as cleaners for him. I gave them an advance and told them to visit him everyday even if there was no cleaning work to do.
Three months later the couple found him dead in his bedroom. The doctor said he had died of heart attack due to lack of fluid in his body. It was later confirmed that he had not been eating or drinking for almost a week.
I still don’t know whether to call it natural death or suicide. The doctor preferred to call it natural death just to avoid problems with the insurance people.
By his will, I too inherited a small legacy from my uncle. I sold it as soon as I got it and donated most of it to an old age home. The rest of it was used as a permanent fund to serve a meal every year to commemorate my aunt’s birthday.
I am sure there is some point in it.
Sreekumar K, known more as SK, writes in English and Malayalam. He also translates into both languages and works as a facilitator at L' ecole Chempaka International, a school in Trivandrum, Kerala.
GLIMPSES OF OUR HERITAGE - AN OVERVIEW OF HINDU SACRED TEXTS
It is popular belief that Hinduism has over the centuries developed with a group of Aryans (?rya means respectable). However, mystery shrouds on the place of its origin. It is believed that in western India they were already present. Some others think that they came from Central Asia and far beyond. Further, it is believed that Hinduism began to assert its presence in the north-west of the subcontinent in the beginning of the second millennium BCE. The Indus civilisation existed then. The Indus civilisation is so named because it spread out from settlements on the Indus river banks. The language of the Aryans was Sanskrit. It was meant to assert their cultural and linguistic superiority. The Indus River used to be called as ‘Sindhu’, and from this term that ‘Hindu’ has been derived. Thus Hinduism signifies the culture and religious traditions as they developed over time.
According to Professor Julius Lipner [a Professor Emeritus in Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge in an article “Sacred Texts in Hinduism” published in “Discovering Sacred Texts”(1997) of British Library] “Hinduism is hard to define, for we cannot think in terms of a mainstream faith with a number of neat offshoots. Rather, it is a religion that embraces an enormous diversity of belief and practice, developed over millennia. It may help to form some idea of the distinctive nature of Hinduism by evoking the image of an ancient banyan tree. The banyan has a central trunk, but in time shoots from overhanging branches reach the ground and take root there, growing strongly till those ‘shoots’ eventually look like trunks of the tree in their own right. As such, an ancient banyan can look like a small wood made up of many trunks all linked to each other by a single canopy of leaves and branches.....Hinduism similarly has many centres of life and growth that are nevertheless organically related, some more, some less distantly, to one another. It has many seemingly independent centres, often with distinctive sacred texts, deities, myths, rituals, saintly figures, codes of conduct, festivals and so on, but on closer scrutiny, like a great banyan, these different centres can be seen to link up more or less directly. This also explains how, while other faiths and civilisations have come and gone, Hinduism continues to thrive and put out new shoots and roots.....”
The sacred texts of Hindus
When we talk of Hindu sacred texts, immediately, Gita, Vedas, Ramayan and Mahabharat come to our mind. Gone are the days when the language of Hindustan used to be generally Sanskrit. Over the years of invasion of our country by foreigners, we lost our moorings and also touch with our rich cultural heritage and texts written in Sanskrit. These scriptures do not mention the word 'Hindu' but many scriptures discuss dharma, which can be rendered as 'code of conduct', 'law', or 'duty'. Here, a glimpse of Hindu sacred texts is briefly described.
Hinduism being an ancient religion with diverse sects namely Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism and others. Each sect has set traditions and texts. Of these Sruti are broadly considered as core scriptures of Hinduism, but beyond the Sruti, Hindu texts include Smritis, Shastras, Sutras, Tantras, Puranas, Itihasas, Stotras, Subhashitas and others. Most of these texts exist in Sanskrit, several others have been composed in Indian languages such as Tamil. In modern times, most of the texts have been translated into other Indian and Western languages.
Hinduism has five primary sacred texts, each associated with a stage of its evolution. They are: (1) the Vedic Verses , written in Sanskrit between 1500 to 900 B.C.; (2) the Upanishads , written during 800 and 600 B.C.; (3) the Laws of Manu , written around 250 B.C.; and (4) Ramayana and (5) the Mahabharata , written sometime between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. when Hinduism spread too far and wide. Hindu cosmology was explained in the Vedas and Upanishads, provided a theoretical basis for this cosmology. The Brahmanas, a supplement to the Vedas, offers detailed instructions for rituals and explanations of the duties of priests. It gave form to the abstract principles given in the earlier texts. Sutras are additional supplements that explain laws and ceremonies.
These sacred texts are generally grouped into two categories namely (a) Shruti (“What is heard”) and (b) Smriti (“What is remembered”). The Sruti — which includes the Vedas and Upanishads — are considered to be divinely inspired while the Smriti — which includes the Mahabharata (including the Bhagavad Gita) and Ramayana — are derived from great sages. Some sources include a third category: Nyaya (meaning 'logic'). Hindu Shruti-Smriti classifications are based on origin not on the mode of transmission. Thus, Shruti is something believed to be more authoritative as have been heard directly from the Gods by the sages while Smriti refers to what was remembered and later on written down.
There are six systems of Indian philosophy. They are: (i) Jaimini's Purva Mimansa, (ii) Patanjali's yoga, (iii) Gautama's Nyaya (Buddhism), (iv) Kanada's Vaisheshika, (v) Vyasa's Uttar Mimansa, and (vi) Kapila's Sankhya. All the six systems are written in aphorisms (sutras). Though each sutra is just a few lines, huge commentaries have been written on each of them. Besides all the philosophy which expound on the cosmic attributes of the divine, there are epics (Itihaasa-s) and stories (Puranas) written which bring into light the human attributes of the divine.
The Ramayana was first written by Valmiki while Mahabharata was written by Sage Vyasa. Vyasa also wrote the eighteen Puranas and eighteen Sub-Puranas. The Puranas generally emphasize valued Hindu morals and are often stories about deities fighting to uphold morals. There are also Kaavyas which are based on stories derived from the Puranas. Among these, the Raghuvamsa, Meghaduta and Shakuntala are the most well known.
The main Hindu texts are the Vedas and their supplements (books based on the Vedas). Veda is a Sanskrit word meaning 'knowledge'. It is believed that the Vedas were received by scholars directly from God and passed on to the next generations by word of mouth. There are four Vedas: Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda. All of these together are attributed to as ‘Chaturveda’. The Rig Veda serves as the principal one and all three but the Arthaveda agree with one another in form, language, and content. Each Veda has been sub classified into four major text types – The Samhitas, the most ancient layer of text in the Vedas, consisting of mantras, hymns, prayers, and benedictions which has in literary terms put together with other three texts; the Aranyakas which constitute the philosophy behind the ritual sacrifice; the Brahmanas which in turn has the commentary on hymns of four Vedas and the Upasanas, the one that focuses on worship.
Rig Veda, one of the oldest texts of the Indo-Aryan Civilization, is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic hymns. Two Sanskrit words Rig and Veda translate to ‘praise or shine’ and ‘knowledge’ respectively. A collection of 1,028 hymns and 10,600 verses in all, organized into ten different Mandalas, it is the principal and oldest of the four Vedas. The words of Rig Veda are put to music, and are to be sung rather than to be read or recited.
The Sama Veda, divided into two major parts, first to include the four melody collections, or the Saman, the songs and the latter the Arcika, or the verse books a collection (Samhita) of hymns, portions of hymns. All but 75 verses of the total 1875 are derived from the Rig Veda. Widely referred to as the ‘Book of Songs’, it is derived from two words, Saman, of Sanskrit, meaning Song and Veda, meaning Knowledge. It is the Sama Veda, which served as the principal roots of the classical Indian music and dance tradition, and proudly the tradition boasts itself as the oldest in the world. The verses of Sama Veda, as the tradition had followed, is sung using specifically indicated melodies called Samagana by Udgatar priests at rituals dedicated to different deities.
Yajur Veda, of Sanskrit origin, is composed of Yajus and Veda; the two words mean ‘prose mantras dedicated to religious reverence or veneration’ and knowledge respectively. This Vedic collection is famous as the ‘book of rituals - a compilation of ritual offering formulas or the prose mantras to be chanted repeatedly by a priest while an individual performs the ascertained ritual actions before the Yajna (the sacrificial fire).
The fourth text of is the Atharva Veda, in short, is depicted as “knowledge storehouse of Atharv??as” meaning, formulas, and spells intended to counteract diseases and calamities, or “the procedures for everyday life”. A late addition to the Vedic scriptures is ‘the Veda of Magic formulas’. As it sides with popular culture and tradition of the day rather than preaching religious and spiritual teachings, it is more often viewed not in connection with the three other Vedas, but as a discrete scripture. Atharva Veda is a mixture of hymns, chants, spells, and prayers; and involves issues such as healing of illnesses, prolonging life, and as some claim also the black magic and rituals for removing maladies and anxieties. The Atharva Veda still finds its relevance in today’s contemporary society as it has been a pioneer in influencing medicine and healthcare, culture and religious celebrations, and even literary tradition in the Indian sub-continent as it contains the oldest known mention of the Indic literary genre. This is one of the most cherished texts for any Vedic scholar today.
The Puranas
There are mainly 3 categories of puranas namely (i) 18 Maha Puranas; (ii) 18 Up-Puranas and (iii) 29 Additional Puranas. Maha-Puranas include Vishnu Purana; Narad Purana; Padma Purana; Garuda Purana; Varaha Purana; Bhagbata Purana; Matshya Purana; Kurmya Purana; Linga Purana; Shiva Purana; Skanda Purana; Angi Purana; Brahmanda Purana; Brahma-vaivarta Purana; Markendya Purana; Bhavishya Purana; Vamana Purana; and Brahma Purana. The Up-Puranas are Sanatkumar, Narasimha, Skanda (Abstract), Saiba-dharma, Dairbyasas, Naradiya (Abstract), Kapil, Vamana (Abstract), Oushanash, Brahmanda (Abstract), Varun, Kalika, Maheshwar, Sambya, Souriya, Parashar, Marich and Vargabh. The Additional Puranas are 29 namely Nandikeshwar; Shukra; Bashishtha; Vaguri; Manu; Vayu; Mahesh; Kalki; Shaiba; Aditya; Adi; Shambhu; Bashishtha-Linga; Vishnu-dharmottar; Brihodadharama; Dharma; Gauri; Neel; Ganesh; Atma; Devi-bhagvat; Bhagvat-bhushana; Bhagavatamrit; Maha-bhagvat; Bhagvatamritashar; Shree-bhagvat; Kaali; Devi and Bhashkar.
The divisions of the eighteen Puranas are defined by Lord Shiva to Goddess Uma in the Padma Purana (Uttara Khanda 236.18-21):
" O beautiful lady, one should know that the Vishnu, Naradiya, Bhagavata, Garuda, Padma and Varaha Puranas are all in the mode of goodness. The Brahmanda, Brahma-vaivarta, Markandeya, Bhavisya, Vamana and Brahma Puranas are in the mode of passion. The Matsya, Kurma, Linga, Shiva, Skanda and Agni Puranas are in the mode of ignorance."
The Mahabharata (also considered as Itihaasa) and the Bhagavat are more famous, popular and more widely read. Some say Siva purana is also part of them, although not covered in the mnemonic slokas.
Dr. Ramesh Chandra Panda is a retired Civil Servant and former Judge in the Central Administrative Tribunal. He belongs to the 1972 batch of IAS in Tamil Nadu Cadre where he held many important assignments including long spells heading the departments of Education, Agriculture and Rural Development. He retired from the Government of India as Secretary, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises in 2008 and worked in CAT Principal Bench in Delhi for the next five years. He is the Founder MD of OMFED. He had earned an excellent reputation as an efficient and result oriented officer during his illustrious career in civil service.
Dr. Panda lives in Bhubaneswar. A Ph. D. in Economics, he spends his time in scholarly pursuits, particularly in the fields of Spiritualism and Indian Cultural Heritage. He is a regular contributor to the Odia magazine Saswata Bharat and the English paper Economic and Political Daily.
Translated Malayalam by Sreekumar K
With a peacock feather dipped in some herbal concoction, Birbalfinished his writing on the marble wall.
“This too will pass.”
The next day, Emperor Akbar would see this sentence which had the power to make the sad happy and the happy, sad. By and by, the whole world would know about it. Birbal smiled to himself.
Body 1 (An Embodied Soul)
You may be reading and listening to the name Hayaththudin now. I am that Bangladesh boy, named Hayaththudin whom the media and newspapers speak of both as a terrorist and as a refugee.
I was born at Hamidpur in Jassor District in the south-western part of Bangladesh, now under the Ghulna Administrative Division. My first job was at 18 in a cloth mill in Jassor, a place famous for cloth mills. You might have heard about a kind of sugar called Pattali made in Jassor.
I used to come to Kolkata, looking for a better paying job. It takes only two hours to go to Kolkata. I first heard about Kerala from Abhoy, a dear friend from Bengal. It was with him that I came to Ernakulam. That was how Justin Muthalali, the owner of Padaveedan’s Decorations, took me in as a labourer, based on Abhoy’s recommendations.
From the age I could remember, I was highly skilled in scampering up any tree, like an Orang-utan. Seeing me go up trees and pillars, to hang decoration lamps and put up canopies, Justin Muthalali too got very impressed by me.
Every day was a celebration for us. We hung Shamiyanas and decorative luxury canopies for wedding and religious festivals. We pinned dazzling filigrees on them, illuminated them with colourful lamps and brought them to life with sparkling sequences and streamers. It was pleasure and business fused into one. The leftover food was always aplenty.
Days when poverty stayed off.
It was the fourth day after the Golden Jubilee of Karimukal Panchayat, I was on top of the canopy to dismantle it. We usually use a JCB or a small crane to do this. But when they were too late, I went up the main pole.
It took only a moment of carelessness for me to lose my grip and fall off to land head first on a boulder which seemed to have no other purpose than to put an end to my life. Like a pomegranate quashed under a heavy foot, amid a million drops of blood glistening in crimson, I lay there, eyes bulged, mouth open and breath bated. My last vision was that of a lady, numbed with shock as she watched me fall.
Later, when my death was confirmed, someone squeezed my bulging eyes hard to shut them, one of the rites of passage. I was left in the dark, but was strangely aware of what was happening around me.
That is when my story starts. There would have been no issues and my death would have been insignificant had I been from Bengal or Orissa. But I was from Bangladesh and my name sounded like a Pakistani’s. Even earlier, from the sound of my name, people had charged at me, yelling at me to go to Pakistan. I never did. We all know that payment isn’t any better there.
We come to Kerala like you people go to the Gulf. We too sweat it out, dawn to dusk and even from dusk to dawn to make both ends meet. My blood is not green, it is red, crimson to be exact. I wanted to shout all this to the crowd, but I was shelved in the mortuary after my post-mortem, enjoying the kind of peace I had always coveted when I was alive. What an irony! To enjoy peace in life, people like me have to die.
They thought that since I was dead, I was also oblivious to the noise they were making about me. My obituary was that I, a terrorist from Bangladesh in hiding as a casual labourer, died in an accident outside the Panchayat Office. Post dinner channel discussions were a feast on my dead body. I waited for some journalist to come to me for a bite so that I could literally do it. I hoped secretly that my first flight would happen soon, a homecoming in all dignity.
Those peaceful moments too were to pass. Though I didn’t want it to pass, I earnestly waited for that.
Body 2 (The Mind Within)
Just the day after the appointment order came for Rekha Suresh to join the Ernakulam Karimukal Panchayat Office as a clerk, she did so. She woke up at three-thirty in the morning, finished her household chores, packed her lunch, and with her mind set on the Lord, got out of her house. Her husband Suresh dropped her at the railway station on his bike. At five past five the Palaruvi Express usually reaches Perinadu. When the train entered the Perumon bridge, Rekha closed her eyes. She would have to pass that bridge twice every day, up and down. She was in the second standard when the Perumon disaster, a train plunging into the back waters killing hundreds of people,happened. From then on, she had been always scared of this bridge. After she married Suresh and settled down at Perinadu, she switched from trains to buses. Now, finally, twice every day, she had to overcome her irrational fear that her train also would plunge into the backwaters from the Perumon bridge, once in the morning when she would be on the Palaruvi Express, and in the evening when she would be on the Venad Express.
The very first day, when she reached the Panchayat Office, a huge celebration was going on. She had literally walked into the golden jubilee celebrations. When she heard that several big establishments like the Cochin Refinery and many luxurious flats come under her Panchayat, she was naturally anxious. Had she come to a Panchayat with too much work to do? Would she be able to finish all her work in time to catch the Venad Express in the evening? Worrying thoughts hurried across her mind like the harshly noisy bogies of a train.
The Panchayat Secretary was on medical leave. She was introduced to the assistant secretary who was in charge, the superintendant and the establishment clerk. The president, the members and the administrative staff were in high spirits. So much of work was going on unhindered amidst art and literary competitions, the reunion of the ex-members, a cultural meeting in the evening with the Honourable District Collector and the Honourable Minister for the Local Governments, and the procession. Even though her plan to join on Friday and stay home for the next two days, as they were a second Saturday and a Sunday, was shattered, she arrived in time for the festivities every day and took part in them with zeal and zest. All the matters related to three wards were assigned to her in addition to birth and death registrations.
The office was on a small hillock. Actually, it was a mini civil station. A community health centre, a veterinary hospital, an agricultural office, a social welfare office and the Karimukal branch of the District Cooperative Bank were all in the same compound.
On Monday, she walked up the hill and took a turn to face that tragic sight up close. The festivities had ended and a young boy who climbed up a pole to dismantle the canopy lost his grip and fell right in front of her, writhing in pain, screaming at the top of his voice and finally breathing his last. She had never witnessed a fatal accident before.
That was the first step she took in her job as the registrar of birth and deaths. Her duty to register the death of a young man from Bangladesh, an unlucky man who was either a refugee with no id proofs or a terrorist whose identity was yet unknown, and her position as the primary witness of an accidental death came to her at once.
It was really a bad time, a time of turbulent restlessness.
Even this time will pass. One has to wait hopefully for that. There is no other option to look into.
Body 3 (Body aka corpus)
Such a bad time. Even that would pass. But a whole month’s collection at the pump would have gone with it by then. A very reasonable price.
Justin James Padaveedan was drenched in sweat even in the cosy chill in his bungalow in the midst of his coffee plantation at Kudaku.
“Damit!”
He threw his empty wine glass at the wall.
It broke into splinters.
His fury remained the same.
It was his father who started Padaveedan’s Decorations. His father built it up as a good business and started a petrol pump too. It was Justin who built a shopping complex and a super market. Twice, he had planned to shut down the decoration business. But his mother was dead against it. It had beenPadaveedan’s Decorations that made them rich and famous, she argued. He was somehow managing it when that hapless boy from Bangaladesh fell off the canopy pole right in front of the Panchayat Office and croaked.
These Bengalis are OK, no problem makers at all. They work twice as much for half the pay. Ten to fifteen of them stayed comfortably in a pig sty like shed close to the warehouse, guarding it for free.
He had thought that the one who departed was also a Bengali. The labour officer was on his payroll and so there had been no trouble from that side at all. Some nitwit in the channel hollered that the one who died was from Bangladesh and that he had infiltrated into India without the necessary documents. It was Koshy, the manager at the pump, who assured him thateverything would be taken care of, and asked him to be in Kudak till it all got over. Justin himself had no interest to get any notoriety by going on air.
It was the money he had been saving to buy a Range Rover that was vanishing like that. He had had his own fights with life and won them too. But losing money was a different issue...
To weave the necessary strategies to overcome the trouble he had plunged into, troubles like police cases, mass agitations and ill fame, he drained the bottle into his mouth.
Tail Piece:
Like an ill fated coincidence, the channels clubbed together the agitations against the citizenship bill and the Muhammed Hidayaththudin incident and set ablaze the post dinner discussions. The social media took it up and made it traverse all kinds of borders like those of Panchayat, District, and even those of the state to make it a national issue, adding fuel to fire.
Time, just as the famous poet says, lay etherized on a table, much a post-mortem table and much like the young man’s freezing body.
Vishal Ram (pen name) is a versatile artiste who is very active in Kerala theatre and Malayalm moves. His role as the father in the theatre adaptation of Nissim Isakkiel’s ‘The Night of Scorpion’ was much appreciated. In February his first collection of Malayalam short stories, “Avalidangal”, was released. He works for the department of local self government and lives in Kochi. The present story is based on real incident he witnessed.
As I go down memory lane and flash back twenty-five years, I recollect that day vividly. Those days my kids were small, and I was following the strict regime of 4 am to 11pm almost non-stop working hours, frantically trying to keep pace with time and doing the balancing act of being a homemaker and a teacher. It was literally a race against time those days, especially in the early morning rush hours. Each day was a challenge as punctuality was rubbed deep into the psyche, partly due to the strict convent schooling and partly due to the desire to adhere to professional ethics. Armed with an ever-increasing desire to accept the challenges face on I was ready for a new challenge each day.
Little wonder, that I was on tenterhooks that fateful day, dreading being late to work, rushing through the routine I managed to tread on the road that took me to the bus stop, from where I would board a bus till a certain point, literally hop into another bus, get down and take a rikshaw or hitch a ride till the sight of the school gates brought out a sigh of relief from me. My initial thoughts bordered on pessimism, “Oh, I think I will not be able to make it in time today.” Then with an almost magical turn of thoughts, these words flashed upon my memory..."God sees you through someone's eyes, hears you through someone's ears, reaches out to you through someone's heart, helps you through someone's hands and walks to you through someone's feet."
Lo behold, the magic of optimism and the power of positive thoughts, barely had the frown eased out of my brow and a happy smile settled on my face that a car stopped by.
A pleasant looking man beamed at me and said, 'Hey where are you heading, may I drop you somewhere?"
I muttered a reply informing this stranger about my destination.
“Oh, what a coincidence, I am headed right there, please hop in.”
The next ten minutes of my ride in someone's car had my mind clouded with a plethora of thoughts ranging from confusion to discomfort to anxiety to relief to wonder and amazement.
Before I could sort out my thoughts and calm down, the school gates were in sight, much to my relief. I got down and turned to thank the stranger, but the car had sped away and ‘that someone who had come to my rescue that day from nowhere, was not in sight. I rushed into the school and all through the day's work and through the rest of the days, and the months and the years...I have been thinking of that someone who had helped me reach my school in time on that day.
Time has flown away but the memories of that "divine help" are still crystal clear in my memory till date.
Let us ponder awhile and think of similar incidents in our lives and we will be pleasantly surprised to find several of these instances. People may be different, names may be different, times may be different but what remains common is ‘the strong brush with the divine power in each of our lives.’
Shubha Sagar is an educator, a counsellor, a Tarot Reader, a Reiki Master, a poet, an author, an avid blogger, and a healer. APost Graduate in Zoology and Psychotherapy & Counselling, her career as an educator spanned twenty five years during which she worked in various reputed schools across the country. She loves penning down her thoughts especially in form of verse. She has published two solo books 'Heartfelt Poems' and 'Soul Stirring Stories, Women With Extraordinary Spirit.' She has contributed poems and short stories to more than three dozen anthologies.
Brief Description
An act of benevolence which I couldn't manifest due to extreme shyness but saw that materializing through my daughter after a gap of 25 years. Yes, we have progressed in woman empowerment but the values remain the same.
News Content
Just as me and my daughters were savoring on the chicken sandwiches, my younger daughter eyed on the colourful pastries on the other rack in the famous Mio Amore bakery. I knew her sweet tooth well and nodded a “yes” since I was in a relaxed mood on Sunday afternoon, not freaking about calories, junk food etc. and she started choosing her piece of delicacy. As I paid for all that we had devoured and packed some, she made another hesitant request…..had I brought my pocket money, I would have paid for another pastry for her….she pointed her finger towards a small girl who had just sat outside the shop unnoticed.
