ONE ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

The little ripples in the Indus River has turned golden again, rising, dissolving and rising in giggles. Bird-mothers have embraced the sky and the sky would float them from sky to skies before they return to their babies. The Sun has started sprinkling golden life once again over the Indus River and soil adjoining it and beyond. The sun would now make villages dependent on the Indus, wake-up with utmost urgency and exuberance. Day-to-day life of all would begin and will begin life-long struggles. Quests too! Some human feet are dipping into the chilled water of the Indus, and they, remaining immersed up to their waists would recite hymns in the praise of the Sun, thanking it for being their consistent-nourisher.

Aditya, a seventeen –year old boy of a poor farmer of a poor village named Prajnapur had seldom bothered to go with his father to take an early-morning bath in the Indus and sing the strange prayers as his father would press him to sing. He knew not the purpose of thanking! “To keep receiving the service”, he thought. Thought and often kept it concealed. His father did not liked to be in awkward situation, he knew that and thus told all his self-believed-nonsense to his mother. “Mothers have a lesser tendency to judge and even if they, they never let it affect their reason or reasonlessness to love their children!” Aditya observed this much before turning seventeen and concealed it ever since He knew that his mother agrees with his father and also the rest of the village, that, Aditya just thinks a little more, but not with the later half of the mass-belief – “and is good for nothing”, and concealed this to herself which Aditya stole from her silence, from her eyes! At seventeen, all his friends are into work- farming, clay modeling, carpentry… Aditya plays with much younger boys in the village and when ashamed to play, just sits besides the Indus. He has two friends in life – Indus and his mother.

Often, while dreaming during sleep in the night, Aditya tried to analyse how the world suddenly changes its form and language during a dream. He always wanted to have a dream in his sleep, so that he could find a purpose in sleeping too and he would try to wrap-off before his father’s usual pressing for the bath in the Indus. For last two years he has known how to avoid it – by faking sleep and putting father in a hurry not no miss the sight of the rising Sun, from waist-deep water of the Indus.

But, today he had to open his eyes and could not fake the sleep. His father’s tone was different, way of pushing Aditya with his right hand was different, and also the look in his eyes! Aditya woke up to a strange feeling, a strange emptiness!

At first, lying on his bed, he had no idea as for what reason his father was trying to wake-up his mother as he saw him attempting. The sixty-year old farmer of Prajnapur who got a late fatherhood seventeen years ago was frantically trying to deny the scare and thus applied all his strength by shaking Aditya’s mother up, sometime by her palms, shoulders or face before burying his head over her now-cold chest with a strange cry that is quite similar with that of the dogs when stoned by mischievous village-children or animal-like adults. Soon, the first note of the loss went into a full inconsolable cry as Aditya simply found himself watching it. He wanted to spring-up from the bed and instead found all his body having no clue of strength to lift itself up. The mind, the heart, the body and life – all separated from each other with one single jolt. And Aditya thought that these parts will never and can never come close again and form one ‘whole’ being that would be able to withstand the crates-creating pain called the ‘loss of mother’.

Aditya found the sounds of the approaching footsteps. One, two and suddenly he could sense a crowd outside the house and stroking the door and calling his father by the name aloud. This seemed to have done the trick that Aditya was desperately trying to – it pulled him up from the bed. The ever-caring neighbours of Prajnapur rushed in as soon as the door was open and soon they were all around the bed where Aditya’s mother was lying still. Some started weeping and some stood still. Some got hold of his father and started trying to calm him down. Amidst all these, Aditya wondered about one thing that why he was not being able to cry whereas those are, who were absolutely no one to his mother! He scolded himself silently amidst all these as the villagers formed groups and assigned themselves with tasks Aditya had no idea about. They dispersed to all directions quickly and Aditya thought – “Is the Indus missing my father today, who would never miss Indus a single day? Does she know what her devotee just lost in his life? Will She stop giggling for today for a poor farmer as a mark of condolence?” And before Aditya could get lost in his web of thoughts that brought him kudos in the past all the time, the neighbours who went out with tasks rushed in to pull Aditya back into sense.

They came with bamboos, cutters, robes, and Aditya saw them all work in harmony to quickly make a structure – a bed like structure with no stands. Four of them then went inside, came back with Aditya’s mother in their arms, and put on the structure over which they kept a bamboo-mattress. One of them now pulled up a red cloth and wrapped it all over the dead body. People spread flowers all over and burnt incense sticks. The nostrils were sealed with leaves and sindoor being poured over the forehead. They worked with precision and fast hands and soon everything was ready. One of the villager now took Aditya in his arms and tenderly told him how he should have strength at heart and described him what should be his duty in the cremation process and then later in life! Aditya heard him all and quietly readied himself with the task ahead. He was ready to shoulder his mother’s journey through the fire, smoke and ash.

The bamboo structure – bedlike with no stands with Aditya’s dead mother lying still on top soon found four shoulders under it to rise above the ground and started marching for the cremation ground. Aditya and his father were among the four besides his mother’s left and right shoulders respectively while other villagers balanced the rear. A few of them lend their shoulders in the sideways too. Villagers, especially women broke down into shrillest form of weeping as children watched and some cried seeing their mothers crying. The cattle in their house would find someone else to feed them and take care of them from now on and not the familiar hands that caressed their bodies with the tinkling sounds of the chudis. The procession with Aditya’s mother’s dead body left the village at the back of their horizon now and entered an area where Aditya played with his friends-of-the-other-village. People of this region rushed up to his father and looked at them with utter surprise. A few of them joined the procession and others stood idle leaving their works off to see the procession leave them at the horizon too, as the cremation-ground appeared in front.  Aditya is well acquainted with many villages outside his own but had never seen this place before. He had heard but did not have the courage to pay a visit or witness how entire bodies go into nothingness in moments. He always thought that ‘that cannot exactly be everything about a human life’. He thought but never knew whether he was one to verify it or not.

Everything went with precise smoothness as they carefully placed the body on the ground, arranged for big logs, ghee, flowers and other substances for the ritual of the cremation. Aditya watched by as his father broke down into another spell of loud cry. Some of the villagers went around to a nearby house and Aditya saw them returning with a man who stole his attention at the very first sight. He knew what they were called as – “Chandals – the caretakers of cremation-ground and without whom no cremation can take place”. The above six-foot, dark and fat chandal with curly hairs, metal ear-rings and beards who wore a red short dhoti and had bangles in his wrists and ankles, came up to the dead body in swift steps. Aditya could see the redness in his eyes and became very awed at the look. The chandal looked clearly unperturbed and knew his job; he came right beside Aditya who was sitting near his mother’s calm body. Near-by the villagers had piled up logs over logs in a particular arrangement much like a cubic grid with gaps in between.

The chandal had put his hands over the dead body and Aditya understood in a flash that what he was trying to do.

“No”, cried Aditya as he saw the chandal trying to take the cloths off her mother’s dead body and pushed him with full might.

Both of them stood up as if to start a life-taking fight, the villagers caught hold of Aditya swiftly as the chandal threw a look at Aditya with a smile that puzzled him a lot.

“We come without a possession and we go that way too!” The chandal said to Aditya before resuming his work.

The dead body was bathed one more final time and dried with cloth and slowly everyone joined to rub ghee on the dead body, so that it burns well, shines well.

Soon the final phase was ready. The dead body was carefully placed over the log-structure and some more logs were piled up over the body. The chandal quickly verified everything to ensure it burns well and then people poured some kind of oil over the structure. A small branch with a tip prepared with cloths and dipped in ghee was lit up and handed over to Aditya. His pulse-rate suddenly rose up and he started shivering as he could sense the purpose of holding the torch. An elderly neighbour who was very experienced with such matters tightly grabbed Aditya and hurriedly made him walk seven rounds around his mother and then somewhat forcefully made Aditya do the necessary. The silence at the cremation ground was stabbed with Aditya’s first cry that rolled up from his navel, piercing the heart, shattering the body as he touched the torch to his mother’s face to invite fire from everywhere to engulf his mother.

Aditya’s father now grabbed his child onto his chest tightly. The two last hugged each other when Aditya made a false promise to his father about his decision to help him with his farming work, a year ago.

As the Sun was very little away from the over-the-top position, the fire-bed almost reduced to ashes. Again, Aditya was called for another set of ritual – this time to pour water over the heat from the clay-buckets. Quickly everyone started doing so and they started collecting the ash and bones into another kalash.

In the crowd, Aditya sensed a heavy hand touching his left shoulder. He looked around to see the chandal who was seeing at his eyes.

“Do you know what your mother’s last thoughts were?” The chandal asked Aditya and before the crowd could notice that he has spoken something to somebody, went away without waiting for Aditya’s response. He collected his fee from an elderly neighbour of Aditya for his work before disappearing.

*   *   *

The old farmer leaned his head across a bamboo-post in the veranda of the house, where Aditya used to disturb his mother- with words, with deeds. Aditya was also sitting at a distance after doing the ritual of bathing in the Indus before entering house. The villagers who accompanied the cremation-process helped Aditya acquire a dress that every son needs to wear for twenty-one days until the last ritual is over that is called the “Shraddha”. In just a piece of thin white dhoti, Aditya sat over a straw-mattress that he is supposed to use until the Shraddha is over. They also tucked in a piece of iron through a thread around Aditya’s waist and told all these were necessary as the dead may try to see her dear ones taking any form which might scare him. “I will throw the iron when they will go!” thought Aditya and sat still when a fifty-plus, fat, bald priest of the local temple entered the house and approached his father.

Aditya had noticed earlier that the priest liked female devotees over males ones in the temple, disliked children and scolded them for wanting ‘prasad’ and would always first notice the number of coins kept as offering in a thali for worship besides flowers and other materials.

Aditya’s father got up hurriedly with folded-hands to welcome the priest.

“Very sad, very sad…” The priest said to the old farmer, and before Aditya’s father could say anything, he himself resumed, “…after twenty-one days the Shraddha has to be performed, everything must be arranged in perfect order- the ritual-related materials, cloth for donation to the priest and a hundred coins. The time of your wife’s passage was in particular inauspicious, so extra work has to be performed to free her spirit from trouble, else she might harm you…” as the priest continued, Aditya’s father kept nodding his head and Aditya walked up to him to ask something.

“Where is her spirit?” Aditya asked the priest firmly.

“What is this boy asking?” The priest asked Aditya’s father, on which his father gave him a mild scolding.

“I am just asking where is her spirit!” Aditya was in no mood to restrain.

“Are you trying to go against the shastraas?” The priest retaliated looking clearly annoyed with Aditya.

“I am trying to go against nothing I am just asking whether do you know where her spirit is, else how do you know she is in trouble? And who told you a mother can harm her children?”

“This boy is challenging me!” Cried the priest and readied to go, “all right, I am not going to perform the Shraddha let me see who now save you all from the wrath of the gods!” The priest started walking off as the few neighbours who were still present somehow prevented him and Aditya’s father busted out in anger over his son

“You are good for nothing. You always troubled your mother, at least now you mind give her a little peace! Go, what are you looking at, go up to him and apologise.” Aditya’s father commanded him pointing to the priest.

“Never.” Aditya refused without any hesitation.

“Then you go out of my sight…” the old man had almost hit his son when the neighbours left the priest alone to guard Aditya from his father. Aditya stood still – a moment, then for another, then came out of the house, and went off his father’s sight. Neighbours did not mind as they started having a negotiation with the priest regarding the amount of arrangement needed for the Shraddha.

Aditya kept proceeding towards the place that he often walks up to when lost in thoughts. A place called the ‘next few steps’. As he kept walking, the few villagers of Prajnapur who were not taking rest, caring less about the glare of the fireball up in the sky, looked curiously at Aditya. He recalled the rules that one of the elders acquainted him with, that for three days now, he should not go to any place alone. Aditya knew why the villagers were so curious to see him walking unmindfully.

And the unmindful steps led him to the place where he had just saw his ‘everything’ disintegrate into ‘nothing’; he noticed, that, that time he did not notice anything about the place – that the place is surrounded by forest and there is one small temple of Goddess Kali. He found the Shamshan- the cremation ground, a beautiful yet a scary place for reasons unknown. However, he chose an Amla tree to sit under its shadow and his eyes took him to the spot from were the ash and bones of his mother were just collected – where fire danced freezing everybody to just look at! “Do not play with fire…” Aditya recalled his mother scolding him during his childhood whenever he would try to find out how the yellow-orange-flame looked ‘soft’ like ‘cotton’! He found some warmth on his cheeks that tasted salty on reaching the lips. He had put his head inside his two knees and wanted to die!

Before he almost started struggling for breath and the throat got a soar from within, he felt a touch of the hand of whom he knew would surely come to take him home this time too! He looked up to find that the man who kept a hand over his shoulder was not his father – but the chandal.

He found himself nervous. He heard many stories about the strange lifestyles of the chandals and was not sure what kind of people chandals really were. Do they really eat the unburned fingers of the dead bodies?  Do they use skulls to drink water? Are they very angry people?

“Why are you here?” The chandal broke the silence.

Aditya did not know what to say and chose to break the eye contact.

“I know you are very sad, but you should not have troubled your father. He is an old man and you are his everything now. Please go back my son.” Before Aditya could verify his surprise, the chandal was gone again with quick steps. “Does he know about the reality? Does he know that a while ago I had an altercation with my father? And yes, did not he ask me whether I have any clue about what were my mother’s last thoughts?” Aditya thought to himself and sprang-up to look for the chandal. He tried for more than a while, went a few steps inside the forest, and then had to cease the search as he heard his father calling-out for him from a distance. Aditya went home along with the old-farmer with heart-filled with curiosity regarding the Chandal’s behaviour without revealing it to anybody.

*  *   *

Aditya woke up to the bitterest morning of his life and started attending the cattle, when he saw the priest entering their house with a happy expression. Aditya started rubbing the fur of the cow that his mother loved the most – “Moti” – a white, big, milk-giving cow with a bell strung in a robe around her neck. He had seen a strange calmness amongst the cattle from yesterday. “Do they actually have understood what had happened?” Aditya thought to himself.

“Very nice, very nice, do take care of them. And do not worry I have forgiven you my boy!” The priest told Aditya with a ‘smile’ that he always avoided paying a sight.

Aditya did not spend a word and attended the other cattle.

“I have considered your point Aditya’s father, you need not give me a hundred coins, pay me half of it and yes according to yesterday’s words, donate me the white milky one. Rest you do not worry, I will free your wife’s spirit from the troubles…”

The priest went on but Aditya could not hear what his father and the priest spoke further, he only understood that Moti who had refused to take eat anything since yesterday and has show no interest to the grass that is heaped before her mouth, had been negotiated as a part of the fee to the priest for the Shraddha.

The priest came to pat Moti before leaving the house, and Moti offered him a mild back-kick that he somehow managed to escape. Aditya heard the tinkling of the bell after a long time.

As the priest left, his father made himself engaged in inspecting his plough and other tools required for farming. Aditya found himself gradually entering the frame of activity, he loves the most doing about- thinking! “What exactly is meant by spirit? What happens actually during death? Is it something like sleep, a deeper form of it? Did we burn mother while actually she was just having a deep sleep? No, not everyone could have been wrong, and moreover, the elders have seen many a deaths during their lifetime till now. They cannot be all that wrong! What is ‘That’ that stays in our body and we are alive, and leaves the body and we are dead? What exactly a dead body is devoid of? Does that mysterious power goes out of the body and still lives or the body throws the power away? If the power leaves the body then can it enter a new one and if the body throws the power away then can the body acquire a new one? Did the priest meant this ‘power’ as spirit? Where does a spirit go? Do they have a separate world? Do the bodiless spirits leave in a formless world? Do the spirits undergo change? Do they also die? What happens when a spirit die? What remains? Is there anything changeless in the world of worlds? Do we need to be or meant to be helpless before death? Is this everything about a human life?” Aditya was getting lost in his mesh before being interrupted by his father.

