5
A
Pre-religioner
The Sadhu was born at a time when
the last phase of Indian freedom struggle was groping around, clueless.
Suddenly, the imperialistic balloon had burst with a hell raising noise.
Prejudices ingrained for the last three decades gave rise to the devil’s incarnation.
Whole of Europe was caught in a mudslinging,
flagrant malady. These raging and griping imperialistic convulsions from Europe shook distant Asiatic lands. A loathful Mahatma
Gandhi, perturbed by the splurging fire, gave a quick quitting call to the
Britishers, lest his land might become the violent badlands of imperialism as
well. “Britishers, Quit India!” he said in a pinning voice octaved by a
heavenly non-violent urgency.
And now when the
corpses of imperialism were being counted, a new thing had been conceived in an
uneasy, frightened war-time womb. It was the black and white stage of escapism
from the mayhem witnessed during World War Second. It turned the masses shoddily
away from life’s bitter-sweet variety. Alcohol and sex, two new Goddesses
emerged in the western pantheon. The western society now seeked liberal varieties
in different mixtures of cocktails and promiscuous sex. An almost blindfolded
society leapt over many spicy, humanely divine things. The purity of love and
relations fell prey to an uninhibited copulation between the male and female.
Mechanically rational fucking and cordially invited ebriated emotions consoled
western world as it staggered out of biggest of graveyards after the second
world-war.
It seems the
Occidentalism very rarely finds (as does the ecstatically erotic cocktail of
the Orientalism) a synergy between materialistic libido and spiritual murmur.
So the western society was in a difficult pregnancy, preparing itself for the
post-war period of total biologically rational sex and baited ebriated
emotions. Everything became so certain, dull, colourless and tasteless. What
else you expect if you start fucking at mere pindrops. Where is the charm?
Human society is built upon what goes on during the time separating copulation
from the outdoor offerings of the mundane life i.e., the practical moments
defined by the absence of copulation. Only in the natural animism of the fauna
(excluding human beings) there is a natural permissiveness about sexuality. But
there it is controlled by inbuilt cycles. For rest of the time they roam in
wilderness, almost sexless. Ever-active sexuality of human beings is what separates
us from other animals. And the social build up has arisen only because we’ve
tried to control it through social mechanisms. These controlling mechanisms
provided certain time periods when we beautifully created the world of ethics
and moralities. Thus, in humans there lies a humane world between the meeting
of opposite genitals. Cut away the inbuilt inhibitions between both sexes and
what we face is crumbling down of social fortress, because those inhibitions are
the very foundations of human society.
So in the post-war
west there was no such exclusivity of our blind passions from the normal
everyday life. So the social foundations shook. Divorce, family break ups,
suspicious parentage, perpetually defying siblings, loveless but lustful
relationships butchered the peace of mind. In fact everything suffered.
Orientalism, at the other hand, with its virtuositic charm, multi-hued pluses
and minuses, still glitters in its faded and subdued modern aspect. Now, it’s
the ‘Asiatic Brown Man’s Burden’ to peel away this inhuman dullness and
mechanic monotony from the western social fabric; to paint it in charming
colours and help it shine like it did on two previous occasions---the era of
Greeks and the Renaissance, when it not only reached Orientalism in its charm,
but almost surpassed it to unachievable heights of human body, mind and spirit
in a divine tango.
* * * *
He (the Sadhu) was born in a different district
of the same state where the village of our tale is situated. He was an unfortunate
boy with a birth time deformity in his right leg, as well as the social
deformity of low caste in an occupation based social hierarchy. At that time it
was one of the most traditional (almost unwavering conservatism) societies of
northern India
At the time of birth,
his right leg’s asymmetry wasn’t a glaring one. It won’t be caught by a simply
voguish look. His staggering strides as a toddler, however, clearly showed that
all wasn’t well with his right leg. But, poverty enforced slackness, or compulsory
carelessness, never got his parents to turn a serious eye at the defect. Determinism
was at its supreme. Remotest possibility of such cures, in all its aspects in
this part of the world, was at least half a century away. So, the deformity
grew up sketchingly resulting in a full fledged limping walk of a club footed
child.
