Second Coming The Story of Nachiketa: 1.

The Homecoming

Nachiketa is a character from Kathopanishad.

There is a dialogue between this young  boy and Yama—the divinity of Death in the Indian mythology.

Long back, this boy had captured my imagination and I framed him in a narrative that took its flight from the basic ground in the Upanishad and then made its own flight-path.

I had shoved it under a pile of old files. I remembered it and decided to release it. Two persons had read it closely when it was written; both have departed from this world. One of them was my father and the other was my spiritual Guru. . My Guru read it and smiled. As was his custom, he never opined on anything. But he passed on the story to his trusted friend to read. I think they both liked it, because my notebook passed through quite a few hands before it came back to me through my Guru to whom I had originally given it. Here is my take on the original story in the Upanishad, with a considerable liberty of the flight of imagination.

Nachiketa stretched his supple limbs like a kitten and lay in bed a little longer, feeling the warmth of the deer-skin bed. He felt its bristling soft touch pressed against his body like a fond animal. For a few moments he was on the verge of sleep and reality, undecided about what to choose. For a while his dream continued to cling to him like a warm restful kitten and then pressing itself hard against him, the dream sprang away and Nachiketa woke up but refused to open his eyes. He wanted to snuggle close to his mother. With his eyes shut, he expected to seek the warmth of her body surrounding him like a cascade of mango leaves. But when he lifted his hand it fell through the empty space surrounding him. He opened his eyes and blinked as his eyes caught the shafts of the morning sunlight descending on him through the slits in the ventilators of the cottage. He turned over and found that the space where his mother lay asleep had been vacant for a long time. It had already absorbed the morning mist and felt dewy and cold now.

Nachiketa sprang out of his bed in panic, anticipating his father’s wrath. But when he came out in the courtyard, he was thrilled to tread softly on the warm, crisp floor freshly plastered with cow dung. The place was full of the aroma of ghee being poured into the sacrificial fire and the deep sound of mantras being chanted in unison. The thatched cottage wore a festive look with men and women bustling around. His father presided over all of them He looked lustrous with his broad forehead stretching back to meet the bald crown of his head making one whole radiant sphere.

Nachiketa rushed through his morning routine and then frisked away with a set of fresh clothes tucked under his arm.  he went straight to the riverbed for his bath. He sat awhile on the bank resting his back against the crusty surface of a solid rock. As he sat there looking at the quiet, rippling expanse of the river, blissful lethargy caressed his limbs. He watched the shimmering ebony bodies of the buffaloes wading in the sun-kissed waters of the river.

Nachiketa had begun to hear the sound of silence these days. Whenever he watched the expanse of the river, whenever he sat here watching buffaloes and the sheer contrast of the white cranes taking a ride on the shimmering dark backs of those indolent animals, he would hear silence. He wanted to share it with his mother, but she would be too busy to accompany him on his idle excursions into wilderness. He understood silence; the silence of the wilderness, and yet it was different from the silence of his mother.

When he finished his bath and came out, he was dripping wet. He liked to splash water and sprinkle tiny beads of water on the lotus leaves in the river-bed. Yesterday he had tried to make his mother laugh by trying the same trick on her instead of on the lotus-leaves. She too looked like this lotus-leaf, beautiful, but unresponsive. The dew-drops had made her look extremely young and ephemeral. But there was no trace of joy or sorrow on her face. Nachiketa had tried to listen to her silence. She seemed to understand and smiled, a little sadly, as if to say….But no, he did not understand what she seemed to say. With a sudden surge of emotion he had put his arms around her and kissed her and then feeling assured that he had done the right thing with this gesture, he had run away to his world of sounds and silences, turning for a moment to look at her with an implicit promise of coming back.