“I have never thought of it.” Rachana’s words are pensive and her tone of voice says the weight of Jaliya’s question is something that is beginning to grip her. Perhaps her own storytelling could allow her a space to become someone else, and leave her life and its designated junctures. The impending wedding. The departure overseas, to another life. The morning, and its duties awaiting her on arrival at Chennai.
“What about you?” There is a certain elevated spirit in her voice. “Have you ever wanted to become one?”
The response from him is silence. A silence of meaning, she supposes. Her question has brought on that silence in him. Speaking in its form of wordlessness of what lies in his inner being.
“There will be a young man, who has entered university. He is in his freshman year. He needs some means of income to meet his expenses...”
Rachana is glad the quiet has been broken. His voice now kindles her to imagine this young man. This young man whom she grows curious of as Jaliya’s words create a shape of him to reside in her vision, under closed eyes. A young man like him? She has that question in her, now, as he speaks...
“He has a manner of quietness. Unless he finds suitable company. He believes in conversations of a purpose. Talk that can enrich in some way his understanding of the world...”
Perhaps this is you? I can see this young man. A quiet person whose thoughts run deep. Searching for some greater meaning in things that form his world. From where are you conjuring this young man?
These thoughts interlace in Rachana’s mind with the image she is building to the spoken words of Jaliya. Yes, she too has questions she may not give voice too. In this gentle darkness that tries to almost coo her to sleep while his words drape her...
“...He is the kind who would find solace in solitude...”
...Will she drift into sleep? And dream this story Jaliya is developing? No. The world of sleep has not been able to claim her just yet though the darkness may want to seduce her to it. She wants to be awake to his words. It is not the image of the story alone that matters to her. It is also the presence of a voice –his.
“One of his neighbours offers him a job, of sorts. The neighbour has an elderly uncle recently widowed. He has one child. A matured son in his mid forties. He is unmarried, lives with the father who is now in his eighties. Every Tuesday to Friday the son returns very late at night. It’s because of the work he does. Only a manservant is in the house. The old gent needs a companion to bear those evenings till late at night. The loneliness is too much for him, he is an educated man who had held high positions in public administration....And so...”
And so, this is the start of a turning point it this young man’s life. For a somewhat modest amount, sufficient to meet his requirements, he becomes the paid visitor. Every Tuesday to Friday from five to ten. He proves to be a worthy conversationalist to the old gentleman who sees a new world through the eyes of this young man as they enter into dialogues that enrich their evenings by reaching across generations.
“This is a story I would someday like to write Rachana.”
And will it be a story of your own life Jaliya? She cannot help but think it sharply. Is it so? But Jaliya has not given any indication of it to her.
“Will it be a novel?”
“Maybe. Or a novella. A short novel.”
What makes a person want to be a writer? Do we address our minds to that question when we assume the position of the reader? Or for that matter should we ask, what makes a person become a storyteller? And what makes a person listen to the narratives of a raconteur? On one hand one may say these are truths best know to these personae whenever they are in those respective roles. But perhaps Jaliya and Rachana may reveal such truths as they sit in their splendid isolation. Bothered by no one on this bus which now drifts into a placid slumber of its own. Though the engine runs and the driver steers it on, there is a certain curtain of quietness fallen over the rest of everything. Muting a busload of passengers from being a living body of human burden to Jaliya and Rachana. Let us assume it is the hour that has claimed them, taking them to sleep, while Jaliya and Rachana continue in their refusal to accept the existence of time’s conditionings.
“What is the plot of this story Jaliya? How does it end?”
“Its plot is in the stories they tell, the knowledge they exchange. The worlds they each find opening to them through the words they speak. The meeting of two generations, one that is slipping into the quietening dusk, and the other feeling the morning rays, hoping to shine forth someday... There is nothing of the conventional novel in this story. Not like the Victorian flow of plot and all that. No Rachana, it will be a fiction that tries to journey into the souls of these two. This venerable old gentleman who has seen a world and its many changes and lived its times and now wants to pass on what he has learnt of life, to a patient and caring soul of the generation that will shape the world to what it will be. A world that is sometimes so very incomprehensible to him...”