His low caste
prepared him to bear all puns, pranks and taunts—humorous foolish folklore
associated with his caste—with a slithery attitude, without slightest remorse
borne out of a stoically resigned sense as if they were just calling his name;
his very identity. In addition to the funny and foolish—almost to the extent of
countryside mythology—folklore of his caste, his jerking walk made him a pick
out of the rest of his fellow community members. After all there were so many
quizzical proverbs about their brain’s lacunae as would be sufficient for any
abdomen’s howlarious diet. They were called the Kings of foolish kingdom;
numerous facts snazzily distorted to create jokes; their compulsive
helplessness moulded in a pell-mell order to chalk out dunderheaded
protagonists of glibly flowing comic tales. Perhaps it was the only form of entertainment
for the sturdy work brutes. These funny episodes were coloured with such tabby
dullardness that even the person claiming to have never parted his lips for a
laugh in his whole life would have broken his accursed moroseness, surrendering
himself to a fall in the dirt and kicking amidst sand-blowing bellicosing
laughter. When someone saw a peacock graciously walking, exhibitionistically
dancing or flying with its buttock-bursting herculian effort, it symbolised the
comic aura hallowed around the boy’s caste. If someone from the boy’s caste
happened to be there, the farmer would’ve relaxed his work-load by rudely grinning:
“Hey look at that, my God! The mol is doing pulghoo...pulghoo…Haaa...Hhha
...Ha...the chol is doing chalghoon...chalghoon....Mol is dancing
dreaming a rain,” as the cowering fellow chickened out of the scene.
History and myth of
this analogy between the boy’s caste and the national bird of India
Sometimes in the
earlier times a brave fellow from the community got crazily interested in the
fabulous flight of a peacock.
“I’ll fly like him,”
the man resolved.
Cudgeling up all his
profundity and faculties of reason he gathered all instruments of flight. A big
broom to serve as his tail, two huge winnowing tin-plates tied to both hands
for the wings, an inverted tumbler tied over head as the bird’s crown. And the
bird incarnate proudly presented himself to his reverent wife.
“Hey wifie, don’t you
think I’ve become a complete mor!” he envisioned before her.
“But how? I’ve never
seen anyone attempting that,” she raised meek doubts.
“Your husband will do
that,” proudly he patted her shoulder.
He attempted the
historical effort from the top of a high sheesham tree, but fell on the
ground with slight protestations by his artificial feathers against the
deflighting force of gravity. A hand and a leg broken and the shrieky bird lay
in his smashed equipment. His wife ran quiveringly to call the farmers working
in the nearby fields.
From that day
onwards, the bird and the community were very rarely mentioned separately.
There were many
people from the same community who were parts and characters of many jocular
fables, whose authenticity many villagers avowedly litigated for being the
witnesses to the abnormally foolish spectacle. In easy spirits, facts or fictions,
nobody cared about the actuality of these happenings when narrated in a typical
style encompassing unsophisticated story telling, enunciating narration, and
comic acting to the limits of a drama, buffony puppetry and mimicry. Validity
of these prankish fables became sureshot when one came across the real self of
a character who was earlier acquainted through a funny little tale. The feckless
air about these poor, foolish characters would let loose unrestrained laughter
in its full feathers, so the onlooker too ended up surrendering to a riotous
foolhardiness.
Those were somehow
easy times in this part of erstwhile Punjab
province, when compared to the gruffy flukes of the second world-war, as well
as the intensifying freedom struggle in India India
Sometimes, frustrated
with the rigescence and ominous aura of present times, an odd veteran farmer of
pre-independence period, now could be heard saying, “That period was far better
than present times. At least the guilty was sure of a punishment. Now all are
too free. Nobody cares about independent law and order.”
“They brought a
tractor. The first one! I saw it by my eyes. Couldn’t believe as it ploughed
unbelievable stretch of land,” another would say in a thankful tone.