“I am going out. Money must be arranged for your mother’s Shraddha. I have only fifteen coins. May God help me borrow the rest, to have the full fifty. You be at home and do not go out.” Aditya’s father readied to move out and then halted to say something more to his son, “These two old shoulders have become weaker by your mother’s departure my son, it is time that you take charge of the farming now, it is increasingly getting enough for me…” he left keeping some more words within himself. Aditya had heard them many a times before – “they are under debt, their farming-land is kept as mortgage against the money his father had borrowed and taken so far from the land-lord of Prajnapur, by his age his father was ably supporting his grandfather and finally no one can say when his old father may die… ”

“I hate the mud, I hate the Sun and its merciless heat and I hate to do what everyone else does.” – would be his final say with reasons on turning down his father’s call for farming every time the issue would arise and invariably each time mother came in between two fighting males to keep peace in the place and allow hope one more chance.

Suddenly Aditya recalled how in a mysterious way the chandal asked him about whether Aditya knows what his mother’s last thoughts were!

*   *   *

“What my mother’s last thoughts were? Aditya did not care whether he could return home before his father returns and asked the chandal straightway on reaching the Shamshan with quick steps.

“She got the glimpse of the unchangeable and wished that you too realize it soon.” The chandal replied even quicker.

“Realize what?”

“What your mother got so delighted to have realized about- the changeless-full of bliss!”

“What is that?”

“I am not aware of that yet. I do not know.” The chandal hid not his knowledge about his own ignorance.

“How to find that?”

“I do not know.”

“Then why did you tell me about it?”

“I did not. You asked me about it.”

“But you wanted to tell me about my mother’s supposed last thoughts, did not you?”

“Yes. This is because, your mother desperately wanted to share her joy with you. She left a mark of that feeling on her face. So, I asked you whether you would be interested to know that or not!”

“How come you read her last thoughts?”

“It is simple.”

“How?”

“When we feel something, we are constantly painting our face with the picture of that feeling, only it is very subtle and needs years’ of practice to be able to interpret and understand those pictures.”

“You can read about the last thoughts of all dead people?”

“Yes, all, from last ten years.”

“Does everyone realize ‘that’ which my mother realized before her death?”

Now the chandal broke into a loud laughter that Aditya found very ugly and waited patiently until the chandal was not over with it.

“Everyone? What are you saying? What peculiar thoughts people think when they die what would you understand about!” then he again broke into a laughter, this time a soberer and shorter though, before resuming, “everything, just everything becomes so meaningless and helpless before the stare-of-death my boy! And it is so scary for the scared and unprepared. But to your mother, death showed its real face – the immortality and bliss that it holds in its heart. Death is beautiful my boy, death is beautiful.”

Aditya never heard such words in his life, but got a feeling that why did he not found the chandal earlier. He was offering himself to discard the believes that he constructed on hearing peculiar stories about chandals.

“Is death the only provider of such an experience?” Aditya now sat beside the chandal and the chandal accommodated him with tenderness.

“No my boy! My teacher said that it is attainable in this very life.”

“Will your teacher also teach me how?”

“Who knows where he is? He came like a storm and broke me with his unconditional love and that love is rebuilding me ever since! But I know, I have the faith that he is alive and is still guiding me!” Suddenly the chandal brought himself into a non-emotional state and said to Aditya, “But my boy, you should not bother yourself with these issues yet. You have a life ahead of you and should not allow such curiosities to affect you!” Before Aditya could say something, the chandal sprang up to the call of his duty. One more spirit had left a body or the body had thrown the spirit away.

Aditya did not feel like returning home and watched by another dance of fire at the Shamshan.

Aditya wanted to know about how to know the unchangeable if that is a reality.

He neutralized the chandal’s days’ -long unwillingness to give him a clue about the path, watched by many a cremation, and felt that death can give one thing – courage and compassion to those who are not afraid to see the dance of fire.

“Whatever I knew I told you my boy!” The chandal and Aditya were amidst another conversation, “now I cannot tell you anything else…”

“Please, you must tell me a way!” Aditya realized that he was good at one thing – persistence, and he applied that, and finally the chandal offered him a way – “Tomorrow is Amavasya- the New Moon Night, a Yogi will come here for meditation. I think he can help you. But he is a Mounee- the keeper of silence, I just felt there could be a way if you can come at the night. Do not ask me anything else, it is over now. ” Aditya did not have the courage to say anything else over the chandal’s conclusive tone and he departed to hear the complain about him by his father.

TWO ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

The whole of Prajnapur once again became unaware of its own existence in the lap of mother-sleep. An animal from here and there would give a faint try to highlight the dense silence with their wayward cries and howls or some insects with their strange sounds make the silence even more rhythmic, but after all they never succeed in waking up the baby-Prajnapur from the mother-of-darkness-and-solace until the Sun decides to smile upon the soil again.

Amongst the many peculiar habits Aditya always tries to conceal due to the disliking for getting ridiculed at, is, his attempts of listening to the ‘silence’. He did this many a times from the top of a small hill where Prajnapur’s sounds fail to climb and also the giggles of the Indus. Half of the village is visible in miniature from the top of the hill where children are strictly prohibited from getting sneaked-in and grown-ups does not opt to go. They say that the odd cattle, which were vanished by leopards, were eaten up in the jungles of the hill. “Between sounds there is silence. Does sound actually reside in silence?” Aditya often thought to himself and questioned while attempting to listen to it as one concentrates on the words of someone while speaking with him in a  crowd and chaos. In addition, Aditya believed, “Silence speaks too- only in a very, very-low-voice, perhaps!”

Bark of a dog! Break of the night’s silence and within a dimly lit house Aditya half-opened his eyes and thought in a flash – “why do dogs bark so much in the night?” And then he fully opened his eyes to gauge the remaining length of the night and recalled something. He had met the chandal yesterday and tonight is the night of Amavasya – he has an offer waiting for him at the Shamshan.

Aditya sprang up from his bed, opened the door of the house and blew-off the tiny flame of the diya, with a gentle wave of the palm before venturing out.

Strange habits sometimes come useful in strange situations.

That was one of the favourite plays of Aditya and his friends when they were a little younger, a few years ago. A rhyme would be recited- every word of which would fall on the chest of each participant. The eyes of the receiver of the last word would be covered with a black piece of cloth firmly tied at the back of the head then, and other participants would go around and hide themselves and once everyone would take their positions, one would quickly shout at the blind-hunter – ‘ready’ and swiftly change his position. The hunter would now try to locate his hidden friends and then friends would then laugh at the blind-search and the fumbles; one who would be located by the hunter will have to exchange the roles for the next round of the play. Aditya was very poor at this game and did a trick to improve his skills – he cut himself off from the group for a few weeks, went to a secluded place that had many trees with a piece of black cloth. He then first targeted one tree and count his steps from the point of his standing up to the tree and touch it, from there again came back to the point. Then he would make himself blind with the black-cloth and attempt to go and touch the tree. Within days, he could locate any tree with blind-eyes. Then he learnt to climb the tree also with blind eyes. He returned to the area where he and his friends used to play the game and rehearsed same thing there by trying to reach every possible places of hideout with blind eyes and counted-steps. When he returned amongst the friends, he only delayed to locate his friends to keep the charm of the game alive.  The success was so sweet that from then on Aditya almost subconsciously used to count his steps everywhere.

The darkness of the Amavasya was blinding, but Aditya reached the Shamshan with a few fumbles only and a heart-full of anxiety.

Scene at the Shamshan was different. Aditya did not require to count his steps as the light coming out from the small temple of Goddess Kali illumined the entire Shamshan at least needing no one to count steps.

Aditya could understand that a worshiping of the Goddess has been made not so long ago. Five huge diyas were lit and indicates to burn till the dawn, huge amount of red flowers were offered at the feet of the deity and one garland made of the same red flowers and another of leaves that is considered as sacred were flowing over the Goddess’ neck up to the feet He got a strange feeling by going a little nearer to the temple- he found as if the idol was smiling at him. He did not care much about it and instead interested himself in trying to find out the chandal and proceeded towards the house of the chandal that was nearby.

He found the door of the house open and entered straightway.

“Is he having a happy dream?” Aditya thought to himself while observing the facial-lines of the sleeping chandal. “Why everything about the Shamshan is so happy-like tonight?” Aditya further thought before finally deciding to wake up the chandal.

The chandal opened his eyes, before Aditya could call him up, and said, “Oh, so you have come!”

“Yes! You told me about a Yogi.” Aditya replied.

“O yes, I remember. But you see, there is not much time left to dawn Do not you think you have lost some opportunities?”

“I would like to avail whatever is remaining, you help me.”

“But what would you ask for from the Yogi?”

“I would like to know what ‘Unchangeable Bliss’ my mother saw that she wanted me to realize too and how I can realize that.”

“Very good, very good.” The chandal said while getting up from the floor where he was sleeping. Aditya had a quick look at the house, inside he could see a clay-stove with some clay-utensils, a clay-container of water and a skull. A few red-dhotis were hang up over a piece of bamboo-posts inside the house – that was all about the chandal’s possession.

“The temple is looking beautiful. Who performed the worship?” Aditya asked the chandal who was adjusting his dhoti by tying the knot afresh while readying to take Aditya out to the Yogi.

“The Yogi.”

“Does he come here regularly?”

“Every Amavasya.”

“Who worships the other days? You?”

“Yes.”

The chandal and Aditya were walking now to go to the Yogi. The chandal knew where he was meditating and told Aditya how to approach the Yogi with his questions, “See my boy, you should patiently wait for him to wake-up from his meditation and do not do anything that may disturb him. Offer him a pranama and then humbly beg for help for finding the answers to your questions.”

“I will do as you say, but will he answer me, will he help me?”

“I do not know that.” The chandal replied.

“What, if he turns me down?”

“Then you go back and assist your father in farming by shedding your hatred for the mud and what-everybody-does.”

Aditya once again got astonished at the chandal’s ability to read thoughts but did not say anything further and simply followed him.

The chandal offered him to hold his hand as they were entering a forest that was not getting the light from the lit-up Shamshan.

Aditya obeyed and felt that the chandal knew something similar to his step-counting technique and after a while of walking amidst crushing darkness, they stopped.

“Here;” whispered the chandal, “here you wait and look forward only. It is about to dawn and that is why the night is the darkest now.” Chandal freed his hand from Aditya’s clutch and mingled in the darkness.

“Conscious wait needs a lot of patience.” Aditya thought to himself as he waited fro the dawn to break and see the Yogi with his eyes. He heard all the subtle sounds of the forest in the darkness while sitting on a rock and absorbing his mind with thrills-unknown, while innocent rays of light started appearing from around. The trees started appearing clear and visible frame by frame by the dawn and Aditya found his eyes fixed at a tree – at the root of which the Yogi was meditating.

Long hairs flew down beside the two large, calm, and closed eyes up to the broad shoulders of the Yogi who was sitting in a cross-legged position with his arms stretched over the knees and fingers held straight and the tip of the forefinger held against the tip of the thumb. His beards covered his neck.

As everything in the forest started getting prominent and birds all over started telling each other about the end of another night, Aditya observed some vibration in the body of the Yogi and almost stopping-of-his-breath. He recalled the chandal’s instructions and got up silently with folded hands to offer the pranama to the Yogi who was showing signs of waking up from the meditation.

A chorus of countless birds’ chirps and the waving-off their wings brushing aside leaves and twigs went into the sky and marched forward bringing silence back to the forest. The Yogi, slowly, very slowly started opening his eyes while Aditya bowed down to offer his pranama as per the instruction of the chandal, and he got up again, his eyes met the eyes of the Yogi. He had never seen such still and calm eyes. At times, he often thought and wondered about ‘what makes the look of one’s eyes different from other’s?’ he had noticed this not only in humans but in animals too! He loves the look in Moti’s eyes the most among all the cattle they have back in home.

Amidst the mysterious forest, a boy’s curious eyes remained in contact with the wisdom-radiating eyes of a Yogi for quite a while and nature kept witnessing it with silence. Aditya had also noticed something like almost-a-smile in the lips of the Yogi. He rushed through his senses and re-framed the questions he must ask the Yogi. As he was doing so, he saw the smile-like-expression being suppressed by the Yogi who got up from his posture gently, turned back towards Aditya and started marching towards the forest deeper.

Aditya, after some moments of indecisiveness, also started going inside the forest following the Yogi; Aditya was walking in a brisk, while the Yogi appeared uniformly paced, relaxed and always ahead of Aditya. Now, Aditya decided to run and go past him to come face-to-face with the Yogi and to his astonishment still found himself lagging behind.

He started shouting his ‘purpose’ and begged him to stop. The forest was very deep now and offered no sight of the Yogi to Aditya anymore.

Amidst the plenty-of-shadow within the forest, Aditya understood where the Sun might have reached the sky now. The whole of Prajnapur must be rushing for work now and his father would refuse to spare a thought regarding the whereabouts of his careless son.

“Why the Yogi has avoided me like this? Where he might have gone? Does he stay within the forest? Has he chandal prayed some joke with me? Te chandal told me about some Unchangeable Bliss that mother had realized before her death and which mother wanted me to realize too! What might be that Unchangeable Bliss? Once I heard that the worshippers of Kali sacrifice animals and even humans in front of their deity to please Her and obtain power. Are they- the chandal and the Yogi, together making any conspiracy to kill me that way? No one would know if they do so! Was Bhulwa, who was a eight-year old orphan and went missing a year, met the same fate that I am scared of meeting at the hand of the chandal and the Yogi?” Aditya increasingly found it difficult to come to a decision about the next course of his action – whether to ‘see-the-end’ or return home. His adventurous-instincts took him deeper into the forest and he frantically started looking for the Yogi; one part of his mind told him: ‘go back, it’s a trap’, and the other half made him remember something that Aditya’s mother told him once, while massaging oil on his head – “never allow two things into your imagination – pleasure and fear. Because most of the time, almost always, imaginary pleasure and imaginary fear both remains imaginary and in reality something very different takes place.”

Aditya sat down under a tree the name of which he did not know and felt hungry. After a while, he got up to search for the Yogi once more. And this time he kept searching until the intensity of light in the forest started falling steadily as he realized that he was in the thickest of the forest and the Sun was preparing to go.

 “The birds,” Aditya often told himself, “are the maddest lover of light and freedom; they never return to their nests until the last rays of light remains in the pool of sky!” and Aditya knew that he was almost lost in the jungle when groups and groups of birds came back to the trees and chirped each other assuring ‘light and freedom will come again the next morning’. Suddenly he recalled something, that, he wandered around the forest for the whole day and did not remember to count steps; but he refused to get scared remembering his mother. Instead he sat cross-legged much in the fashion he saw the Yogi in his meditation and started following one instruction that his mother gave him: “If you are lost and do not find a way, ask for it from the God within, you and everybody else will get it.”

Aditya closed his eyes and started praying in silence.

“You are a strange boy my son! Why did you not return home when I fled away from your sight?” Aditya heard someone talking to him when he was constantly sending prayers to his God-within for a while believing his mother’s words in crisis.

“Are you the Yogi?” Aditya could not see anyone but replied to the voice that appeared to have come from a near-distance.

“Yes, you are right my boy!” Replied the Yogi.

“Why did you run away from me?”

“To see what mettle you are made up off.”

“What mettle?”

“What do you want to know from me?” Asked the Yogi.

“Are you again going to escape?”