They speak of travels. The old gentleman describes to the young man his numerous overseas visits. Opportunities that he was privileged to have had as a government official. The young man hears of the awe inspiring sights of the murals of the Sistine chapel. The grandeur of Buckingham palace and the elegance of the tomb of Napoleon. He learns of the palace of Versailles; a creation in homage to luxuriance, which despite its great ostentation had not a single toilet. Jaliya tells her how one dusky evening the old gent asks the young man if he has read The Old Man and the Sea. The young man answers that he read it as part of his prescribed readings for studies. With a placid smile half shadowed, the gentleman expounds to the young student of literature, why Hemingway devised the most simple of language to narrate the story of Santiago the fisherman. The great writer it seems had begun to distrust ‘erudite’ language.
“...Touched lightly by the last rays of the setting sun, a light that seeps through the shady trees outside the veranda they sit at, the gentleman says how he finds the story of Santiago endearing itself to him in ways that sometime make him feel slightly disturbed...Getting up from his seat he asks the young man to follow him to his library. They enter a space that is revealed from the shadows as a light switch clicks. Surrounding them is an awesomeness of knowledge to the young man who sweeps his sights over the spines of books cased in mahogany shelves reaching an impressive height. A space he believes is in homage to the beauty of reading and the sanctity of knowledge. The wrinkled old hand moves gently. The fingers slowly grasp the top edge of a slim, leather bound, spine of a book. The volume is placed in the young hands of his young companion. He is told it was bought years ago in Washington D.C. The young man holds a first edition of The Old Man and the Sea. To his speechless joy he is told, it is now his to keep...”
Jaliya sees these two figures in the elegance of that library. The emotional depths of that moment, as treasures are bequeathed, and a man’s legacy finds a way to survive for another generation. Beneath the closed eyelids, he feels their presence becoming closer. He sees the tenderness in their faces as they find in each other kindred souls.
“...They converse about history. The great narratives that charted the courses of civilisations...their words take them to the great land of Bharath and of the battles that shaped the course of the subcontinent...”
And what wonderful stories of this ancient land will they talk of Jaliya? What in your story will you write about this country, bringing it through conversations between that dear gentleman and the young student? Perhaps I could guide them...
“...The temple of Somnath, said to have been built by the moon god Soma, the eternal shrine, becomes a great fascination to the gentleman who tells the young student of its grand history...”
What has attracted you to Somnath? What mysteries do you believe this temple holds for your story Jaliya? Rachana’s quiet wonderings take her to a beach overlooked by an ancient temple, where once as a child she gazed at the sublime sight of the ‘protector of t
he moon god’ –Somnath. As the waves washing over the grey sand lapped at her feet that peaceful evening, she was told by her Amma–amma the story of how the moon god was cursed to wane for the sin of loving one of his wives more than the others. Thus she knew the birth of Somnath ‘the eternal shrine’ to have been in a time before the era of ‘common man’. Somnath, a creation bound to the repentances caused through love, when denied in its rightful share. It is also a story of how love can redeem the wrong doer, she was told, that gentle evening as the waning crescent moon hung over them in the darkening sky. Pointing to the waxing moon, Amma–amma tells her granddaughter sitting on her lap that it was Rohini’s love which saved her husband Soma to not wither and die as cursed by her father Daksha, but instead to be reborn anew and become renewed of life. A story of how life was restored to a dying man through the love of a favourite wife.
“...Somnath, had been the object of attack and destruction by the Arabs and Moguls time and time again, and the young man is told of these battles history had witnessed in the land of Gujarat...Wars fought for religion, riches of gold and silver, and jewels...”
There were battles fought for rewards of other kinds as well Jaliya. Jewels, yes, perhaps that’s how those who fought over them would say. Jewels that aren’t the kind that may be worn on a ring. But possessed into ownership, in every way.