A small girl of 7-8 years age maximum, shabbily dressed, sitting with expectant eyes for someone to feed her out of compassion may be. I smiled at my daughter and said you can buy something for her and later on at home you can pay me back from your pocket money. Not just she bought a butterscotch pastry for the small girl but also asked about her parents and whether she wants anything more. The small girl said that her mother was ill and she’s begging today alone. Answering whether to get any more food, she innocently replied- “don’t bother, someone else will give.” Left that place with a contented heart for having fulfilled one of my old desire and helplessness.
This incident took me back to my memory lane 20 years back when I was a young Medical student. We used to study in the library for the entire day before exams and when felt bored, just get up and go to the adjacent canteen. I used to be a loner and quite shy and an introvert in those days. Once I noticed a new aide in the canteen of 8-9 years age. Even though everyone knew child labour was a crime they did hire such kids because at least the child could feed himself and family also got some amount of money for sustenance. The child was ever happy and almost flew from table to table serving snacks and tea. He was dressed in a shabby shirt and pant adjusted with a safety pin.
It might be around 11o’clock in the morning and I slipped into the canteen to sip a cup of tea to evade drowsiness. From the corner of my eyes I could see that an elderly worker was chiding the small boy and immediately the child lost his chirpiness and slowly shrunk to do some other work. It seems he had wanted a piece of “Chhenapoda” (a sweetmeat indigenous to Odisha). Oh! How much I wanted to get up and order a piece of that and offer the boy and see his smile! But my shyness and inhibition as if shackled my feet. The more I wanted to do it, the more I felt glued to my chair. Then coming back to my books I kept on thinking next time I’ll go to the canteen and first thing I’ll do is to buy the child a piece of Chhenapoda. It was only Rs.4/- after all.
But as fate had some other way, I couldn’t go to the canteen for a week or so and when next I went there, the boy was gone. I was cursing my shyness, my inhibition….I could have done it right that day!
Coming to the present, I felt very proud that today children and especially girls have been given ultra-freedom for which they are not hesitant to ask for anything to their parents and teachers. A fearless progeny is coming up. They are also being raised with values that will build this nation further. I was really amazed that my daughter could fathom the feeling of a hungry stomach though she has never missed a single meal in her small span of 11 years of life!
I took the money for the pastry from her doubtlessly back at home to keep her “punya” (fruits of good karma) and pride with her. May God bless our future generation who may build a beautiful nation and world balancing their freedom and privileges with judicious thought process.
Dr. Viyatprajna Acharya is a Professor of Biochemistry at KIMS Medical College, who writes trilingually in Odia, English and Hindi. She is an art lover and her write-ups are basically bent towards social reforms.
TEACHER STUDENT RELATIONSHIP : A DIVINE GIFT (FROM MY EXPERIENCE)
INTRODUCTION
Oh my deeply revered preceptor, bless me with the dust of your lotus-feet to polish my mirror like mind so that I can sing the un-tarnished glory of Lord Rama which will blaze my inner world and harvest fourfold rewards for my deeds.
Without students the word TEACHER is nonexistent, Therefore I will not be wrong if I say this relationship is created by God. The example of Hanuman and Sri Ram is the bright example. True student teacher relationship is such a thing which can't be described in words but can be felt. It's an emotional bond.
WHO IS A TEACHER AND WHO IS THE BEST TEACHER ?
From the day I was admitted into the postgraduate course in VSS Medical College, Burla in 1976, till date, I am practicing two noble professions TEACHING AND HEALING. Teaching is my passion and HEALING is my profession. My father was a teacher. Out of my four sisters and four brothers in law, five are teachers. My father in law was also a teacher. I must have taught more than fifty thousand direct students. From my experience of more than thirty years with students I have developed a sacred relationship with my teachers and my students. I am the intermediary between my teachers and students with vast experience of student-teacher & teacher-student relationship.
This relationship is not like any other ordinary relationship. It's not built overnight. It requires a lot of understanding, patience, sacrifice and commitment to build such a relationship. It's a habit. After all what's habit?
"Habit is a cable. Weave a thread daily at last you cannot break it. " It's a DIVINE GIFT.
It's said that YOUR EXPERIENCE IS YOUR BEST TEACHER.
In my career I have come across innumerable teachers and students and enjoyed the true student teacher relationship. Therefore, I will put forth something about the pious relationship from my experience.
BECAUSE GOD CAN'T BE EVERYWHERE HE MADE MOTHERS. The mother is more experienced by forty weeks because a man gains experience after he is born. Inside the womb, mother has taught all of us so many things, which have gone unnoticed. The best thing she has taught continuously for forty weeks is the attitude of bending, which every fetus (intrauterine baby) must have practiced. Bending symbolises compromise. Had every fetus practiced the same thing after birth in his real life, this world would have been a better place to live in. Apart from bending mother teaches her fetus how to adapt in solitude, ATMANIRVAR, as also caring and sharing in multifetal pregnancy. In return the fetus teaches its mother the art of monitoring. The kicks of the fetus perceived by the mother is the best indicator of fetal well-being. The MOTHER gets all the information about the fetus by counting the number of kicks perceived by her during a day.
In real life, mother is the first teacher. She not only carries her baby ten months in her womb, but carries him/her on her shoulders for a year and holds his/her hand throughout her life. Charity begins at home. The parents are the first teachers to teach their kids all virtues to be a good human being.
Yes, the foundation of a child is built in his family, the parents contribute a lion's share. Traditions, education, civilization, feelings of brotherhood, social life, teamwork and "caring is sharing " are learnt from home. Father plays the role of a true leader. In reality father and mother are the two primary teachers teaching different subjects to build the life of their child. This relationship between child and parents is as pious as a disciple and a Guru .
After my entry into medical college, I discovered that a cadaver was my first teacher. Anatomy is the only department where the dead teaches the living. I haven't seen the soul, but I am convinced that after the soul leaves the body the body isn't useless. It's as divine as a Guru. Skin stitching was taught to me by the Casualty attendant Kalu Dada, intravenous injection by a staff sister Sephali didi, how to conduct a normal delivery by my senior post graduate student Parul Apa and endoscopic surgery by a pharmacist Mr Moharana. They all are my teachers.
Even one has to learn from a sweeper. Every person and professional has something to teach. A true learner knows the trick of learning.
STUDENT TEACHER RELATIONSHIP
Some of my teachers are my role models. Prof. Umakanta Nanda, my guide and mentor taught me discipline and value of time, Prof Sindhunandini Tripathy, my academic role model taught me how to accept change and keep pace with it. Late Prof. Pratima Pattanaik taught me to be straight forward and the art of teaching. Prof Raseswari Panigrahi was my moral strength and taught me how to face difficult situations and Late Baidyanath Mishra taught me how to be confident in my subject, the practical skill and public relationship.
My teacher Prof U K Nanda had given me the certificate of learner, teacher and preacher. Since teaching is the best way of learning I became a teacher. Actually while interacting with different types of students, a teacher learns many things. Many a time mistakes committed by teachers are corrected by students. I can't forget my students who are still in touch with me, who take opinion and guidance from me in difficult situations in their work places, who wish me daily in the morning and never miss to wish on Teachers day .
I still remember a student who had taught me the value of patience in her OPD duty. She was scolded by me for her impatience and returned me with a valuable gift through her article JUVENILE DELINQUENCY in which she converted her impatience into a milestone of learning. The relationship between student and teacher is not just a routine work of learning and teaching but an eternal bond with divine link, which can't be erased by the waves of time.
As a physician we deal with life and death of patients. The physicians always learn from their patients. Every patient is a new book and every ailment is a new chapter. Since I'm a Gynecologist I always address my patients as mothers. Mothers are the representatives of God on this earth. I say, "You are my Saraswati, I learn from you. You are my Laxmi, I earn from you." Patients are human beings not a mere collection of organs and systems. When a patient comes with a complaint, she /he should be treated as a whole human being physically, mentally, spiritually, socially and financially. This is called HOLISTIC approach. Patients worship physicians as God who listen to their problems, understand their pains and treat them with empathy. This divine power is in every physician, which is not realized by many. When every physician will explore his/her self and utilize his/her divinity to wipe out suffering, then he/she will be worshipped as God. Many a time the patients teach their physicians to realize their potential, as teachers help their students to explore their inner talents. Therefore it's said MEDICINE TREATS AND FAITH CURES. This relationship between a physician and a patient is no less than a divine gift.
CONCLUSION:
A true learner can find something to learn from any source.
For a learner everyone and everything can be his teacher or Guru. Once this concept is implanted in his mind, then this world will be full of Gurus and disciples. Every Guru is a master and every disciple is a talent. Then a miracle will happen where wisdom and vision will prevail. There will be no defeat. As rightly said in the last verse of Bhagbad Gita:
Prof Gangadhar Sahoo is a well-known Gynaecologist. He is a columnist and an astute Academician. He was the Professor and HOD of O&G Department of VSS MEDICAL COLLEGE, Burla.He is at present occupying the prestigious post of DEAN, IMS & SUM HOSPITAL, BHUBANESWAR and the National Vice President of ISOPARB (INDIAN SOCIETY OF PERINATOLOGY AND REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY). He has been awarded the BEST TEACHER AWARD of VSS MEDICAL COLLEGE,BURLA in 2013. He has contributed CHAPTERS in 13 books and more than 100 Scientific Articles in State, National and International Journals of high repute. He is a National Faculty in National Level and delivered more than 200 Lectures in Scientific Conventions.He was adjudged the BEST NATIONAL SPEAKER in ISOPARB NATIONAL CONVENTION in 2016
Kanaka shuddered. Even now it made her sweat. But the silver lining that pacified her was the concern and love God had for her then and even now. Even in her wildest dreams she could not guess how she was saved from becoming a mental wreck for life. She must have been hardly ten then, when it all happened.
It was a hot sultry afternoon. Everything was quiet in the farm. The heat had driven all the farm animals and workers and even her parents to take a siesta. But Kanaka and her siblings were playing inside the shed. The indefatigable resilience of young ones kept them going from game after game. But soon they too got tired. For Kanaka her youngest sibling Rony was like an appendage on her hip. He was only 2 years old and had started walking. So she carried him in case he ran off. So he was always on her hip when she moved about and on her lap when she sat down somewhere. When her siblings trooped out of the shed she had no choice but to follow them with Rony.
"Akka let us go fishing", Moni piped and it became a chorus. "Please catch some Manathu kanni or Nettie potten ( small freshwater fish commonly found in Canals or fields.( Striped panchas) we can put them in the water feed behind the cowshed". Kanaka was dubious as she looked at Nina, nine years old, Ami, eight years old and Moni, 5 years old. She knew that she would have to get into the water and fish while they would wait at the edge of the field. She was ready but who will take care of Rony? Amma had entrusted him to her. She thought of taking him back to Amma but he too started screaming and lisping that he wanted to go fishing and clung on to her. Kanaka, not much more than a child herself, went to pick up a small bucket. And they trooped down the hill through the narrow path to a field which had some water and fish.
Amma had always told them not to go to the fields at the bottom of the hill. Kanaka felt guilty but still she too wanted to get into the water and wade and fish. The field with water looked inviting. She found a cool place at the edge of the field where her siblings could sit while she fished. She made Roni sit between Nina and Ami and told them to hold him so he won't fall. Moni was made to sit without wiggling next to Ami. Yes, they were safe and comfortable. She slowly eased herself into the slushy mud, as her feet sank deeper and deeper she started giggling. The mud was ticklish. She found solid sand beneath. She moved may be two steps further and standing there she started scooping the fish as they swam by. The first attempt itself was a success.
She turned round to show her siblings and found them standing up and watching her excitedly but Roni was missing. "Roni" she screamed and dragged herself to where she had left them. He had slid into the field and was totally covered with the mire. Luckily he was still at the edge where there was very little water Kanaka picked him up and wiped the mire from his body. All the while trembling in great shock. She clambered out of the field and started screaming as she ran
"Amma Roni had fallen into the field...Amma…"
Her siblings now frightened started wailing too.
It was a dismal sight. Appa came running and took the baby and gave him a good wash. Roni sat dimpling as if nothing had happened. He had no bruises and no mud had entered his mouth or nostrils. So Amma suckled him and handed him over to Appa and came searching for Kanaka.
She lay in the corner of the Verandah soaked in mire sobbing her heart out. Her siblings sat around with a downcast look. She thought that she had almost killed her baby brother by carelessly giving him to her younger sisters who were too small to look after a baby. She was careless. How could she? she sobbed and sobbed.
Amma came and scooped her up, mud and all and hugged her and consoled her.
"Don't cry Kanaka, Roni is fine, nothing has happened to him . You saved him. I am proud of my girl. No more tears. Again don't go to the fields without any grown ups with you, ok"? She nodded her head.
Amma had noticed that her body had become quite cold and that she had started shivering. So she gave her a hot water bath and made her drink a glass of warm milk and tucked her to sleep. As she drifted to sleep, physically and mentally worn out she saw the image of her baby brother comfortably sleeping in the cradle. Thank you Jesus, she lisped even as she entered the realm of sleep.
Prof. Latha Prem Sakhya, a poet, painter and a retired Professor of English, has published three books of poetry. MEMORY RAIN (2008), NATURE AT MY DOOR STEP (2011) - an experimental blend, of poems, reflections and paintings ,VERNAL STROKE (2015 ) a collection of? all her poems.
Her poems were published in journals like IJPCL, Quest, and in e magazines like Indian Rumination, Spark, Muse India, Enchanting Verses international, Spill words etc. She has been anthologized in Roots and Wings (2011), Ripples of Peace ( 2018), Complexion Based Discrimination ( 2018), Tranquil Muse (2018) and The Current (2019). She is member of various poetic groups like Poetry Chain, India poetry Circle and Aksharasthree - The Literary woman, World Peace and Harmony
The day was Wednesday. Apurba and his wife had not eaten a morsel of food since last two days, and they had also not slept. They had not even exchanged a word amongst themselves even though sitting together. The only thing they did was to chant mantra with eyes closed. Time to time they checked the burning lamp and added oil to it. The room was filled with smoke coming from agarbattis and the glowing lamps. It was stuffy, hot and humid. Both Apurba and wife, though sweating profusely, had only one thing in their mind, to chant the mantra and keep the lamp burning till the Baba who initiated the puja comes back and performs a little ritual to close it. That auspicious moment will end all their misery and life will be a bed of roses for them.
Apurba looked briefly at the big newly bought earthen pot that was kept just behind a line of images of gods and goddesses. Inside the pot was kept all the gold ornaments of Apurba’s family and wads of currency notes. The top of the pot was covered with and bound tightly by red color cloth.
Apurba was becoming impatient and looked time to time at the wall clock and the calendar hanging on the wall. He also looked carefully at his wife sitting by his side with eyes closed and mumbling the mantra. Apurba was having a nasty feeling of being cheated, The Baba who had left on noon of Monday promising to come back on Teusday morning had not returned. And Apurva along with his wife had been chanting the mantra the Baba had given them non-stop since the Baba left.
Apurba’s wife looked at him with a look of disdain and trying to convey a message “Why you are so restless, sober up and sit chanting the mantra Baba had given. You look like hell bent on spoiling this golden opportunity”.
Apurba was thinking something else. His hopes were now giving way to suspicion “What if the Baba does not return? What if the Baba turns out to be a cheat? A cheat!!! Apurba’s stomach churned and his tummy was filled with fear. He looked at the earthen pots and wished he had x-ray like vision and could see if all their life’s savings were safe within those earthen pots. He felt very uneasy. He and his wife had been sitting and chanting mantras given by the Baba who took a days leave to perform similar puja at the home of one more devoted disciple of his, in a nearby town. He had promised to come back by Tuesday noon and spell the final mantra, sprinkle holy water on the earthen pots and hand them over its content, multiplied two fold.
“These are things not to be discussed with any one, not your neighbor, not with friends and not with other members of family” the Baba had cautioned them. “Only people who have absolute faith are rewarded with boundless bounties in life”, Baba had added while he and his wife sat with folded hands chanting the mantra with closed eyes.
As the three of them sat in the puja room of Apurba’s house filled with smoke from burning sandalwood, ghee and fragrance of agarbatis Baba asked both to close their eyes and imagine their gold, their money to be doubled.
“Premadasa!!!” Baba called out his assistant.
“Jay swami ji” Apurba heard the voice of a stranger who greeted the Baba and came into the room. There was a sense of uneasiness in Apurba as the Baba had not told them about involvement of anyone other than himself.
“These disciples of mine are sitting in meditation, let God and our Guru fulfill their wishes, let them be relieved of all their worries and live happily for rest of their life” The Baba went on uttering some indecipherable mantras.
Apurba, between chanting mantras with closed eyes, had this irresistible desire to look at this unannounced arrival of the assistant of Baba whose sudden appearance created gnawing doubts in Apurba’s mind.
“Premadasa, have you brought the ashes from the cremation ground?", Baba asked his assistant.
“Yes Swamy ji” Premadas replied.
“Very good, move over to those earthen pots, open their top just a little and sprinkle some ashes into each of them, but do not look into them, be very very cautious” Baba instructed his assistant.
Apurba involuntarily almost opened his eyes but shut it tightly again when he heard the Baba burst in anger at his assistant.
“Premadasa!!! Did I not tell you to be very careful? Do you think this is game? You fool, close your eyes and be very cautious, just open the cloth covering a little and sprinkle the ashes inside the pot. Should you even have a slight glance of it, you will become blind, you fool” The Baba hissed at his assistant.
All doubts from Apurba’s mind was removed and he focused on chanting the mantra which he had never done in life. His wife was also sitting by his side.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The small industrial town of Laxmipur on the highlands of Eastern Ghats had a new visitor, a Baba who possessed magical powers and was on a spree to catch poisonous snakes from the neighborhood. His style and skill in handling the snakes almost like rubber tubes caught the attention of people and it soon became the talk of the town. Apurba was very curious to see the Baba and his team in action. He rushed to a friend’s house when he came to know that Baba will be arriving there to catch some snakes often seen by his friend in his back yard.
Tha Baba arrived with his two assistants each carrying a jhola slung over their shoulders. Apurba’s friend offered the Baba a chair in front garden of the house under shade of a tree. A crowd of onlookers gathered around Baba’s chair. The Baba opened his bundle and spread its contents. It was an assortment of tid bits some of which were not recognizable at all by Apurba.
“You two go and collect some samples from the place around the house” Baba instructed his assistants. His assistants went around and collected pinches of earth from few places and handed over to the Baba. Baba rubbed the loose earth between his fingers and smelled.
“It reeks of scent of snakes passing over it” Baba’s face lit up.
“How on earth!!! How could you smell the soil and know about snakes?” Apurba who was watching the Baba blurted out.
“Am I not an expert at it? Mark my words, there are few big sized cobras around”, the Baba smiled and looked at Apurba.
The Baba asked for a bucket of sand and took out a paw of a dead animal small enough to be of a monkey’s. The loose bones were held in place by some metallic wires inserted into holes in the bones to retain the shape of the palm. Next the Baba took out a pen knife and started scraping chinks of the bone depositing them on the sand in the bucket. One of the assistants of Baba started mixing the bone scraping with the sand.
“Now, go and sprinkle this all over the place.” Baba instructed his assistants but it was not necessary. His assistants were well trained and they had already split the bucket of sand into two half. Each carried his half of sand and started sprinkling it like farmers throwing paddy in the field.
Barely a minute passed when snakes were seen at many places where the sand had been sprinkled. His assistants pulled out one snake after another and came running to the Baba who had by now a gunny bag opened. The snakes were deposited inside the bag and his assistants ran again back to backyard of the house to catch more of the snakes. Apurba was spell bound and shaken to see the huge snakes resisting being caught and trying to hit out at the captor in vain.
Suddenly, there was a cry of one of assistants, “Guru, plz come running, there’s a big black cobra”. The urgency of the call made the Baba bolt in the direction of call and the crowd followed the Baba. It was a scary sight. A big black cobra was coiled on earth and was hissing loudly with open fangs watching the Baba’s assistant intently. Baba, simply charged towards it and caught it by his open fangs like he was grabbing a toy. The snake immediately coiled around Baba’s outstretched hand but the Baba was simply amused. The crowd was in awe, scared and excited at the sight, but the Baba was unperturbed. He chided his assistants at being scared to catch the cobra.
The Baba settled back in his chair and his assistants ran in more places around the house followed by the crowd. Apurba stood there gawking at the Baba and marveling at his super natural powers.
“My son, do you wish to speak anything?” The Baba asked him.
“Oh Baba, you are just mind blowing. I have never seen anyone ever doing such things. It is a miracle” Apurba barely could articulate this much.
“Miracle? This ? You must be joking my son. This is nothing. Please do not insult my Guru, for my guru has blessed me with much more knowledge with a word of advice, to help the society with knowledge. So, as per his orders, I roam around place to place, catching venomous snakes and carry those snakes to our laboratory in Kolkata. That is how anti-venom injections are made for greater benefit of our country” The Baba replied with a jolly face.
“And what else your Guru has taught you, Baba” Apurba asked with innocence of a twelve year old kid.
“We do not advertise those things to everyone we meet, few things are for deserving people and for people who have faith on my Guru” the Baba said dismissively.
The assistants came running with more snakes hissing, coiling around their hands. The sight was so disturbing that Apurba felt his stomach churning. He moved away from the place and walked home at the other end of colony.
Apurba was about to enter his home when he saw two strangers stopping in front of his house and walk in his direction.
“Sir, is the famous Baba somewhere here catching snakes?” one of them asked.
“Oh yes, he is there” Apurba replied pointing his hands in direction of his friends house.
The two strangers were about to go when Apurba asked “Why are you searching for him?”
One of the two persons who was wearing a thick gold chain, gold bracelets and thick gold rings over most of his fingers raised his folded hands in direction where the Baba was sitting and said “Baba ji ke jay ho!!! We are blessed that there are still such miracle Babas who look so simple, who still mingle with people never advertising their true self, I am blessed to be his disciple”.
“My friend here (pointing at the other person) is eager to meet Baba and take his blessings”, the nam with gold ornaments said.
“And what exactly is your problem” Apurba asked the other man.
The man looked confused and hesitated whether to narrate his problem before Apurba who was a stranger for them. But the man with heavy ornament saved the situation “Speak up my friend, the Baba may not advertise about his abilities, but as good disciple of Baba, who will stop us? The more we sing his praises, the more we will be blessed”.
The other man looked a little relaxed and looked in every direction and whispered into Apurba’s ear, “The Baba can turn gold ornaments and currency note into double, My friend here who is wearing all the gold is a proof of Baba’s power, But please keep it to yourself and do not utter a word to anyone”
“You mean, he can double your gold?” Apurba asked.
“And your currency notes too. Just half a day puja, and half a day chanting mantras with closed eyes, when you open your eyes, you will see everything two fold” the stranger said.
And then the two men left in a hurry in the direction of Apurba’s friend’s house.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It took a while for Apurba to absorb the enormity of the message given by the two strangers. He was in a dilemma whether to go to his house or go back to the Baba and seek his blessings. He cursed himself for his failure to recognize what a great person the Baba was.
Apurba’s wife who was waiting for him to turn up at the lunch table called out at him. Apurba entered into his house and like clockwork washed his hand, washed his face and wiped with a towel. He sat at the dining table, went on putting food into his mouth mechanically. His mind was not at the lunch, his attention was not on food he was eating. His wife who was watching all this asked if everything was alright.