“No, no more” The Yogi replied firmly and also said, “One thing Aditya, Goddess Kali loves blood,” he paused for a while that send a shiver through Aditya’s spine and then he resumed to complete, “but the fresh, warm blood of the inner brutes of her worshippers.”

Like the chandal, Aditya understood, the Yogi is also a mind reader.

“How can you, or the chandal read thoughts of another mind?”

“By mastering the own mind and knowing its mechanisms.”

“What are its mechanisms?”

“That is another subject my boy, it needs years and years of systematic practice to learn and master the mechanisms of the mind; but one analogy I can give you.”

“What?”

“Have you ever watched a tide in a river?”

“Yes, in the Indus.”

“What happens in a tide?”

“The water-level suddenly increases.”

“And why it increases?”

“I do not know. Why?”

“Because the water level in the oceans increase and water from oceans enter rivers. That is a tide.”

“But how is it connected with mind reading?”

“Now onward if you witness a tide in a river wont you know that water-levels are trying to reach the sky in the oceans?”

“Yes I will.”

“Exactly this way mind reading can be done. As the water-reservoirs on earth are all inter-connected and if watched carefully one can tell about the condition of the oceans, rivers, ponds, lakes by examining one of these minutely; similarly all minds are connected and waves in your mind had an impact on my mind too and since my years’ of practice of knowing the significance of the minutest ripple in my own mind, I could tell about your thoughts too.”

“Can we read someone’s thoughts all the time?”

“No. Actually it is of no use unless it is required to apply for a cause. So now you tell me what do you want to know from me.” The Yogi asked with a sense of urgency.

“You might be knowing already.”

“May be but how much of that you want?”

“What is ‘That’ thing that the chandal said my mother had realized just before her death- the ‘Unchangeable Bliss’? How can I be sure that my mother wanted me to realize that too? And if so, then how can I obtain that?”

“Is that all?”

“Yes it is.”

“Yes, you mother indeed realized ‘That’ or you call it ‘It’, whatever, ‘that infinite bliss, infinite strength, infinite purity, infinite knowledge’, but my boy what is ‘that’ like nobody can express with words, only can reflect a very fractional part with words, or hymns or action or love. She also wanted you to realize that, but why so I cannot say. How can you realize ‘That’ that also I cannot say, but all I can say is that, we all, including the animals and the insects, the trees and the grasses, the hills and the rivers, the sun and moon and the stars are all projection of ‘That’. Are you understanding my words Aditya?”

“Not really, but I have a feeling that devoting my life to understand these issues would be far more interesting than the need to plough the lands of Prajnapur. But please tell me a way how can I realize ‘That’.”

“I do not know, but I can give you three things that may or may not lead you to a way of achieving your goal.”

“What are those three things?”

“Do not be in hurry. Because, if you accept them then there is no coming back for you!”

“Yes I am ready, but what are the three things?”

“They are three boons. I have been a Mounee for last thirty years and spent every moment of it in austerity and that makes my boons unfailing, so you decide once more.”

Aditya took his time this time and send intense current of prayers to his God-within for a decision.

After some considerable amount of time, Aditya broke the silence, “I am ready to receive with gratitude the three boons you have so kindly considered to give me. I have full faith that they will give me wisdom that I am seeking.”

At this, the Yogi seemed to get pleased and said, “But my boy, one of the boon will pose as a life-threat to you too!”

“I will consider that kind of a death better than death in illness. Please give me the boons, I am ready and eager.”

“That is fine then. I am giving you three extra-ordinary days’ of life to you that would commence from tomorrow. Tomorrow you will find a Banyan tree who is a greater mounee than me, therein you get the chance to see a great life that would teach you something; day after you will be in a cave; next day i.e. the third day you will have a day of play with a little boy. These three days will either make your life or break it. As you have already accepted the boons, you have no way to revert and I pray to the Almighty Mother to protect you. We will never meet again in this life. You are hungry Aditya, eat the fruits I have placed near your right knee.” The voice stopped abruptly and Aditya felt very sleepy after just one bite of the fruit that he had never tasted in Prajnapur.

THREE ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

It is not often, that, Aditya wakes up in the morning without being called. Today is one such rare occasion.

Three boons; three days of extra-ordinary life! Aditya does not know what is in reserve for him, but he now knows that both pleasure and fear in imagination remains only imaginary and reality always finds a place and time in a man’s life to stamp its presence. “Are the boons really true?” Aditya thought to himself as the first astonishment awaited his sense.

 “Is not it a Banyan Tree?” Aditya thought, now fully woke-up looking up at the dense mesh of branches and leaves that had roofed him the whole night and is now protecting him from sunlight.

Birds in groups engaged themselves to go out in the sky – Aditya saw numerous of them who all were sleeping, perhaps peacefully like him the last night, in the arms of the Banyan Tree. He knew the names of many of their species and had never seen the most of the other species; they were colourful and delicate, baring one species that Aditya always found not-a-bird like bird, – the crows.

“What my father might have done last night?” Aditya found that, because of some unknown reasons, however disliking he may have for his father, the thought of the old farmer is not exactly bringing him much comfort at this moment. The old farmer might have frantically looked for him. Also it is a possibility that he might not have taken any food last night. Aditya kept thinking to feel very bad about the situation, “God save the old man” he silently uttered his prayers and hoped that his father do not worry for him for three days at least and whatever punishment he greets him with, he would manage!

“Why am I like this? Why knowingly or unknowingly I become an issue of concern? What do I do if I feel like rising above the routine-life of life-and-death? Why I spend my thoughts on subjects that others reject as foolish? Why I do not agree with them and secretly pursue the thoughts? Am I my own trouble-maker actually?” as Aditya busied himself in thoughts, a crow from the Banyan Tree landed near him on the ground. The not-a-bird like bird had a quick look at the stranger and made Aditya hear something to his astonishment!

“What kind of a bird you are? Where are your wings?” The crow spoke to Aditya in clear words.

“This might be the start of my strange and extra-ordinary period of the three boons as told by the Yogi.” Aditya thought to himself and decided to talk to the crow, “I am not a bird, I am a human being.”

“Human being! What is a human being?”

“Have you never seen one before?”

“I have seen birds, almost all the types and I have seen many a type of animals- deer, leopard, tiger, buffalo…many, I have seen snakes and we birds do not like that creature, then I have seen…” the crow continued as Aditya found that very interesting, “but I have never seen an animal called human being.” The crow concluded.

“I told you I am human being, not an animal. Do not call me an animal” Aditya found the crow’s words very disgusting.

“What is the difference?”

Aditya did not know how to answer that but still decided to give it a try, “See, human beings are different from animals…”

“How?” The crow interrupted Aditya, “do you feel hungry?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Animals feel hungry too. Do you sleep?”

“Yes we do.”

“Animals sleep too. Do you give birth to children?”

“Yes.”

“Animals too! We lay eggs and then our children come out. So you do all the things that we do too, is not it? So why are you saying that you are not animals?”

“I do not know what is the difference, but there is surely something! I will tell you when I know.”

At this, Aditya heard the crow call out for his mates and they all broke out in a particular chirping that he found very similar to an insulting-laughter.

“I am feeling hungry. Can you show me the way to obtain some fruits in the jungle?” Aditya asked the crow.

“We all know where to get our food from. What kind of animal you are! You do not even know where to get your food from?” the crow joked with Aditya before flying out in the sky along with other birds.

Aditya looked-up at the sky, it was visible in pieces between the birds!

“Before it is too late and the situation gets beyond control, I must go back home.” Aditya thought to himself, “After all, how can a tree, just a tree, can give me a way of knowing what my mother had realized before her death! What a blunder I have committed by believing in the chandal’s words! They all- the chandal and the Yogi have proved what my father and the villagers used to say about me – ‘I am a fool and always spend time in useless thinking’. If I could have curbed that habit of getting curious at everything, then this fate would have not come in my life. Boons! What boons? They were all hallucinations. True, I have not counted my steps, but if try I will surely find a way out of the forest and reach home.” Aditya decided to break out of all his mistakes and start life afresh and got up with a new spirit and determination.

Wading through the strange paths of the jungle, for the whole day, immersed in thoughts of all strange kinds – fear and hope and also the tendency to check out the boons once more – either to verify or to falsify, Aditya returned to the place where he woke up in the morning. He saw the birds returning to their nests in groups and almost felt like breaking down in tears.

“After all what I look for in life? Do I really want to know what my mother knew before death or this is just an escape-route because I do not like the poverty in which we have been living at Prajnapur?” Aditya questioned himself putting his head down, listening to the beats of fear in his heart. He found a burning sensation of humidity in his eyes before hearing a very soft yet strong voice.

“I think it is both. You sincerely want to know what your mother had realized that – ‘that infinite bliss’, at the time of her death, and also you do look for a way out of the poverty.”

It is almost dark in the forest and Aditya had a feeling that the voice is not of any bird, “Is it the Banyan tree?” he thought.

“Who are you?” Aditya asked the strange source of the voice.

“Under whom you are sitting!” came the answer.

“Banyan Tree?”

“Yes, my boy!”

“Are you the Banyan Tree the Yogi mentioned to me?”

“Which Yogi?”

“I met a Yogi yesterday and he told me that I would meet a Banyan Tree who is a greater mounee than him and can help me out in my quest.”

“Every tree is silent, every tree is a mounee.”

“May be, but he particularly told me about a Banyan Tree.”

“May be, but I have no idea why you want to talk to a Banyan tree and why you are here, this place is dangerous for human-beings. I have seen one after two hundred years now.”

At this, Aditya briefly told the Banyan Tree the sequence of events that had led him here in this forest.

“How come you have believed in the boons?” The Banyan Tree asked Aditya after hearing the story.

“I wanted to test. I was curious. And moreover, I did not have much time to think, as things kept happening one after another so fast.”

“What, if the boons lead you to nowhere?”

“The Yogi himself said that the boons may not serve any purpose and it was up to me to avail those, he gave me choice, I opted to receive. And also, I do not think the boons are altogether false, else how come I am hearing a tree talking to me?”

“And you want to say, that is making you hopeful about the rest?”

“Yes, I must say so.”

“Then, may be you are right and may be not.”

“Your words are puzzling me.”

“What I feel, you should go back home.”

“Why?”

“Forest is not the place for humans to live, it is for trees and animals.”

“I have not come here to stay, I have come here to live my boons and get teaching from you.”

“We are trees and not teachers, we serve and do not preach.”

“I want to know why you serve.”

“This is our nature.”

“Who gave you this ‘nature’?”

“The giver of natures – the Nature.”

“I have a feeling that you are trying to avoid me…”

“We trees do not avoid anything, neither heat, nor cold, we only endear and serve.”

“Do we, human beings, have anything to learn from you?”

“I do not know.”

“You said that you only serve, is not it?”

“Yes.”

“But you see you are not helping me.”

“What do you want?”

“The Yogi said, in you I will see a great life, and that would teach me some lessons.”

“Everyone’s life is great, at different degree of its manifestation. Tell me what you want to know about me? If that serve any purpose I will be obliged. But before that go back two hundred and five steps backward, there you will find a small tree. Go and eat its fruits and then we will talk.”

Aditya obeyed and this time he ate four apple-like fruits and came back at the root of the Banyan Tree. His first boon was getting realized.

*   *   *

“The mind is more stable when the stomach is non-empty!” Aditya thought to himself as he prepared to start the conversation.

“Can I call you the Wise Tree?”

“Actually I do not have a name, but you can call me anything you like my boy.” The Banyan Tree replied to Aditya.

“We human beings, each of us, have a name. But animals do not, trees do not, why?”

“From a lower stand-point non-humans are not capable of ‘individualisation’ and from a higher stand-point we opt for ‘universalisation’ or ‘unification’ rather than individualisation.”

“What is individualisation and what is universalisation?”

“I am so and so, I am tall, I am short, I am ugly, I am beautiful, I am strong, I am weak, I am the son of so and so, I am the brother of so and so and I am limited within these attributes only, anything beyond is not me. This is individualisation. And thus I have a name and the name tells who am I. This is individualisation.”

“And universalisation?”

“The reverse, trying to see the ‘Whole’ and not the part.”

“But something from within always keeps us conscious about our individuality, does not it?”

“It does and also keep an individual very uncomfortable.”

“How?”

“Does not everyone fear to die? Have not you seen how everybody try to avoid thinking of his own death?”

“Yes…”

“That shows that the ‘individual’ within is attuned with the ‘birthless-deathless-universal’ and that is why even subconsciously the illusion of death is repelled by it.”

“How can universalisation be attained? What is the benefit?”

“Universalisation cannot be attained my son, so the question of benefit does not arise at all.”

“But you said that you trees are ‘universal’.”

“Not all, only a few.”

“So you are accepting that you have that universal-consciousness!”

“By the grace of the All-Pervading, yes, I have.”

“So, how you got it.”

“I did not get that.”

“You want to say that you always had that?”

“Yes I always had that and so does everybody!”

“But I cannot feel that within me!”

“That is why you live, else you would have opted to end the play or opted to be a tree like me.”

“End the play! Opting to be a tree like you! Were you always not a tree?”

“I was not.”

“Then what you were?”

“An animal with the capacity to do a fourth thing besides eating, sleeping and reproducing; an animal who could feel an individuality; a human being who could question and search and had the potential to dissolve the individuality into universality.”

“You mean you were a human being?”

“Exactly my boy. I was very much like you.”

“Like me!”

“Yes, that was more than three hundred years ago.”

“Three hundred?”

“Yes, a little more than that, my tree-age is a little over two hundred and seventy years.”

“O Wise-Tree, I am so eager to listen to your story, please consider me able to receive you life-story.”

“Of course I will, I have already said that the attribute of a tree is to serve, so of course it would be my pleasure to serve you with whatever you want from me.”

“I am feeling myself as fortunate too O Wise-Tree! Please tell me the story.”

“I was the son of a fisherman and at your age I had been ably supporting my bodily-father. And I became very skillful within a very short period of time and started netting more fish than my father would, I got the support of luck too. We would go to the Indus in the morning or night and would come back with boat-full of fishes; some we would trade and some we would distribute. We had never seen poverty in our house and would were good cloths and always ate stomach-full. But somewhere I had a discontent deep within me that I never shared with anyone. I always wondered what the human life is all about! Are we also supposed to be caught in the net of death one day when we are old? Are we invariably not same with those fishes? These thoughts started troubling me a lot and soon I found I was catching lesser fishes than my father would catch; in a way I was losing interest in life.”

“Then?”

“One night, on the pretext of fishing, I started rowing my boat alone towards destination-unknown on Indus. It was a full moon and the surrounding was very beautiful. In the midnight when I might had been quite far away from my village, on the Indus, I saw an old Yogi set to immerse his body down into the waters of the Indus. I forcefully rescued him from the water and wanted to know why he was trying to give up his body.”

“Why was he trying to commit suicide?”

“He told me that the utility of his body was over and thus was going for a Salil-Samadhi, – a willful self immersion in the river-water. According to him, he had realized himself as one with the All-Pervading and there was no more need to keep the individual-identity that was manifested through his body.”

“Then what did he do, died?”

“Yes, he did, but after a night-long conversation with me. ”

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me many things about his own austerity and particularly made an wish.”

“What wish?”

“He told, ‘Go meditate and see Light; realize that you ever were, are and ever will be the Universal-Consciousness.’”

“Then what did you say?”

“I refused. I told that my father needs me and I cannot spend my life meditating.”

“Then?”

“On this he said something very strange. He said, ‘See, my little limited individuality has merged with the limitless Universal-Consciousness, so every thought I think now will definitely manifest. You will attain your Knowledge-Original, your Universal-Being. My words cannot fail.’ By saying this he recited some hymns and dived into the waters of the Indus and I could only see that like a hypnotized witness.”