“And they gave prizes
for the mightiest bull, cow or buffalo with maximum milk, tallest of jowar
or sugarcane,” another might say, lost in that era of ‘20s and ‘30s, reminiscing
how they put tireless efforts to win the first prize.
To earn one’s two
times meal with the consecration of their own blood and toil was their motto.
Recalling along the same sanctified lines they would peep further back in time,
around the hey-day of their grand fathers at the time of revolt of 1857, when Delhi
Cherishing his
undying farmside shibboleths, another oldie might’ve said as well, “To protect
a refuge seeker was our duty. So those gore angrezs were welcome, but as
long as they themselves earned their part of meals. Fate can make even softest
of hands work hard without bothering about blisters. Menfolk worked in the
fields, around scoop wheels, drove kolhu bullocks in thousand of circles.
And those fairy like women of theirs, they matched each step of our arrogantly
ugly females. Their angelic children threw pebbles at birds preying on crops in
the fields from high scaffoldings. And... and... do you know, one chap even
succeeded in fleecing a houri-like young memsahib? Aaahaa... what luck
of him!”
*
* * *
His father Nathhu Ram
too was linked to one such casteist banter which defined his identity. Attired
in his filthy, tattered homespun peasant vest and a piece of see-through,
patched linen cloth serving as a loin-cloth tied in multi-layers around his
dark, hairy legs he was a typical scion of the downtrodden humanity: a lower
caste man engaged in a bitter struggle for survival; providing grains for his
big nest hustling with wife, five children and still surviving parents. Apart
from his community’s voguish work in leather, he labored in the fields for the
sake of unhealthily big bellies of his children. Unceasing hard work had taken
its toll. He seemed too elderly for his forty and five years on earth. Long greying
beard made his appearance like a sage too much bothered about worldly matters;
his unselfish heart ever pulling him up to wage a grihastha yudha, a war
for the cause of one’s household.
Their house, albeit a
bigger one considering his community, too seemed weary and bothersome like the
patron. Unevenly laid out unplastered brickwork gave it a too rickety look, as
if it would wilt under pressure of the bullying vibrations of the children’s
noise hitting against its unsymmetrical walls. Bricks enunciated timeness
almost to the muse of an archaeologist’s virtuosity. There were many types of
bricks picked up from different sources. Some were purple blue, well baked ones
holding their place under the duress of emerging holes in their vicinity where
the inferior yellowish-sandy ones gave away to the unseen fits and fury of
time; dirt creeping down at the base of the wall, mixing in the primal earth
below; completing its purpose in an unlively form and then entombed in a bigger
dirt still fulfilling its purpose as the bearer of human civilization.
The bricks came from
different sources. Some had been purchased, some asked as alms in broad day
light and others appeared almost overnight. Roofing was made of snaggy logs
covered with a thick layer of clayey soil. Vituperative thwacks boomed below
whenever anyone of the naughty ones succeeded in completing a staircase-less
climb. Still, there was some solidity about the whole look of it; built as it had
been on the foundations of labour’s altar. It had been consecrated by the
spirit of sweat and toil of the patriarch. How contrasting it was in comparison
to the shaky foundations of two-nation theory, on which a new nation was to be
erected; its facade hanging dangerously even imperiling the fate of its
neighbour.
Front portion of the
house consisted of a narrow, rectangular room partitioned into two with the
help of a mud-brick thin wall which rose up to about two feet below the uneven
roofing, which had its own world of sparrow nestlings. Shaggy roof-sticks laid
tangentially across the logs left it cavernous enough for the spirited birds.
Sinews hang down and swayed as the house’s vault decoration. Sparrows chirped
in a playful choir. Below, the mud plastered floor had a high proportion of
bird drops and sinews. In one portion of the room, into which the main
weathered down wooden door opened felicitously, Nathhu and his wife slept, as
if to protect the family from all dangers. Four of the children occupied the
second portion to the right of their parents’ chamber. The lame boy and his
grandparents had the remotest corner of the house. These were two small
shelters at the back of the house, separated from the crowded front part by a
little courtyard. This open space in between had delipitated side walls
struggling to reach at least up to half height of the front room, while at the
back they meekly vanished into the dingy structure just a couple of feet higher
then them. Of the backside dungeonic shelters, the one to the right seemed
remotest as it was still lower than the other. Its roof had fallen, so it was
brimming with those unfortunate things which didn’t need a cover at night.