And then Apurba told his wife all about the Baba and the two strangers who were seeking Baba to double their gold and money. For rest of the afternoon husband and wife were excitedly discussing what a good thing it would be if they could double their entire wealth two fold.
“So what do you say?” Apurba asked his wife.
“Run at once to Baba and prostrate before him”, his wife advised him excitedly.
Apurba located the Baba lodged in the only hotel in town. There was already a crowd waiting for Baba’s darshan. Apurba could see the local money lender with a big bundle by his side waiting for his turn to see the Baba.
“This wretched fellow must be carrying wads of currency notes to double up with Baba’s help”, Apurba thought to himself.
One of the assistants of Baba took down Apurba’s name and asked him to wait for his turn. One by one the people entered into Baba’s room and came out with a radiating face.
“Surely the Baba is a pious soul, how else could so many people become so relaxed after meeting the Baba”, Apurba’s faith in Baba increased many fold.
When Apurba’s turn came, he entered the room which was filled with a divine smell. The Baba sat in a lotus position. Apurba grabbed the feet of Baba and mumbled “Baba, Baba, please forgive me, I could not recognize such a great soul like you, please forgive me”.
“Relax son, relax, please sit upright and tell me what is troubling you”, the Baba asked.
“No Baba , I will not leave your feet if you do not promise me to help me like you helped the Rayagada fellows”, Apurba pleaded.
“How did you know? Did you speak to anyone else?”, the Baba appeared alarmed.
“No Baba, I am your devoted disciple, I have not spoken a word to anyone else. Please help me Baba”, Apurba tightened his grip over Baba’s feet.
“All right, all right, please leave my feet, sit up”, the Baba said in a firm voice.
Apurba sat upright with folded hands before the Baba. The Baba looked at him with piercing eyes and said,
“This is a very special puja, I do it only for two people in a year, people who have absolute faith on my guru and absolute trust on me, do you think you have both?”
“I have Baba, I have”, Apurba said almost on verge of tears.
“All right, come tomorrow early in the morning and I will tell you how to prepare for the puja.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Apurba and his wife hungry to bones, worried like never before in their life. They were clueless what to do. The baba had left in the middle of Puja and had asked them to carry on chanting the mantra till he returned next day morning. He had instructed them not to discontinue the chant come what may. They were not to speak to anyone, not even to open their front door.
And they had obliged. They had asked the house maid not to come for wash and scrub for next two days. They had asked the milkman not to deliver milk for next two days. They had sent their kid son to his uncle's house and promised to pick up after two days. After all it was they who were to gain. Fifty grams of gold and two lakhs of currency notes will become 100 grams of Gold and four lakhs rupees. My God, what a good turn of fate.
But they were now starting to have serious doubts. Finally it was Apurba who broke the stalemate.
“I have a strong feeling that the Baba will not come back”, Apurba said hesitatingly.
“I also think the same thing”, his wife confided.
“Let's check the earthen pots now, we do not want two fold of anything, we will be happy with whatever we had”, Apurba said with a trembling voice wishing to find their 50 gram gold and two lakhs rupees safe inside the pots.
“Go and check now” his wife said with alarm in her voice.
And Apurba broke open the first earthen pot as he did not have the patience to open the cloth bound tightly on top.
Both wife and husband shrieked in panic as few nasty looking poisonous snakes slithered out of the broken pots immediately opening their fangs and surveying the surroundings, wanting to know the reason for breaking their peace.
Apurba and his wife fled for their life from the scene to outside their house. Apurba’s wife was hysterical and shrieking uncontrollably gasping for breath. She kept cursing the Baba in choicest unprintable expletives. Sobbing, shrieking, and gasping with chaotic order.
Apurba’s neighbours rushed in one by one alerted by ear splitting outbursts of Apurba's wife.
Apurba did not know where to begin, what to say.
Er.Sunil Kumar Biswal is a graduate Electrical Engineer and an entrepreneur. He is based in Sunabeda in Koraput District of Odisha. His other interests are HAM Radio (an active HAM with call sign VU2MBS) , Amateur Astronomy (he conducts sky watching programs for interested persons/groups) , Photography and a little bit of writing on diverse topics. He has a passion for communicating science to common man in a simple terms and often gives talks in Electronic media including All India Radio, Radio Koraput. He can be reached at sunilbiswal@hotmail.com
Every day by seven thirty in the morning Vasan, executive manager of formidable bank, would leave his house for the office. His itinerary was to walk along the street to the junction which was nearly hundred meters away. From there he would catch the bus A-9 to the metro railway station which was a five kilometer ride. A ten minutes travel by rail would then take him to his office which was quite close to his point of alighting.
Many of his colleagues used to ask him why he wouldn’t use the car provided by the bank instead of using the public transport system. Vasan humbly used to tell them that he enjoyed his morning trip for several reasons. He wanted to be a model to the society in using the public transport system so that road pollution and congestion could be brought down. He also could use the journey to study the changes happening around and observe the people. Health wise, Vasan would deliberate that the morning journey would give him vigour. He could inhale the available fresh morning air before it got polluted and he could expose himself to the early sun which would help his physiological system in manufacturing the vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin. Thus everyday Vasan had a chance of meeting many people along his way and those people too saw him each day when they did their daily routine things. Thus all were familiar faces seeing each other daily though they were all strangers to each other.
Every morning as Vasan got out onto the street from his house there was this particular man who was a familiar stranger to him. Vasan never paid any attention to him but he could feel that this amusing man was inspecting him from top to bottom even as he kept cleaning his mouth with a brush and paste. Vasan always wore only the best of the branded clothes. He was very conscious and concerned about his dress and he always had a feeling that the people around were observing him in detail. Vasan knew that this man here was an admirer of his attire and he flashed his neatly ironed dresses to him on which there was no unwanted fold or crease. To exhibit his dress daily to a man early in the morning itself helped Vasan in gauging how neatly he was dressed and that gave him enough confidence for the day.
In the A-9 bus that Vasan took daily at forty minutes past seven o clock, there was this cute little school girl of around seven years. She with her mother usually occupied a seat two rows in front of him. It was a habit for the child to turn back all the time and keep staring at Vasan during the journey. It happened every day. Seeing the little child smiling and giggling at him gave Vasan a good feeling that he alone had the most gentle and loveable face in that bus route or else why would that child smile at him only. He realised that the child had a fascination for his fair chubby cheeks and well shaved clean face. Vasan in turn would make a smiley face to make the child giggle. He was sure the commuters who were around him in the bus were appreciating his effort in making a small kid smile though she was a stranger.
In the metro train there was this familiar strange odd looking guy, who would make way for Vasan every time he passed by him in the crowded compartment. The stranger would even make space for Vasan to sit if he had already occupied a seat. It was quite evident to Vasan from the gestures the stranger showed, that this man saw Vasan as a high profile person who deserved to be respected. Vasan thought it might be somebody whom he had interviewed for a placement in the bank job or a potential candidate who might come before him seeking a job one day. Vasan didn’t want anyone to take advantage of him and so Vasan paid least attention to him. But more than Vasan himself, it looked like the stranger was in awe of Vasan’s latest smart phone and his smart watch. Vasan had the habit of flashing all his gadgets to the people around him to make a statement that he was a techno savvy person. He often succeeded in it and the some of them who sat around him would be glued to the objects that Vasan exhibited. Vasan would just connect the blue tooth and detach himself from the surroundings listening to the music through his wireless ear plugs. The stranger who usually sat somewhere around Vasan would make his phone calls and in between have a look at Vasan as though expecting back a welcome look.
At the metro station where he alighted, there was this beautiful woman with a seductive smile who always walked away in a hurried manner, as though she was shy to look at him. He didn’t know from where she got into the train and to where she disappeared after having a brief walk just behind or ahead of him. More than once he made it sure that she would notice that he was entering into one of the leading banks. So in turn Vasan too tried to seduce her by flashing his wealth. He would put on his costly sun glasses as he got out from the train and he walked down the station looking into his expensive watch a dozen times in sixty seconds. Occasionally he would take out his credit and debit cards as though he was searching for something in his purse. Vasan always made sure that he gave an appearance of himself to her. He felt that a sight of him would give much happiness to that simple woman, similar to how the view of the deity in the sanctum of temple would give joy to the followers.
...........THE STRANGERS' PERSPECTIVES.........
The man who munched on the tooth brush every morning as Vasan walked by was one who ironed all the clothes of Vasan whom Vasan never knew. Vasan’s wife gave the clothes to the man’s wife who came to collect them from the apartments there and she would return the ironed clothes back after two days. The ironing man’s only intention in watching Vasan walk by was to see the perfection of his work on his customers. He could pick his clients by the shirts and trousers they wore which were so familiar to him. As Vasan walked by, the ironing man used to inspect his quality of work. He would inspect the collar and every detail right to the hand cuff and then his eyes would follow the long folds of the trousers. He was a perfectionist and wouldn’t compromise on any wrinkle that could mar his ironing works.
There was this seven year old child in the bus number A-9 who would eagerly wait for a funny man to climb into the bus. The moment she saw him, she would turn around excited, kneeling on her seat, though her mother would admonish her that it was bad manners to enjoy the fun in others' appearances. But the child’s happiness for the day began when this funny man got in. Vasan very much resembled one of the cartoon characters that she saw in the television. All the mimicking that Vasan did with his face to make the child happy brought alive the cartoon character the child had in her mind. She would go and tell her friends in the school that she had met the buffoon today too.
In the metro train the Bluetooth hacker made way for Vasan and the hacker made sure he too sat within a range of ten metres around Vasan. The hacker was bluesnarfing into Vasan’s phone and accessing all the information by connecting his device to Vasan’s via Bluetooth. The texts, photos and banks vital files were downloaded even as Vasan sat pretending that he was a techno geek. Even few phone based payments were done which Vasan didn't seem to have noticed till now.
Every time the lady got out of the train she always somehow came in front of this arrogant guy who always was displaying his wealth. The sight of this person made her laugh though she used to try her best to suppress her laughter by biting onto her lips. Every time she saw him, it flashed into her mind the day when a well-dressed man in full style came out of the toilet smiling at her with his trouser zip fully open.
.................AND THE CRUX
The morning trip was kind of a ramp walk for Vasan. He loved to flash himself and his wealthy possessions to the people around him and he loved the attention they spent on him. He was handsome, well-built, fashionable and had his own unique mannerisms which made him believe he was somebody who was born to get all the attention . He enjoyed the admiration which he thought he was receiving, a feeling that boosted his esteem and pride. He felt himself as a super star on the road with a mass of people cheering and waving around him. The mass around him were all familiar strangers who crossed his path on his journey to his office.
The poor daily wagers, simple folk who did ordinary jobs, commoners who passed by him daily used to watch him as he walked by. They saw him as the funny man who tried to be conspicuous and look rich. They kept a check on this familiar stranger to see what he was up to each day. They all knew and liked this familiar person, a stranger who did a sashaying daily in the morning like a peacock strutting around vainly with its plums fanned out.
Dr. Nikhil M Kurien is a professor in maxillofacial surgery working in a reputed dental college in Trivandrum. He has published 2 books. A novel , "the scarecrow" in 2002 and "miracle mix - a repository of poems" in 2016 under the pen name of nmk
IN THE LAP OF GREAT RIFT VALLEY: AN UNIQUE EXPERIENCE
Emirates Flight landed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi at 20.30 hours. After completing visa on arrival formalities, when we exited from the arrival terminal of the airport we were ceremonially welcomed by our tour operator ‘Fnkewa Mara Bush Camp’ and were escorted to our hotel. The guide of the tour operator briefed us about the ensuing 7 day’s tour itinerary of African Safari, in the hotel lobby and bid us goodnight, wishing to meet us next day morning.
We were given to understand that the main gateway to African Safari is Nairobi, East Africa’s largest city and main hub of air and road safaris to Kenya’s diverse national parks and reserves. Kenya’s capital city has arisen in a single century, from uninhibited swampland, founded in 1899by the colonial authorities in British East Africa, to a thriving modern capital and could win the title of’ Smart City No-1’ in a world convention held at Barcelona in 2017 .West of Nairobi; the Great Rift Valley is home to lake Naivasha, lake Nakuru, Hell’s Gate National Park and the peerless Masai Mara National Reserve. North of Nairobi stands 5199 meter tall, Mount Kenya, the untrammeled Meru National Park, the arid Samura-Buffalo Springs National Reserve.
As per schedule at the appointed time, the guide cum driver Mr. Peter Gonthanju drove us in their Safari Cab fitted with electronic gadgets and wireless sets for communication and monitoring the movements of the wild animals in the vast expanse of Masai Mara National Reserve. After covering a distance of 90 km on our much excited safari trip, at Mai Mahiu –a picturesque view point of Great Rift Valley escarpment ,we stopped for tea and looked down from the vantage view point at the amazing gorge from a height of 7062 feet and captivated at the spectacular and breathtaking views of the great rift , running approximately 7,000 km (4300 miles) from Jordan in Asia in the north to Mozambique in the south in the Mideast Africa .The Great Rift Valley ,the world’s largest terrestrial geographic feature measuring around 7,000 km from north to south ,equivalent to roughly one-seventh of the earth’s circumference. The valley started to from some 30 million years ago, when tectonic activity split Africa into two separate incipient landmasses, referred to by geologists as the as Somali and Nubian plates.
East African rift system, also called Afro-Arabian Rift Valley, one of the most extensive rifts on earth’s surface. The system is some 4300 miles or 7,000 km long with average 30-40 miles or 48-64 km wide , runs from , Jordan’s Beqaa valley in north ,takes in the whole of Red Sea, sheers through Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania ,Malawi and finally reaches the sea –Indian Ocean near Zambezi Delta. The system consist of two branches: the main branch, the eastern rift valley (often called the Great Rift Valley) extends along the entire length system. In the north, the rift is occupied by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aquaba. It continues southward along the Red Sea and into Ethiopian Denakil plain to lakes- Rudolf, Naivasha and Magadi in Kenya. The Rift is less obvious through Tanzania because the eastern rim is much eroded, but it continues southward through the Shire River Valley and Mozambique plain of the coast of Indian Ocean near Beira, Mozambique. The Western Rift Valley, extends northwards from the northern end of Lake –Nyasa (lake Malawi) in a great arc that includes Lake -Rukhwai, Tanganyka, Kivu, Edward and Albert. Most of the lakes in the rift system are deep and fjord like ,some with their floors well below sea level .The rift has been formed some 30 million years( as African and Arabian peninsula ,separated) and has been accompanied by extensive volcanism ,along parts of its length ,producing such Massifs as Kilimanjaro( a dormant volcano in Tanzania: the highest mountain in Africa and the highest single free –standing mountain in the world:5895 meters above sea level) and Mount Kenya.
A Rift Valley is a linear shaped low land between several highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geological rift or fault. A rift valley is formed on a divergent plate boundary, a crustal extension or spreading apart of the surface, which is subsequently further deepened by the forces of erosion. When the tensional forces are strong enough to cause the plate to split apart, a center block drops between the two blocks at its flanks, forming a graven .The drop of the center creates the nearly parallel steeply dipping walls of a rift valley widens, until it becomes a large basin that fills with sediment from the rift walls and surrounding area .One of the best known examples of this process is the East African Rift. East Africa is an active Rift. According to Dr. David Hilton, Prof. of Oceanography of California University- “East Africa is one of the most geologically intriguing places on the planet –a place where the African continent is literally ripping apart. Deep rift valleys, active volcanoes, and hot springs are dramatic evidence for the powerful forces deep within the earth that are slowly reshaping the continent.” On Earth, rifts can occur at all elevations, from the sea floor to plateaus and mountain ranges in continental crust or in oceanic crust. A Rift Valley constitutes a type of tectonic valley and, as such, differs from river and glacial valleys which are produced by erosional forces. At some places, the walls of the rift rise little more than 30 meters (100 ft) above the valley floor. Elsewhere, steep cliffs rise sharply to 1200 meters (4000ft) above the floor, but nowhere, is the Rift more sharply defined than where it cuts through the highlands of Kenya. Also scattered, along the length of the Kenyan Rift, is a chain of seven Lakes –Naivasha, Nakura ,Bogoria, Turkana ,Magadi ,Baringo ,and Elmenterita. These are unusual in that not a single one of them has an obvious outflow .Waters pour in from the rainfall on the surrounding land and more or less stays there in the shallow pans, while high rate of evaporation keeps the levels fairly constant; it also causes an accumulation of salts and minerals, in the waters of the lake. But there are exceptions too ,as two lakes –Naivasha and Baringo happened to be fresh water lakes and lots of vegetables are grown surrounding these two lakes .Kenyan highlands comprise one of the most successful agricultural production regions in Africa. Contrary to popular beliefs, glaciers are found on Mount Kenya, Africa’s second highest peak.
The drifting of the continents is a feature unique to planet earth. The complementary, almost jigsaw -puzzle fit of the coastlines on each side of the Atlantic Ocean, inspired Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift in 1915.The theory suggested that an ancient super-continent which Wegner named ‘Pangaea’ incorporated all of the earth’s land masses and gradually split up from today’s continents .The basic theory is that the Earth’s crust is made up of a series of rigid plates which float on a soft layer of the mantle and are moved about by continental convection currents in the Earth’s interior. These plates diverge and converge along clear margins marked by earthquakes, volcanoes and other seismic activity. Plates diverge from mid-ocean ridges where molten lava pushes upwards and forces the plate apart at a rate of up to 40 mm a year; converging plates form either a trench (where continental rock) or mountain ranges( where two continents collide).
Besides its geological and geographical features, the Great Rift Valley, running across Kenya, is home to myriad species of flora and fauna. Africa harbors fauna and flora as magnificent as its terrains including large mammals that occupy huge expanses of land. Out of all African plants and trees, Africa is home to only one native species of Baobab tree. These trees may be oldest living things on the continent living up to over 3,000 years. The quintessential African savannah tree is the flat topped Acacia. Savannah plants such as –Acacia tree, Candelabra tree, Elephant grass, Jackal Berry tree, and Whistling Thorn plants are found in profusion .As to fauna- the Great Rift Valley’s inhabitants includes –Lions,Elephants(Tuskers),Zebras,Giraffes,Wildbeests,Hippopotamus, Crocodiles, White Rhinoceros, Deer , Antelopes, Cheetahs ,Ostriches ,Vultures and Hyenas abound aplenty. Mountain Gorillas and Chimpanzees are some of the most iconic animals endemic to the Great Rift Valley .During the great migration of wildebeest from mid-June to October, the wildlife enthusiasts from across the world rush to the Masai Mara game sanctuary to behold the scenes of migration especially at the crossing points of Mara River. The animals used to migrate from hot Serengeti National Reserve of Tanzania to comparative cooler Masai Mara located in Kenya and remain until end of October, when they move back to the contiguous Serengeti National Sanctuary in Tanzania. The long formations of migratory animals offer spectacular views just like passing out parade of military, one regiment after another. The most thrilling part, of the African Safari, is a most exciting and memorable night spent in the Eco- Cottage situated near the Oloolaimutia entry gate of the Masai Mara National Reserve-a world famous and much visited game sanctuary-an extension of Savannah wilderness.
The Great Rift Valley of African continent is unique in many aspects and an affordable scenic and African wildlife treat. The visitors enjoy spectacular views and enrich with great experience .The scenic beauty is breathtaking and infuses a blissful effect .The travelling; the attraction caters for all kind of visitors-from nature lovers to a more reserve individual .The Great Rift Valley provides the perfect sceneries and captivating landscapes.
Gouranga Charan Roul (gcroul.roul@gmail.com)
The author, after completing post graduate studies in political science from Utkal University, Odisha in 1975, worked as a senior intelligence sleuth in the department of Customs, Central Excise & Service Tax and retired as senior superintendent. As a staunch association activist, he used to hold chief executive posts either as General Secretary or President of All India Central Excise Gazetted Executive Officer's Association, Odisha for 20 years. Presently in the capacity of President of Retired Central Excise Gazetted Executive Officer's Association, Odisha, coordinating the social welfare schemes of the Association. Being a voracious reader, taking keen interest in the history of India, Africa, Europe and America. In his globe tottering spree, widely travelled America and Africa. At times contributing articles to various magazines.
This write up is NOT for sympathy or pity. Written purely out of EMPATHY, based on my personal experience. The purpose is only to share my contemplations, what I learnt, and trying to unlearn, and thought many of you could relate to it.
Been a roller-coaster ride for a whole week, with Dad unwell, and hospitalised. This happened in August 2020. By God's grace, Dad recovered and he is better now, though age-related issues, fears, and anxieties triggered by Covid, and lockdown are still there.
With old age comes, the inevitable fears, insecured feeling, mood swings, and thoughts like, ''am dependent, am troubling others, am being a burden...'' . These thoughts and emotions are unnecessary from 'our' point of view, but not 'always' avoidable for the elderly.
We need to first understand that, remembering the fact, we too in our old age 'might' go through these emotional turbulence.
With loads of patience, it is our responsibility to reassure our parents/in-laws/grandparents, and overall the elderly, that things are going to be fine, and we are there for them rain or shine.
My Dad is always a source of inspiration, full of positivity and gratitude, has strong faith in the Almighty and believes in 'surrender' rather than question God's wisdom when adversity strikes. Has zest for life...
Yet, age and health issues weakened his spirit a little, in the past few months. Mom is equally so, a sweet soul, though we are at loggerheads on certain things. Common story in many families. :)
It took time for me to accept the reality. To calmly digest the facts especially when witnessing parents suffer. Especially being a single child, it was tough for me emotionally to see my parents become fragile, both physically, and mentally.
Yet, I need to accept the realities. I bounced back. Dad has of course regained his spirit, and it was satisfying to watch him pluck flowers for Pooja, and make garlands - one of his routines...
Moral support from friends, and family is crucial, to endure the challenges and stay balanced. Am fortunate - blessed with the same. Touch wood! The universe has blessed me with wonderful brothers and sisters from different wombs, to be grateful for. Though a few, they are trustworthy 'go to' shoulders in the form of friends.
Caregivers need abundant energy both physically and mentally. Often, it is draining, yet, with limited or no choice, practically handling situations by oneself(especially during this lockdown where hospitals have too many restrictions) all one has to do is, keep hoping and just be in the moment. One day at a time. I tried my best.
We do lose temper while multi-tasking that demands a lot of energy, have mood swings, and it is OKAY! Let's be honest. We don't intend to hurt anyone, and can always 'explain' our anger.
Never give room to sentiments. While it would definitely be difficult to see parents suffer, who were once so active and energetic, sentiments and getting emotional would only weaken us, and we won't be able to do justice in supporting/taking care of them.
Be mentally prepared for unexpected challenges especially when it comes to parents' health, in their old age. While they are in good health, involve them in small healthy activities to keep their body and mind fit in the long run. To maintain immunity.
Teach them basics of technology, right from phone usage to apps and social media usage, patiently. Never make fun of parents', elderly souls' ignorance; anyone's lack of knowledge, for that matter. Instead, with love and patience, teach them through interesting simpler methods to remember, so that they will feel more confident, having knowledge of how to use technology efficiently, for important communication, and explore the world of internet to keep themselves entertained, and well-informed, too. To kill loneliness, when nobody is around...
Beyond all these, certain things are indeed not in our hands. Do not trivialise their pain/fears. Take time to help them overcome the same.
Do NOT discuss health issues with too many people, however close. Let doctors play their role; clearly discuss with them, and clarify doubts. Do NOT consult Google. The doctors, nurses and all healthcare workers deserve respect and abundant gratitude. Thank them from your heart. A word or two, puts a bright smile on their faces. It's beautiful, amid all the pain and chaos they deal with everyday.