“...And also the ‘prize’ of certain damsels. Wars have been fought so often through history between nations over the right to possess women. The beauty of Helen sealed the doom of Troy, and Somnath was sacked in the wave of destruction that swept across Gujarat for a woman’s beauty. Incomparable, and indescribable by even the craft of the most gifted of poets. Unbelievable, until seen with living eyes. Yes Rachana, it was the beauty of a woman that was the prize that brought the sea of mogul swords. The young student is told this by the learned old gentleman. Fabled as the living jewel of all jewels, they came for her, Kamala Devi...”
The warriors whose last stand was at the temple of Somnath believed so long as the white flag atop the temple remained in its place honouring the four winds, they would be undefeatable. This sublime truth kept them inexhaustible. The ‘eternal shrine’ would not fall. And their treasures within would be untouched by the invaders.
“...Knowing the unfading courage of the warriors came from their belief in the sacred white flag’s immovability, the invaders began to devise means to scale the eternal shrine. And one single mogul warrior finally succeeded. Though an arrow found its way to lodge in his side, the strength of his resolve drove his hands to make that last lurch forward and pluck the white flag.”
With his triumphant cry in praise to his god, the courageous warrior had fallen under a rain of arrows cast upon him. The blood from his hundred wounds desecrating the immaculate flag of Soma. The strength in the hearts of the faithful defenders had fallen at the sight of what they believed was the impossible. The temple is overrun by the invader with an unstoppable wave of warring might. Conflagrations erupt in the house of homage built to Shiva by the moon god. Bounty is everything and anything deemed worthy of possession by the victors. Resistance of any kind is crushed. None may even hope that there is a possibility of resurrection... They watch, drained of all will to fight, as hapless captives, the blood of a cow flow from its slit throat pool on the central shrine’s floor. Men felled in their beliefs may never rise once more. Only the victorious may pronounce of what is possible in this world.
Yes, Rachana hears from Jaliya that it all happened for a certain woman. Kamala Devi, the virgin princess whose possession would be a prize, a pleasure, beyond all value of gems and gold.
“The power of a woman’s beauty” He tells her. His voice becoming subdued, as though benumbed by the sight of a form of beauty that commands a sanctifying silence by any who behold it.
Kamala Devi.
What could she have looked like he wonders, imagining he is the student who longs to ask this from the elderly raconteur before him, calm in his composure of a sage unstirred by the chaos of the world.
Kamala Devi...
But, Jaliya, don’t you know?...
“Kamala Devi. The beauty of a woman moved those armies to wreak horrific devastation.”
“Jaliya, they invaded for Omunkashyu...”
Another story begins. Jaliya is intrigued and turns his face to Rachana.
“...It was the one treasure that could not be valued by gems or gold. The gemstone that gave its keeper eternal beauty and youth...It was Omunkashyu that they waged war for. The jewel whose keeper was Kamala Devi. She was a beauty who was fabled throughout the land of Bharath for her magical youth. A youth that never withered. She kept Omunkashyu on her at all times Jaliya. It was kept in her body...”
She tells him that Kamala Devi’s life was bound to Omunkashyu and its mystical properties. And she became the ‘chamber’ that would house it. Her body was made the shrine inside which rested the gemstone that had descended from the heavens. Her vulva, the doors to this glorious treasure.
“...Eternal youth, beauty, who wouldn’t put nations on fire for such power Jaliya? Since the dawn of time, since man realised his body was meant to wither and die, his one unrelenting quest through history was for immortality...”
A listener behind the veil of darkness draping them, Jaliya has found a raconteur in Rachana. She now inscribes on the fabric of darkness in front of her a history that had been hidden to him. Her words conjoin his narrative to give continuance to the story.
“...Kamala Devi saw her soon to be captors as they broke through to her chamber. Brandishing swords stained with the blood of their victims, snorting like wild beasts hungry for their prey they meant but one thing to her...”