Roofing of the other, which covered three sleeping bodies at night, had even more
glaringly uneven wood.
Two trees, a mulberry
and a blackberry, completed the courtyard’s part in the coupled symmetry of the
house. Their luxurious and rich vegetative gown seemed to undo the poverty
enforced feline-forlornness of the house. Under the glitter of a fresh dawn
these nature’s tassels shone like a shy bride in her sheeny apparel, hennaed
hands, and the maternal eyes going ecstatic over the pious nupitals.
Prized-possession of the house was in the bread earner’s roomlet. It was a
broad framed, rusted bicycle with a huge carrier at the rear and a big basket
at the front. It had been specially equipped to suit the diversity of the man’s
tasks which he took to keep his family alive.
In the same room, a
stone slab had been tucked into the wall in a corner to serve as a shelf. On it
was put the object of his pride. In fact it was the only special thing which
broke the monotony of the generality surrounding him in its few shades of
caste, occupation and foolish fables. A pretty catty thing was this Magic
Lantern. It was a rusty, squarish tin-box structure of an optical apparatus,
throwing magnified images of pictures on the back screen. Two eye-like cylindrical
tubes protruded from the front panel, and when their iron-sheet cappings were
removed, dull faded lenses peeped into the enlarged vision inside. Dim light
coming across the back sockets made of a transparent plastic sheet met the
magnified eye sight groping forward through the darkness enclosed inside the
box. Inside niches along the back sockets had two narrow openings (slit-holes) into
which pictures could be inserted. Once into the play the darkness inside came
alive with static pictures of Raj Kapoor, Ashok Kumar and their fellow stars
and actresses who to the villagers seemed mythologically vague, unknown and
surprising like the scenes from Mahabharata and Ramayana which formed a major
proportion of Nathhu Ram’s dog-eared pad of pictures. That was a time when not
a single cinema hall existed in the whole area which now forms the present state
of Haryana. There were just a few circus-like wandering groups who occasionally
opened the unbelieving countryside eye to the motion picture. So at least to the
children this tiny spectacle based on a simple technology was almost worthy of worship
in its playful grandiosity.
In a sleepy town or a
city the enterprise might’ve accrued some coins where children had some pocket
money, but here in this countryside sustaining itself on a barter system among
different communities, using minimum of currency, it was destined to be a fun
game. And it remained so. If the poor man insisted for some coins, the bullying
look of the farmer might have rebuked: “Why’re you so crazy and cunning? Asking
money for just a peep into this rattle hole! Come on, come with me I will give
you something from my barn.”
Children of the
village called it “Baraha Man ki Dhoban” literally meaning “a fat washer
woman weighing twelve mounds.” He tried to remunerate its cost by visiting some
local fairs held annually. After all it was a similar place where in a fit of
curious and sweet absentmindedness he’d bought it. Thus, when at the fairs he
rarely missed a chance to ask the peeper if he was impressed enough to buy it.
For rest of the time village children had a free peep into it, depending upon
who was at what terms with the poor man’s children. In return they accosted him
as ‘uncle’ rather than by his plain name, surnaming it with the name of his
community without batting an eyelid. Also, the object was a rare permissible
path through which the higher caste children mixed with Nathhu’s lower ones. As
they peeked into the casteless box they had to gag their customary pun and
disdain for the poor man’s unclean children.