Always have details of the latest medicines taken, health-related details of elders including prescription soft copies, handy. Have backups in mails. share the same with siblings, or with close family members to quickly refer, in case of emergency.
Be grateful for every bit of support received, and every stage of healing. Gratitude is a way of life.
Caregivers, and communication! Reading/responding to messages can wait. Social media can wait. Those who truly can empathise, would understand our position, and respect our space and time. Those who don't, let them be. Don't drain your energy in explaining to people who are not willing to understand.
There were/are several messages/calls, I could not read/respond to, yet am blessed with souls who perfectly understand and gave/gives me time and space. Even texting a line was/is at times tiring. Grateful to those compassionate souls, who understand this, and needs no explanation.
Though out of genuine concern, enquiring too often would only suffocate the caregivers. This must be kept in mind, with much empathy.
Souls who checked on me too, had a world of patience to receive my response, and I felt their presence throughout. Especially when I heard what I 'need to hear', the raw truth, and not the cliches or motivational speech. Empathise. one can't be, needn't be always positive. Toxic positivity, kills us inside. Let us accept and embrace, our and others' vulnerable moments.
One need not even be aware of our situation to respect our space, and silence, unless it is very important to contact us. Those who are restless and curious even after our efforts in explaining certain things, not willing to understand the importance of boundaries, are to be ruthlessly ignored. Our energy, the vibes we send out and receive are important to save our sanity.
"This too shall pass. Stay strong. Life is like that", might not 'always' be encouraging or reassuring. Allow the broken emotions to flow as tears, talk about it to a trustworthy soul, acknowledge your worries, and fears and then slowly come out of them replenishing hope in your heart. Silence, is therapeutic in the process. Value it.
Caregivers must eat well. Stay hydrated. Do what they love, to lift their own spirits. Must smile, laugh uninhibited, if they want to. Worrying too much, not eating properly, starving, sad-faced, are not signs of love, but stupidity. Caregivers need to be times more energetic. In good spirits. One cannot serve from an empty cup.
Be there for others, whenever you could. All the help we received, all that we didn't and wished we had, desperate then,
if we are capable of giving, let us just give in gratitude and compassion. The person we extend help to, needn't be from our family, or a well-known friend. Even a small act of kindness, to a deserving stranger in need of help, could make a huge difference.
"Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam". The whole world is one family. Family is not always blood. Let bonds be built on trust, love, and compassion. Let's be there for each other, gifting warmth and hope, and keep believing, with all its highs and lows life is beautiful, and life is more meaningful, when love is the language of souls...
Madhumathi is an ardent lover of Nature, Poetry(English and Tamil), Photography, and Music, Madhumathi believes writing is a soulful journey of weaving one's emotions and thoughts, having a kaleidoscopic view of life through poetry. She experiences Metamorphosis through writing. Nature is her eternal muse and elixir. Poetry, to Madhumathi, is a way of life, and loves to leave heartprints behind in gratitude, through her words. She strongly believes in the therapeutic power of words, that plant love, hope, and enable a deep healing. Madhumathi loves to spread mental health awareness through writing, breaking the stigma, and takes part in related activities, too.
Madhumathi's poems are published with the Poetry Society India in their AIPC anthologies 2015, 16, and 17, the multilingual anthology 'Poetic Prism' 2015(Tamil and English), Chennai Poets' Circle's 'Efflorescence' 2018, 2019, India Poetry Circle's 'Madras Hues Myriad Views'(2019) celebrating the spirit and glory of Madras, in the UGC approved e-journal Muse India, in IWJ-International Writers' Journal (2020), and e- zines Our Poetry Archive(OPA), and Storizen.
Blog for Madhumathi's Poems :https://multicoloredmoon.wordpress.com/, http://mazhaimozhimounam.blogspot.com/?m=1
HAPPINESS IS NOT PEACE, PEACE IS HAPPINESS….
“Be every happy inside. You can’t change things outside of you, but you can change yourself.”
The other day, a friend engaged me in an insightful conversation.
Happiness – Peace – Success…
Which is most important in your opinion?
That set me thinking….
I had always considered myself successful and happy, but was I always at peace?
The mind often experiences variances - from turbulence in the skies to the placid waters of the lake. Without a doubt, chaotic external forces are the cause of such disturbances, but the question is how to stay insulated – what sheath of armour to wear?
Offering me a plate of my favourite ‘mysorepa,’ he said, ‘This is your favourite sweet. Does eating this in large quantities give your happiness?’ My body and mind negated it. While a few pieces of the sweet gives pleasure, consuming more pieces would result in a stomach upset and its resultant woes.
A story that I had read some time ago flashed in my mind.
A young ‘brahmachari,’ who was new to the ashram was asked about his preference for food. ‘Idli!’ he replied casually, little realizing what was in store for him. Soon, he had idlis for breakfast, idlis for lunch and promptly, once again, idlis for dinner! Within a week, he developed an aversion to the steamed dish, the staple breakfast of many South Indians.
In other words, what gives happiness today can result in sorrow tomorrow!
Reflecting on the question at hand, my thoughts went to a verse that I had scribbled in my personal diary:
PEACE OF MIND
Buddha, with followers
passing by lake said,
“I am thirsty,
Get me some water.”
As disciple walked
spied a bullock cart
crossing through lake
turning water turbid.
Returning to the Buddha,
disciple narrated plight.
After a while
Buddha bade him to go.
Finding the water
still grimy
disciple returned
disheartened, disturbed.
More time elapsed
Buddha gave go ahead
This time water clear
Disciple returned with filled pot.
Buddha remarked- Mind is similar,
When disturbed, let it be.
let it settle down-peace of mind
Effortless task!
How true! I uttered aloud.
When my friend looked at me quizzically, I narrated the verse to him. Further, I went on to explain: Change is the only constant, as Heraclitus said.
By accepting change, in other words, if one is open to change internally, it is easier to accept external changes, which will, in time, will yield happiness (and success).
A relevant example is the pandemic that we are currently facing, notwithstanding the entry of the vaccine into the market. ‘Social Distancing’ has made us connect better with people from far and near through technological devices. We are better connected with individuals and groups than ever before, rather, we recognize the significance of staying connected.
While depression, disease and other negativities have affected the vast majority of the populace, a number of people have successfully managed to be at peace, akin to the ‘placid waters.’ The inner equilibrium has brought in the acceptance to adapt to the ‘new norm,’ and remain as accommodative as possible, until the situation eases.
To get back to your question, peace of mind or inner engineering is the first step to happiness/success. So, let’s remain contented, without being avaricious,
remain grounded, not yielding to unlawful temptations, remain alert, to avail opportunities
work tirelessly, without giving up mid-way, work, as if tomorrow is the last day,
work until the goal is reached.
Such inner peace is bound to bring external change as well…
Hema Ravi is a freelance trainer for IELTS and Communicative English. Her poetic publications include haiku, tanka, free verse and metrical verses. Her write ups have been published in the Hindu, New Indian Express, Femina, Woman's Era, and several online and print journals; a few haiku and form poems have been prize winners. She is a permanent contributor to the 'Destine Literare' (Canada). She is the author of ‘Everyday English,’ ‘Write Right Handwriting Series1,2,3,’ co-author of Sing Along Indian Rhymes’ and ‘Everyday Hindi.’ Her "Everyday English with Hema," a series of English lessons are broadcast by the Kalpakkam Community Radio.
Ram: My little brother was reciting the stupid rhyme ‘Hickory dickory dock’
Shyam: Why do you call it stupid? I quite liked it.
Sam: Which rhyme are you talking of
Shyam: Don’t you know?
Hickory dickory dock.
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one.
The mouse ran down.
Hickory dickory dock.
Sam: Yes, Now I remember. So, what is stupid about it?
Ram: Well. If I was the mouse and I am going to some place I will not just turn around and give up my plans, aims or whatever, and run down and away, just because somebody or something made some noise.
Sam: I see your point, but if I heard a noise as the mouse did, I would certainly look around. It is not so clever to ignore a possible warning. The noise could be a warning.
Ram: Nonsense. The clock was just doing its duty. It would anyway strike, mouse or no mouse.
Shyam: True. But how will the mouse know that unless it stopped and checked?
Sam: It could stop and checks alright, but why run down?
Ram: Hahaha! Maybe it was lunch time and that was the lunch gong for the mouse.
Shyam: You never know. May be the mouse had something else to do at one o’clock and the clock was an alarm,
Ram: Ha! Ha! Alarm indeed. Alarmed I would think.
Sam: In any case no harm in checking before we proceed.
Shyam: Well. After all it is a mouse and can only be a mouse, why expect anything else from it?
Sam: Don’t talk like that. Mice are also clever, like Jerry or Mickey!
Ram: Yes. Indeed. And why mouse? Even some people are like that; reactive ones. I was thinking of such people, people who just react everything forgetting what they set out to do.
But I see your point now. While it is wrong to react to every thud and bang, it is equally wrong to ignore what’s going around. We do need to be alert and check before we decide to ignore.
Note: (This is the third of a series ‘in conversation’. The first was published in the 101 edition and the second in the 102 edition of LV.)
Padmini Janardhanan is an accredited rehabilitation psychologist, educational consultant, a corporate consultant for Learning and Development, and a counsellor, for career, personal and family disquiets.
Has been focussing on special education for children with learning difficulties on a one on one basis and as a school consultant for over 4 decades. The main thrust is on assessing the potential of the child and work out strategies and IEPs (Individual Educational Plans) and facilitating the implementation of the same to close the potential-performance gap while counselling the parents and the child to be reality oriented.
Has been using several techniques and strategies as suitable for the child concerned including, CBT, Hypnotherapy, client oriented counselling, and developing and deploying appropriate audio-visual / e-learning materials. Has recently added Mantra yoga to her repository of skills.
She strongly believes that literature shapes and influences all aspects of personality development and hence uses poetry, songs, wise quotations and stories extensively in counselling and training. She has published a few books including a compilation of slokas for children, less known avathars of Vishnu, The what and why of behaviour, and a Tamizh book 'Vaazhvuvallampera' (towards a fulfilling life) and other material for training purposes.
Aunty, I am going to marry Prakash, please bless us, said Apoorva all smiles. Even before she completed her sentence, a dashing young man who apparently seemed to be waiting impatiently to be introduced followed by her announcement quickly joined her, extending his right arm to draw her closer.
The words seemed to come out of the blue and it took some time for me to get their import. I looked at the two youngsters, Apoorva still looking pretty and charming though she was on the wrong side of thirty. I couldn’t guess the man’s age because he appeared quite boyish which I thought may be because he was slim and of an average height compared to Apoorva who was tall, fair with sharp features. My first impression was the two appeared mismatched, at least as far as their looks were concerned. She was wearing white palazzos with a bright floral kalamkari red top. A string of white pearls adorned her chubby neck and a small nose ring accentuated her looks. A thin pearl bracelet on one hand and a watch on the other completed her ensemble. Still engrossed in sizing up the bridegroom chosen by Apoorva and at the same time wondering what attracted Apoorva to this young man and even decide to marry him, my thoughts were interrupted by Apoorva’s words ’aunty, please bless us quickly as we have to leave in a few minutes. Saying so both prostrated before me for my blessings and left as abruptly as they came, which was without any prior intimation.
Even as I was hoping Apoorva would be lucky the second time, thinking about her earlier failed marriage with the man she loved, her colleague at office, the girl breezed in after a few minutes taking me by surprise.
Aunty, I know you must me wanting to know all about Prakash and why I have decided to marry him, she began, probably guessing what was going on in my mind.
Well, his full name is Prakash Bhatt. We met, do you know now where? She said laughing.
How should I know, I too laughed?
O.K. Tell me where did you two meet? I said quite curious.
During our coach tour of western Europe. He was my co passenger, rather a tourist like me who too came from India for sightseeing, she informed.
Oh, that’s interesting, is all that I could say.
Though I wished to know more about Prakash, I did not know how to ask Apoorva who I knew did not like too many questions when it came to her personal life. I always waited for her to open up and she did whenever she felt like confiding in me.
When do you plan to get married? I asked albeit hesitatingly.
Where is the hurry aunty? Prakash has plans to go abroad and study, she said.
Study what? I said with some trepidation.
Well, something to do with hotel industry and ultimately open a restaurant of his own, she said all smiles.
Where in India or abroad? I asked.
It all depends, may be in Chennai or Bengaluru because he has some contacts in both the places, she informed.
That’s good Apoorva. Probably it might take a while for all this to happen, I said looking at her.
May be a few years, she chuckled. Aunty, shall see you later, saying so she left.
My memory went back to two decades when Apoorva was a little girl with two pig tails. She studied in a convent which was coed. Both her parents were doctors working in a corporate hospital and Apoorva was literally brought up by her grandmother. She took care that she learnt about our culture by telling her stories from the epics and insisted she read Amarchitra Katha. But as Apoorva grew up, she preferred reading romantic fiction as her friends did and completely disregarding the values she was brought up with .
She believed in enjoying herself partying with friends and seeing a lot of movies besides bingeing in on western cuisine .Somewhere on the way the travel bug bit her and she had become a compulsive traveler neglecting her studies .However she managed to complete her degree and joined a not so well known institute to do her M.B.A. in marketing .She was lucky to have got a job almost immediately as a junior executive in a startup and here she met Prathap and the two were married after a brief courtship. Even as I was thinking she was settling down, she announced one day that she is divorcing him because he had developed an affair with her close friend’s sister who was his junior working in the same company. After a two-year separation she was divorced and I thought she would not have plans for a second marriage almost immediately after the divorce and I knew I should have known Apoorva better.
‘Aunty, I want to have a break and I am joining a group that is going on a tour of Western Europe, commencing from London, she announced and she left a day later and returned after a month. Just a few days later came her announcement of marriage with her tour mate.
Apoorva always took impulsive and rash decisions and did not have an open mind. For her there were no two ways about anything and she believed she was always right. Also was extremely susceptible to flattery and the worst drawback was she was very secretive, it was difficult to read her mind. Though Apoorva was not related to me, she had become very fond of me and considered me as her Godmother. Though I was her grandmother’s age, she called me aunty saying I had very progressive ideas for my age unlike her own grandmother. Her parents had very little time for her due to demands of their profession. As a result, Apoorva from childhood spent most of the time with me as she loved to play with my granddaughter who was of the same age. The two became very good friends until my granddaughter Preetha got married and migrated to the U.S. with her husband. But the two continued to keep in touch through mail and met whenever her friend came down to India.
Even as my mind was going back in time and thinking what lay ahead for Apoorva, she came back after a few days and sat beside me, literally hugging me.
Aunty, I know you must be wondering about my sudden announcement, but don’t worry, I really love Prakash and he loves me too, she affirmed. We have a lot in common, she added.
Like what? I said.
Well, we both love to travel and see places, she said.
Anything else, besides that? I said.
Yes, we love to see movies, romantic movies, she said.
Is that all? I said.
Well, he loves to study further to better his prospects, she said.
But, Apoorva, you just said he wishes to open a restaurant sometime, I reminded.
Well, that’s one of the options after he gets a degree in catering technology, she said.
But who is going to finance him for his studies, I said.
Don’t worry auntie, his father is a politician (it was a revelation to me) and has pots of money, she assured
Does his father know about your plans? I asked.
No, not yet, he said he will introduce me to him shortly, she said.
Well, is all that I could say.
But aunty, tell me how do you like the idea of opening a restaurant? She wanted to know.
If you ask me , its not a bad idea but one can’t open a restaurant just like that, you need to conduct a market study and do a lot of field work before you embark on such a venture.As far as I know there is bound to be a lot of competition, unless your restaurant is way different from other existing ones, I said.
Aunty, what if Prakash drops the idea of qualifying himself in catering technology and buys a restaurant which someone wants to sell? She asked.
Do you know anyone who is going to sell his restaurant? I asked.
I believe his uncle wishes to sell his restaurant as it is working under loss, so Prakash can buy that if his father gives him the money and run it, she suggested.
Are not there a lot of ifs and buts, Apoorva? You appear to think all this is easy, I said.
In fact Prakash and I discussed all possibilities and he feels it is best to qualify himself in catering technology and then open a restaurant, preferably in the south, as I said, she said at last.
I knew Apoorva has not matured and appeared like a day dreamer, even though she was getting on in years.
Aunty, I forgot to tell you we might change our mind about marrying each or get married and give it a try, she announced.
For how long? I said aghast.
May be, a few months or a year, she replied sounding very casual.
But aunty, we may live together for a year and see how it works. I have already gone through a marriage earlier and it’s a bother to get a divorce. Why marry and divorce if we find we are not compatible, living together is a better option, don’t you think auntie? She said looking straight at me.
What do your parents and grandmother think about it? I asked at last.
I haven’t yet told them about my option, but for all I know the old lady will not like my idea of living together even if my parents may not object, she said sounding very sure of their approval.
But Apoorva, you are already 30 and don’t you think you should be sure of yourself, I said.
So what? 30 is not old at all to start life all over again, is it? She asked.
I agree, but you should decide what you are going to do with your life, take up a career all over again so that you could at least be independent, have an income for yourself , shouldn’t you? I tried to put in some sense into her head.
Well, you are right aunty, I will seriously look for a job from now, she said after a long pause and promised to meet me before long.
Days passed, and there was no news from Apoorva, neither a phone call nor a message. Meanwhile, I was scanning the matrimonial columns of newspapers, web sites and contacting some close friends to find an eligible groom for Apoorva though I knew she would not have liked me to do so.
Months passed and there was still no news from Apoorva. She was not in touch with her parents or with her grandmother or even my granddaughter who was her close friend.
I had almost given up all possibilities of contacting Apoorva when I suddenly stumbled upon the mobile number of an old friend of mine settled in Seattle. When we were trying to catch up from the last time we were in touch, probably it was sheer coincidence and call it providence that I came to know Apoorva was pursuing a management course in one of the colleges in the U.S. I wondered who was financing her because as far as I knew she was not a bright student to be eligible for any aid. But the news brought some relief.
Years passed and there was no news from Apoorva and I stopped hoping as I too was getting on in years. I could only imagine that after completing her degree, she would have got into some firm or other and earning a decent sum.
Don’t surprises cease, I thought when one morning when I opened my mail, I saw a long letter written by Prathap, who was Apoorva’s ex-husband.
He wrote:
Dear aunty,
I know you will be surprised to get a letter from me, perhaps it is more than four years since we met. After Apoorva and I got divorced , I was not in touch with her or with any of her family .I have moved to the U.S. along with my wife (who was my girl fiend and the reason for Apoorva and me getting divorced) and have been working in Seattle for the last four years. My wife, Smitha, and I were leading a happy life and have a two-year-old daughter called shanti. But as days passed I found Smitha was behaving in a strange way and was not giving any attention to me. She preferred to spend more time with a friend of mine, invite him to dinner often and the two would chat, chat and chat, well into the night. I could imagine what this was leading to and my worst fears came true when one fine day she announced that she was leaving me to move with my friend.
Now comes the news that you would be interested. I happened to meet Apoorva at one of the management conferences we both happened to attend, sorry, she was delivering the key note address and I was the one who was attending . During the break, I went to speak with her hoping she would recognize me and be cordial for courtesy sake, but she completely ignored me.
Well, perhaps I met my NEMESIS and was happy for Apoorva who has made a success of her career.
Kind Regards
Prathap
‘Well, Apporva, you made it on your own, that too in a foreign country, I said the words aloud. Now I don’t have to worry about you.’
N. Meera Raghavendra Rao , M.A.in English literature is a freelance journalist, author of 10 books(fiction, nonfiction) a blogger and photographer .Her 11th. is a collection of 50 verses titled PINGING PANGS published in August 2020. She travelled widely within and outside the country.She blogs at :justlies.wordpress.com.
Just as Archie was tightening his seat belt and getting ready for the take off, his phone vibrated in his pocket once again. Slightly irritated, he reached for it, knowing very well it would be another text from Ruby. She kept texting non stop, even though he had sent her the flight timings and assured her that he would reach there in a few hours' time. Why she should be so very worried as to keep on nagging him, he had no idea at all.
This time the text merely said she would meet him at the airport. He had told her she did not need to bother as it was a working day, he could as well take a prepaid taxi, but it seemed she had already taken a few days' leave from office and needed to set things in motion as soon as he stepped off the plane and touched the soil of his native place. Archie switched off the phone, he could be at peace till he reached home, surely he was going to need a winding down before being forced to be face to face with Ruby.
The plane took off smoothly, drinks were offered by the smiling air hostess, passengers returned to talking and reading and unwrapping blankets or whatever. Archie leaned back and closed his eyes. It had been a hectic week at work. Added to the workload, Priyanka had been haggling him, she wanted to start looking at bridal dresses and honeymoon brochures. The way he kept putting off a final decision was getting on her nerves. Her bosom friend Rita had warned Archie that this time he would be doomed, Priyanka had set her heart on getting married before the summer was over, and when she was so determined, nothing, even the Almighty himself, would not dare argue. In a way Archie had decided on this trip to avoid her insistent demands too. But it was a case of escaping the frying pan to fall into the fire, he mused. Ruby seemed to be as forceful as Priyanka in wanting to get her own way.
What's with the women of these days, Archie asked himself, with all the independence and financial upper hand they had acquired, they were still not happy unless they could tie up a male counterpart and make him do a whole lot of domestic tasks he probably detested. Equality in theory was a peaceful state of affairs, but in reality it was just a reversal of roles, instead of He ordering and She obeying, She had the power to order, He had to be servile enough to obey. He sighed and tried to rest, he would find escape routes soon, he was good at wheedling himself out of seemingly closed traps.
Though he tried, Archie could not be restful enough to get some well needed sleep. Too much weighed on his mind. Family. Such a homely word, arousing feelings of love and care and concern, but in reality a thorn filled bush with pretty flowers. The more you went close, the more it pricked you and hurt you. Archie had a whole lifetime of experience about such hurtful episodes, hence his careful avoidance of the bliss of matrimony. Better to be alone, through thick and thin, rather than expose himself to the vagaries of the feminine hormones. I must be feeling so because of the excess of feminine influence in my life, Archie mused. His father having passed away just as Archie crossed into adolescence, masculine influence during his growing years was in absence, and his mother and sister being slightly mad and highly erratic, had succeeded in instilling in him a wariness regarding family bonds.
Just as now, Archie mused, he was called back home, not knowing the real reasons for it, Ruby could not explain coherently, she was too mad with Mother, it seemed, the older Mother gets, the more difficult she is, does not listen to a word I say, you just have to come home, Archie, calm her down, maybe put her in a pleasant retirement home, Ruby had been wailing, almost at the end of her tether. Mother had always been adamant, ever since Father's unexpected demise she had thrown caution to winds and taken rash decisions, uncaring of the inconveniences it put on others. First she had sold the luxurious penthouse apartment they had been living in in the city and gone back to her family home in the suburbs, where both her siblings had homes nearby. The old house, sprawling over a grandiose acre of land, had been given to her because she was the eldest granddaughter, the favourite of her grandparents. Nobody had been very happy about that. All other family members had hoped that it would be divided equally among all the grandchildren. Pressure had been wielded on Mother's parents to make her see the right way and share the land with cousins. Father would not hear of it, saying that it was her inheritance and so she had every right to enjoy the benefits. He had told his in laws that they could give all they had amassed to their other kids, Mother needed nothing more from the family. And he soothed other ruffled feathers by assuring them that the family home would always be open to all, family functions could be held there, holidays spent together, anyone needing a hideout or convalescence could use it as needed. And over the years the house was properly utilised, many a family gathering took place with lots of fun and frolic and many who felt like having a peaceful retreat in the countryside stayed to unwind and make decisions on the future. A few enterprising youngsters had tried to make it a heritage home with sightseeing and boating and fishing in the river offered as highlights, but it had not done too well and they had found other avenues of business and settled elsewhere.