“Then what happened?”

“I returned home and came out within days once and for all. Went deep inside a forest and meditated against all odds to see the Light.”

“You saw the Light?”

“Yes my boy, I saw the Light.”

“What was it all about?”

“It cannot be said through mouth, it cannot be expressed in words; but you can also see it.”

“Did my mother see something similar?”

“Yes, her individuality busted into the Infinite-Ocean of Love-Consciousness, which you want to realize too, is not it?”

“Yes, I want to, but I am a little scarred too!”

“This is natural.”

“Tell me what happened when you saw the Light.”

“I had two ways – either to go the way the old Yogi had gone in the Indus or serve the world of God.”

“And you opted for the second one?”

“You caught it right.”

“But how come you become a tree?”

“‘Forms’ are the projection of thoughts. I saw myself serving one and all silently, with love and without expectation; I meditated on this role so intensely that I became a condensed form of compassion and took the shape of a Banyan-Seed by choice; gradually I became a tree from that seed and my tree-life is my second-phase of austerity- and it is so good, so divine! Now I can tell you that if our lives are deeply rooted in purpose and flourished in service-with-love then living hundreds of years only intensifies the divine-joy.”

“Purpose means?”

“Purpose means the gradual progression towards the Universal-Consciousness from the little ‘individuality’, dissolving it more and more into the All-Pervading-Love by acts of love.”

“So, the boons are true, is not it, the Wise-Tree?”

“They ought to be, but I tell you, you go back home and do not venture into the next boon-effects, one of those may take your life my son, I do not want that.”

“According to you, no one dies.”

“But still my boy, do not venture out at this hour of the night! Do not you feel the wind that is blowing so hard and the accumulation of the clouds? It is about to rain and a great storm will break out soon, come to my arms my son, I will protect you as I protect the birds.”

Aditya offered his gratitude to the Wise-Tree and spared no thought about a protection against the storm that started even before he could walk past the range of Banyan-Tree’s voice.

Banyan-Tree kept calling out for Aditya and the boy marched ahead. The boons were for real. The sky was at is cruel-best and beautiful too.

FOUR ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

The storm that broke off last night with its cruel thunders took away many lives with it; it made numerous birds incapable of flying in freedom and lightening struck many deer calves before their mother and many mothers before their little ones. The entire jungle is still mourning amidst fallen trees.

It was difficult for Aditya to wade off the mighty wind and the harsh rain, but he was not to return to the Banyan Tree and also not to take shelter under any other tree, so he marched on; marched on into the threat, drenched and weak-footed. Broken flying twigs and branches hit him on many places of his body but Aditya was prepared to die but not ready to stop.

Lightening pierced the heart every time, and every time it illumined the surroundings to Aditya too. At the heart of the heart he believed the cave mentioned in the second boon by the Yogi must be near about, and at the flash of each lightening, he hoped to get a glimpse of that and kept failing. Kept failing but not discouraged. He knew the second boon must also have to come true.

Hit by twigs and incessant rain, he found a rock to lean against. The storm was slowing down and Aditya decided to go to the other side of the rock to avoid the rain. As he turned to the other side, he found a pattern in the rock that offered him complete protection against the storm. He sat and unknowingly fell asleep thinking and hoping about the second boon to come true and find the cave.

The storm had completely stopped then and Aditya heard the Banyan Tree in his sleep, “If you had counted your steps, come back to me in the morning.”

At the break of the dawn Aditya recalled his last night’s dream about the Banyan Tree, and decided to go back. He saw the wounds in his body and regretted for not listening to the Wise Tree’s words. He recalled, that, amidst the devastation last night, he had counted his steps. He got up quickly and readied himself to count the steps back.

The jungle, although in much disarray, looked cleaner and fresher. The soil was still wet and a little muddy and appeared to dry up soon at the receiving end of a brightly lit up Sun. The birds still flew in the sky and Aditya observed no sign of any cave nearby. He had started his journey back to the Banyan Tree.

While he had completed the number of steps he counted last night from the root of the Wise Tree and failed to find the tree at the completion, he realized what he had done, – moved in a wrong direction. He called out for the tree in a loud voice, at the top of his voice to get his words echoed back to him.

“What has obstructed my voice?” He thought to himself and was curious to find out whether there was a hill nearby. As he advanced he realized where his voice had hit and how it came back to him. It was a wide rocky-hill almost invisible under the wrap of the trees.

As Aditya advanced towards it, he realized for one more time that the boons were all supposed to come true as he clearly saw the entrance of a cave.

He entered with cautious steps, unsure what is in reserve for him. “Is the cave going to speak this time? Who knows, here everything speaks!” He wondered and entered.

The first thing that came to Aditya’s mind was, that, he has to rely on his step-counting-skill to explore the cave as he suspected whether light had ever entered the cave; it was a blinding darkness as if darkness slept over darkness. But on advancing a few more steps, he heard voices from within.

It was a murmuring of some sort, Aditya felt on advancing a little more.

“Welcome to the cave of joy, O freshly dead!” A husky voice greeted Aditya.

“Dead? Who is dead?” Aditya thought to himself and spoke the same.

“Yes, I am referring you.” The husky voice confirmed that it was addressing Aditya.

“But I am not dead.” Aditya clarified.

“It cannot be. You are dead. But do not worry, it happens with the spirits that just leaves their bodies out. I guess you were killed by last night’s storm!”

“No I am not dead and I can understand it, I can feel that I am very much alive!”

“Alive?” Laughter broke out from all directions and the voice resumed, “If you are alive then how have you entered this place? Only the dead come here not living-beings. You are dead.”

Aditya did not know what to say at that, and stood still for moments, trying to verify whether he was actually alive and not dead as the voice was claiming.

“Which place is this?”

“This is the cave of joy as I have already told you. Tell me, if you are not dead, then how have you entered this place?” The voice ordered.

“I was lost in the jungle amidst the storm and wanted to find a shelter, so I guess, by mistake I have come here. But I am not dead.”

“How can you prove that?”

“What proof you want?”

“Can you see us?”

“It is so dark, how can I see you or anybody else?”

“O hell! This means you are really not dead! We dead ones can see each other and we are seeing you too!”

Aditya did not know what to reply with and stood calm.

“Do you want to go out? Are you scared?”

“Not really! Can I spend some time with you?”

“Why do you want to spend time with us?”

“Because I want to see how dead men lives.”

“But no living men can stay with us. This cave is only for the dead. If you want to live with us, you will have to die.”

“I do not want to live with you forever, I just want to have a glimpse of your life and then I will go out.” Aditya gave his option to the voice and heard the murmur again, as if they were all discussing something and framing a decision.

“But why you want to live with us?” the voice enquired.

At this, Aditya told his story to the voice, about the Yogi, his boons, the Banyan Tree.

“I see” the voice replied, “So you are searching something.”

“Yes, I want to realize what my mother had realized.”

“Your mother had realized nothing. All these Yogis and Banyan Trees had been making a fool of you.”

“I do not think so.”

“Nobody ‘thinks’ in this cave. So if you want to be with us cut off this habit of ‘thinking’.”

“Dead men cannot think?”

“They can, but what is the use of ‘thinking’? We were happy when we were alive, had food, drink, wealth, children and we are happy even after death; while living we did not use to ‘think’ and that has brought us to this cave of joy – that ability to not ‘think’. If you do not ‘think’, you have joy.”

“But I think, no one can do away without ‘thinking’!”

“You think so, not us! Anyway, tell me how will you live here if you do not see us? Do you want to get rid of this darkness or have the eyes that can see in darkness?”

“I think I will need that to see your joyful life.”

“But everything comes for a price my dear!”

“What price do I have to pay? I have no possessions with me at this moment.”

“That matters not. But you have a possession.”

“What’s that?”

“Your ‘sense-of-life’.”

“Means?”

“As I told you, we dead men can see each other, so if you want to see us you will have to die.”

“Is there no other way?”

“There is one, however!”

“What is that?”

“You will have to undergo a session of magic.”

“Magic! What sort of magic?”

“It will take your living-consciousness away for a day and you will feel that you are dead and then can see all of us. Tell me are you ready?”

“I need time.”

“Do take your time, but if you want to see our life then it must be on our terms, or else…”

“Else what?”

“Else we will kill you right here and then you can stay here forever.”

“I refuse to get intimidated by your words, but I take the offer of the magic-session. You can tell your magician to do as he likes; but at the same time promise me that the effect of the magic will only be very short lived.”

“I, the King of this cave, promise you that you will get your living-consciousness back before the break of tomorrow’s morning.”

Aditya heard all sorts of strange sounds, sort of some strange recitation of some symbolic words for a while and saw the members of the cave all at one go when the magician had completed his magic by splashing the magic-water on Aditya’s eyes.

The second boon of the Yogi was at full go.

*   *   *

What Aditya saw on opening his eyes, send a shivering through his spine, his whole body shook up twice and the heart contracted into a seed-of-pity.

“You call this the cave of joy?” He straightway confronted the magician-king of the cave.

“Ah it is wonderful, you are dead now. Now you can fully avail the joy of this cave.”

“What joy are you talking about? The joy of the burning sensation that they are getting? The joy of ever-flowing blood from their hearts that they are having? The joy of the unbearable weight that they are trying to steady on their heads?” Aditya pointed out at the various instances of pictures that terrified his heart at the first glance of the cave.

“You go and ask them whether they are not taking joy in all that they are doing. You also go and ask him, then her, then…” the magician kept on pointing at other scenes.

They all were busy, but the look in their eyes empty; they were pale, almost bloodless and bony, and to Aditya none of them looked as if dead; Aditya also himself not felt like dead, but acknowledged to himself that at least the magic-water has taken the darkness away.

He determined himself to go and talk to them all and also wondered how the events, – the chandal, the Yogi, the Banyan Tree and the coming ones are going to impact his life, his thought process, his preferences, his opinions, his decisions! And moreover is this leading up to his discovery of what his mother realized before her death; is it going to verify that human being with their limited-little-individual can actually realize the ‘universal’ and feel again ‘One-with-the-One’?

“Of course I will talk to them” Aditya replied to the magician’s challenge.

“That is nice, if you find one, who says he or she is not in joy, you are free from the effect of the magic.”

“Means? Did not you say it is going to last only till tomorrow’s morning?”

The magician threw a cruel smile at Aditya and disappeared in a flash without feeling any necessity to answer Aditya’s question.

Aditya decided to see till the next morning and told his heart not to get scared, and approached the man who was repeatedly putting his hand into a bucket of boiling water.

“Why are you doing this?” Aditya asked the man who looked nowhere and was driving his hand in and out like a mad. Aditya had to repeat his question. Twice. Thrice.

Now the man looked at Aditya’s eyes, “Why have you come here? There is no escape. No escape!” and then he continued doing what he was.

“Who brought you here? Are you dead?”

“I brought myself here. I am not dead.”

“You are putting your hand inside the hot water, is it not burning you? Is not it painful?”

“Pain? What is that?”

“Are you really alive?”

“I am alive, I am alive, but only I have lost my life.”

“Your words are so confusing! Why do not you tell me everything clearly? How can one be alive after losing his life?”

“Men with whom it happens, come here. I have come here.”

“When did you come here, long back?”

“Forgotten everything. When did I come here?”

“Who has made your condition so pathetic, the magician?”

“No, he only took advantage. He does not have the power to kill, he only waits for men like me to apply his magic on when we arrive here!”

“Will he apply his magic on me too?”

“No, he cannot, you are not dead that is why.”

“But you said you are also alive!”

“Am I alive? Am I alive?” the man wanted to verify this from Aditya and then cried at the top of his voice, “I am alive…!” and then lifted the bucket full of hot water to pour on his head.

Aditya sprang away in horror and stood still for moments to reflect on the incident.

Aditya kept looking at the persons who were engaged in peculiar activities in the cave; he felt like going up to the young man who was bleeding profusely from his heart and help him, but restrained, knowing that invariably all are likely to converse in that strange way as the man did with Aditya and poured boiling water on his head.

He particularly wanted to know that whether these men are dead or alive and if alive then why were they engaged in such peculiar deeds! Unsure how to find out this he set his eyes on a relatively less busy man who was looking very old and was repeatedly counting something at the roof of the cave. Aditya decided to make one more attempt to know something about the secret of this cave.

“What are you counting there?” Aditya asked the old man.

“I am just making sure whether all my possessions are in place or not.” The old man was quick in his answer and welcomed Aditya with a very normal and almost a warm smile.

“What kind of possession? Where are they?”

“From there you cannot see, you need to come a little closer.” The man suggested Aditya.

Aditya did accordingly and looked up at the roof to see nothing.

“I can see nothing still!” Aditya regretted.

“O how come? Why cannot you see?” the old man pointed with keenness, “right up there! Cannot you see the beautiful house and all my dear ones there? Cannot you see the wealth I have accumulated and kept so safely in that corner under the ground? Cannot you see and hear the respect with which my neighbours are calling me out?”

“O yes, now I can see some of it.” Aditya saw nothing and yet wanted to continue the conversation with a little lie.

“I knew from this spot one must be able to see!”

“Tell me one thing”

“Yes, my boy, please ask what you want to know. You have come to a very learned person. I do not think anyone in this cave has read even the half of what I have read.”

“But have you read all the books in the world?”

“No, not really, not all!”

“Then by your own reasoning, you do not have all the knowledge of the world and moreover books and scriptures will keep coming and no one can live forever to read them all; does this prove that one can never attain complete knowledge if knowledge is believed to exist in book only?”

“Ah, yes, in a way you are right.” The old man looked visibly uncomfortable and yet continued, “but the number of books I have read are huge, I think that no other in this cave can give me a defeat, and since your reasoning applies to all, by that very reasoning you must acknowledge me as the most learned having the highest knowledge.”

“May be you are right.”

“O yes, and you were supposed to ask me something.” The old man got his comfort back.

“By nature are we individual or universal? I mean is there anything that exists in the veil of this limited body-mind?”

“When I was at your age, I also used to think about all these issues!”

“And that is no answer to my question!”

“Even I used to feel the same way when somebody would fail to answer my questions. But later on I understood the truth.”

“What was that?”

“The truth is, human life is the life for enjoyment and not quests. You may fill your heart with many ideas of infinity, bliss or universality but the truth is, death wipes out everything and thus you must and only try to be as happy as possible till death comes.”

“Are you dead or alive?”

“The magician says I am dead, I believe I am not.”

“What your books say?”

“The books stay silent.”

“Is it painful?”

“Yes, it is painful my boy, it…”

At this Aditya cried out for the magician, in a tone of challenge. “Can you hear this magician? Can you hear this old man? He is pain and not joy, he is in pain. And as a matter of fact all are in pain in this cave, perhaps only you have hypnotized them to interpret pain as joy. Show your face to me now and show me the way out of this cave too. I have learnt what happens when men forgets, ignores and kills their link to the universal element; they arrive at this cave to get tortured at your cruel hands. I condemn your cruel magic. Show me your face… ” As Aditya kept throwing his angry-words in the air the husky voice appeared again with a cruel laughter.

“There is no way out from this cave my boy, instead there is a prize for you for insulting me in my cave in front of my people. Stay here till infinity remaining blind.”

Aditya got a splash of water on his face before he could say anything. And what followed next was a crushing darkness all around, and Aditya heard the magician again instructing all the residents of the cave, “Stone him to death.” Aditya’s heart choked but still he could hold on to some reasoning, “All that the Yogi had said came true, He said one of the boon would pose a life threat to me and this is that boon. He did not say I will die, he only said it would be a threat; so if the third boon is yet to appear then my death cannot happen in this phase.” Aditya decided to calmly wait for the result to show up, connected with the God-within with prayers for courage as the stone-rain met him with furious-force.

