Nachketa 9

Nachiketa was now most often left to his own devices to fathom the answers to the questions that arose in his hours of deep meditation. He often wondered if the old man knew the direction of his thoughts and his quest, and still held back the answers for reasons of his own.  Nachiketa was almost a child when he was brought by providence to the door of the old man, really to die, but perhaps the providence, or perhaps the old man, did not let him die. His childish faith had led him here not really in search of what the world calls ‘death’, but in search of answers which the child in him had believed to be in the trust of the divinity called ‘Yama’. At that time the old man came and gave him life, not death. He wanted to be claimed by death; he was claimed by life. All these years he was cut off from the life of society. He and the old man were the creatures of the forest. The forest knew them and they knew the forest. The forest knew what they needed and gave them in plenty. It was so plentiful that they had forgotten what it is like to be in lack of something.

The old man did not teach him anything, but Nachiketa learnt everything by way of osmosis. He absorbed the old man’s agility of the body and the mind. He absorbed his way of synchronizing decision and action. He absorbed the old man’s virtual invisibility as he reflected on a phenomenon. He understood the marvellous ways in which he disguised his reality when he had to appear differently to the world out there. He had soon realized that the old man was an ace marksman and a good hunter who never missed his target. Living with him, Nachiketa had no memories of his roots.  They lingered in his mind as pictures recalled from a dream. He had lived the years of his childhood in that state of virtual amnesia. But as self-awareness increased, he started thinking about what he had left behind. He remembered that he had dreams of an idyllic world of ideas which he had longed to share with his father and his father’s discordant relationship with the world did not let him in. In his hours of meditation he was often confused as to the nature of his thoughts about his father. As he grew up he developed the practice of concentration and contemplation. But the process of growing up was tied up with a growing realization of his father’s heart and the mind. He was confused about those thoughts because he did not know whether they were distractive and needed to be banished from the focus of meditation or whether they needed to be tamed and understood fully. Often, he felt his father’s hand touch his heart, as if that touch was trying to say something that transcended words. The memory of his father’s strident and commanding, almost terrifying voice would wake up and gradually shade off into an ardent whisper. That whisper seemed to have a voice that desperately called for attention. Nachiketa did not know what to do at such moments. He had no experience of dealing with such feelings. He had no way of establishing a contact with a person who had once ruled over his life and was now relegated to the domain of imagination. He had no way of determining if his perception of that whisper was real or a fragment of imagination.

The old man was neither curious nor perturbed over Nachiketa’s past. As Nachiketa grew up and understood his environment, its perspective and meaning began to grow upon his consciousness. He did not know whether the old man’s apparent apathy was empathy raised to an all-encompassing universal consciousness. Nachiketa as yet had no ability to merge with that dimension where, at this stage of his growth, he felt, God alone could dwell.         

Nachiketa 8.

Nachiketa

3

These days the old man was mostly confined to the four walls of their cottage. Nachiketa, now young and strong, had been busy collecting life-giving herbs for him. His search would take him to far off hills and valleys, to places which he had never known to exist before. It was an unusual experience for Nachiketa to wander alone thus. When alone, he would sometimes think of the past he had left behind, his father, mother, the fateful day on which he broke away from all of that life, his journey to the unknown…He would be arrested in his meandering thoughts by the reminder of the gentle, soothing words of the old man. In the moments when grief had seemed to overwhelm him, when the effort to connect himself with his origin had proved futile, the old man would say, “Do not try to remember the past, nor think of what is to come. Think of here and now, my boy. Do not chase shadows. Time is ever present. “

Nachiketa would then stare at the herbs he had collected. He would refrain from asking the unasked question:”What was he going to do with these herbs? He could not yet distinguish very well the remedial ones from the harmful. He had to place them before the old man who would feel them with his trembling fingers, smell them and explain the properties of each of them. His eye-sight had weakened and Nachiketa knew that he could scarcely distinguish between objects except by their feel. Looking at him, Nachiketa began to fear the knowledge that seemed to dwell in the deep recesses of the old man’s heart which Nachiketa, as yet, had not begun to fathom.        

Nachiketa 7.

Nachiketa spent the formative years of his life with this man who seemed to exist in a land beyond life and death. By now Nachiketa knew every brook, waterfall, and tree in that hilly region. After the last batch of monsoon clouds had departed, the winter would set in. Then the old man would wake Nachiketa before sunrise and the two would explore the hills for herbs. Their search would sometimes take them to the crest of the hill. Sometimes they would rest under a tree and watch the crowns of the neighbouring hills until the first rays of the morning brought to light their rough surfaces and threw into relief the multiple shades of colours that had so far been merged in one purple sheet of darkness. Below, one would never be able to fathom the depth of the valley.

Once Nachiketa got up from deep sleep, thinking it was dawn. He found the old man sitting cross-legged, silently facing the east. A delicate tinge of pink in the purple sky had deluded Nachiketa. He sat near the old man and stared into the dark. The old man gently stroked his head and said, “This is a false dawn. But do not fall asleep again. Stay awake and you will see how it will change into a real dawn. It is a beautiful experience." So Nachiketa sat there, watching the sky. Sleep overwhelmed him. It was a painfully long interval before the first rays of the sun started to ascend the sky. In the interval he felt drowsy and longed to go back to sleep, thinking that the darkness would never end. But then came the moment when the hint of the lustrous orb of the sun appeared behind the hill and soon the entire sphere began to throb and expand with growing light.

The old man smiled at him and said, “My friend, you will always remember what you have learnt in this moment here and now, and it will fill your life with light as it did today”.      