Mother's decision to make it her permanent home was seen as a rash decision. For one thing it was too big and too old to be maintained for just one person. A lot of money would be needed for the upkeep itself, and since Mother could not stay alone a full time maid would have to be found. The old rambling house standing by itself in spreading land was not a secure proposition, probably a man would be needed, a combination of archaic caretaker and new age watchman. All these doubts and deliberations were brushed aside by Mother. She packed up her things and just started living there, assuring all and sundry that she would deal with problems as and when they cropped up. She bought three dogs, two as watch dogs, a male and female Doberman, and an adorable tawny lab as constant companion. A distant relative who had no home to call her own, one who stayed there often and did some cleaning and farming on her own initiative, was invited to be a full time caretaker with a fair salary and she in turn employed a younger girl as housemaid and a hefty middle aged man for the heavier work. In no time the house was turned into home again, warmly open, filled with talk and play and barks and scoldings. Mother worked her magic on people and places, wherever she was. She was a born hostess who invited all sorts of people in, never bothered about status or relationship.
Ruby was not at all pleased with Mother's lifestyle. She had had an eye on the property for some time, some business ideas based on the land, and had been waiting for an opportune moment to speak out. She had decided that Mother should make her home permanently with her daughter now that she was a lone widow. She should be more careful with money now, else she will be cheated by exploiters, Ruby used to repeat in those early days. But Mother never paid any heed to her moanings. Especially since Ruby's husband had never hidden his antagonism towards the mother in law. Staying with them would have been suicidal for an independant minded individual, that was evident enough.
The discord between them must have deepened during the next years, Archie had gone home only very rarely and that too for very short vacations. He had thought Mother was doing better than he had foreseen, life in the suburbs suited her better than the busy showy urban style Father had preferred. She had a good sized vegetable garden, and a lot of customers for the products grown on natural manure only. She had talked of starting on a flower business too, since there was land enough for orchids or anthurium or whatever the market was open for. Already different varieties of jasmine blossomed in plenty and the evening breeze carried its heady fragrance afar. Demands for jasmine garlands had started coming in. There were like minded people interested in joining that venture, so the capital could also be shared. All in all, a busy, fulfilled life had been sketched out, it had seemed to Archie. So what could have disturbed Ruby so very much?
Answers were not easily forthcoming even when he stood outside the airport looking inquisitively at his sister. She looked thinner, the lines running from the nose to the lips etched sharper, eyes a bit sunken, colour of cheeks lost. ' Why diet so vehemently Ruby? Surely you know you will look better with a few more pounds on these fragile bones? ' He tried to say it lightly, as if in fun, but she looked askance at him and ignored the implied criticism.
'So Ok, lets come to the point. What exactly is the problem and how do you want me to handle it?' Archie lost no time in turning to the matter in hand, he was getting tired of the evasions and the beating around the bush. Ruby put on her seat belt, started the car and sped out of the station as if she were partaking in an important race and had no time to stop and chat. Archie heaved a sigh, Ruby had always been so, high speed in all things she undertook, too efficient as to be intolerant of slower human beings, far too sure of herself to bow down for help. People never change, basically they remain the same whatever outward show they put on, he mused.
In no time they were passing in through the gate of the new apartment Ruby had bought recently and Mother had walked out of in a huff because pets were not allowed inside. She had gone back to the dilapidated old family home that everyone had persuaded her to leave and put up for sale since maintaining it had become almost impossible.
Archie looked around approvingly, all neat and compact and extremely hygenic. It was indeed an idyllic living space for people of Mother's age. But the dogs would be a real problem here, true. Going up in the elevator he watched his sister, the way she impatiently tapped her fingers, as if urging the lift to be faster, faster, no time to waste, the next thing on agenda had to be addressed. Really a hyper active individual, won't she be stressed out ever, wondered Archie.
They were met at the door by Bobby, Ruby's ten year old son, who had been waiting excitedly to see his smart and savvy Uncle who shared his passion for cricket and computer. Archie hugged him and handed over a new notepad, already programmed with the latest games. Ruby gave a look of disapproval, 'Already he is backward in homework and studying, now he will have no time even to glance at his books', she murmured. Archie smiled, 'We were all young once upon a time dear sister, not born so dutiful and workaholic'.
Bobby laughed out loud and bounced into his room, happily expectant. Archie was shown into the tidy guest room where he changed clothes and had a wash. When he went back into the living area Ruby's husband, Raju, was seated at the dining table, a glass of whiskey at hand, ready to do battle with the newcomer. Ruby was putting lunch on the table and beckoned Archie to the place marked for him. 'How about a drink dear boy, you must be tired out by the early flight,' the brother in law started off genially enough but Archie caught the warning glint in his sister's eye and read the message correctly.
'No, Chetta, ' he said politely, 'As I am going to confront Mother I will need to be clear headed'. Raju chettan laughed long and loud at that, 'Sure you will, sure, sure' he kept nodding his head, ' My wife has been trying for a time but that arrogant lady never listens to her. So why keep trying, I asked, why not have your intelligent management brother come back here and look after his dear mother? After all it is the son who should look after the parents in their old age, hmm? And this boy, Archie, has no family hanging on him squeezing out his money and health, he is absolutely free, he can do anything he wants to! Three cheers to bachelordom!' And he poured the next drink, right up to the brim of his glass. Ruby took it away and put the plate before him. 'Have some lunch before filling up your stomach with that filth', She said forcefully and served fried rice and chicken cooked with onions and baby potatoes and fresh green peas. Bobby saved the moment by rushing in and drooling at his favourite dishes, Raju was diverted by his son's exclamations of pleasure. Soon they were sharing the tasty combo and talking of other things. Seeing Archie gaze at the menu with a comical 'here also?' look, Ruby laughed. 'Father and son prefer these things bro. For us I have prepared a traditional meal'.
Archie was relieved to see the maid bring in steamed rice, sambhar, aviyal and pappadoms in plenty. He was tired of eating hotel food, especially fried things. 'Its time for your little brother to stop wandering the world and settle down with a homebound girl who loves cooking vegetables', Raju said, a hidden criticism in his seemingly pleasant observation.
Both Archie and Ruby ignored him and hurried with their lunch since it was time to move on to Mother's place. Archie wondered whether Ruby's husband and son intended to accompany them, but that would be an encumbrance, on the way he wanted Ruby to tell him the real reason for being called home.
In the end, Raju being well drunk, went off to snooze, but Bobby wanted to see his grandma's dogs and would not be put off. He sat in the back with his new toy, engrossed in the games, so Archie could talk in some privacy.
This time Ruby tried no evasive tactics. Looking even more strained, she said, 'As I messaged you Archie, Mother has gone back to that old falling down place to live alone. I think she is too old now, she cannot manage on her own, and you know servants are not easy to come by. Not like those times when she had enough and more help there. Now most youngsters go to school, even if they do not get past the final exams, they get some steady job or other, more pay than housemaids, more leisure. So I pointed out these difficulties and told her it's best to be with me the rest of her days. But ofcourse she began missing her old dogs, saying she will just see they are doing ok she went off one morning and the next I hear is that she has acquired a new one too, a stray puppy right from the streets, and she has no intention to come back to the city. How she can live on there, I cant imagine. The house is falling down. No comforts, no security, no help. She's really mad to think she can survive there by herself.You must sell her the idea of an old age home if she is determined not to stay with me'.
A repetition of old times. When Mother had first started living in the family home too everyone had said she would never manage on her own. But she had lived there more than a decade, till the Covid outbreak, when no help became available, so Ruby had dragged her to the new closed flat. For one year Mother had borne it but when the lockdown was cleared she must have seized the first opportunity of escape.
'Really Ruby, if her wish is to spend her last days in the family home, why try to stop her? She must be confident she can manage, else she would have stayed on with you.'
Ruby gave him an exasperated look, as if he did not get the point at all. But then she said, 'Thats not the whole story. She finally decided to spend her lifetime savings on rebuilding that white elephant. And do you know who she chose for the renovation work?' This time Ruby looked really fed up, angry, defeated even. Archie had no time to wonder why, she broke the bombshell right on his head. 'Ronnie'.
Archie was shocked. The name went straight to his heart, every nerve end rose up, tingling, he felt drowned in long forgotten emotions, love, anger, betrayal, sense of loss. Ronnie had been his childhood playmate, then adolescent soul mate. Inseparable, they had been like Siamese twins, wherever Archie was, Ronnie would be present as well. An unwritten rule followed by both. In fact the nickname Ronnie befell her because Ronnie was the all time sweetheart of Archie in Archie comics. So the so very tame name Rohini became Ronnie and together they were teased as the evergreen lovers Archie and Veronica of the celebrated comic series. Archie had to prove he was not like the love smitten fool pictured in the comic, Ronnie had to show she was not a selfish, idle,super rich showgirl. So they found intellectual pursuits that gave them a totally different image and also real interests in life. Shared interests made them even closer than most young lovers. In fact they separated only when Archie gained admission in a celebrated B school and had to leave home. Ronnie had still to decide which field she wanted to stick to. She had just then realised that management was not a long lasting interest. Not creative enough, she had declared, much to Archie's disappointment. He wondered whether they were growing apart, he wanted success and stability in life, but she seemed to think she needed more than that to give meaning to life. Left wing idealism was springing up again and some of her friends were fanatically working for equality and liberty. Ronnie was confused, pulled both ways, she could not settle for one without the other.
Archie himself had been too young to realise that her dilemma was a genuine one. He had his own dreams, ambitions, his innate intelligence needed constant and satisfying work to keep it sharp, new friends with similar interests kept him occupied. So that he had not seen that he and Ronnie were already drifting in opposite ways. It was only when he was home for an extended study holiday before his finals that he had learnt that Ronnie had left home to study architecture in a foreign university. She had not called him or said goodbye. He had expected she would be home, still undecided, waiting to see him to discuss their future. But both his mother and Ruby were sure that she had gone away because she felt that Archie needed another kind of life. ' I don't think you really know her, Archie, ' his mother had said, 'Even her parents were not fully aware of her political bend, she was involved in certain extremist groups, urging for a change in society and all, somehow they pulled her out before the group was arrested and sent her away for higher studies. She is a rebel now, totally against money making and exploitation of the poor. Talks of building a classless society, demolishing capitalism, and I don't know, bringing down the bourgeoisie, things like that.'
'Makes no sense', Ruby was her usual critical self, 'Living off rich parents, knowing no hardships, youngsters just turn into socialists and begin to rebel against their own. For what? I cant understand.'
But Archie could understand how Ronnie's mind worked. He had been with her in her growing years and had sensed her dissatisfaction with the lifestyle her parents and relatives followed. She had always yearned for something more, and had spent time in Mother's rambling house and spreading yards doing household chores and helping in the vegetable garden, listening to Mother's yarns about the family history. She had enjoyed the simple dishes Mother made on the spur of the moment with something plucked fresh from the garden, mostly rejected by both Archie and Ruby as make do.
Archie missed her badly but could not get in touch with her however much he tried. He realised that she had decided to cut off the bonds with him and search for alternatives. He had to accept that for the time being. But he had hoped that it was a passing phase and that she would also miss him soon and come back as a more mature, more practical, more equal, partner.
Water flowed under the bridge, Archie got flooded by academic work, higher studies, projects, interviews, probation, then his career began to take off rather well, he became immersed in another world, of money matters, work politics, technological maneuvers. Women came and went, fleeting, disappointing affairs, he expected little, gave forth little. Many had angled for permanence, like Priyanka now, but at the last minute Archie would get cold feet. He could not imagine having any of them with him throughout his life, demanding this and asking for that, setting his timetable and managing his finances. No way. He valued his time and routine and solitary pleasures too much to share it with those flighty femme fatales. He did think of Ronnie at times, wondered where she was and what she was doing, how life might have changed her, but had never felt the urge to find out for sure or to meet her and chat.
But now at last, he was about to be confronted with his lost love once again. 'How did Mother find her, after all these years? Or did she go to Mother knowing she lives alone?' Archie mused out loud. Ruby shrugged her shoulders expressing distaste. 'Who knows? Mother did not tell me anything at all. I came to know of it from some neighbours who call me and advise me on my filial duties every now and then.'
'Ronnie used to be at that place a lot. So she may have made a visit to see Mother. Thats not so unusual'. Archie said, thoughtfully.
'No, a casual visit is not unusual. But staying on as a caretaker, playing on an old woman's sympathies, thats a bit too much'. Archie understood that Ruby's bitterness was due to the fact that she had been rejected and another chosen to fill her place. A better choice. He did not know how he could soothe her about that. Should he blame Mother or see Ronnie as a timely usurper bent on ousting out himself and his sister? But surely she was a socialist, not a materialistic money minded villain?
'You can never say, ' Ruby seemed to read his mind, 'Its the committed socialists who secretly crave for money and property and other luxuries'.
'So what do you intend to do once you see her? Ask her to get out? And force Mother to abandon the renovation and come back with you? Do you think both of them will meekly obey your orders?'
Ruby laughed rather bitterly, as if putting him in his place, 'No, they won't mind me at all. Thats why I am dragging you there, reluctant as you are. You turn on all your masculine charm and they follow you as if you were the fairy tale Pied Piper himself.'
Archie was dumbfounded. So this was what was expected of him. Expert management skills. Convincing two extremely stubborn women about what was good for them. And another specimen behind to see to it that he did his job. He wished he had not caught that flight. Priyanka seemed tame by comparison.
As soon as the car turned into the front yard of the family home, excited barking erupted somewhere inside, as if guests were expected by the canine dwellers. Bobby put down his new toy and dashed out shouting a reply to the unseen hosts. Archie felt reluctant to get down. Not knowing what sort of a welcome awaited him, he felt he needed time to prepare himself. But the moment he stepped out from the car, he forgot all the problems waiting for him. It had been a long time since he had visited this place of childhood memories. For a minute nostalgia engulfed him. The simplicity of that bygone era when all was black and white and easy to read. When technology was still eons away. When the sun and the wind and sky and stars were all playmates to the kids. Mud and dirt and rain and slush not seen as unhygienic, when common colds or running nose did not cause fear.
Ruby made a sound of surprise that startled him. Looking around she gasped, 'See, all the trees have been cut down, the ground cleared of weeds'!
Archie saw that now, the sunlight glittering on the old roof tiles, making them glow a soft pink, the blush reflected in the hibiscus flowers blooming lushly over the roof. White sand had been spread over the ground so that it looked pristinely clean.
'Oh my God, last time I came it was full of dog shit and dead leaves, I was afraid to put my feet down.' Ruby could not get over the ease which with the transformation had been accomplished. And with no help from her too.
Before he could tame his emotions Mother came out, followed by Ronnie. He stared at them both, amazed at how time had passed, making them strangers in looks even. Mother seemed to have aged all on a sudden, looking thinner, weary, hair all grey, angles of face sharper, resembling Ruby a lot. Ronnie had lost her teenage vulnerable look, she was trim and chic, dressed in work clothes of jeans and shirt, hair cut short into a wavy shoulder length cap. 'Archie', she drawled in a rather languid voice, 'after so long...' He looked at her mutely, for once lost for words. But Mother hugged him tightly and said, 'So very nice of you to come down, son, I did want to see you and have a long chat.'Feeling how fragile she had become, all skin and bones beneath his touch, Archie felt emotional. In his thoughts Mother was always hale and hearty and stubborn and smart. Not an iota of weakness in her make up. But now, grown old and weary, she seemed but a shadow of that strong personality.
Freeing himself from her hug, he caught sight of Ronnie's sympathetic look, a trace of tears in her eyes too and was confused. Why should she turn emotional? Why feel sympathy for him?
Ruby seemed irritated by all the family drama. Looking at Ronnie with antipathy, she asked outright, 'And whats your role here Rohini, how come you have no place to stay and have to stick on to my mother?'
'Ruby,' Mother was quick to intervene, 'Mind your manners. This is my house and she is my guest. You have to accept that.'
'Why are you upset Chechee, 'Ronnie drawled out lazily, ' this is not the first time I have stayed in this home, you were never bothered before however long I lived here, this house is part of my childhood too, I came for a visit and was invited to stay and do the renovations, its my job you know'.
Before Ruby could argue on that, Mother ushered us all inside. The dingy front room, dining area and part of a bedroom had been joined together to create a large, sunny, living room decorated with family heirlooms, all reworked and polished. Archie sank on to the hanging cot, a childhood favourite of his, with a feeling of coming home. The good sturdy wood, carved with care, glowed with the new coat of varnish and he breathed in the faint scent that remained of it.
He saw that Ruby too was impressed with Ronnie's handiwork, though she was trying not to show it. Obviously Ronnie was a help, not a cadger of Mother's good nature. Why Ruby should have had such odd notions, Archie could not quite digest.
Mother said, 'I am so happy both my children are here today. I have been discussing things with Ronnie and we have some ideas. But I need you to approve it all.'
'So you have decided to live here on your own. Though its not really practical now that you are getting older. You don't need us or our approval, thats what you really mean.' It was obvious Ruby was sticking to her stand. She wanted Ronnie out of the picture and Mother to herself.
Ronnie too was ready for battle, it seemed. 'Chechee, 'she said in that false drawl, 'you know nothing of your Mother's wishes. She sees this as a base holding her family together. She feels you will need such a base sooner or later, when all this flying about and conquering the world will seem meaningless and you begin seeking something lasting, more fulfilling.'
Ruby was enraged, 'How dare you speak to me like this you chit of a girl? As if you know more of life than all of us elder to you? And do remember that this is our mother, our home, not yours to play with as you please. Just because you were disowned by your own family you cannot slip into another and claim it as your own, thats not what socialism is, you ignoramus'.
Ruby was literally shaking with anger by now. Mother took hold of her hand and tried to calm her down. But she shook it off and approached an indifferent Ronnie, poking her finger into her face, 'For your information, this is a family reunion. No place for homeless intruders like you. So pack your bags and get out. Now'.
Archie stepped into their midst, raising his hands in a calm down gesture, but before he could utter a word, the world came crashing down. In an instant, the picture changed, and their point of view too.
The threesome could pick up the pieces only days later. After Mother had been cremated in the family cemetary, her ashes floated in the river beside, her wishes as said to Ronnie. 'I met her by pure accident', Ronnie reminisced as they sat in the drawing room that seemed empty without Mother's talk and laughter, even the dogs were silent in their kennels, the whole house seemed enveloped in an emptiness left by the unexpected tragedy. 'I had gone to the hospital to visit a friend. Auntie was just coming out from the doctor's room after getting confirmation of cancer. Advanced stage, nothing to be done, the doctor had said. When the doctor saw me with her, he assumed I was the daughter accompanying the ill mother. He handed over a list of medicines and instructions and advised Auntie to obey me, not to be her usual stubborn self. Obviously he knew her from way back, but not her children. I wondered why but later Auntie told me she did not want to tell either of you since nothing could be fruitfully done. I just want to go in peace, no fuss, no going around hospitals for chemo, radiation, this and that. I will stay at home, looking at my plants, petting my dogs. Ronnie, will you look after them when I am gone? She asked me. They cannot be abandoned to any shelter, they are too old to adjust. You wont have to bother for long, their time is also nearly done. She was so very calm, no worries, if there was any pain, she never showed it. But I did not want to leave her alone in that big house, at first I had thought one of you would come soon and I could leave, go back to Delhi where I had a job, but then I realised your mother was blocking your coming, creating silly issues and irritating Chechee. She did not want you to see her so weak, dependant. I did wonder whether it was my duty to inform you both but actually there seemed to be time for all that. I started drawing plans to rework the house just to give Auntie an interest but she loved it so much that she wanted to see the transformation begin. Thats why the yard and front rooms were hurriedly done. She enjoyed having the workers around, feeding them, cracking jokes about their lazing about, overcharging her. They played old film songs on their mobiles and teased her about her old romances and she too sang those old love songs along with the young men. It was fun, even I forgot the tragedy waiting behind the curtains, we were all so engrossed in the present.'
When Ronnie stopped talking because tears threatened to overwhelm her, it was Ruby who hugged her and patted her bent head. 'How very sad that I never even guessed', her voice too was choked, 'She was too clever hiding her fatigue and discomforts'.
'Yes,' Archie agreed, 'She was always disinclined to open up all the way and tell us children all she felt or wanted or yearned for. We were too complacent that we were better educated, more practical, more successful'.
Ronnie looked up at him then and gave a drenched smile. 'True. Even I felt you had moved way up the ladder. Thats why I decided to find my own way'.
Archie looked into her large guileless eyes and saw himself reflected in them. He felt his Mother had read his mind right. For her Archie she had wooed in his Ronnie. According to her will, the family home was left to Ronnie. But she had known, in her heart of hearts, it would remain in the family. Not just for her son and his children, but also for her daughter, as stubborn as she herself, her grandson and ofcourse, the all time owners of the grounds.
'Come, Jughead, lazybones, run, you dont get your burger till you complete ten rounds at least', Bobby ran into the room, the young stray dog christened Jughead by him at his heels, barking in ecstasy. The older ones ambled in slowly, mournfully, missing their mistress and maybe realising their time too was short.
'They are Reggie and Betty', Bobby said, as if they did not know that Mother had taken all the names from her favourite Archie comics. Her sense of humor had remained undiminished all through the trying times she traversed, that was sure.
And she was helped in that by the original Archie and his group, thought the son, I have only the second place, the one who was named in honour of the predecessor.
But we all live on in the warmth left by her, reflected in the pink of the flowering hibiscus, felt in the cool wind of the closing dusk, the home offering its peace. The ultimate coming home.
Sulochana Ram Mohan writes in both English and Malayalam, her mother tongue. She has published four volumes of short stories, one novel, one script, all in Malayalam. Writes poems in English; is a member of “Poetry Chain” in Trivandrum. Has been doing film criticism for a long time, both in print and visual media.
It is rightly said that what you look for, is always within you. One instance which signifies this quote is from the life of professor Mandy.
Long ago, in a small village in the jungles of Congo, lived a young lonely orphan called Mandy. He lived with his elderly grandparents. His parents had abandoned him right after his birth leaving him with his old grandparents and a great fortune. But money was not something Mandy wanted. He never had any friends. He felt lonely and depressed. His grandparents were quite aged and spent most of their time in bed.
Mandy started spending most of his time in the forest and became close to the nature and its wildlife. He loved spending time with birds, squirrels, rabbits, lizards and all other splendid creations of nature. But, there was one little critter which attracted him the most. It was a serpent, a bush snake. He keenly noticed this creature everyday and slowly started understanding it’s body language and behavior very well. He bought this snake home and named it ‘Slinky’. Mandy tried communicating with Slinky by creating different types of vibrations using everyday objects. The reptile didn’t have any ears or vocal cords to communicate like humans. It could only feel the vibrations around it. Mandy never left Slinky alone and carried it wherever he went.
Time went by fast. Mandy had almost completed his school. He had to decide about his future plans. He didn’t want to spend his entire life in the jungle, away from the rest of the world. He aspired to become a herpetologist. He had enough money and knowledge to get admission in one of the top colleges, but no supervision or support. His grandparents had died of old age and his only friends, the animals couldn’t help him this time. Mandy had never seen the world. He was scared to face the challenges the modernized world would throw at him. He had zero confidence and became disappointed.