FIVE ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

“If you play with me the rain will stop.” Aditya heard a very sweet and innocent voice as he sat at the break of the stone-rain to connect to the God-within and find a way out.

“But who are you?”

“I am your friend.”

“Friend? Are you from Prajnapur?”

“I am also from Prajnapur.”

“What is your name?”

“Any name that you can think of, you never played with me before, but I always wanted to play with you. Tell me will you play?”

“How the rain will stop if I play with you?”

“Because death dies in my presence?”

 “How can I play with you? I am deeply injured! Cannot you see how deeply I am bleeding.”

“They have only decorated our play ground with red flowers! Tell me are you playing?”

“Where shall we be playing, in this cave?”

“No, in a different cave.”

“Which cave?”

“The cave at the heart of your heart and which is never dark.”

“You mean in imagination?”

“In imagination of the Real.”

“That is alright, but what is the game? And how the winner would be decided?”

“The game is – ‘you will require to identify me’, and naturally if you succeed you win else you fail.”

“How long do I have to play it? What is the duration?”

“The duration is from the start of the game till you win.”

“No, no, that cannot be! I am in a hurry!”

“What is the hurry?”

At this Aditya told his friend about his story so far and stated that he in particular was trying to realize what his mother experienced at the time of the death.

“You can find the answer my friend, it all depends how you play the game and how soon you win.”

“Is that true?”

“As true as I am” assured the friend.

“So how to start?” Aditya asked.

“I ask you questions and you try to answer.”

“I do not have any knowledge, I am from a poor village with very little facilities for education; I can count numbers; recite a few poems that my mother taught me and write a few sentences only.”

“The game is not education-based, it is based on the willingness to think.”

“Then I am ready, tell me what is your first question?”

“I am telling you something about myself and then you tell me who am I.”

“Fine, tell me, I am listening.”

“When you divide, divide and divide me, I remain as the One; Tell me who am I! When you push and apply all the force of the world, I still smilingly remain still and unmoving, but you can take me anywhere you like; Tell me who am I! Let your mind run fast and I walk the slowest, yet I reach the target first; Tell me who am I! You cannot see me, you cannot hear me, you cannot taste me, you cannot touch me, you cannot smell me; Tell me who am I! Put everyone, everything in a race with me and I outrun all; Tell me who am I! Whatever shines, shines because of me; Tell me who am I! I move, I move not, I am far-off, I am very near, I am inside you, outside you; Tell me fast, tell me who am I!”

“My goodness! That is such a long question and is so puzzling!”

“But tell me fast, tell me fast my friend.”

“Patience! I am trying. I will win.”

“Let me see!”

Time stood still and the rain of stones too. It was darkness outside at the cave and light within, at the cave where the playground was set, – at the heart of Aditya’s heart. Silence wrapped silence as he concentrated to solve the riddle. Silence continued in rhythm as Aditya wanted to know what remains as ‘The One’ after divisions innumerous- water? Space? It must have to be the thing that ever was, is and ever will be. Once an old wise man asked him to look at the sky in a star-studded night; it was winter then and he was eleven years old. He looked up at the sky when the old man asked him to count the stars. He started and after a while told a number and the old man said it was one less; he added one more to the last number and the old man said it was still one less; then he told the boy-in-wonder about the stars, the moons, the planets, the galaxies and their container – the space. He said that space appears, expands into more space and then disappears. The boy kept hearing the old wise man who had long-flowing white beards and always looked content, whose sight always looked beyond but not lost. That night the old man was the guest at Aditya’s house and his mother had cooked rice-milk.

Is space that thing that is undividable? But where from space appears? The old man had said ‘space appears, grows and disappears’. What is the Container of space? When it disappears, where does it dissolve? Is the Container of the Space – the undividable ‘One’?

Aditya found that winter-night’s calm inside the heart of his heart where the other player also stood in patience for the answer.

He dived deeper at the heart of his heart, and felt the ‘Container of Space’ a good argument to carry on with for the rest part of the riddle.

“That ‘Container’ whatever that is, if ‘One’ then must have to be all-pervading,” He continued at the heart of his heart, “and where is the ‘second’ to push it? ‘One’ cannot push ‘itself’, if pushes then where, which direction? – That would be also within that ‘One’, so nothing can push the ‘One’, so the ‘One’-the ‘Container of Space’ is Unmoving; it never moved, never moving, will never move because It is always within Itself.”

“How come that be taken anywhere which is Stationary and Unmoving? It can be taken anywhere because it is already everywhere.” Aditya concentrated hard, and it was only giving him a certain kind of unspeakable joy and he continued to formulate the rest.

Aditya often used to hear his mother hum a folk-tune while doing the household jobs with swift hands. Aditya remembers most part of that song that went as “O my mind, hold on, I cannot keep pace with you; O mind, be slow on forming thoughts, I cannot keep pace with you; O mind, rush not to imagination else I will forget myself in dream; O my mind, hold on, do not bring the bitter fruits of my bitter thoughts so soon that I do not find the time to rectify them; O mind, slow down, I cannot keep pace with you…”

As he recalled the song in parts, he himself got aware of, up to some extent, the speed at which the mind functions- so many thoughts, one after another, towards so many directions! Where the thoughts end up traveling? The Yogi gave the analogy of interconnected water-reservoirs. Do thoughts travel to hit other thought-waves in some other mind or they do not travel at all? Traveling at high speed and where it reaches, out from the ‘Container of Space’? – That cannot be, as minds are within bodies, bodies are within worlds, worlds are within Space, Space is within the ‘Container’- the ‘One’. So this way it is faster than the mind” Aditya felt encouraged as he felt like advancing towards solving the riddle and condensed the concentration.

“It can surely be tasted, as everything we eat is made up of that ‘One’ thing; it can be seen heard, spoken about, touched and smelt for that reason too. But since ‘That’ is the ‘One’- the ‘Whole’ and the objects of taste, hear, smell, touch and seeing are ‘parts’, so ‘That’ cannot be seen, heard, touched or tasted.”

Silence all around was getting intensified and the light brighter in the cave, at the heart of the heart. ‘Where was this game before, where the play itself is as sweet as a triumphant result. Where was that playground before where the breathing is so uniform and more the play better the rhythm?’ Aditya was getting lost in the charm and felt his friend within encouraging him to go on. ‘Where was a competitor like him before?’

“It is Stationary, Unmoving and the Container of Space; space – that appears, grows and disappears. It is a Container and the ‘One’ without a second and container of all movements that moves within it to remain within. It was there at the origin of all movements, it is there along the path of all the movements and it is there where the motion ends and it is also beyond the point where motion ceases, thus it outruns all remaining Stationary and Unmoving. It is the Fastest being Motionless and All-Pervading. The earth is spinning and revolving around the Sun, within the Container; the sun is moving within the Container, the Galaxies are moving within it too and it accommodates all- the moving masses and the thoughts in motion. It outruns all remaining still, accommodating everything, within.

Everything operates as if someone has told them how to operate; The Sun that shines, the breeze that blows, the flower that flourishes and spreads fragrance, the river that flows continuously, the small ants who knows where to get their food from and how, the birds that fly, the trees that gives shadow, the soil that knows how to give life to the seeds sowed into it, the infants- the way they know how to suck their mother’s milk, the fire that knows how to burn, the breathing system that knows how to inhale and exhale in order to live, the system that knows how to assimilate vital energy from food, the tiger-cub knows that it is a tiger-cub and a lamb-calf knows it is a lamb-calf, the way nature forms storms and also ends them, the way seasons know when to come and when to go, the way time dwells between day and night, the way bodies know how to grow and how to decay, the way fishes know how to swim, the way human beings know that they can ‘think’; the way harmony appears everywhere, it looks everything and everybody has the knowledge of ‘what-to-do’ present within. Is it that ‘One’, that manifests through all- through the light of the Sun to the fragrance of a flower or a man’s ability to ‘think’? The ‘One’ therefore is not insentient and must be pure Consciousness.”  As Aditya sharpened the one-pointed concentration, the outer world completely ceased to exist for him for that time being; he felt he was winning and immersed himself more into the play he never played before and the play he never knew he was capable of playing before!

“No wonder that you move – appear to move and actually move not, O my All-Pervading friend!” Now Aditya started a conversation with the kid who brought him into the play and stopped the rain of stones long back, “No wonder you would be far-off and very near, O my All-Pervading friend! No wonder that you are within me and outside too, O my All-Pervading friend!”

“Whatever you have thought and told, the way you played is all right, ”, now the kid came and embraced Aditya from the back with his delicate little hands and his resting his chin on Aditya’s right shoulder, he brought his mouth very near to Aditya’s ear to whisper, “But you have still not answered my question. Tell me who am I?”

“I tried, but at that point I got puzzled. You are beautiful, but who are you that I do not know.”

“Then let me further help you to find who am I. I am going to tell you what ‘I am not’ and catch them all to form my picture!”

“I am ready to play with you more my friend. Tell me ‘what you are not’.”

“I am not that, that changes, I am not that, that had something before me, I am not that, that would have something after me, I am not that, that has a form, or a shape, or a size or a volume or colour or odour. I am not that, that works, I am not that, that can be perished; tell me who am I.”

Aditya took them all, at the heart of his heart – the cave that illumined bright as the core of the Sun sans the blinding effect of light-rays, sans the heat. It was soothing all of Aditya’s wounds and it was drawing him deeper into its pool of peace.

“True it is that you are changeless”, Aditya resumed the play and found himself putting the pieces to form the whole. “The space appears, grows, shrinks, and disappears. Where from the space comes? From you! Where it resides and grows? – In you! And then it shrinks and comes back to non-existence, where does it dissolve? – In You! You create the Space by your own power, with your own self and then you create the star-system up to the smallest creatures of the world. From the birth of the Space, throughout its life till its death the Space along with the members of its family undergoes change, continuously; because with its birth, starts time! Time that is an eternal painter – a painter that uses the canvas of the Space and paints the pictures of change until space shrinks back to nothing and time vanishes. The canvas is within you, the painter is within you; Space belongs to you, time belongs to you; you belong to them not, and naturally disqualify to be relative, change is not applicable to you. The Absolute changes not.

Before you, you had yourself in your place, you will have yourself in the same place. Because, you stretch up to infinity, towards your precedent period and you also stretch up to infinity towards your consequent stage; when you move, you always find yourself already ahead of you. Time reaches you not being merely a tiny-manifestation of you and you have thus, no past, no present, no future as every future needs a past and every past has a present, being relative to each other, as painted by the painter-time. Being the Absolute and not the relative you had and will have yourself in your precedent and consequent stage; or in actuality, you never had a precedent stage or can never have a consequent stage. Births and Deaths are bubbles that dances within you and you are Birthless and Deathless. You were not formed, as is, who other than you exists to form you? You are the cause of your own being- ‘The Eternal’.

Every work needs a doer of it and it yields a result. What can you find to work upon other than you and what result other than you can yield if the work is done? Where the result will go and what it will impact other than you? You-in-work is truly a delusion. What can exert a force upon you with an attempt to disintegrate you? You are the ‘One’ without a second, You are the Eternal without a beginning or end, You are the pure Consciousness that reflects through everything; Imperishable truly you are!” Aditya felt as if his breathing was on a hold and now took a deep one that vibrated deep up to his navel and wanted to hear from his playmate back.

“So, now you tell me who am I?”

Aditya could not understand, how to satisfy his friend and kept looking at him with silence, expecting him to say that Aditya has failed in the game despite the hours-long efforts.

“No my friend! You have not succeeded, true, but you have not failed either.” Aditya heard the boy speaking to him as if he had understood his feelings.

“How can that be possible? How can I not succeed and not fail at the same time?”

“It is because, in this play, there is no defeat, no failure, only success of different intensity, different magnitude!”

“I am clueless.”

“Tell me, did you ever think the thoughts that you have just thought in the game anytime in life before?”

“No, honestly no, but I also never met you before and not played this game with anyone else!”

“But I was always there with you, anytime you could have played the game by calling me out at the playground.”

“If you were always there then why couldn’t I see you?”

“Because you were playing other games.”

“Were you also playing other games with other friends when I was not playing with you?”

“Yes I was playing at the heart of the hearts of other friends and are still playing, and I was waiting for them patiently who did not believe me to be their friends. I am still waiting at the hearts of those who are devoid of faith in their own self and are busy playing other games. I am waiting at the heart of the hearts of animals that are clueless about a friend within them. I will wait for all of them. They all will play with me one by one someday!”

“So, now you tell me who you are.” Now Aditya begged to know about the from the kid himself.

“I am a symbol.”

“Symbol? Symbol of what?”

“Symbol of ‘That’, that you have been describing and reasoning for a while now – the ‘One’, the ‘Eternal’, the ‘Pure Consciousness’, the ‘Imperishable’, the ‘Infinity’, the ‘Birthless’ and ‘Deathless’, the ‘Stationary’, the ‘Self-Effulgent’… ”

“Now you are saying that you are the symbol of ‘That’, whereas earlier you said you are ‘That’!”

“Both are true.”

“How?”

“Remember, you said ‘That’ cannot be expressed through words?”

“Yes, the Wise-Tree also said so.”

“So, if that is true and you could express it in words or by expression then you have certainly limited it to ‘finite’ whereas that actually is boundless and infinite. So, when you limit me I am the Symbol and when you attempt not to realize me after attempts-infinite I am in essence ‘That’ that you attempted to catch at this playground.”

“I thought I could no way have joy again, smile again in my life when my mother died!”

“And you know, what your mother experienced at the time of her death?”

“The chandal said it was an Infinite Bliss.’

“Can there be two Infinites?”

“How can that be?” Now something struck Aditya as he felt like finding the missing links, “Did my mother experience you?”

“Yes, and dissolved in me or rather you can say that she realized that her ‘I’ was always dissolved in my ‘I’ or the Universal ‘I’, and the moment she realized that, her ‘individual’ could never separate it from the Universal as a fallen rain-drop cannot be separated out from the Ocean! She realized that Bliss and that left a subtle physical mark on the facial of your mother which the chandal could interpret, then ever-caring-Cosmic-patterns followed in your life in the form of various events. Because moments before merging into the Infinite Ocean of Bliss she wanted you to experience that also and a good-wish in the Universe is never made to go in vain, be that wish for yourself or for somebody else…”

“The chandal also said that she also wanted me to realize that Bliss! Why me only and not my father or anybody else?”

“When she was fractions of moments away from finally merging into me, she got a glimpse of what Bliss was coming her way, or rather say, when she almost realized that she was always in that Blissful State and saw everyone else too but not aware, like you or your father, she felt like shouting and invite and wake-up every sleeping souls to know in reality what-an-Ocean-of-Bliss they were in; since she loved you the most, your thought came to her mind first, then she could hold no more to call out others, she was completely dissolved by then.”

“Is death, the fate of all who dissolves in you or gets the consciousness back that they were always dissolved in You?”

“Death of the ‘limited’, ‘finite’, individual only.”

“And they cannot keep their bodies?”

“Most cannot.”

“But the Tree did.”

“No, he opted for a different body, body of a tree, form of a tree; he wished this at the time of his own realization, so he became that, ah, what a body of compassion and love the Wise Banyan Tree is!”

“So, the human-body cannot be kept?”

“It can be kept too, some very strong yet very delicate men are carrying their human-bodies still after getting the little ‘I’ dissolved in the Infinite ‘I’. Such men are difficult to find but can be identified by some signs and indications.”

“What are these signs and indications? Can you make me meet someone who has directly-experienced the Real- the You?”

“If you play with me another game then may be you will be fortunate enough to come in contact with such a saint and then you yourself verify whether the saint has realized the Supreme directly by trying to match his deeds and characteristics with the signs that I am going to tell you about.”