The lame boy,
however, as it’s to be expected, was usually left behind in this scampering and
hustle-bustle among the playing children. His grandmother had sewn for him a farcical
knee-length robe. For the major part of his childhood he was seen in it,
without any other piece of clothing on his body. The children found him unfit
for the fructification of their fleecing plans. He involved himself as a
spectator in this cajoling game, as they were bribing his brothers and sisters
with a ‘play and chit-chat with higher caste boys’ to gain access to the
peeping hole. With supreme humility he opened the lids for them as his part of
the game. Also, on certain occasions, when elders of the family weren’t expected
back very soon from the fields, they thronged this lower caste courtyard to
taste translucent berries on either of the trees. Here too the children of the mochi
went up to any height to bring the sweetest taste of their hospitality for the
appeasement of their superior playmates. Hence, even the remotest piece of
berry was within the invaders’ clasp. The lame boy couldn’t match his fellow
siblings’ non fearing dexterity in tree climbing. Once he’d a hard fall while
attempting to play an equal part in the game and they laughed hilariously. From
that day onwards he just stood beneath the trees and jostled among the crowd to
get the fallen fruit. He just gobbled his own share as soon as his hands fell
upon the fruit up for a grab, without caring to forward it to the taboo
breaking higher caste children, as was done by his brother or sister stonily
collecting the fruits for other’s tongue. The casteless competitor in him made
him a hate figure among the village children. He on his part became too gutsy
for the children of his caste as he limped through those grabbing scrambles. He
hated all the playmates of his fellow siblings. They in return directed all
their casteist sleaze on him, as well as the taunting slur offensively aimed at
his lameness.
Thus the seed of
marginalisation from a normal childhood was born: the fact that he was not like
others made him jittery most often. The cunning brats seemed to ogle tauntingly
only at the deformed portion of his. He too in return picked out one aspect of
their childish surface that they scoffed at him in all their meanness. Shorn
off a mild generality of childhood thoughts and emotions, he often found
himself giving an attentive ear to this off-stream, particular, clattering wail
inside him. Multi-hued rainbow of childhood colourings in such cases veers off
to a hard, rigid colour where the wavering fickleness of little heart and
little mind can’t abandon itself to free airs. A hard, mature, rationalized and
one-sided aspect of a harsh reality glares in its bewildering array, more fatal
for childhood than any other disease. For, the childhood if not enjoyed in a
bulging gusto in its flickering multifaceted ways and aspects, pulls a child
apart and make him look from some distance, from a specified angle, at certain
points and circumstances. An impenitent conscience vibrates with an obdurate
frequency inside the marginalised compartment of this heart. Unfortunately,
these disharmonic wavelets emanating from a part of heart are too overbearing
and it’s only a matter of time before they churn out an inhuman concoction as
they go on maturing in a rigid and marginalised chamber in a world more and more
single faceted, and glaringly unfavourable.
Thus there remained a
nagging constancy despite his growing up: constancy of marginalisation, of
lameness and of the habit of adamantly looking at only one side or aspect of
reality. That narrow margin between his folded hands for a surya namashkar,
on the first day when Bhagte introduced the mound to him, symbolised this very
rigidness, which had become his telescope to peep out at one fixed object ; a
fit of worldly ordinariness, yet so mean especially for an anchorite.
His grandmother’s
myth laced, ancient tales were the only blossoming childish points in his
otherwise uneasily-whimpering childhood. She told him these stories in the dark
of their roomlet. Stories about triumphant princes, beautiful nymph like princesses
shedding tears, sorcerer’s witch-hunt, wisecracking dwarfs, ragamuffins frittering
away fates by winning or losing a dice, terrifying and fierce demons, mythology
defining tapasya of rishis and munis in Himalayas and
devil ridden forests. He listened to these exciting tales with exciting horror
and pathos of childish pain and pleasure. His favourites were those which had
protagonists like blind, deaf, mute, lame, hunchbacked dwarfs and the like. He
would go with an iridescent beserking joy as he heard in raptly attendant intonation
the impossible tasks performed by these favourite characters. The story about a
lame wood cutter who won an effusively beautiful princess in a swayamvara---an
open competition to choose a groom---through his wit was the boy’s favourite
one. It had been told and retold umpteen times by the hollow cheeks of his
granny with the gnats and other insects singing a choir in the background from
their cosy holes in unplastered bricks, broken sometimes by a sleepy scrawl
from the old man lying in rag-tag charpoy near their pallet, “Oh my...it’s
midnight ! Why don’t you
people stop and sleep?”