Suddenly, one day, he had a strange dream. In his dream, came a middle aged man who had a snake similar to Slinky. The man told:
“Don’t worry child. Never think that there’s no one to support you, because I will always be there for you. I will assure that you are successful in becoming a herpetologist.”
Mandy couldn’t see the man’s face as it was covered in black.
He usually believed that dreams and reality can never be the same, but, this strange dream meant a lot to him. He had a contented feeling of this man’s existence and Mandy was now determined to find him.
The very next day, he set out for an expedition in search for this man. He decided to visit the places which were famous for the study of herpetology.
He started off with Athens. Days passed, weeks passed and the man was nowhere to be found. Mandy now had no choice. He couldn’t give up on his studies. He got himself enrolled in the Ohio University of Athens. He was afraid that he won’t be able to survive in such a different environment so he kept searching for that man alongside his studies. Things weren’t as tough as Mandy had thought. He was one of the top students in the University. After getting the doctorate degree, he had gained some confidence of facing the world. He no longer continued to search for that mysterious man. He moved to Florida to pursue further studies and later joined an institute of serpent research as a junior researcher.
He travelled round the globe studying snakes and was praised for his works. He soon became one of the most successful scientists in the world. The little orphan Mandy was now known as “Professor Mandy”. He devoted his life for snakes. At the age of sixty, he decided to visit his village. He was taken aback when he got there. The forests were cleared and Mandy lost his old friends, the wild animals. Luckily, he didn’t lose Slinky as he had always carried it around with him. Slinky was a big part of his success journey.
His old schoolmates, who never glanced at him, welcomed him with due respect. People were rushing for his autograph. After two days, a boy of around fifteen came to Mandy and told:
“Sir, I’m desperate to become a herpetologist like you. I love reptiles. But, my family doesn’t support me. They want me to become a doctor. Please help me, sir.”
Mandy immediately replied:
“Don’t worry child. Never think that there’s no one to support you, because I will always be there for you. I will assure that you are successful in becoming a herpetologist.”
Suddenly, something struck Mandy’s mind. The dream. The man with a snake similar to slinky. It was Mandy himself! The dream showed Mandy’s future!
Mandy now understood that the support he was searching for, was within himself. His self-supportiveness and self-confidence is what has bought him success.
Hiya Khurana is 13 yrs old and is studying in 9th Standard. She developed an interest in writing since a very young age. She enjoys writing essays and poems. She started writing poems at the age of 10. She likes reading short stories and poems. She won an essay writing competition at the age of 8. She has also won many school level speech competitions in English as well as in Hindi. She represented her school and backed a position in the Top 10 in a national Hindi speech competition held last month - Aug'2020. She is also interested in painting and crafting. She has won many school level drawing competitions. She also enjoys playing chess and has participated in an inter school chess competition as well. She has won chess awards at the school level.
It is the South African rapper Watkin Tudor Jones who said that the unexpected things in life are the only real things in life. I have often felt that the statement is absolutely correct and sometimes feel that it should be slightly amended as: The unexpected sorrows of life are the only real things in life.
Life gives us unexpected sorrows and pains the scars of which never heal. Personally I have had many unexpected experiences that are sorrowful, painful and quite unbearable. But the three incidents I narrate below are not from the list of my personal sorrows and yet each of them haunts me still.
Some years ago, when the traumatic experiences of my personal life were tormenting me insufferably, I opted for a transfer to a remote office of my department. I had to travel three hours starting from 7 a.m. to reach the office at 10 a.m. and in the evening, I used to reach home at 8 p.m. At least in the travelling hours I could escape from the mental trauma I have been going through. In the morning, I used to travel by the same bus every day and befriended a fellow traveller, Pradeep, whose native place is forty kilometres away from mine. He was a lineman working in the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB). In our conversations, he once told me that he plants tree saplings wherever possible in order to ease the pain he suffered when he had to cut the branches of the trees that are near the electric-lines, permanently stunting the growth of the trees. Around the KSEB office from which he was transferred to the one to which he was travelling with me, he had planted many trees which now provide cool shade and fresh air for the humans and nesting place for many birds and squirrels. By the time he was transferred from that office, he virtually created a small forest in the office compound and his colleagues complimented him for his achievement. He told me that he was longing to return to that office itself as soon as possible. The environmentalist in me liked him very much.
As I wished, I was soon transferred to Nelliyampathy, the remotest office of my department. Being a part of the Western Ghats in Kerala, Nelliyampathy is a hill station covered with dense evergreen forests. I have been residing in the office quarters and before and after the office hours and on the weekend off days, I used to wander deep inside the forest. As Henry David Thoreau says in his book Walden: Life in the Woods, “We need the tonic of wilderness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us… We can never have enough of nature.”
‘The tonic of wilderness’—the forest and the wild animals who are gentler than the humans, the forest winds, the forest creeks and everything related to the forest—captivated me completely and rejuvenated my mind and body. Listening to the exotic orchestra of the forest winds and birds, wild crickets and creeks; and the everyday sightings of the Malabar giant squirrels, black monkeys and barking deer; the occasional sightings of wild boars and gaurs and elephants and Malabar pied hornbills were real ecstasy for me and the wounds of my mind started healing and I forgot everything else.
Two years later, when I was having a cursory look at the vernacular newspaper in the office library, a news report caught my attention because I saw the photograph of Pradeep with the news. The news was that the lineman was killed by electrocution while he was repairing an electric line after switching off the transformer. I was thunderstruck. How was he electrocuted from an electric line when the transformer from which electricity goes to the line was switched off? The report didn’t say how it happened and there is no point in knowing how it happened. He is no more, that is the poignant reality; knowing how electricity passed to the line doesn’t change the reality. From the place name of the KSEB office mentioned in the report, it was evident that he was not yet transferred to the former office where he wished to work again. I thought about the office building around which he had planted many trees; I thought about his unfulfilled desire to be transferred again to that office which is near his home. Even if he has given me his mobile number, I haven’t even once called him. Suddenly, I felt to call him, but he will never attend my call. He has gone to a world where no phone call will reach.
The second tragedy, which is affecting me more personally than the first one is the accidental death of Manmohan, one of my friends who was my colleague in another office six years ago. His home was on the way to Nelliyampathy and when I was working there, often he used to invite me to his home. Being one of the villages of the valley below the Nelliyampathy hills, his native place and the surroundings are filled with pristine scenic beauty and, understanding my passionate love for Nature, he used to accompany me to the beautiful rustic places in and around his village. I am a strict teetotaler and even if he was an (occasional) alcohol user, he took special care to abstain and not to entertain his ‘drinking’ friends whenever I was at his home. In the darkest days of my personal sorrows, when I have been let down by everybody I loved, he stood by me as a shadow and always tried to boost my morale.
He was different in many ways and one of his ways that specially attracted me was his habit of keeping the key of his home hanging on a nail above the threshold after locking the door. And the gate was never even locked. When I asked him whether somebody wouldn’t unlock the door and enter inside, he told me: “Sir, if somebody enters my home there is nothing to steal. There will be food and if those who enter the home are hungry let them have food. My father was a coolie and in my childhood I have suffered the pangs of hunger, hence I always like to offer food to the hungry.” Hearing this wonderful reply, I told him that I would write an article about him and he was very pleased to hear it. He took it as a compliment from me. He was very proud of having me as his friend and used to introduce me to his friends mentioning my writings.
There is 50 kilometre distance between my home and his. In April 2020, when the country was in complete lockdown, he came to my home driving his new car and we spent the whole day together discussing politics and the annihilation of caste, our two favourite subjects. When he left in the evening, I invited him to come in October, during the pooja holidays. He told me he would, but he could not. And he called me to tell that he would visit me in December on the Christmas holiday and he also told me that the motorbike that has been with him for the last fifteen years was discarded and a new Enfield Bullet was purchased.
The local body elections in Kerala were scheduled on 8th, 10th and 13th of December 2020 and, as the employees of the panchayat department, both of us have been busy with election duties. The election in our district was on December 10th and the next day was an off day for those who had election duties. On 12th December, one of our common friends called me to convey the shocking news of Manmohan’s death! Even if he ought not to be present at the office on 11th December, he was present till 5 o'clock. Nobody still knows where he went after that. In the wee hours of 12/12/2020, while coming back to home, his new Bullet collided head-on with a lorry and he was killed on the spot. From the accident site, it was clear that the lorry was on the right side and the Bullet was on the wrong. What might have happened in that night? Did he sleep while driving? Or was he coming from a ‘drinking’ party, inebriated?
The accidental death of Manmohan reminded me of an identical accident that killed the husband of a young lady. He was working in the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). Two years after their marriage, he was deployed to the Airport Sector (APS) which was formed to provide security coverage to the airports in the wake of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 hijacking incident in December 1999 by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terrorists, and transferred, as he wished, to Kozhikkode from North India. As his wife didn't conceive even after two years, he rented a home near the airport and the husband and wife started living happily. After a year their baby girl was born. When the child was just six months old, one day, he left for duty telling his wife that he would return earlier than usual for an outing and to visit a studio for taking photographs of the child. On his way back, his bike collided head-on with a Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) bus and he was killed on the spot. As this young lady is known to me personally and intimately, I know how painful and traumatic that accidental death was for her. It was heartbreaking to hear her narrate the agony of accompanying the ambulance going in front of the car in which she was traveling with her child and relatives to her husband’s home in Palakkad to cremate him. The journey from Kozhikkode to Palakkad takes a minimum of four hours and in all her journeys from Palakkad to Kozhikkode and in return, he was with her and she used to enjoy those journeys. Now they were traveling to Palakkad, their last journey together, but the husband was in an ambulance and they will never travel together. What a terrible journey it might have been for her who loved him passionately. She was virtually in a trance ever since she heard the tragic news and the day after the cremation, seeing the ashes, the only mortal remains of her beloved one, on the spot where he was cremated, from the verandah of the upstairs of the home which was built by him, she fell unconscious. She once told me that she desperately wished to talk to the departed soul of her beloved husband at least once in her life. It was quite poignant to hear her talk so. She still pines for him.
I have told Manmohan that I would write an article about him, but I have never thought that the article will be a posthumous one and he will never see and read it. I don’t believe in the notion of god. As Jawaharlal Nehru says, “Often as I look at this world, I have a sense of mysteries, of unknown depths. The urge to understand it, in so far as I can, comes to me: to be in tune with it and to experience it in its fullness. But the way to that understanding seems to me essentially the way of science, the way of objective approach. What the mysterious is I don’t know. I don’t call it God because God has come to mean much that I don’t believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me.” (The Discovery of India, Chapter 1, Subtitle 4—‘Life's Philosophy’).
And yet, deaths like that of Pradeep, Manmohan and the CISF personnel remind me of the words the famous English painter Edwin Henry Landseer chose as the caption of his painting on the lost Arctic expedition of Captain Sir John Franklin—Man proposes, god disposes.
The author who hails from Palakkad district of Kerala has completed his post graduation from JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University), New Delhi. His articles on gender, environmental and other socio-political issues are published in The Hindu, The New Indian Express, The Hans India and the current affairs weekly Mainstream etc. His writings focus on the serenity of Nature and he writes against the Environmental destruction the humans are perpetrating in the name of development that brings climate catastrophes and ecological disasters like the 2015 Chennai floods and the floods Kerala witnessed in 2018 August and 2019 August. A collection of his published articles titled Leaves torn out of life: Woman the real spine of the home and other articles was published in 2019. He is a person of great literary talent and esoteric taste. One of his articles (Where have all the birds gone?) published in The Hindu is included in the Class XII English textbook in Maharashtra by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education.
THE LIBERATION OF NARAYANGARH
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
The train reached Narayangarh station at the break of dawn. There was a faint glow of red on the eastern sky – the rising sun was announcing its arrival. The heavy, unseasonal rains of the night had petered into a drizzle. The platform was wet, with puddles of water shining under the dim lights.
Sandippan got down with his suitcase, his mind weighed down by the unpleasant prospect of an impending quarrel with the coolie on the platform and the auto rickshaw drivers outside. It always happened with him. And every time after a fight he decided he would never speak to a coolie again. But auto drivers were a different game. With them there was no choice. If the coolie got difficult, one could carry his suitcase outside, but walking five miles to home with a suitcase in hand was of course impossible. And to make matters worse, the auto drivers had thrown out all the rickshaw pullers out of the station premise by mercilessly thrashing them.
But on that wet morning getting down from the train, Sandippan got the shock of his life when a coolie came forward, folded his hands and said, “Namaskar Sir, please give me your suitcase. It’s my turn.”
Sandippan couldn’t believe it. He thought he must have got down at the wrong station or probably he was still asleep and all this was happening in a dream. He pinched himself and reassured, looked at the name board on the platform – it said Narayangarh in multiple languages. He realized something had gone seriously wrong. The man before him might not be a coolie – perhaps it was a dacoit dressed up as a coolie. He would probably beat up Sandippan, or run away with his suitcase. Scared, he clutched the small briefcase with money and other documents close to his chest and stammered, “T…T…Turn? What do you mean turn? Where is the rest of your gang?”
“They are all here sir, standing in a queue. See, outside the compartments.”
His heart beating violently against the ribs, Sandippan was astonished to see the coolies standing in a disciplined way like a bunch of job-seekers waiting for the headhunters. He was still not convinced.
“How come you guys have not stormed into the compartments and started fighting with each other?”
The coolie smiled, “No sir, we will never do that again. This morning all of us had a meeting and decided that we will behave in a proper manner from today. Many of the passengers come for the first time to Narayangah. We will not create a bad impression about our town in their mind. We will speak to them properly and accept whatever wages they give us. If we are good, people will be good to us. People like you are our saviours, giving us our bread and butter. If we displease you, God will not forgive us.”
With that he lifted Sandippan’s suitcase and started walking. Sandippan followed him in a trance. He didn’t believe his ears. He still clutched his small briefcase tightly, afraid that the coolie might suddenly change and come to his true colours.
A bigger surprise waited for him outside. Auto rickshaw drivers, the notorious goondas of the town, were standing meekly near their autos and waiting to pick up passengers in a queue. Unlike earlier times, there was no pushing, shoving or snatching of suitcases from a passenger, no fight among the drivers and no exchange of abuses in colourful language.
Sandippan gave thirty rupees to the coolie, who accepted it with visible gratitude, touched it to his forehead as if it was the prasad of a temple and quietly melted into the crowd. Sandippan was impressed. He woke up from his reverie when an auto driver got his turn in the queue, lifted the suitcase and put it in his vehicle.
“Sir, Namaskar. Where will you go?”
“To the Hanuman Temple Lane, but I won’t give you a pie more than fifty rupees.”
“Did I ask you for fifty rupees Sir? Please give me whatever fare the meter shows.”
“Meter? Since when have meters in auto rickshaws of Narayangarh started working? You have always told us that meters are out of order!”
“No Sir, since this morning we are a reformed lot. We have decided not to do anything which will bring a bad name to our town. We want to make Narayangarh the best town in our state.”
“Why? What happened this morning that the coolies and the auto drivers are behaving like reformed criminals?”
The man let it pass! Probably not quarreling with the passengers was also a part of the morning’s noble resolve. Sandippan’s eyes widened in disbelief with more surprises along the way. It’s as if someone had touched Narayangarh with a magic wand and changed it completely. Even at six in the morning, the roads were getting cleaned by the municipality workers. They were in uniform and working with a never-seen-before dedication. A tree had got uprooted in the night’s thunder-shower. The municipality supervisor was standing there and personally looking after the cutting of the branches and clearing up of the road.
Sandippan looked in amazement. The supervisor standing there in person! It was as if mountain had come down to Mohammad! This big man never budged from his office. Last year the drain in front of Sandippan’s house had got chocked and he tried to meet this high-ranking officer. After waiting for three hours and sending a “gift” of one thousand rupees, he could get an audience and within half an hour the chocked drain got cleared like in a magic-show. In our country the officialdom comes alive and starts kicking when bundles of notes loosen the creaking joints of the rickety machinery. It’s as if nuts and bolts which had gone astray in a different trajectory, find their way again and fit into the right places.
Today, seeing the supervisor in flesh and blood, Sandippan could not resist the temptation of getting down from the auto and greeting him. The officer greeted him first, much to the surprise of Sandippan.
“Sir, sorry for the inconvenience on the road. Who can stop nature’s fury? Last night there were big thunders and huge lightnings. It was unprecedented. Trees have blocked the roads at many places. But sir, we are doing our best. We will not allow Narayangarh to suffer because of lack of efforts from our side.”
Sandippan found the supervisor a changed man. Not the haughty, power-drunk official who had refused to see him without the “gift” in advance. He asked, “How come, your workers have suddenly become so diligent? Normally they don’t come to work before eight and if anyone questions them they brandish the broom and use filthy language. What has happened to them today?”
“No sir, they were wrong. They get paid by the Municipality to work for the people. How can they neglect their duty? This morning they all came and assembled before my house and decided to clean up the town and clear the roads. We all should work together, sir, to make Narayangarh the best town in our country.”
Sandippan shook hands with him and got back into the auto. His mind was in a turmoil. What had happened to Narayangarh and its people, how was it everyone had changed?
Confused, Sandippan tapped the auto driver on the back. “Has Satya Sai Baba or Ramdev Baba or any other saint come to Narayangarh in the past two-three days?”
“I don’t think sir. At least we, the auto drivers, would have known, with people rushing to them and touching their feet to seek blessings. No sir, I don’t think any saint has come to our town.”
Sandippan reached home. The meter showed forty three rupees. He gave fifty rupees to the driver and asked him to keep the change. The driver touched the note to his forehead and said ‘Namaskar’ and left.
The door to his home was open. It was only six-thirty in the morning. The door of his home usually opened only after eight. His heart skipped a beat. Had the house been burgled last night? With trembling hands he pushed open the door and entered. In a moment, Sandippan thought he would faint – like a bolt of lightning he got a massive shock. Kamalini, his wife had got up, finished her bath and wearing a clean, shining saree that she normally reserved for festival days, was moving around, plucking flowers, gathering tulsi leaves and preparing for the morning pooja! She was quietly singing some devotional songs also. Kamalini! The same Kamalini who never got up before eight and the first thing she did in the morning was to shout at son Siddharth for being such a laggard, not getting ready for school in time and then she let out an endless harangue at her mother-in-law for being lazy and slow, not making Siddharth ready in time. And then a mouthful at Sandippan for wasting time on newspapers when the whole world wad waiting to be explored for more money, bigger riches, greater comforts! Kamalini, the one with the acerbic tongue, capable of cutting your skin like a knife with her acidic words, how was she chanting devotional songs! What happened to her? Had she gone crazy?
Sandippan put the suitcase on the floor and out of shock, disbelief and premonition of something very bad happening in immediate future, sat down on a dining chair, looking completely bewildered.
Kamalini came rushing to him, “Why didn’t you call me, how long have you been sitting here?”
Sandippan caught hold of her hand.
“Kammu, come and sit here, by my side. Tell me, what has happened when I was away from Narayangarh in the last four days. How is it that everyone is changed? Is this the precursor to some impending disaster? Are we going to be hit by a super-cyclone again, or a tsunami? Tell me, why I find everything different? What has happened? I am shivering in fear, chilled to the bones!”
“Nothing has changed my dear! Perhaps we have all become true to ourselves. What is wrong with that? Isn’t there an infinite bliss when you realize the value of self-fulfillment?”
Sandippan almost shrieked in shock! Bliss! Self-fulfillment! Since when had Kamalini learned to use these words? It was so uncharacteristic! Her repertoire was rich with the choicest abuses and select unparliamentary words which would put even seasoned veterans to shame! How come she was using words like bliss and self-fulfillment?
For the first time since morning Sandippan’s head started reeling. He looked at his wife, about to burst into tears.
“Is there some conspiracy somewhere? Has the ISI of Pakistan played some mental trick with our people? Have they released some hallucinatory chemicals into the air? Are we seeing the end of our country? What exactly is happening? From so much good, only something bad can come! If spring comes can summer be far behind? Tell me, what all have happened in the last three days. Don’t leave anything, usual or unusual.”
“Nothing has happened. How could anything happen? Last three days it has been raining continuously. And last night was the worst. There were blinding lightnings and deafening thunders. Only now the weather has cleared up a bit. Who can hatch a conspiracy in such a weather, when nobody could stir out of the house? Now don’t worry about such things. Go and take a bath. I have prepared some prasad for the pooja. We will have it for breakfast.”
Sandippan shook his head in disbelief when he heard that Kamalini had already cooked prasad in the morning. His mind heavy with worry, he finished his bath and got ready to leave. This morning at ten he had an appointment with the Tehsildar, to get the land documents for a small piece of land where he proposed to build four flats.
Sandippan was a minor builder in Narayangarh, not very successful, because of the small scale of operations. But he had dreams of making it big. The quality of his flats was impeccable and more than the money, he had earned a good reputation. Narayangarh was a small colliery town at the border of the state. Over the years it had grown, right since the new coal fields became operational. Population grew, demand for houses increased and some builders like Sandippan were trying to gain a foothold in the business. It was a strange town and like many colliery towns was ruled by the coal mafia. Money was the prime mover here. Businesses rose and fell at the mercy of the mafia leaders. Days were vibrant with excitement and activities were centered around the market places.
With evening came the reign of mafia terror. Liquor flowed freely, gambling eclipsed all other forms of entertainment. Markets closed by six, cinema halls got empty, decent men and women stayed indoors. Thugs, criminals, middle-men, law-breakers, pimps took over the town to indulge in pleasures reserved for men with free money. Stacks of currency notes changed hands. Police felt safe in the confines of police stations. SDM and senior officers found the glitter of power on the golden liquid flowing out of whiskey bottles at the Officers’ Club. Fortunes were made and sometimes innocent people, caught in the web of intrigues and sin, lost their life with the snap of a finger. Dreams were built and demolished with the flicker of a flame, ignited by mafia leaders, men of money, power and muscles.
Sandippan’s shock at the sudden turn of events was not out of character. For a mafia-ruled town to become an abode of peace and order was similar to a desert blooming with flowers overnight. Poor Sandippan couldn’t understand how it had happened. He had gone to the capital of the state to meet the regional chief of a bank. In these temples of modern India, prasad is not offered in the form of currency notes. How can somebody excite a bank’s chief by showing currency notes? Sandippan had solved the problem by promising a Maruti Swift to the chief’s son-in-law after the loan was disbursed. With that assurance, he had returned to Narayangarh in a buoyant frame of mind, when he found the town turned upside down with strange occurrences and weird activities.
With a heart full of misgivings, Sandippan drove his scooter to the Tehsil Office. A trip to this abode of power always set his stomach aflutter, butterflies doing trapeze tricks inside. In such offices one was made to feel humiliatingly small before the mighty power of the state machinery. The moment one entered the premises, brokers surrounded him and offered their specialized services for a commission. They kept reminding the hapless man that without them, nothing moved and a wise man knew better than wasting his time, money and patience trying to get his work done without these facilitators. Sandippan knew all the brokers, having frequented the Tehsil Office many times in the past.
He got a shock when he didn’t find any of the brokers there. The office premise was virtually empty. A counter had been opened at the entrance, a pleasant-looking lady guiding the people waiting for their turn to be called. Sandippan tried to see if their palms had a small role of notes hidden deftly and being offered to the lady. To his surprise there was no such transaction in evidence and people returning from inside the office had smiles written all over their face, like they had all been declared winners in lotteries and were to return after a week to collect the prize amount!