Nachiketa 6.

Nachiketa 2.

No one knew the old man. He avoided being seen and lived in his cottage at the far end of the thick forest. No one knew who he was and whence he came. A few who had happened to stray into that part of the forest saw him, but none could talk to him. His silence seemed unfathomable. But those few who saw him were hardly the same when they came back to their village to their human abode.

Sometimes unknown and unseen, he would come out of his dark cottage on a bright afternoon and sit basking in the courtyard, looking into the distance, as if waiting for some lone way-farer to come, and lift the age-long spell and bring to life the shrunken silence to dance on his wild flute-notes.

Those who had seen him told others afterwards that one might see him suddenly face to face and catch him smiling. But that smile would not be like anything you had seen before. It was a benign smile that accepted you and set you free, and thereafter one could not belong to anything in this world and yet be a part of it.

For three days and three nights the old man had been away from the cottage. When he came back he saw a human form lying in a heap at the door of the cottage. On going nearer, he found it to be a boy of about seven years, probably of the brahmin lineage. It was obvious that the boy had barely made it to the gate of the cottage and then collapsed from hunger and exhaustion. The old man looked long and steadily into that tender countenance, now immobile, but still retaining its fluid transparency. He bent over the child with silent compassion and stroked the matted hair and the little forehead that had gathered layers of dust. Then lifting him gently, he carried him inside. The old man sat motionless until he saw a slight manifestation of life in that limp body and then watched with interest the gradual awakening of the senses until all the senses reaffirmed the existence of body and the world around them.

The boy opened his eyes and saw a pair of eyes watching him serenely in utter silence. No, this wasn’t his father.

“Are you the one I am looking for?”

“Who are you looking for my dear?” The old man asked gently without a trace of astonishment.

“Why, you must be Yama. I had set out in search of you!”

“Indeed? Do I look like Yama to you? I don’t know what I look like!”

Nachiketa silently wondered. True, he did not know either what Yama looked like! He stared at this serene face and could think no more. All that he could understand at that moment was that he wanted to be claimed and at that moment it did not matter who was to claim him! Slowly, a tiny hand lifted itself. So slight was its movement that it was scarcely visible to the eye. But an old, wrinkled hand, strong and steady, grasped it and Nachiketa lay trustful in the old man’s lap, assured and asleep.  

Nachiketa Installment 5

 

(A page which formed a vital link in the script is missing here, appropriately perhaps. This rupture in the narrative was a coincidence and like certain coincidences it created a vacuum within which one can write everything or nothing. It also made me think over my father’s aversion to my story-telling skills. He did not want that I should understand pain and sorrow. My Guru was perhaps happy that at last I was fit to be a disciple.

In the postmodern techniques of scripting, a rupture in the narrative is also a point of loose ends which let the reader in and write the script. Whatever it may be, a coincidence seized as a moment for introspection, a rupture, or a technique, the narrative has to go on. )

Nachiketa read a sign in the words uttered by his father. His childish mind was not equipped to understand the nuances of the adult language. His world had taken a trauma. Fables and parables are not allegories to a child who has just begun to understand the world and its language. His reality was broken. He had no language to communicate the massive impact of it. He wanted now to meet Yama, the divinity of Death, face to face. If it was Yama who was going to claim him, he belonged to Yama. He felt drawn in love to Yama.

The night was long and restless for Nachiketa. He stayed wide awake and stared into the heart of that night, defenceless and bewildered. He closed his eyes. It made no difference, within and without, all was the same. Is this what they call death? Is this what he loved?

Suddenly he realized that it was not his own death that he feared. How could he die? He breathed his own  name slowly. Each breath filled him with a strength that was beyond hope and time. He realized that at that moment  something had happened to him out of time.

Yes, he was free to choose and he had the strength to choose. And now it did not matter where he lived. In that single night he had come a long way to belong to Death, because he did not belong anywhere. Now he belonged to himself. It was all the same now, here or there, or anywhere; in the woods or in the world of sacrificial rites and strife; Nachiketa would be Nachiketa.

Nachiketa was conquered by Nachiketa. Nachiketa was beautiful; Nachiketa was strong, inexhaustible. No longer would he be banished; no longer would he shy away from the world. His mother, his cow, his father, everything came back to him and he gave them love, infinite love. But not by living here. He must break away from it all.

………………………….

It was a long, long journey, alone to an unknown destination, a journey in search of the meaning of life, and strangely in search of Death. The boy went on and on in search of Death so that great Master would reveal to him the meaning of life. He had left behind the silent rivers, the changing skies, the humming forests to understand the silence beyond it all.

Driven by a lunatic force, he went ahead as if borne on the crest of a deafening tide, inebriate with the desire to know. He was being washed away to the feet of the inevitable. Mornings brought sunrise and with the sun going down he would feel the sea-gulls sweeping across the sky, singing a desperate song to ease the tedium of lonely flights to unknown lands. The boy would gaze at the horizon till the ever-widening blue conquered his vision and sleep too became a sightless plunge into the Blue. His lust or the horizon made him forget that the land never ends and the sky never begins.

Thus Nachiketa travelled for three days and three nights and then dropped down in sheer exhaustion and fatigue.

Myriad forms fleeted past his vision in that moment, his mother’s silent face, the river-bed, the lotus-leaf, the silent, suffering in the eyes of Kapila, and then his father’s volcanic eruption: “Go, I have given thee to Yama, The god of Death.” The next moment Nachiketa could no longer hear silence; he became part of it.