It had been the end for Kamala Devi. Rachana’s words sound as if they come from a great distance. A distance setting them apart in their places in time. In this darkness she has crept away to that tragic moment of Kamala Devi’s emollition of herself. She had uttered the incantation that beseeched Agni, the god of fire, acceptor of sacrifices, to consume her in his sacred flames. Her piety and purity beyond all questioning, she was taken by Agni the two headed messenger to the gods. Nothing had been left of her but a white ash gleaming with a million fragments of a shattered jewel. Only divine fire, she says, was able to finally claim Omunkashyu.
“...Only divine fire, Jaliya, was able to finally claim Omunkashyu.” Her voice becoming whispery as the last word exhales itself gently from her lips. This exhale that moves past Jaliya, as though bidding him catch it, if he can. He rests in the silence that holds them, as does she. There is nothing so much more sensible to them right now as their being awake to each other’s presence. An unseen presence that speaks of propinquities that takes various forms in this gentle darkness of a night undisturbed.
“Omunkashyu, has caused the destruction of many civilisations Rachana...” She feels how in him a spark has awoken. Their story will take on a new face, she assumes, settling into her seat. Jaliya finds a newer shape for this word gaining more meaning to its form. In this new form is another story, she senses.
And then what of the young man, the undergraduate who travelled with the stories of the learned old gentleman? Where have they been left? What is to become of them? In his mind, in sketchy images drawn of soft hazy shades, Jaliya sees them sitting complacently in the closing moments of a quiet dusky evening as the student speaks of his plans to one day become a writer. The old gent lauds it; a smile of dearness speaks of his inner happiness. Live your life, he advises the young man, and live to tell the story. In telling your tale one day your past finds life renewed. The final gem of wisdom imparted to the young man as he rises to take his leave of him–Remember, a raconteur is nothing without an audience.
“...Other than the great Hela nations that tried to build bridges to Omunkashyu there was also a god incarnate who crossed the sea over a pathway built of stones and trees to reach Omunkashyu...still, today that ‘bridge’ exists, silently
, under a shallow covering of sea water.”
“Ram sethu.”
“Yes, ‘the bridge of Rama’ was a pathway to Omunkashyu. Through its mesmerising beauty it held great power over any whose sights beheld it, and caused the destruction of nations. And taking the form of knowledge it was coveted and prized for the power it would give its possessor...”
“Lord Ram crossed the sea to Lanka for his wife Sita. Did she carry Omunkashyu in her, like Kamala Devi?”
“No Rachana, Sita was the one who was to acquire it...”
To acquire it? From whom? What do you mean ‘acquire’??
Logical responses, valid questions, one may propound very comfortably. Yet Rachana does not put forward such queries verbally. No, she isn’t that child sitting on her Amma–amma’s lap asking questions to dwell deeper and deeper into the world that stories opened for her... But does she want to? Would she like to? Yes, very much so. Because in each of us there is that child who yearns to sit on the lap of parental or grandparental safety once again, and be enchanted by stories of times and places that only children may know of; for it is only the child whose world is wide enough to allow them in.
“...When Emperor Ravana carried her off to his golden city of Lankapura the citadel perched in the central hills of his empire’s capital Lanka, Prince Rama’s plan had worked exactly as anticipated.”
Lord Ram wanted Ravan to abduct his wife Sita?! The most pious and virtuous of all women!
The acceptability of such a twist in the tale is what pricks Rachana right now. But what we may hope she will soon realise is that the story Jaliya will unfold with his words is his, and not the text of a ‘history’ before ‘recorded history’ that survived the ages through oral narratives of sages and bards.
“Their battle Rachana was after all one that marked how two civilisations clash when each vies for mastery over the world. The very first in fact in the existence of human kind. Though born of the same root, the people of these empires did not see the world big enough to share. Isn’t that how it is after all with all great powers, whether they are divided by waters or not? Though blood is thicker than water, power hunger, that insatiable craving, overrides all bonds of kinship.”