Sandippan got an interview with the mighty emperor – the Tehsildar of Narayangarh Taluk – in exactly nine minutes. If that was not astounding enough, what happened when he entered the room was a page out of fantasy, the stuff that dreams were made of. The all-powerful officer stood up, actually stood up, and shook his hands. This was so unusual! Every time Sandippan had met him, he was gruff, indifferent and rude. Even after a bundle of notes was offered as prasad, the mighty one would still treat him as a lowly supplicant. This time it was frightfully different, striking terror in Sandippan’s heart. Had the rates gone up since he last met the emperor? Why was he smiling? Was he going to administer a fatal blow like a smiling assassin?
To his utter surprise, the Tehsildar opened the drawer, took out the document and handed it over to Sandippan,
“Sandippan babu, like every time, your document is perfect. No errors, no problem. Please take it.”
Sandidpan smiled. Ha! So, the mighty one has given a hint by saying “like every time!” He thanked the Tehsildar and taking out a bundle of notes put it on the table. The Tehsildar recoiled from it, as if Sandippan was a snake-charmer and had put on the table his basket of cobras, who would force open the lid and bite the mighty one in an instant.
“Arrey, what is this Sandippan babu? You have already paid the processing fees. Why are you offering this? Please take it away.”
Throwing shame to the wind, Sandippan smiled obsequiously and said, “No sir, this is a very small token of appreciation for your help. Please accept this. It is just small enough to buy some sweets for your children.”
The Tehsildar’s face became stern. “Sandippan babu, if I have to buy sweets for my children, I will do it from my salary. Why should I take money from you for that? What will my wife and children think of me if I collect money from the public to buy sweets for them? Please don’t offer money like this! Haven’t you seen the board outside the office? Offering or taking bribe is a criminal offence. Please don’t do it again.”
The Tehsildar Saheb stood up and folded his hands in a gesture of namaskar. Sandippan shook hands with him and left. His heart was thumping like a train engine. What went wrong? Was it possible that the mighty one’s experienced eyes gauged how much money was in the bundle and rejected the offering, treating it as an insult? Had the rate doubled in the last few months? Last time he had offered the same amount and it was whisked away like a flash of lightning! Sandippan was crestfallen, fearing for the next time he came here with fresh documents. Hope the mighty one would not fleece him with a vengeance!
Sandippan walked out of the Tehsil office and started his scooter. The moment he moved into the street, he forgot everything. The town greeted him with new surprises. School children were walking in an orderly manner, vehicles were following lane discipline. Traffic constables were standing at crossings, guiding the drivers and pedestrians. This was unheard of – traffic constables of Narayangarh were notorious for callousness. Their main activity was to sip tea and pilfer snacks from the nearby stalls, leaving the citizens to their own fate. Today it looked as if the big sticks they carry to terrorise hapless rickshaw-pullers and innocent passersby, had turned to garlands of flowers, eager to adorn the drivers who observed lane discipline and the pedestrians with the best traffic sense!
At a distance he could see the infamous lake, which had degenerated into a small pond, filled with garbage, breeding mosquitoes and varied kinds of insects. Today, students from the local college had descended upon it, donating free labour to clean it up. The Vice-Chairman of the municipal council and a few councilors were lending a hand and guiding them, although there was no need for it. Students looked inspired and were doing a perfect job.
Sandippan passed a big market on the way. A place which was normally a picture of phenomenal chaos, was strangely silent today. Vehicles were parked properly, coolies were unloading sacks from trucks without fighting with each other, rickshaw pullers waited patiently for customers instead of trying to snatch away their bags and forcing them to use their rickshaws. Sandippan couldn’t believe his eyes. He realised, with a strange sense of foreboding, Narayangarh had undergone a transformation of heart and there was nothing which could explain it!
His next stop was the Municipality Office where he had to pick up the building plan submitted for approval few weeks back. Unlike the Tehsil Office swarming with brokers, someone had brilliantly introduced a “single window” system here. The name of the window was “Chairman”. All that citizens had to do was to knock at the window with a thick bundle of notes. Once it was done, like “open sesame” all doors would open magically and lo and behold, the building plans, work orders or job letters will be glowing like an incandescent light at the end of a dark tunnel!
Unlike the unauthorized brokers in other offices, it was the municipal councilors who worked as facilitators in the corridors of the municipality office. One among them was very close to the Chairman, who found it difficult to handle so much of public service by himself. This councilor worked as his right hand by mutual consent of all councilors. He was the chief facilitator. The public service commission, collected as facilitation fee, was shared by all in proportion to rank and seniority of the councilors and officials. Everyone was happy, including the employees who also facilitated things in their own way.
In fact, it was generally known that the average happiness index of the municipality office was the highest among all offices in Narayangarh, what with so many services to be rendered to the public – from birth certificates to death certificates, tender documents, admission to municipal schools, treatment at the municipal hospitals, health centres, cleaning of choked drains, environment clearance for coal mines, safety certificate for cinema halls and dozens of other frightening activities.
Just outside the office entrance there was a board which proudly announced, “From birth to death, through sickness and well-being, we are with you, for you, always.” Some miscreant had added a small line below that “For a fat fee.” Somehow the Chairman and the councilors decided to keep the line there, to remind people that everything good in life came with a price. These humble servants of the people thought they also paid their own price – in terms of hard work and dedication. During the school admission season, or Dussehra festival when so many pandals had to be issued license, the Chairman and councilors often stayed late into the afternoon, foregoing their simple lunch of biriyani, kebabs and beer!
When Sandippan reached the municipality office, his heart sank. There was no crowd, the busy councilors were not to be seen and the corridors were empty. Had the office closed down for some reason? Had a noble councilor kicked the bucket, unable to bear the heavy burden of public service? He asked the parking attendant while parking the scooter if the office was closed. The chap, who was known for fleecing an extra rupee or two from all customers to ensure that not only the vehicles but their parts were also safe in his hands, smiled in an unusually polite manner and said, no, the Chairman was in office since eight in the morning and all councilors were out in their wards. Sandippan got a shock when he offered the usual extra rupee to the attendant and the chap recoiled from the coin as if it was a small bomb and would explode on his palm the moment he touched it.
Sandippan entered the Chairman’s room without anyone trying to stop him. That in itself was a miracle. The Chairman, the first citizen of the town, got up to greet him and shook his hands.
“Come, Sandippan babu, I was waiting for you. Somehow I knew you would come today!”
Sandippan felt a tremor quickly pass through him. Was the man in urgent need of money? Why did he remember a small builder like Sandippan? On certain important occasions, every thousand counts! And God knows, today how many thousands would have to change hands for the approved building plan. He lovingly patted the small bag lying on his lap, reassured that there was enough there to satisfy the Chairman. With an oily smile he said, “Sir, it is a privilege to be remembered by a great man like you. Narayangarh is what it is today due to your had-work and dedication.”
The big man shok his head, gently, like a cobra swaying before making the strike,
“More than me, Sandippan babu, it is people like you who have brought a good name to the town. Your flats are impeccable in quality. You are the pride of this town.”
Sandippan’s heart-beat got incredibly faster. From experience he knew that when a great man showered praises on you, he expects great returns. He started doubting if the bag contained enough to satisfy the Chairman’s lust.
The Chairman took out the approved plan from the stack of papers lying on his table and handed over to Sandippan.
“Take it Sandippan babu. This time build a block of flats which will be the owner’s pride and neighbour’s envy. Unlike the other towns where buildings crumble a few years after construction, let your flats be a model for others. People from all over the country should come and marvel at their quality.”
Sandippan felt overwhelmed by the praise and the beaming, oily face of the Chairman. He took out a fat bundle of notes from the bag and put it on the table. The Chairman gave an indifferent glance at them and shook his head, smiling like a benign Buddha. He pushed the bundle back at Sandippan. Sandippan was horrified. What had the world come to? The tiger was refusing a delicious deer cub, as if announcing politely that he had turned a vegetarian!
“No Sandippan babu, you should not waste your hard-earned money like this. Please use this to deploy new technology in construction so that your buildings become a model for others. The people of this town have given me their love and trust and put me in this exalted position. What more do I want from them? How many persons get this rare opportunity to serve the people? I don’t need any money from you, just continue to give me your support. That will help me in serving the people for ever. Do you know what grand plans we have for the town?”
Sandippan looked expectantly at him, hoping the great man will change his mind and gobble up the deer cub lying invitingly on the table.
“This morning all the councilors met in my chamber at eight. We have decided to give a face-lift to Narayangarh. There will be new parks, fountains spewing coloured water. Nights will be colourful, days will be exciting with games in the parks and play grounds. Schools are being renovated, councilors are going to start annual awards to meritorious students and sports champions. The colliery managers were here one hour back. They expressed their regret for neglecting this town all these years and have promised to redeem themselves. Each colliery will adopt a park or a traffic island and beautify it. You will see, Sandippan babu, we will make Narayangarh the best town in the country. Just wait and see.”
The Chairman was excited, like a small child waking up from a nap and finding new toys and gadgets in his room. Sandippan shook hands with him and left him in his new-found euphoria.
This time he walked back to his scooter like a zombie, unable to bear the burden of so many shocks and surprises on a single day. When evening came, his head started reeling. For the first time, in many years, the markets came alive, the cinema halls started screening movies, citizens of Narayangarh came out in hordes and filled up the parks, restaurants, movie halls and pavements. It appeared someone had indeed waved a magic wand and changed the spirit of the town overnight. The star-lit sky looked brighter from the benches of the park, even the birds on the trees twittered songs of love and fearlessness. The goons of the mafia behaved in the most polite and civilized manner, as if they had taken voluntary retirement from their life of crime and from now on they would spread the message of love and non-violence. What was missing, in this picture of joy and bliss, was the Gandhi cap on the head of these noblemen!
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To everyone’s amazement, Narayangarh’s run with the miracle continued day after day, month after month. Peace and order reigned in the town, once notorious for crime and lawlessness. Narayangarh became the talking point of the state. National media got a whiff of it and in no time scores of television channels from all over the country descended on the town. Every room in hotels was booked and with the camera-trotting young journalists roaming the streets, there was a festive look everywhere.
People in the town continued with their good deeds, unmindful of the attention they were getting. There was discipline and orderliness everywhere, streets were kept clean, street lights actually worked, reminding people that the earlier days of darkness were an aberration. Markets, restaurants, movie-halls, parks got filled to the brim, people of Narayangarh deciding to make up for the lost time and to enjoy the good luck as long as it lasted.
There was a change in the attitude of people, many of them openly sharing food and clothes with the poor. The municipality opened shelters for the homeless and destitute. The colliery managers gave jobs to able-bodied people who were jobless. The old and infirm got help from the municipality through old age homes. In six months time, Narayangarh ushered in a sort of Ram Rajya. The whole country woke up to this miracle and kept blinking unbelievingly. The municipal elections were round the corner and no one had any doubt that the same bunch of public-spirited councilors and chairman will be voted back to power.
The country was baffled by this turn of events. No one could fathom the mystery behind this. How did this miracle happen overnight? What exactly changed the people and the town so suddenly? What was the reason behind a collective change of heart?
The journalists and media representatives tried their best to unravel the mystery, talking to people, leaders, interviewing the tantriks and astrologers. No one had any idea. The media didn’t give up and dug itself in. They were determined to solve the riddle and no one knew how long it would take.
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Around six months after the sudden transformation of Narayangarh, the ruling party of the state convened an urgent meeting of the central committee at the state capital. Everyone was there – the big leaders, the elderly advisers, the committee members, people’s representatives from the party and the Chief who presided over the destiny of the state. There was palpable tension in the air, a panic writ large on the face of the leaders. It was apparent that all the smiles, occasional laughter and back-thumping did not hide the nervousness of these worthies who had dedicated their life to the service of the people.
Dinanath Babu, the senior-most leader of the party started the proceedings,
“Friends, we have gathered today in the midst of an unprecedented crisis. In my sixty years of political life, I have never seen such a calamity. Many of you may not realize the enormity of this disaster. That’s why every time I saw you back-thumping each other, or laughing loudly, a knife pierced my heart. How could you be so frivolous when an era of darkness has started descending on the state? Does any one know what is waiting for us? It is more serious than even the worst natural disasters. Whenever there is flood, cyclone, earthquake or tsunami, we manage to bluff the central government, get tons of money, a part of which we benignly distribute to the people. And then eagerly wait for the next disaster. But what has happened to Narayanragh now is frightening! Physical disasters like flood and cyclone we can manage. But when a disaster affects the mind, the process is irreversible. Has any one cared to ask, in this vast country of more than a billion people, how did calamity strike Narayangarh, of all the places? How has this town got into the wrong track? Why have the people of Narayangarh gone astray, deviating from the path of accepted norms of behaviour which the rest of the country is following? Who has corrupted the minds of the people? How have the norms ……………”
There was a loud explosion from the third row. A burly man with handle-bar mustache had stood up, his face red with anger. It was Sashank, the representative of the big constituency of which many small towns like Narayangarh were a part. He had exploded like a bomb – “Hey, Dinanath babu, will you stop this lecture? You old fellows with decrepit minds can only think of lectures, you have brought this country to the brink of moral bankruptcy through your lectures. Norms? What bloody norms are you talking about? What is norm-form? People understand only one language – the language of the stick. Thrash them, beat them to pulp, they will see reason. This country should be handed over to young people like us - we will show the people what is good for them. Gone are the days of lectures from old fogies like you. Action, only action, can work. Some baba-faba has gone into Narayangarh and has corrupted the people. The bastard is hiding somewhere in the town. If only I could catch him, I will tear his limbs one by one and shove it down …...….”
Shashank was about to use an unprintable word, suddenly his eyes fell on the chief who was looking at him with amused indulgence. Shashank applied sudden brake to his words and changed tracks.
“You people will not understand my agony. With great care I have nurtured Narayangarh for many years. All the mafia leaders of that town were in my pocket. At the time of elections their goons used to stand two hundred meters outside the polling booths and kept a watch on the people going to vote. That was enough to persuade the voters to vote for me. Now, in one clever move, someone has changed that equation. If people stop fearing the leaders, who will show them the right path? What will this country come to? My men are telling me that in the nearby towns people have started talking of the Narayangarh model. What is this model-fodel? The only model that should work in a decent democracy is the mafia model. Unfortunately the presence of the media in dozens has made my model ineffective. Three times I have sent more than hundred goondas to the town armed with persuasive tools like cycle-chains and sticks. When they knock at the people’s doors they all come out and squat on the pavements behaving like deranged monkeys. My men want to beat their brain to pulp and reconstruct it with reason but these media chicks in jeans and tee-shirts come running with their video cameras and start filming the scene. My men have come back empty, not even a broken hand or a leg of the town’s people to show for their efforts. And the police have started threatening me that they will file cases against my men. Look at the guts of the bloody police! Threatening a leader of the masses! Chief Sir, I humbly pray to you to do something. We must rescue Narayangarh and we must stop its corrupting influence from spreading. Save me Sir, allow me to continue my selfless service to the people.”
With that impassioned plea, the leader of the masses of Narayangarh and its neighbouring towns sat down. The booming voice, the pitiful appeal had sent a mild tremor in the room and the seriousness of the situation had sunk in like a hot knife in a pile of butter.
The Chief stood up. Although not very old in age, he was a veteran of many battles, known for his craftiness and clever moves which often immobilized his opponents like the steady gaze of a python weakening its victim. He was known for his composure, rarely got agitated and almost never showed any emotion. In his early days in politics he was prone to a bit of rashness but with successive taste of power and the soothing, balming influence of tons of money, he had mellowed into a seasoned leader.
“Friends, both Dinanath Babu and Shashank are right. It is true that some unprecedented disaster has struck Narayangarh and the town needs our help. The intelligence reports say that other towns in the State have been affected by the corrupting influence of Narayangarh. I have also received a few warnings from the national headquarters of our party. The malady of Narayangarh is bound to spread to other parts of the country, thanks to the TV channels showing the town’s clean streets, orderliness and voluntary labour of the students and citizens. Media, as you know, is a very dangerous instrument in the hands of the thinking people. It often loses sight of the long-term goals of the country and wastes its energy on solitary aberrations. This is what has happened in Narayangarh. The media, as usual, is behaving in the most irresponsible way.
But we have to act with patience. If it was only the local media, I would have tackled them in my own way. A few prime plots in the heart of the capital town and couple of foreign jaunts would have quietened them, but unfortunately for us, some of the national media is also camping in the town. I am told BBC and CNN are planning to ask a stringer to cover Narayangarh.
There is absolutely no doubt that the town of Narayangarh has gone utterly, helplessly corrupt. By our definition, which as you know, is the classical definition all over the world, when a single entity acts contrary to the universal norms of behavior, it is presumed to have been corrupted by a known or unknown force. People of Narayangarh do not realize what harm they are doing to the system. If everyone donates voluntary labour to get things done, what will happen to all the noble schemes we and our leaders have crafted with so much care and attention? If streets are kept clean, parks don’t get damaged, and buildings are maintained by the people themselves, where will be the need for big schemes and the Plan and non-Plan heads of expenditure? How will the billions of rupees that the country generates from its revenue be spent? Can you imagine what far-reaching consequences it will have? There will be no budget, no expenditure, no contracts, no tenders. Donations to our party will stop, the source of our public service commission will dry up. Let alone thousand rupee notes, we won’t have even a hundred rupee in our pocket!”
At this frightening prospect the meeting room fell strangely silent. Naked fear spread in the room like a mass of cold, asphyxiating fog. Two young women leaders broke into audible sobs.
The Chief removed his loving gaze from the cute ladies and resumed,
“And friends, let us not forget the way the democratic edifice of this country is being demolished by the insane action of the people of Narayangarh. Long-standing institutions are under threat. Just imagine, if everyone helps others, people don’t fight with each other, there will be no need for the police, and for lawyers. The courts will vanish and judges will be jobless. If there is no need for law, institutions like Parliament and state legislatures will lose relevance. Leaders like you and me will have to go to villages to live with the masses. Can you imagine going and shaking hands with dirty villagers throughout the day. All our life we have struggled for the masses, sacrificing our comforts and well-being. You think it is a pleasure to sit in air-conditioned rooms twenty-four hours a day and be deprived of free sunshine and pure air? For whom are we doing all this? It is for the people of the country that we work day and night. Friends, tell me honestly, can anyone of you think of going and living with the masses at this stage of your distinguished career?”
There was a hushed silence in the room. A fog of panic spread over these self-less leaders like a poisonous gas. Some of them felt like swooning, petrified at the prospect of living in the villages and mingling with the masses. They knew early in their career that catchy slogans rake in votes. For example, ‘Aam Admi’ was a good concept and had mass appeal and each of them specialized in delivering impassioned speeches in the name of aam admi. A leader could only propagate a concept. Was he expected to embrace it? A leader should live for the masses, not live with them. Then only he could think freely. Didn't one see in the public meetings, the bigger the leader, higher the stage for him and greater the security cordon to keep the masses away from him, so that he need not be bothered by ordinary woes and can think of higher issues like big schemes and projects for the poor?
The Chief continued,
"And what a retrograde idea it is to think of helping each other to remove poverty? If poverty is removed, for whom will our hearts bleed? Who will be the inspiration for us to be in public service? And think of hallowed institutions like State Planning Commission. What will they work on if schemes are not to be devised for the poor? At this rate not only sacred institutions like courts, police and legislatures will collapse, many established practices will come to an end thanks to the collective stupidity of Narayangarh. Just imagine the joy and relief we bring to the doctors, engineers and teachers every summer by ordering their transfer and then cancelling those orders. If we are not there, who will provide that joy to them?
Friends, for the past sixty two years we have built this independent nation brick by brick, re-writing laws, enacting legislation and implementing schemes and projects. We will not allow all these efforts to go waste. We will have to liberate Narayangarh from the corrupting influence of some misguided elements. I have already passed orders to depute twenty trained CID personnel to Narayangarh. They will be led by the best of the sleuths we have. They will go there two days from now and spread themselves in that unfortunate town. I am confident they will go to the bottom of the mystery and tell us the way to meet the crisis. This is my promise to all of you and to the nation. Trust in God, He will not ditch humble public servants like us.”
The Chief thought it politically correct to end his inspiring speech by imploring God, the Almighty. Deep within his heart he knew God helps those who help themselves while rendering public service.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The town of Narayangarh got its name from Goddess Narayani, an immensely powerful divine being whose temple is on a hill two kilo meters from the town. Legend says that two hundred years ago, a saint had come to the place and liked it. In the night, while he was sleeping near the river, Goddess Narayani appeared in his dreams and expressed a desire to have an abode on the hill-top. The saint collected the people and together they built the temple.
The Goddess was so powerful and so potent that there was no question of disturbing her every day. So only once a year, one week from Chaitra Poornima, the priest opened the temple, cleaned it up and performed pooja for the Goddess for a week. On the seventh day there was a grand pooja and practically the entire populace of the town climbed the extremely steep hill and offered prayer to the Goddess. For the next fifty one weeks the temple remained locked.
A few days after the meeting in the state capital, one week before Chaitra Poornima, on the first day of the temple’s opening, CID Inspector Shambhu Nath was roaming in the outskirts of Narayangarh, desperately looking for some clue to the mystery of the town going astray. Suddenly he saw a lean, emaciated man running down the hills in a frightening speed, stumbling repeatedly. Shambhu Nath stopped him, it was the priest of the Narayani temple. He was trembling like a leaf in a storm and his face had gone ashen pale. In his eyes there was the foreboding of death.
“What happened? Why are you running like this?”
The priest looked at Shambhu Nath with terror and pointing at the temple on the hills he bleated weakly “Maa….. Maa…..” and fainted. Shambhu Nath was perplexed, but being a seasoned police officer, did not lose his wits. He sprinkled water on the priest’s face who came round quickly, still shaking with fear. Shambhu Nath gave him some hot coffee from his flask and again asked him to explain his weird behaviour.
“Something terrible has happened, Sir. O Mother, O Goddess, how could this happen? How has the world survived till now?”
Shambhu Nath was getting a little irritated. In his stern policeman’s voice, he asked the priest again.
“Why are you blabbering like an idiot? Tell me exactly what’s wrong.”
The priest, despite his primal fear, shook his head. “Sir, I can’t even describe it. The Goddess will strike me dead, if I open my mouth to tell you what I have seen.”
“Then let’s go and see for ourselves. Whats your name, poojariji?”
The priest stammered, “Sadashiv, Sir, Sadashiv Tripathy.”
“Ok, Sadashiv, let’s go.”
Together they climbed the hill. Used to the comforts of the capital town, the burly Shambhu Nath found it difficult to climb the steep path. He wanted to hurry, but was getting increasingly breathless due to the strain of climbing. By the time they reached the top, it was late afternoon. Soon darkness would creep in.
The priest unlocked the temple and they entered the sanctum sanctorum. The moment Shambhu Nath peeped inside, he shrieked in horror. Even a seasoned veteran of the police force like him could not contain the shock. On the floor, the huge six feet idol was lying in a peculiar position. Somehow the mighty Goddess had fallen from her pedestal, but on the floor she was sitting upside down, her head on the floor and feet towards the roof.
The temple had no electricity. Shambhu Nath switched on his powerful torch and examined the room to decipher what had gone wrong. How had the Goddess fallen into this utterly astounding position? There was nothing wrong anywhere, no sign of a forced entry, everything was in place, except that the room smelled of stagnant water and mushiness. His torch lighted up the roof and Shambhu Nath’s heart skipped a few beats.