“Another game? It must be another defeat for me!”

“Was the earlier one a defeat?”

“Not really, only I have gained something significant.”

“Then the next one would be similar too. Now you first listen about the signs.”

“Yes friend, I am ready, once more, it feels if I could be with you lifelong like this.”

“That is also possible if you want to be, it is actually a matter of what you want. So if you see a saint who is completely devoid of hatred, delusion and sorrow and overflows with love-unconditional and always engaged in serving all for no apparent cause, know for sure that you have come across with him or her who have fully and directly experienced the Real that is Eternal, that is eternally Pure Consciousness and Infinite Bliss.”

“What is the utility in coming in contact with such a person?”

“The utility is as similar as taking a dip in the Indus or putting a piece of iron in the fire so that it can be given the shape of a sword. It would help you identify your own infinite human-possibilities. And work them out, it would help you differentiate want from love, it would at least make you capable of giving some well-meaning answers to the crow’s question who asked you what kind of an animal you are, under the shadow of the Banyan Tree, remember? There are two ways in life- first, – the life of the less strong- they very soon, almost hurriedly ‘become’ something and invariably risk to end-up in the cave- the darkest cave; and the second is the life of the strong, ay, rather let me say that the life of the lover of strength who engages their whole life on ‘becoming’ the ‘next higher state in the infinite human possibilities’.” You have lived all your three boons now and if you open your eyes now you will see the exit of the cave. And once you exit you have two entrances – the life of the less strong or the life of the strength-loving-hearts.”

“Are you a little angry with me friend?”

“You will only find love in that anger also! So, now you tell me are you ready to play another game to see whether you can meet the Saint who has experienced the Real directly?”

“Of course I will, which iron won’t be interested to find the fire that can turn it into a sword?”

“To play the game, you will have to open your eyes now.”

Aditya opened his eyes to his astonishment to see the whole cave vanished and its members hustling bustling against each other covering their eyes tightly with their palms against the bright beaming light that radiated from the body of his friend.

“How the cave has vanished?” Aditya asked his smiling friend, in wonder.

“There never was a cave; it was the accumulated darkness of their heart that solidified around them. Now, come, hold my hand, the boy of light offered his hand to Aditya and jerked him off from the posture to stand up, “now run, run with me.”

Winds followed the two boys who stopped at the bank of a river; the run knew no pause in between and filled the path with loud heart-busting laughter all throughout.

“Look at this river whose water is blue in colour. See its current.” The boy of light pointed at Aditya to notice the river and then said, “Look at the hill that is so rocky at that side of the river.”

“It is beautiful!”

“And dangerous too.”

“But why have we come here?”

“Because the saint who had kept his body even after experiencing the Real directly, lives in a monastery that is at the other side of the hill. And you are going there to become a sword out of an iron-rod.”

By saying this, the boy-of-light disappeared in a flash.

Aditya got a push from behind and was instantly in the blue-currents of the unknown river, before he could reply to his friend and inform that he did not know how to swim.

SIX ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

There were two monks- with shaven heads wearing saffron-coloured dhoti and the upper-body-cover- a one piece long cloth called a chadar, whom Aditya saw on opening his eyes; they were keenly observing, almost falling over Aditya’s chest. One of them had a bowl in his hand; Aditya could understand that there was water within, as he woke up to the splash of that.

Slowly, frames of pictures returned to his mind; the push on the back; the desperate attempt to cross the flooding blue river and its currents; finding of a huge log that floated him across the dangerous river; the scorching sun; the pinching hunger and a chest-crushing thirst and the continuous one-wish in life to return home; and then everything around merged with one another as he recalled the fall he had from a rock that was on the other side of the hill.

The two monks spared not a single word but attended with swift hands the bleeding from Aditya’s wounds. As his whole body kept shivering at each touch of the paste of herbs that the monks were carefully placing on each of his wounds, the blankness in his eyes were reducing in intensity. As they applied the medicines on Aditya, one of them went away with swift steps as if to bring in something else with utmost urgency and the other came around Aditya, stretching his left hand around his back to help him lift up from the lying position to a sitting one, on the floor.

“Where am I?” Aditya asked the monk.

“Please do not talk now, you will come to know everything once you become fit again.” The monk quieted Aditya in a quieter voice. Aditya obeyed, as he realized that they must have had surely saved his life rescuing him from the hill.

The monk who had gone out, came back with another bowl in his hand and straightway offered it by stretching it up to Aditya’s lips, gesturing him to drink; Aditya hold it by both his hands to take the first sip – it was lukewarm milk mixed with raw turmeric paste and the taste was definitely odd. Both the monk offered resistance to Aditya’s resistance to drink it and when somehow Aditya drank-up to empty the bowl, the monks looked at each other with a subtle feeling of assurance and wanted to know whom they were attending.

Aditya told them his name.

“What have you been doing there?” The monk who helped Aditya to sit up asked about how Aditya had the accident.

“I was crossing the hill.” Aditya did not feel like telling them about the boons or the quest.

“But we have never seen someone coming to this land by crossing the hill. Tell us, what is there at the other side?”

“There is a river and it is flooding now.”

“Yes, we heard that there was a storm and a heavy rain at the other side of the hill. Are you feeling a little better now?”

“Yes I am, and I would like to thank you for saving my life.”

“We do not save lives, God only saves, and we serve and serve only.”

“What place is this?”

“This is a Sevalaya for the sick and injured people and it is a part of the monastery.”

“Am I in a monastery?”

“Yes, but my brother, you take rest now and after sometime we will be back to attend the wounds again. Are you not hungry?”

As Aditya kept mum, one of them quickly went off to bring some food for him.

Aditya started to observe the place as the stomach was getting filled with assurance.

Aditya thought that he could get up. He was sitting on a bamboo-mattress that had straws as cushion, and he was alone in a small house that was made of bamboo-sticks and walls and had straws as the roof.

He got up with trembling feet as action followed thought. The feet were swollen but he told himself that he could walk.

He saw similar huts that were well ventilated all around his one, as he slowly walked out. The huts were, as it seemed to him equidistant from each other and surrounded by small trees of flower and shadowed by tall Amla, Banyan, Neem and some other unknown trees.

The place looked serene and calm as he explored the area. Memories of the just-concluded past jammed his mind as he wondered what this place has in reserve for him.

He came in front of the door of another house that appeared to have some people inside it.

There were three old men who were all sick and was producing all kinds of sounds-of-distress; one of them looked a little in hold of his distress and gave a blank look at Aditya as he entered the house with cautious and careful steps.

Suddenly the old man broke out in a cough that would not stop despite his violent efforts to control that, and he, with shaky hands tried to catch hold of a clay-pot that was kept near his bed; Aditya rushed up to him to offer the pot to him where he spitted cough clod-with-blood by removing the clay-made cap and then covered it back with the same. Aditya sat near him and massaged his back gently as the old man was trying to ease up the struggle, for breathing.

“What are you doing here?”

Aditya got his senses back at the question of one of the monk who attended him a while ago.

“He was in pain!” Aditya told, pointing at the old man while still massaging his back.

“You yourself needs rest, come, I will attend him.”

“Now, I am fine actually.”

“You are not, ” the monk said while replacing him to attend the patient, “look at your feet, it’s still swollen.”

“But I can walk and the swelling would be gone soon.”

Silence prevailed for some time, as the monk did not say anything further.

“What happened to him? Does not he have a home?”

“He had rotten-up his chest but will be alright. He has a home, he is here for treatment only.”

“For how long has he been here?”

“For almost twenty days.”

“How much more time he would need to recover?”

“He is improved by half the amount already.”

“Who prepares his medicines?”

“Our elderly monks who meditate on nature and diseases.”

“Can I see them?”

“May be, I do not know.”

“How many patients you have now right here?”

“One hundred and seven.”

“How many such huts you have here?”

“Thirty five.”

“You said this is a part of a monastery.”

“Yes.”

“What else you have beside this Sevalaya in the monastery?”

“A shrine where monks or anybody meditate, ten huts where we monks live, a huge kitchen where food for all is cooked and a goshala of thirty cows and a laboratory where medicines are prepared.”

“It is almost a village.”

“Exactly, it actually is a village.”

“Brother, I am very interested to know more about this monastery. Can you tell me please?”

“Why not. But not now. I have to visit five more huts and attend all the patients therein before it is noon.”

As Aditya watched the monk doing different acts of service to each in the house, one by one, and the way each of them were willingly surrendering them at the assurance and care they were treated with. Another shaven-headed saffron-clad and a very young monk who looked as of Aditya’s age entered the house and made an eye-contact with Aditya with a smile that spread across his whole face and beyond, and before he could say something, the monk who was serving the patients spoke off addressing the younger monk, “Ay Chotu, what are you doing here, want some bitter medicines or what?”

“What else you would have other than bitter medicines?” The boy-monk’s smile now converted into a mischievous laughter as he countered his senior. Aditya watched all with utter amusement.

“Who is Aditya here?” the boy-monk asked and then without waiting for anybody to claim to be Aditya, he himself confirmed looking and smiling at Aditya, “You are, is not it?”

“Yes.” Aditya confirmed and saw the senior paying a look-of-pseudo-irritation to his junior over his peculiar mannerisms.

“Can you come with me? Our head-monk wants to see you and talk.”

“Yes I can”

“Please come with me then.”

*   *   *

Aditya walked along with the boy-monk who appeared more inquisitive than Aditya thought he himself was, and dug up almost everything that had happened with Aditya over the period of last six days from his mother’s death. Aditya told him everything but the boons and what his mother had realized at the time of her death which Aditya had determined himself to experience too – to keep his mother’s wishes – to live according to the idea the kid friend gave him about human-life’s unique potentials in the cave of light at the heart of his heart.

They had walked past the entire club of the huts that formed the Sevalaya – thirty-five huts and Aditya found it a beautiful sight to look back at the Sevalaya that was carefully embraced by nature with her big and small trees alike.

The Shrine appeared at the other side of the big lake that now came in front of Aditya’s path. As the boy-monk guided him through a path that encircled the lake, he saw the beautiful lotus flowers that were parting from each other momentarily to accommodate the swimming swans joyfully playing in the waters of that lake. The boy-monk was speaking ceaselessly and Aditya heard nothing for a few moments at the sight of the lake that sported, as if, he felt – ‘life’.

They now were at the front of the Shrine that was a beautiful construction of clay, bamboo and straw, the wall of which were painted with various designs and it was surrounded by a garden that had accommodated all the colours of the world.

The boy-monk took a right turn and Aditya followed. Soon they were at the front of the house where the head monk was present. The boy monk took permission to enter the house from the doorstep and went in alone to inform the head that the stranger was at the doorstep.

Soon the boy monk came out smilingly to wave at Aditya to go inside.

Peace condensified around the old monk who appeared much older than Aditya’s sixty-year old father and was sitting with eyes half closed, in a posture that reminded Aditya of the Yogi who brought a storm to his life with three strange boons.

Without a conscious thought Aditya bent down on his knees to offer the head monk a pranama that the chandal taught him to offer to the Yogi.

The head-monk now had opened his eyes fully as a flower flourishes silently and slowly in the night.

“From which village you have come son?” came the very soft words sounding as if thunders-of-cloud soaked in love, from the mouth of the old monk for Aditya.

“Prajnapur.” Aditya was still on his knees on the floor.

“That is on the other side of the hill! How have you come here?”

“I was trying to cross the hill, had a fall and lost consciousness. They brought me here.”

“Has anyone died at your home? Why are you wearing that?” the monk pointed at the dhoti and the way it was wore as per the ritual when one loses his parents.

“My mother.”

“How many days ago.”

“Six.”

“How many days to go for the Shraddha?”

“Fifteen days.”

“Your monk-brothers will arrange for your safe return and you can go home safely. You are wounded, so take rest for a few days here and then you can go home.”

Aditya wanted to say that he was not interested to go home back but had to keep it within as the head-monk had closed his eyes again.

As he quietly went out of the house, leaving the head monk undisturbed, he found the boy-monk eagerly waiting for him, and with a smile of utter-keenness he wanted to know what had happened and what did the head-monk told him in such a loud-whisper that Aditya was sure, it went into the ears of the saint within the house.

 The boy-monk guided Aditya along through the path that they traveled while coming to the head-monk’s house. The monk could sense something and made Aditya sit under a huge tree whose leaves from some of the branches bent down to touch the lake-water. He pressed Aditya to tell his story and could not say anything for sometime that was very unusual for him after he heard Aditya’s story; but soon his characteristic-smile reappeared over his round face and offered a solution to Aditya that he never thought of!

“But why don’t you perform the ritual of Shraddha alone?”

“Is that possible?”

“Why not? I can arrange that for you. I will take you to the village adjacent to our village where the priest can perform the ritual for you and he is not like the priest you have at Prajnapur. He is a wise man and will himself arrange something for you to give him as fee to complete the ritual.”

“That is excellent.”

“That way you may not need to go back home, but?”

“What brother?”

“Why do not you want to go back home? Who will look after your old father?”

“I want to look after my father, only I do not want to do farming and live the same poor life that my father had lived all his life.”

“I pray to the All-Caring that He soon shows you a way by which you can live your higher-self without needing to be selfish.”

Aditya felt much relaxed and the boy-monk took him to lunch. Aditya felt a strange bond with the boy-monk who again started chirping at the place where everybody in the monastery assembled for lunch. Monks again started scolding him for various reasons that he knew actually was ‘love’.

*   *   *

That was the third day for Aditya at the monastery. The boy-monk has become his friend and now a few swans started recognizing him. He now knows a little bit about the monastery, its history, interesting events that take place there, the life of the head monk or the King of the State who is a friend of the head monk.

The boy-monk and Aditya kept exchanging stories of the monastery with that of Prajnapur as the monastery absorbed Aditya and Aditya absorbed the monastery.

The monastery is a little older than Aditya and was founded with one house to serve the sick and the downtrodden by the head-monk who was assigned with the task of ‘giving-his-life’ in service to the poor by his Guru whom the boy monk or no other monk in the monastery had ever seen, but only heard of. Seekers of Truth and Reality came and became part of the monastery by becoming monks through various incidents and at different time; and the monastery kept growing. The monks kept growing within and the monastery outside. They would meditate and serve with the same intensity knowing both were leading them to the direct experience of the Real. Aditya recalled his play with the kid friend inside the illumined heart of the heart. The monks lived their lives very joyfully and knew no bounds to love their fellow monk brothers or the patients of the Sevalaya. According to the boy-monk the monastery is sustained by the grace of the All-Caring which is manifested through the support offered by the thankful villagers who are given religious-discourses and service and treatment when they fall ill and the King of the State who always opens his royal treasury for the monastery, to draw anything whenever news of ‘crunch’ at the monastery reaches him; but the head monk always depends on other sources and finds them too by strange coincidences and thank the King for his generosity  at which the King would say to his minister, “I always get thanked for doing nothing! That old man would never allow me to serve him!” whenever the King would pay a visit to the monastery, they would soon get absorbed in very intimate talks on all issues- chiefly spirituality and then social-system, the King would invariably end up with his description of the ever-increasing difficulty on his part to run the State and would almost get the same reply on that, from his childhood friend, the head monk, “Actually what you know, you have become old!” And then the two old men would return to their childhood-age to quarrel an fight at the amusement of all who would be present around.

*   *   *

The boy-monk had informed Aditya that he had told his story to the head monk.

“What did he say?” Aditya asked the boy monk hiding nothing about his curiosity.

“He only heard that from me with closed eyes and said nothing, except that life is strange and so does Almighty’s way of working.”

“Just that much?”

“Yes, only that much.”

“Did not he inquire about when am I planning to return to Prajnapur?”

“No.”

That was the fourth day of Aditya’s stay at the monastery who by then learnt a few techniques of serving the sick along with the monks and took great delight in serving; the intimacy with the boy monk grew further and he was equally accepted by other monks. The immediate deputy to the head-monk who was also a very old person gave him a name – “Adbhut Balak”, meaning – ‘the strange boy’, and soon everybody started addressing him by that name. Only the boy-monk who was the youngest at the monastery among the monks, addressed him by his original name.

Things were not meant to be alike at the monastery; the King had to announce an ‘open-access’ to the royal treasury for the monastery once again, as a deadly disease broke open at the adjoining village engaging almost all the monks to spread across the village, in every house, serving day and night to control the spread of the disease. Even the boy-monk had to shelve his smile and they found no time even to pray at the Shrine or meditate as the head monk had ordered, “All our prayers and meditation will now be in the form of trying to snatch the villagers away from the jaws of death. May the Almighty give us strength in our body and heart! Glory unto God!”

Dark cloud hovered over the monastery. The disease was a highly contagious one and people started getting dead. The monks snatched away many but nature was not to give up its wrath for reason or no-reason so soon. A few monks fell sick too, but refused to leave the battlefield.

Tussle between life and death continued for five days nobody had a clue whom the head monk was attending except Aditya, who was also assisting the monks. But as soon as he discovered where the head-monk was hiding and with whom, he was caught and forced to promise that he would never disclose that to the monks at the monastery. Aditya nodded his head in acceptance but continued paying regular visits to the head-monk to supply him the medicines and the means that he needed to carry out his work.

That was the most difficult case of the disease that the head monk was attending. The sick man lived a lonely life whom his children had discarded and the villagers boycotted for his bad-character and worse-past, lived in a house at the outskirts of the village and somehow maintained his life- mostly by begging at distant temples. Once he, as Aditya learnt from the head-monk who was cleaning his continuous-excretions with both hands as a mother cleanses her child with utmost urgency and care, had enormous wealth that he managed by killing his uncle and the family members of the uncle to himself get robbed off everything at the hands of the infamous horse-riding-robbers of distant terrains.

The old monk spoke to Aditya first time about the latter’s life and the boons in that night inside the house where the everyone-discarded old patient was showing clear signs of improvement.

“Infinite human-lives can be lived if you try to realize that one thing that you played as the subject with that wonder-kid at the illumined-cave at the heart of the heart as part of the third boon. Wherever you are, at home or workplace or temple, whatever you are- a householder or a monk, know that ‘you’ are always with ‘you’ and you have already told me what game you played with that wonder-kid. That ‘you’ is not the ‘limited-mortal-you’ but the ‘infinite-immortal-you’. I pray to the Almighty that you live your Real-You for the rest of your life and get that which is the birthright of all- “the Supreme, – that Existence-Consciousness-Bliss- our Real Self”.”

Aditya was already crying, as the head monk struggled for breath, yet keeping a very calm expression on his face. He gestured at Aditya to bring a piece a robe for him. As Aditya managed a small piece of robe, the head-monk further gestured at him to make three knots on the robe and then managed to explain what it was for. That was a cryptic message for the King from the old monk.

“Why have you done this to yourself?” Aditya asked the head-monk one question from his heart straight, and started sobbing for some unknown reason.

“I have only tried to give him the chance to live life afresh that was anyway due for him in his next birth!”

*   *   *

Everybody looked at Aditya with questions in their eyes when he returned to the monastery at the break of the dawn. The boy-monk ran up to him before he could reach the entrance and meet all.

Aditya broke down at his friend’s shoulder giving the news of the head-monk.

The head-monk had literally kept his Guru’s instructions. He gave his life serving the most badly sick patient whom nobody might have been ready to attend.

SEVEN ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

Human-waves kept splashing over the monastery throughout the day from near and distant villages to pay their last tribute to the head monk, whose body was laid on a clay-structure little above the ground. They offered flowers and tears at the feet of the saint and was reluctant to lose him from the sight who ceaselessly, tirelessly tried to improve their lives by making them solve their problems in life, by making them directing their energies towards a higher purpose; not all were up to him for spiritual guidelines or could sense the sainthood of the saint, but the dumbest of person also knew one thing- about the monk, that, – he was a man of love, and in front of him everybody felt he or she was ‘important and significant’.

Thin threads of cold-air blew across Aditya’s heart, as the body of the head-monk found shoulders beneath it, to reach the bed of fire through the procession. The Sun was at the top of everyone’s head and as the procession took off, some momentary clouds up in the sky covering the Sun seemed paying their tribute with a light drizzle. In a flash, mother came before Aditya’s eyes, in a flash reappeared the sense of loss that only the hearts understand that undergoes a loss.

Everything went on with precision and discipline at the Shamshan, a process that Aditya was well acquainted with by then, due to his frequent seeing of cremations while having conversations with the chandal.

Groups of monks had encircled the bed that would soon invite fire upon it; villagers uncountable formed the outer rungs of the circle.

Rolls of hymns filled the heavy air around as the monks started their recitations; tears were on hold as the fire became unleashed.

Aditya was standing behind the boy-monk who was reciting at the top of his voice and pronouncing each word distinctly, measurably and rhythmically, his whole body was vibrating with the hymns and as if the monks re-affirmed themselves that death can snatch the body away only, only the body.

Dust stormed-up at the horizon while the fire was at the fullest of its glow around the body of the head-monk. From within the huge balls of soil in the air appeared a string of horses that was fast approaching towards the Shamshan. As everybody’s attention diverted towards the earth-thumping sounds, the King with his guards became distinctly visible.

Soon, the horses and the guards formed another ring at the outmost that had encircled the cremation of the head-monk in progress; the King climbed off from a big white horse and proceeded towards the innermost-ring, but he was the King and knew rules and customs and respect for them too; to his surprise the King halted right beside Aditya.

Aditya stole a look at the King, as he was for the first time, seeing a King in real. The king was old, strong, heavily lad with ornaments and also a sword that appeared very heavy by its width and length, a bow and arrow on the back, long hairs and beards that had become completely gray and a crown that glittered as gold. But amidst all these the thing that caught Aditya’s attention the most, about the King, were his eyes. Aditya saw the pair was large and deep and a redness that appeared to have formed very freshly.

The king had joined the monks in recitation and Aditya understood that the King knew all the hymns from start to end.

Slowly, the flames of fire became tired and slept within the hot ashes. As pot-full of water were being splashed on the fire-bed, Aditya found a chance to tell his friend-monk about the message the head monk had left in Aditya’s hand for the King. The boy-monk took the message from Aditya – a robe with three knots, and handed it over to the immediate deputy of the head monk.

Aditya saw the deputy monk keeping the robe with himself for the time being. The king stood still with eyes closed long after everything at the Shamshan was over- every ritual performed up to its minutest detail.

The Sun was at the horizon for the day and everyone prepared to return.

Everything went on like normal at the monastery- the evening prayers at the shrine, religious discourse for the public, devotional songs; but everything, as Aditya found was wrapped in somberness.

The king was staying back at the monastery and had ordered his guards to halt outside the monastery.

The deputy monk called for a special gathering of monks and workers of the monastery in the open air at the night.

*   *   *

Moonlight mildly illumined the ground and nature all around where everyone in the monastery sat encircling a small fire that was lit up.

The King initiated the process of electing the deputy-monk as the new head-monk by the unanimous choice of all the monks.

The new head monk delivered a short yet beautiful speech soaked in spirituality that made everyone acknowledge that they would ceaselessly march towards the realization of the Supreme and hold on to the ideal of service to the poor as worshipping the God as set by the just departed head monk. Together they prayed for the continuous loving guidance in their path from the departed soul whom they believed were with them and ever will be in subtle form.

The new head-monk then requested the king to say a few words about their spiritual-guide who had been his childhood friend.

“We were the three disciples of our Guru who taught us the same things.” The king started in a candid style, “We were taught the knowledge of the ‘Unity’ or the ‘Theory and Practice of the One’, most carefully and intelligently at the same time very strictly by our Guru. He would, ” the King referred to the late head monk, “always come third when our Guru would give us a topic to comprehend. The other student would always be the first one; apparently there was no competition but Sadhu- our departed head monk whom I always called by this name, would always come first in another race- the ‘assimilation of the theory in the character’ and thus was a little more dearer to the Guru.

We bonded with each other for over twelve years of ‘Brahmacharya’ at the school of our Guru so well, that it seemed we were the one soul in three different bodies which actually was the higest ideal of the ‘Theory and Practice of the One’ also, – one must be able to feel himself literally in all and all in himself – a realization that comes not overnight and generally takes years, sometime lives, but, whose each day or each moment of practice makes us more and more Godly, steadily taking towards Infinite-Godliness even in this body.

The time came when we were to depart from each other. The Guru called each of us and gave three different advices or directions in life to manifest what we had learnt in the ‘Theory and Practice of the One’.

First, went the boy, whose identity I would reveal later. He was advised to lead a life of contentment; he was the son of a rich father.

Then it was my call as I were to become the prince and the subsequently the king, my Guru instructed me as, ‘All your good deeds will reduce to nothing the moment you become the king’. I was surprised, but then the Guru always used to talk in an indicative and cryptic manner. He meant that I should only appear as a King outwardly, but within, I must engage all my life in trying to keep the citizens happy, protected and in an ever-growing-in-quality environment.

When Sadhu went up to the Guru, his instructions to him were blunt, ‘Give your life in Service’. And Sadhu was not the one to hurry an interpretation. He stalled himself at the lap of the Himalayas for another few years meditating on the instruction, until the whole meaning in its complete details revealed to him and then he returned where we are sitting now. Sadhu started the Sevalaya with only one house and never accepted any monetary help from me or the royal sources, saying, ‘King, if you sustain me then the Supreme-King would be less concerned for me’, or he would tell me at other times, ‘Friend, spend a few days with me and see how many excuses God can form to help His children who tries to Serve His Children.’.

By that time I had become the King, and tried and struggled each day to be the King only outwardly amidst fame and admiration and the ‘importance’ the citizens imposed over a man who would also reduce to ashes when dead, like anyone else; but I felt my Guru was always supplying me with strength at the heart to constantly keep reminding me about the vanity of this world in my heart.

Meanwhile an interesting incident happened. Our third friend whom I said I would tell about later, wanted more wealth and saw ‘all-in-him, him-in-all’. He was always the first one to understand the most difficult of verses and theories at the school. So this time also he hurriedly devised a strategy that reminded me of the most difficult and perplexing mantra that our Guru taught from the ancient wisdom; it was- ‘The worshippers of ignorance enters darkness and the worshippers of knowledge enters more darkness! There are two different fruits that await the worshippers at the end, and the one who experiences ignorance and knowledge together overcomes the fear of death by worshipping ignorance and attains immortality by worshipping knowledge.’ The worshipper of ignorance may mean here ‘the worshipping of the perishable’ that gives fruits of perishable substance which engages the worshippers in ignoring the Real and thus enters darkness.” As the king went on, Aditya recalled his experience at the dark cave. “The worshipping of knowledge means the worshipping of the Real and Imperishable ‘One’ but if such a worship is done to obtain perishable results then it is like committing deeper mistake then the previous- thus is the saying, ‘enters into more darkness’. The one who worships the both, that is, obtains perishable result through worshipping the ignorance and remains detached with it overcomes death, as death applies to only the perishable things, and worships knowledge not to obtain perishable result but to realize the Imperishable One, attains immortality naturally.

Now, our friend who all of a sudden needed more wealth made a straightforward and a simple plan that did not disturb his conscience.  His uncle was accumulating wealth very fast through sheer hard work, and his eye fell on that wealth; he saw his uncle in him and him in the uncle, and hesitated not to poison him and his wife along with his two other sons and the daughter-in-laws and one daughter; the uncle’s eldest son who was a monk and had renounced the world was not a problem for him.

The man could not be proved guilty at the trial where I was desperately searching for a proof to chop his head off and he kept gazing at me with a shrewd smile on his lips during the trial, as if reminding me who was the most brilliant in the school.”

At this the King took a long pause and then said, “He had killed the family of my best friend, – Sadhu.” Monks murmured with each other and shivered in awe about a fact they had no clue about.

“Sadhu knew it all,” the king resumed, “and had forgiven him, but I said, the moment he accepts the crime, his head will be gone with one single swing of my sword.

Before coming to Sadhu’s cremation, I had investigated the story about whom he was serving, and my doubt came out to be true. He gave up his body, trying to save the man who had killed his family.”

As the monks, each one of them dipped in grave silence and wonder with renewed respect for their Guru, flashes from the illumined cave where Aditya played with the wonder-kid blazed his mind, “Here was the Saint who had realized the Supreme and had no delusion, no hatred.” Aditya told himself in silence, and heard the King again who was then concluding, “We are the kings with our heads and they are with their hearts; we rule through power, they rule through love;” The king said referring to the departed head-monk, “May the Almighty never devoid this land with such saints like my Sadhu!” The King then stopped as a drop of tear tried to roll-down whom the old-king disciplined to dry up.

The new head-monk then informed about a message for the king from the just departed head-monk and told him how it had reached him.

The king took it, looked at the robe, and told the head monk that it was a cryptic message and he could only decrypt it in meditation. By king’s wish, everyone, except the new head monk, the boy-monk and Aditya left for the huts in the monastery. The king dipped himself down into meditation and everybody concentrated on praying to the Almighty to help the king find the meaning soon.

The moon was drifting from cloud to cloud.

The king emerged from his meditation past midnight and addressed the head-monk “Sadhu has assigned me with a job. The robe is not an ordinary one after he made three knots on it; the robe is about Aditya’s future! If you kindly permit me then can I talk with him?”

“Why not?” the head-monk nodded in acceptance, and the King, for the first time paid a complete look at Aditya. Anticipating how the King would prefer to talk, the head-monk took the boy-monk along with him inside the house at the monastery to let the king and Aditya talk freely.

At a distance, the guards with their horses were alert, as the King engaged himself in a conversation with Aditya.

“The robe represents your life and the three knots are the three blockades on the way to your wish of realizing your goal, at the each correct decision on most difficult circumstances would open up the knots marking the removal of the obstacle.” The king told Aditya, “I want to ask you a few questions, are you ready?”

“Yes King, I will try my best to answer them correctly.” Aditya, by now was in love with riddles.

“You seem to be a thinking young boy who had a life that cannot be said as ordinary. You received three boons form a Yogi that actualized all in your life. And it all started with your mother’s death who was everything in your life. The questions that I am going to ask you now, if you can answer them up to my satisfaction, then I, being the King promise you a grand reward- the reward with which will come grand-status for you in life.”

“I do not know O king what reward is waiting for me if my answers are satisfactory, but I would surely try to accept any reward that you may find me suitable for.”

“Tell me, what your mother’s death revealed to you?”

“It revealed to me, in my belief, that blessings of mothers for their children has a lasting-effect beyond death. A mother as it seems to me keeps mothering her children even without the aid of a ‘body’.”

“Tell me what was the effect of Shamshan for you?”

“Death takes away the repulsion-to-death in a human-mind; some unexplainable courage comes while seeing a body burn in fire, that perhaps indicates at the death-denying-reality of the human-nature.”

“What did the Yogi make you think about?”

“That, there is hidden assistance available in nature to human-being’s quest, the connections are established when human being takes the first step.”

“What is required to take the first step?”

“Believe in the possibility of things despite odds and a little courage that only multiplies as the quest begins.”

“Why the Yogi said that you could never see him again?”

“He told me not to live a life depending on hidden-assistance but to depend on human-capacity only. Hidden-assistance comes only to make a child stand on his feet and nothing else.”