On the roof there was a small crack and the spot had turned terribly black, as if it had got burnt. Shambhu Nath was a brilliant CID inspector, one of the best in the business. Like a flash of lightning, his mind fathomed the mystery. He remembered reading from the reports that last year on the night of August 25th there was heavy thunder and lightning in and around Narayangarh. He was sure, a lightning had struck the top of the temple, cracked the roof and hit the almighty Goddess. Due to its extraordinary force the Mother had fallen on the floor, in an upside-down position. My God, what a terrible thing to happen!
August 25th? Another flash of lightning illuminated Shambu Nath’s mind. He remembered the weird behaviour of the town started from the morning of 26th August! Holy Mother! So this was the mystery of Narayangarh! Shambu Nath’s super-brilliant mind made the connection in a flash! Because the presiding deity of Narayangarh was lying upside down on the floor, the psyche of whole town had turned upside down! People behaving exactly the opposite of how they normally behaved! Every norm had been upturned on its head and the whole country was marveling at the mystery, scratching its collective head in awe and wonder!
Inspector Shambhu Nath felt he would go crazy with joy. Of all the CID officers deployed in Narayangarh, he was the lucky one who got the chance to solve this mystery! It must be Goddess Narayani’s blessing on him! He wanted to dance with abandon but his disciplined police mind came alive with a sense of new responsibility. He knew he was the one on whom the divine forces had cast a duty to rescue Narayangarh. He looked at the trembling priest, “Sadashiv, we can’t leave the Mother Goddess in this position. Let us keep her on the pedestal.”
Sadashiv shook his head in shock and grief, “No Sir, the question doesn’t arise. I don’t know the rituals to re-consecrate the Goddess. That’s why I was rushing home to call my father who is a veteran priest and knows all the rituals. Forgive me Sir, I cannot even touch the Goddess, let alone lift her to the pedestal.”
It was close to evening and in an hour or two there would be darkness everywhere. It would be difficult to get down the steep path. Shambhu Nath was getting impatient. He pleaded with Sadashiv again. But the priest was adamant. Shambhu Nath suddenly took out his pistol and waved it at the terrified priest, “Sadashiv, I give you a choice. Will you help me in lifting the Goddess and put her on the pedestal or you want to die with a bullet from this pistol?”
Sadashiv started wailing loudly, “O Mother, O Goddess, why are you doing this to me? What sin have I committed to deserve this? Please kill me Maa, take me to heaven and give me shelter at your feet. I can’t live in peace if I touch you without observing the rituals. Please forgive me Maa, please tell this insane policeman to see reason!”
The Goddess didn’t appear to answer his prayers and the CID officer refused to relent. Sadashiv tried to flee but was stopped by the burly policeman. Tears flowed from his eyes and he wailed even more loudly.
“Mother, Goddess Narayani, please kill me before I do this unholy act. Please mother, kill me. I don’t want to touch you in this position. Please save my honour, Maa!”
Time was running out. Shambhu Nath gave a big shout and pushed the priest to the idol. It was a big-sized idol, awfully heavy, and it took them quite a while to lift the Goddess and install Her again on the pedestal in the proper sitting position, head held high and feet on the pedestal. There was no time for performing pooja, light was fading rapidly outside. They locked the temple and left.
Coming down the path was not so difficult. Sadashiv was chanting mantras all the time, still shivering with fear and appearing close to delirium. Walking behind him, Inspector Shambhu Nath was elated and terribly relieved that the mystery of Narayangarh’s awful downfall has been solved. He knew the poor town and its unfortunate citizens would now see reason and return to the normal path.
Suddenly a thought struck him like a bolt from the blue. What if people of Narayangarh came to know of the fall of the idol and the effect it had on them. What if they chose to go astray again by putting the Goddess upside down? A slight tremor passed through him. Could the country afford another misadventure, another disaster? Could we allow a country of great potential be derailed by a small town of misguided people?
Inspector Shambhu Nath looked at the frail figure of Sadashiv and decided that the man had to make a supreme sacrifice for the greater good of the nation. Anyway, a few minutes back he was praying so fervently to Goddess Narayani to take him to heaven and give him shelter at her feet. Shambhu Nath decided to grant the priest his wish. A gentle shove at the back, a piercing scream and in a few moments the lifeless body of Sadashiv lay crumpled on the rocky river bed four hundred feet below. Shambhu Nath heaved a sigh of relief. He knew the mystery of Narayangarh’s unfortunate foray into the abnormal path will remain safe with him and the Chief in the form of a ‘Top Secret’ envelope.
With renewed joy he climbed down the hill. It was too late in the night to send a message to the Chief. Shambhu Nath also wanted to see if his theory was right before committing it to a piece of paper.
.............................................
Next morning, Sandippan suddenly woke up and looked at the watch. It was already eight o’clock. He saw Kamalini and Siddharth still sleeping by his side. In fifteen minutes the school bus would arrive! In panic he shook Kamalini violently to wake her up. She opened her eyes and let out a piercing scream,
“What? Why do you wake me up at this unearthly hour? Why don’t you wake up that fat, bloody witch of a mother of yours? Is she doing anything to earn her living here? You think I am the slaving maid of this house?”
Kamalini went back to sleep. Siddharth missed the school that day. Outside, Narayangarh showed every sign of returning to the normal path. Most of the municipal workers slept late and forgot to turn up for work. At the railway station two auto-rickshaw drivers had a fight over a passenger and set each other’s auto on fire. At ten o’clock a motorcycle brushed lightly against a car near the market and there was a quarrel, which escalated into a big fight. The car driver took out a glass water bottle, broke it and stabbed the motor cyclist, whose intestine came out and he died on the spot. At the bus-stand two students tried to molest a rural girl. Police took them to the police station and gave them a thrashing. By noon all schools and colleges closed down, after the students went on a rampage, damaged the buses and attacked the police station.
In every possible way, Narayangarh slipped back into a sane and normal path. At one o’clock in the afternoon the Private Secretary stormed into the Chief’s room with a secret message from Inspector Shambhu Nath, narrating the incident at the Narayani temple on the previous evening and the developments in Narayangarh since morning.
The Chief read the message. A broad grin spread across his face like a colourful parachute unfolding itself. Relieved, he rubbed his hands in unfettered glee and told the PS, “Thank God, we have done it. We have saved our state and we have saved the country. This day will go down in history as a red-letter-day in independent India. We will recommend Inspector Shambhu Nath for the President’s Medal for exemplary courage and distinguished service to the nation. Thanks to him, Narayangarh has been liberated. From now on it will be again business as usual.”
Sadanand paused at the gate of his house and looked back at the door. He had just bolted it. Should he have locked it also, he wondered. He shook his head, nah, no need for that. Who is left in the town to come breaking into the old house? The town has been emptied of its people, not a single soul can be seen on the streets, once buzzing with cacophonic activities. He would rather leave the door bolted. May be one day his two sons would come, looking for their old father. They may enter the house searching for some remnants of memory of the parents. The abandoned bike at the corner, the empty shoe rack, would take them back to their childhood. They would wipe the old mirror of its dust and see a thousand reflections of the days gone by, the noise, the laughter, the fights and the games. May be they would try to find some clue about the disappearance of their father, wondering if he was still alive. Their Mom had left the world five years back, Sadanand thought wistfully. Ah, if she were alive, the journey would have been wonderful!
For the past few days life for Sadanand had moved like a whirlwind, restless, listless and tempestuous. The pandemic had held his life and the life of everyone in a vise like grip, sucking the breath out of them, slowly and steadily. The whole town had been feeling breathless, lives were disappearing with frightening frequency. Panicked town folk were leaving the town in hordes, shaken by a primordial fear, everyone wondering whose turn would be next to embark on the final journey of life. People were running away to other towns, other states, as if pandemic would not be able to reach there. Some were returning to their village, with the hope of rebuilding their life in the midst of fresh air, pure water, the mango orchards and paddy fields.
Nights had been particularly traumatic. Dogs were constantly whining, howling, their voices sounding like mourning wails. As if they were messengers, entrusted with the duty of warning the town folk about the impending death, day after day, night after night.
Last evening Sadanand had left home to buy some bread and eggs. The moment he stepped onto the street, he was startled by a whining sound, loud and clear, coming out of the overhead electric and telephone wire. He had never heard such an ominous sound earlier, something like some unknown mourner singing a doleful parting song. House after house was blanketed in total darkness, no sign of life anywhere. Trees were bent with abundance of flowers, obviously there was no one to pluck them for the morning pooja. Streets looked colourful, but the dead, dried up flowers filled the heart with an infinite sadness, a tragic emptiness. At the end of the street where a big road passed, there was a huge signboard announcing the name of the locality, but it had turned upside down, a clear omen that things had gone terribly wrong in this town, famous for its sweets and savouries.
The big road was empty, the usual noise of motorbikes, cars and trucks was absent. Sadanand started walking on the main road. There was not a single soul in sight. After a long time he saw an old man dragging himself slowly on the other side of the road. They stopped, looked at each other, nodded, a slow smile quickly appearing and vanishing like a mild lightning. Sadanand felt as if he was out in the open sea in an old boat, and just saw another decrepit boat passing at a distance; the occupants of the two boats waving at each other.
No shop was open to sell bread and eggs, Sadanand didn't even find a tea stall where he could get a cup of hot tea. He walked up to the intersection where the big road met the main road of the town, which in turn merged with the highway a mile away. There was a stream of people on the main road, all walking towards the highway. Children were holding the hands of the elders, the old men and women were dragging themselves painfully. It was clear they were all fleeing from the town, every one including the children, was carrying a bag or two in their hands. Sadanand wondered, where were they going, were there towns which were free from the pandemic? There was no way one could know. The newspapers had stopped coming out, the TV stations were all locked and there was no way one could get any news. Only rumours prevailed everywhere. People talked of towns and villages a few miles away where the severity of pandemic was much less. Perhaps that's where they all were heading.
A good escape, Sadanand thought. The pandemic had indeed wrought havoc in the minds of people, with constant wearing of masks, social distancing, looking over the shoulders to check if some one sneezed or coughed. What a life! Every one was a suspect, some malevolent being who could transmit the deadly virus. No one was a friend any more, everyone had to protect his own life. The pandemic had turned the human race into a ruthless, heartless mass of zombies.
Sadanand kept walking, unmindful of time. When one is all alone in a big world, time loses its relevance, there is nothing to return to, nobody to welcome with a smile. Ah, here on the left is the Manoranjan Restaurant and Bar. At normal times, the sign board would be lit up with colourful lights to promise a joyous time inside. Customers would go in smiling and come out after a couple of hours swaying to an imaginary tune - the tune of happy abandon, carefree pleasure. This evening it was all dark inside, the signboard was languishing with a small dim light trying to hide the embarrassment of a loss of identity.
And on the other side of the big street was Dinesh Bakery. At any time during the day a strong, alluring fragrance would be wafting through the air from the factory upstairs. People knew, cakes were being baked, pastries were being made there. And the wonderful aroma would entice customers like bees to honey. Sadanand felt like crying, looking at the big lock at the gate and the Bakery hid in darkness.
A little ahead of him there was a big banyan tree on the left side of the street. A raised cement platform below the tree housed many gods and goddesses. Throughout the day devotees would be burning incense sticks there and begging the Gods to grant their wish. On Sunday they would have bhajan and kirtan, followed by liberal drags of Ganja. The big vermillion mark on the face of Hanuman would be shining like a rising sun at dawn. Today the Gods were lying neglected, it seemed no one had burnt incense sticks, no one had come to put sindoor on his head, close his eyes and pray. Two emaciated dogs were sleeping below the platform and panting with their big, ugly tongues out.
Sadanand shuddered at the sight and ran back home like a man possessed by an unknown, stomach-churning fear. He drank two glasses of cold water and went to bed. Sleep eluded him. The howling of the dogs drew near. It seemed all of them had gathered outside his house and crying their hearts out. With great difficulty Sadanand fell off to fitful bouts of sleep. An hour before dawn, he suddenly woke up with a big cry. Oh my God! What was that? A big black bird, perhaps a vulture, was flapping its wings and trying to perch itself on the window seal. Its eyes shone like pieces of burning ember and it looked at Sadanand with a pointed gaze. Sadanand howled like a mad gorilla. The bird cast one last frightening look at him and flew away. Sadanand was so scared he didn't feel like going to the window to check where the bird went.
There was no question of going back to sleep. Sadanand wondered if he would be able to get sleep ever again. At the break of dawn he left the bed, made a cup of black tea for himself, ate a couple of biscuits and took an inventory of what he had in the kitchen, there were a few packets of biscuits, couple of packets of puffed rice, a week old cake in the fridge and a box of cookies. He put all of them in a big cloth bag, along with a bedsheet, a thin pillow, a towel and two bottles of water. He had decided it was time to leave, to join the procession of the town folk who were fleeing from their abode. Some of them had never left the town in their life, but today there was no choice. They believed there would be places which had been spared by the pandemic. And they were determined to go there, no matter how arduous the journey might be.
Sadanand came out of the gate and took a last look at his old house. Ah, so many memories! He wished his wife Sunita were alive, with her by the side he would have crossed a dozen mountains and rivers, roads and bridges. She knew how to negotiate the hurdles of life. He felt so helpless without her. His eyes filled with tears. He dragged himself onto the street and walked on, eventually joining the big file of people going towards the highway.
At the highway there were more people, from other parts of his town. Children holding the hands of the elders, old men and women bent with age, slowly trudging on an unknown journey. They all were asking each other how far is the town which would be relatively free from the pandemic. Some said ten miles, some said twenty five. No one was sure. The only thing they were sure was their own town had become a forbidden place, every one must leave. When death came looking for victims, none should be found. They would deceive death, they would conquer death by simply deserting the town.
Sadanand had read in his college days that during the Second World War many European towns were abandoned so that when the enemy soldiers came they found nothing there, not even a morsel of food. Today people were fleeing away, abandoning their town. Sadanand wondered who was the enemy? The pandemic? The bunch of dogs who kept howling through the nights putting the fear of death in people's minds? Or the vultures who came knocking at the windows gazing at hapless people with burning eyes? He knew there was no answer. He only knew the procession was one of hope against hope, a faint echo of an unknown blip, a journey to an unseen land. An escape from a town, so dear to one's heart, so near and yet so far, its air polluted by the pandemic, its soil soaked by the blood of the dead.
Sadanand used his ration of biscuits and water sparingly and kept walking, part of a moving crowd. After two days of walk, his body started protesting. Every joint and bone ached, the onset of a mild fever weakened his body and mind. On the second evening he spread his bed sheet on the road side, ate a couple of biscuits and a small piece of cake and laid down. The night had got quiet, stars were twinkling in the clear sky, the cool air brought a strange touch of foreboding. Yet he slept off peacefully.
By the time Sadanand woke in the morning, it was late, the sun was already up. Everyone had left. No one had waited for him. He ate some cookies and sipped some water. The deep sleep had restored his strength. He started his lonely walk. After a couple of miles he found a lovely road on the left meandering in a magical way. The red soil, the canopy of trees, a few of them laden with flowers, made him stop and wonder where did the road lead to. Was it a village at the bottom of the distant hill? Would it be free from the shadow of the pandemic? He smiled to himself - such a beautiful road cannot lead to anything ugly. At least the shade of the trees was better than the hot sun beating on the highway.
Sadanand took the turn and started walking. Strangely, he didn't feel any tiredness, just kept walking, looking at the green hill at a distance. A few miles on, when the afternoon sun had gone behind the hill, he came to a beautiful river with white, sparkling water flowing ever so quietly. Beyond the river was a lovely valley with a carpet of soft, green grass, stretching right upto the the hill. There were breathtaking colours everywhere on the foothills, shrubs smiling with resplendent flowers. Sadanand was stunned! Such a beautiful place! And he had never seen it before! Who lives here? What's the name of this place?
As if reading his mind, suddenly a group of men and women appeared on the other side of the river, standing on the soft, green grass. They were all dressed in colourful attire and were laughing and clapping, trying to draw Sadanand's attention. He waved at them,
"Can I come over? Do you have space for me?"
They all chimed in, their voice tinkling like soft music,
"Come, come, there is never a dearth of space here."
Sadanand bent to scoop a palmful of water from the river and gulped it to quench a thirst that had been tormenting him for the past few days. The next moment he collapsed in a heap. In the final moments of his life, he looked back at the beautiful road he had taken, to reach a valley of heavenly beauty, free from the shadow of the pandemic.
Dr. Mrutyunjay Sarangi is a retired civil servant and a former Judge in a Tribunal. Currently his time is divided between writing short stories and managing the website PositiveVibes.Today. He has published eight books of short stories in Odiya and has won a couple of awards, notably the Fakir Mohan Senapati Award for Short Stories from the Utkal Sahitya Samaj.
Book Review
LiteraryVibes 100
Published by Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Printed at Creative Prints, Chennai
Year of publication - 2021
Price Rs.800
This rare book is the printed version of the 100th edition of the eMagazine LiteraryVibes. Studded with 41 poems, 25 short stories and 8 miscellaneous articles it is a literary marvel. Styled as a coffee table book with attractive cover pages and collages, it has the credentials to be a collector's delight.
Jaydeep Sarangi. “ From Dulung to Beas ”
Sheeba Ramadevan Radhakrishnan
Publisher : Author's Press
Year of publication : 2020
(revised and enlarged edition)
Price : Rs.295/-
Poems breathe life ; so are rivers . From Dulung to Beas we sense the scent of woods, scent of rain and rivers , merging with reality -life at its core of truth – the sticking realities , and the silence drizzling at muddy pathways , gloomy and heavy . Silence , dismal , pervading … emanating from the throat of the underprivileged , the suppressed ; an alert , restless soul remains awake when the whole world sleeps . And we are into Jaydeep Sarangi’s poems “ From Dulung to Beas ” .
When the poet remembers his homeland , there is stillness hanging on , there is darkness too , burdened with weariness and we hear these poetic utterances where the surroundings can’t give up the gnawing pangs of one kind or other ; it could be a child’s helpless weeping - writhing its life- force itself – or a Coolie’s silent cry, when he thinks of his ill-stricken fate or may be a darker bloody side, where communal riot cutting roots of an innocent one’s life itself ... Carrying all the burdens , the Ganges still flows, unwillingly willing, blinding her eyes towards all the dirt and filth around , taking an indifferent disposition towards all the thousand disgusting things dense in the air, carrying all the fouls she receives without complaint . And Yamuna too, Baes , Dulung and every brook , every trickle of water .
The poet seeks a ray of light leading to any possible transition, a re-return to Nature and the very characteristics of Nature herself –bountifulness, compassion and love , providing shade and water to any sweating soul, spreading the hope of vegetation to all the hungry ones .
Some poems seem to be simple murmurs but they sing of the harsh truths emerging from soiled memories and unspoken agonies , deep rooted . There are “ injured butterflies smiling in distress …”
“ somewhere a naked child
Cries out of hunger
His mother offers
breasts of no milk
the child sucks water ” [The tree of life]
Mild and calm the poems flow but disturbing to the spirit they stream down . An undiluted undercurrent there is in these poems , sticking to truth , toil and tears. Images from here, there and anywhere from unexpected corners come, blend together and submerge in the main flow and bounce up suffusing with the wholeness of each poem, leaving subtle and sublime nuances ; (It seems that) the reader is at liberty to reach at the resulting connotations . After reading these poems we feel the heaviness of silence within , pressing us to seek answers to questions veiled under an indefinable distress .
“From the caves of the mountains
I come out, all blind
I see all around, ptyalin from saliva
Patches of blood below the feet “
we may not be able to find flamboyance of emotions, nor hear boisterous laugh , nor the mirth of Nature ; but a thoughtful quietude lingering on , like that of a soul left in loneliness , treading the unused pathways leading to the burning issues underlying as an inevitable part of the times where “the residue remains as restless reality ” [ We exist ]
“ silence is a door of the mind, a nation’s
Mind to uncover its wrinkles…”
There would not be the music of the wind enthralling the mind , but a haunting vibration of the disturbed whispers filling the vacuum of “here and beyond” that reverberates throughout .
The theme mostly flows with the soul’s pre-ponderous wanderings through the homeland , through homepages to the Ganges; the poet chooses the path of solitude and starts his
“ humble journey
to the ocean of Truth
with the urns with six bones
pores closed with rough thoughts ”.
We hear the unmistakable utterances of the soul retiring to its own nest at dusk and they lead to unconquerable passages extending to future endless.
“ the journey begins
Now the jaws are stiff
We have announced
War against sleep !” [We exist]
Sometimes clueless we may stumble and quit… still we return to these poems unknowingly , as if glued to its silent charm .
“I sit near the bank of Dulung
And whisper in love lost
Like long trees in autumn
Barren as history books
where dry hard thoughts
Write their names in black ink”
At times we would doubt to move from one stanza to another as if struck at the banks of the Ganges , caught with its ensnaring immensity- the poetic instances arresting the spirit and the mind ,alike.
“ You are my brother .I am your river
Of life flowing downstream
Carrying history
Of our land , your land and my people “
The nuances may range from triviality to divinity, from vapidity to hallucination or from a childlike lilt to spiritual realms.
“ Eklavya ” is a wonderful read , symbolising the agonizing soul of India , where the poet declares :
“ You are my Dronacharya with the skill and art
…………………………..
I may cut off my right hand thumb
And place before you
For your honest life ” and concludes with
“You are a nation, A mind, A heart . A truth for lives” ; this
metaphorical, experimental line says it all , adding an exceptional
poetic quality to the poem to reach its almost sublime stature .
“When you are Homeless” is a powerful poem, leaving indelible marks in the reader’s mind:
“ I run away from you
I search for a shelter,
An abode of peace . You go farther…
I return handful of dust.”
and
“hour by hour after a spell of regrets
Tears led me to the ocean of sorrows.
My strong nerves resist
The horrible memory of last night
Haunts me, questions me
Like random thoughts for an insane .”
And among those “ruins of life” there of course is a “ harvest of promise ” :
“India bleeds
You need strength like an arrow
Of determination.
Villages have full face to offer
When unseen flowers remain your field .”
We close the book , hearing the untold stories the flowing water , the flooded river tell us and their wild beauty gets imprinted on our mind for more thoughtful moments . In Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha” we hear “ Water is stronger than Rock ” . Rivers mould rocks into pebbles … Every river has an indispensable link with the societal samskruty and when the river is incorrigibly polluted , the societal culture indeed is polluted , rotten and venomous.
Flowing with the rivers life is but just “ flaming ”
“Life is just flaming
Here and beyond
Beyond contacts” for
“ The river is your energy ; It writes your history.” And “the Ganges flows through the hearts ” forever .
Jaydeep Sarangi, often tagged as the “Bard on the banks of Dulung”, is a widely anthologized writer and reviewed as a critic and bilingual poet with thirty two critical books and eight collections in English, the latest being Heart Raining the Light (2020 ) released in Rome. Sarangi has delivered keynote/plenary address and read his poems in different shores of the globe. He conducted workshops on poetry writing in different universities in Australia, India, Italy and Poland. With Rob Harle, he has edited six anthologies of poems from India and Australia.
He is the President, Guild of Indian English Writers Editors and Critics(Kerala) and Vice President, Executive Council, IPPL, ICCR, Kolkata. He is the Principal of New Alipore College, Kolkata,India and involved in poetry movement for social change. His works are in all major libraries in the world , namely Barkley Library, University of California, USA , Harward University , Columbia University , The University of Chicago , USA, AustLit, University of Queenland, Australia etc.
E-mail : Jaydeepsarangi1@gmail.com
Sheeba Ramdevan Radhakrishnan writes poems and reviews poetry. Many of her poems and reviews have been published in renowned magazines and journals. Her poems have been included in anthologies like "The Ballads of Our Lives “, “Earth Song”, “Mbifl 2019" etc. She is from Kerala.
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