“What did the crow teach you?”

“It taught me that even an ugly bird like the crow also does not rate a human-being higher than animals if the human being cannot convincingly say what is special about a human life!”

“What is special about a human life?”

“That, it can transcend limitations, realize the ‘Real’ and lead a selfless life like that of the Wise Banyan Tree.”

“How to transcend limitation?”

“By not ‘limiting’ ourselves.”

“How we limit ourselves?”

“By hypnotising ourselves that we are ‘limited-individual’ and not the ‘unlimited-Universal’.”

“What happens when we limit ourselves?”

“We form a cave of darkness around us and suffer without knowing that we are suffering.”

“What about the stone-rain, what is the significance of the stone-rain?”

“Self-believe at the face of faith-crushing storm can do miracles!”

“What is a miracle?”

“A miracle is life’s ability to expand itself ceaselessly and keep revealing man’s unused potentials. I never knew that I had an illumined cave at the heart of my heart and a friend who can never separate himself from me.”

“What is a monastery for you?”

“A true monastery like this one, to me, is a whirlpool of Godliness, embodiment of selflessness, the bright flames of self-believe that day and night sings- ‘we live in all, all lives in us’.”

“So far, I am finding your philosophies in the answers very satisfactory, now I am going to ask you the questions that would require you to take some decision which may open up the knots in the robe.’

“O, the King, I am ready for the questions!”

“Assuming, you successfully experience the ‘Real’ as did our departed head-monk, would you like to keep your body and manifest the ‘Realization’ in some field and do you feel it can be expressed in any field?”

“When I will realize the Supreme, I will lose this little sense-of-I and in that place will manifest the Universal-Will, so it is not possible to know the Universal-Will through this limited-self at this moment; only Cosmic-design can say whether I will retain the body or not.”

The king held up the robe in front of Aditya after the latter’s answer and in the moonlight, Aditya could see the absence of one knot from it.

“Tapsya after work or work after Tapsya? ”

“Tapsya before everything else.”

“Can it go hand in hand?”

“It can outwardly, but possible if work is treated as Tapsya only.”

“I am very satisfied with your answers my son and you see the second knot is also gone.” At this, the king gave a very kind look at Aditya. Aditya saw him smiling gently.

“And now the reward,” The king came back to his point of promise, “Our kingdom is not devoid of anything but a prince, as I am a childless man. This one particular issue always bothered me a lot, as it is the duty of the king to pass on the Kinghood at the able hand of the prince. I guess the search has ended in you. I offer you to be the prince of the State and immerse in the Tapsya without needing to worry for anything, as the Royal-support would always be there.”

Aditya knew not what to say at that, but he knew he would remain unfazed at anything.

“May I have three days to tender my decision King?” Aditya humbly offered for time.

“As you like.” Nodded the King in acceptance.

As they both stood up and there was not much time left for the dawn, the guards of the King approached the King to court him inside the monastery for the remaining length of the night; in the morning the King would return to his palace.

Aditya connected himself to the God-within. The just-departed head monk had given him a few lessons on meditation during the service to the discarded-man in the house during those nights which Aditya now began practicing. Slowly, frame-by-frame, Aditya was getting clear about what he should do next.

He stood up from the meditation after a while and went out to look for the boy-monk.

*   *   *

The King bid bye to the monastery as the morning broke off. He wanted to have a talk with Aditya before leaving, but nobody in the monastery could get a trace of him and the King was getting late for the journey, with a smile the King climbed on his white horse-back and gave the march-order.

EIGHT ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

The hymn-reciting villagers of Prajnapur, who as usual, were taking a bath in the Indus and were waist-dipped in the subtle ripples, had to pause their prayers to astonish themselves about what they were seeing.

 Two strangers – a boy-monk and a priest were passing them by, accompanied by him who the whole of Prajnapur condemned at their hearts for such careless act of disappearance. They murmured with each other that Aditya paid no attention to and proceeded towards home along with the boy-monk and the priest who was supposed to perform the ritual of Shraddha of Aditya’s mother, as scheduled tomorrow.

He would be able to retain Moti and save his father from the greedy-fat-priest of the village. Aditya kept walking having this thought in his mind.

As the Sun turned more yellowish from the initial redness, the whole of Prajnapur started rushing for work. Aditya’s house appeared at a few hundred feet away, which they walked up to quickly.

A long-term friend and companion of Aditya’s father – Ram, who was a little younger than his father, stayed after two house from theirs. Aditya saw that Ram chacha, whom Aditya called by that name, noticed them coming and understood that he had not gone for a bath at the Indus that day, who along with his father seldom missed that in years.

Aditya entered the house along with his companions silently and was ready to receive any scolding, as he gently called out for his father. He was greeted with silence. He called out for the second time and then a third time to hear no one in response. A strange silence filled the air inside the house.

The three of them exchanged blank looks with each other as Aditya kept looking for his father. The house was empty, truly! There was no Moti and neither any other cattle in the shed.

Aditya stood still for a few moments. He knew that at that moment of time his father always returned from the Indus and then left for the field a little afterwards. That time of the morning was supposed to make him see his father in the house, according to routine that his father never failed to live. He turned towards the entrance to follow the sound of the approaching the footstep.

It was Ram chacha who paused at the entrance and kept looking at Aditya for a few moments before entering.

“Where is my father chacha?” Aditya rushed up to him and asked. He repeated seeing him keeping silent, “Where is he and why he cattle are gone?”

“Where have you been for so log Aditya?” ram chacha asked back without answering Aditya’s question.

“I, ” Aditya thought about what to say, “I was lost.” He said.

“Lost? Where?”

“Lost in a distant land. Let me introduce them with you. He is a monk in the monastery in a distant land and he is the priest from the adjacent village of that monastery, who has kindly agreed to perform the ritual of mother’s Shraddha for a minimum fee.”

“I see!”

They all sat on the veranda and then Aditya came back to his point, “Where is my father?”

“He, ” Ram chacha pause for a long period to complete the remaining half, “is no more Aditya. He is no more.”

It took a non-weeping yet tight-jawed Aditya long to break the silence that followed. “How? When?” he asked.

“He searched you madly for three consecutive days! Everywhere, all the villages, without food, without water, and then…”

“Then?”

“We were both on work. The Sun was at the top of the head. We were ploughing, when your father suddenly collapsed. We thought it was for the heat. Quickly we took him carefully under a tree shed, sprinkled water, but to have of no use…” Aditya noticed that his breathing slowed down drastically as ram chacha kept describing the incident, “the village-doctor said that he had jammed his heart with inertia, ” ram chacha “and it was a matter of time for the final breath; he could not do anything, he did not have any answer to that attack that jammed your father’s heart with inertia. The attack had paralysed him totally and he struggled to talk thereafter; faint words with blank looks in the eyes made it very difficult to understand what he tried to say.”

“What was he trying to say?”

“Perhaps many things! Perhaps about you, perhaps about a possible way of saving the house.”

“What did he say about me?”

“I told you that he struggled to talk. But he kept looking at the door with the expectation of your return. He underwent and intense suffering for ten days and all of a sudden, yesterday morning he started speaking clearly. People thought he would become alright, but my fear came true.”

“What fear?”

“A diya burns the brightest before blanking out. He called me go sit close to him and then he told about you.”

“What did he say?”

“I still remember that word by word. He said, ‘Ram, my faith says he will return. But I do not know when. I hope the landlord doesn’t snatch this house from him, I hope he at least has this house to reside in. He is not that useless Ram, not that useless! He thinks. He is different. But you tell me Ram, how would he survive if he does not work? His father is not a King but a poor farmer. Tell me how he can feed himself up? My love for him Ram, convey him that! Tell him that my prayers will always be with him.’ He then, closed his eyes, taking my right hand in his clutch. I knew he had known about his death and I restrained myself from offering  him any false hope. Slowly he became still. The village-doctor came and found no pulse. We waited till evening, hoping for your return. After that, the cremation had to be done, as the villagers were getting impatient. As we retuned from the Shamshan we came to know that he landlord’s people took away your cattle and the two bulls used for ploughing, as all were kept mortgage against the debts your father had with the landlord. We all are under debts from him, may be we all are awaiting the same fate at his hands.” Ram chacha prepared himself to go, after letting Aditya know everything, as the boy-monk and the priest kept listening patiently.

“Now what would you do Aditya?” Ram chacha asked while leaving the house.

“I will go and meet the landlord.”

“What would you say?”

“I will request him to return the bulls and the cattle and promise to clear the debts.”

“Difficult task Aditya, difficult task.”

“Difficulties are boons, frictions blessings.” Aditya told himself before readying to go to the landlord.

“Should I accompany you?” the boy-monk asked Aditya.

“No friend. You help me to perform the Shraddha tomorrow.”

“Let me then go out with him,” the priest told Aditya refereeing the boy-monk, “to collect the necessary materials for tomorrow’s ritual.”

Aditya nodded in acceptance before going out.

He met the landlord. The boy-monk and priest completed the preparations. Food for the boy-monk and priest came from Ram chacha’s house.

*   *   *

Exactly twenty-one days ago, at this time, Aditya invited fire from everywhere to engulf his mother. Flashes of that day jammed his mind as the ritual of Shraddha of his mother had just concluded. Aditya offered a fruit to the priest as fee, that was arranged by the priest himself and then he offered his pranama as gratitude.

Aditya knew, that, as per plan, the boy-monk and the priest would leave soon.

“I need to talk to you Aditya.” The boy-monk told Aditya and he understood by the tone of that, that he wanted to talk to him in private. Aditya took him out of the house, walked up a little distance and they sat under a mango tree.

“Yes my friend.” Aditya offered the boy-monk to ask him what he wanted to.

“What did the landlord say?”

“He is not helping me.”

“What did you ask for?”

“I asked him to give me time and return our cattle and the bulls for farming. But he does not have the trust in me. He gave me three days.”

“For what?”

“To vacate the house.”

“You agreed?”

“No.”

“At that what did he say?”

“He smiled and said that I will have to.”

“Did he intimidate you?”

“He applied force with many in the past.”

“You have a threat.”

“This body cannot be kept forever.”

“That is true, but courage and foolishness are two separate things.”

“It is foolish, only, not to have courage.”

“You have an offer from the King!”

“You mean, a boy who cannot protect himself, cannot stand-up for a cause can be a prince?”

“But you never wanted to be a farmer!”

“I did not, but now I want to.”

“And tomorrow you would want to do something else!”

“Perhaps, but only after I succeed in the present cause.”

“But, did not you want to realize the Supreme Reality- full of Bliss-Consciousness-Knowledge?”

“I still want to.”

“By ploughing? By cultivating rice and wheat?’

“Yes. Remember what your Guru had said! He told me while giving his life for that discarded man inside a small hut, that, the ‘Theory of and Practice of the One’ can be performed by monks and householders alike, during work or meditation, at temples or work field. That assurance is my guiding-light now.”

“It certainly sounds wise, but is it practicable?”

“I am dedicating my life to see whether it is!”

“How can you fight the landlord and his people?”

“I do not know, but I know I will fight.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Yes. From Myself.”

The boy-monk kept his eyes at Aditya’s eyes for moments without words; stillness marked the moments and then the two stood up to embrace each other. The boy-monk promised to return with the priest after twenty days to help Aditya perform his fathers Shraddha.

*   *   *

Ram chacha became busy again at Aditya’s house. This time, trying to convince Aditya that he should not be an obstacle in the landlord’s way of taking up their house, that he should not try to plough again, as that had left him half-dead at the hand of the landlord’s people, with the head still bleeding occasionally and blue-spots all over his body. Ram chacha advised him to compromise and save his life.

Aditya was in severe distress; his body was not listening to him. He wanted to turn to the other side, but his body was not listening to him; he forced from within at which finally the body bowed down.

Ram chacha stood up with trembling feet at the sight of the person, wrapped all over with a black blanket with only the eyes visible, who came beside Aditya’s bed without making anybody know, silently.

“I need to talk to Aditya.” The stranger said.

“Please! Mercy! He will leave. He will leave the house, just give him a day’s time!” Ram chacha pleaded with folded hands.

The blanket-wrapped stranger got surprised, but his trained skills dug up the story about Aditya’s life-threat at the hand of the landlord, from ram chacha, before saying that was not the landlord’s man and he just needed to talk to Aditya for a few moments in private.

The stranger needed to show his hidden dagger to force Ram chacha to trust him and wait outside the house until he comes out.

“Aditya.” The stranger called him out softly, “I am the King’s messenger, please open your eyes.”

Aditya struggled to open his eyes, but he decided to enjoy the struggle and moments-long persistence made him see the messenger who had uncovered his face by then.

“I have come to know on behalf of the King, that, what you have decided about his offer to become the Prince!” the royal-messenger said.

Ram chacha waited with heart-full of anxiousness, as he could not hear anything of the conversation that was taking place inside the house.

EPILOGUE ~ I Am Not Alone, I Live With Myself

The messenger waited for his turn to present his story to the King, as the King was listening keenly to another about a diplomatic issue. And it took time, but messengers were trained at keeping patience.

“Yes!” Finally, the King attended the messenger who had just returned from Prajnapur, “I am sure, he has accepted my offer,” said the King.

“I am afraid my Lord, he has actually declined.” For a moment, everyone who were present at that time around the king during the royal-session, received a shock, as in many years’ they had not heard of anyone turning down any offer made by the King. The King was quick to sense the reaction amongst his ministers and others and with a smile, asked the messenger to continue to tell him everything.

The messenger conveyed all the information about Aditya’s loss of father, getting beaten-up by the landlord’s people, his decision to fight the landlord and save his house and get back the cattle.

“But, did not you tell him that, he is alone and up against a mountain-high task?”

“I did, but at the reply he told me something strange which I could not interpret and after that I could not make him speak anymore.”

“Tell me what did he say. Word by word.”

“Yes my Lord, I do remember each word of that. He said:

‘A hundred-years of life is waiting for me. May the divine contentment fill my heart and make me as enduring as that Banyan-Tree, because I do not want to be fooled and tortured by that magician by killing my self and entering the dark cave. May I realize myself in that unmoving, faster-than-the-mind. May I outrun all by remaining stationary. May move and move not, may I remain here and everywhere. May I realize all-in-myself, myself-in-all. May I go beyond delusion and sorrow. May I know that I am all-pervasive, pure and bodiless. May I win over the fear-of-death by worshipping ignorance and attain immortality by worshipping knowledge.’

Then he told me, ‘I am not alone. I am not afraid. Please tell this to the King. Tell him that I am not alone. I live with myself.’ That is what he said my Lord.” The messenger completed his say.

“Go again to that village.” The King replied and everyone looked at each other trying to guess what punishment awaited the boy. “This time” the King resumed to complete his words, “with two messages. One for the landlord and another for the boy. Take this robe, ” The King took the robe out from his waist which remained with one knot when Aditya begged three days’ time to tender his decision, “give this to Aditya, he will understand. And this time a hundred armed soldiers will accompany you up to the landlord’s house, tell him that I have requested him to have a little love for his own life.”

*   *   *

One-hundred and one horses stormed into Prajnapur at the break of the dawn and soon the landlord busied himself in offering his earnest apologies to the King, and ordered his men to return, all that belonged to Aditya’s father, to Aditya immediately.

The messenger reached out to Aditya to give him the robe, who was trying to plough the field without the aid of any bulls and who was still bleeding subtly.

Aditya took the robe and thanked the messenger. The messenger and a hundred royal soldiers disappeared in flash at the horizon and Aditya resumed work. The third knot in the robe was gone! Aditya intensified himself under the gracious Sun. He will use the bulls tomorrow, when he discovers them at home, on his return from the day’s work.