There used to be an
annual fair in a neighbouring village, in ‘penance and pilgrimage’ type
commemoration of a local female deity. On this day, the deity was worshipped
and the surrounding area bore a festival look. A ramshackle, sheeny market
cropped up for a day to provide some chutney to the visitor’s devotional
demeanour: a market of small human interests, ranging from petty amateur vendors
to the professionals from sleepy townships of far. Balloons, toys, whistles,
swings and cheap sweetmeats for the children; buying and bartering of cattle
among the farmers; bangles, pink ribbons, looking glasses, brass jewellery,
trinkets and combs for the girls and women; and to cap it all the wrestling
competition in the evening were the festivities which made this day so long
with its snaily pace and uncountable happenings. Deeply ingrained social
prejudices seemed to entomb themselves on this day. The easy environment just
smelt of common natural instincts.
The lame boy wasn’t,
and couldn’t have been, a regular visitor to this annual fracas. The place was
about seven or eight kilometres from his village. The children went on foot,
some took lift on bicycles on the dusty road, others went in tongas
During the just
bygone harvesting season, his family had worked tirelessly in the fields of a
peasant and this had brought them somewhat closer to the farmer who deemed it
bearably fit to give some place in his cart to the poor man’s children ready to
go to the fair in best of their clothes. At the merest of a consenting nod from
the farmer lurching on the shaft they flocked neatly and cleanly into a corner,
huddled together with their much obliged, happy eyes, while the farmer’s kids
looked at them proudfully. He wasn’t visible earlier in the pack, but now stood
there on the earth wearing his worn out kurta and knee-length faded
shorts tied with a string around his belly. His usual outfit indicating that
this year too he hadn’t been made ready for a visit to the fair by his parents
fearing he’d be lost there. In the past, on each occasion, his grandmother
embracingly soothed him down, saying he won’t be able to catch up with the straying
children and will be lost like that prince in a tale and then the monster would
pick him up. But now he was grown enough not to show white feathers at the
merest mention of those few-fawing figures from the other end of folklore. To
top it, his granny or any other elder wasn’t present at the scene as the cart
started to stagger onwards. Curious glare of the unseen fair spiraled around
him.
With the help of his sheesham
stick he gave himself a springing jerk and in the next moment he was on the back
shaft, his face backwards and legs dangling freely. The foe had dared to perch
upon their cart. After all he’d, at so many times, taken potshots against them.
The farmer’s children thus gave him scowling looks. The youngest of them with a
sudden spurt in his temper tried with all his might to push the opponent off
the cart head-long into the dirt. Like an enraged dog which writhes in silent
angst for its helplessness of not biting or barking back, the encroacher
thought it fit to concentrate all his power in maintaining his precarious perch
on the wood. He knew that any speck of scuffle from his side will nullify his
chances of reaching the fair. The farmer’s other children meanwhile vent out
their hysteria in chewing gestures. Rest of Nathhu Ram’s brood watched haplessly.
The commotion drew the farmer’s attention. He looked back and found his little
one kicking and floundering against the stony figurine.
“What is the matter,
Moola?” he sounded hoarse and groggy.
“He often fights with
us and now wants to sit in our cart!” his brood chorused, angrily pointing
their accusing fingers at the lame boy.
This consenting
sonority seemed to enforce the tiring little brat and his next tirade sent his
foe into dirt with a loud thud. As was expected, the poker-faced farmer with
his simple and shallow brain, burst out with a clattering laughter. The lame
boy gave a howling cry like a pig when put on a butcher’s block. Rhyme as well
as reason very rarely took deep dives into those parishioner hearts of those
easy, hard times. Watching him weep like this he very quickly brought the odds
in the victim’s favour as his unsparing bull-whip fell on the offender’s back.
His naughty brat cried even more soulfully and took a sobbing shelter in his
elder sister’s lap. With the same whip of justice he signaled the lame boy to
reoccupy his former place. There wasn’t the slightest lurking of any emotion on
the farmer’s face. After all, if those sturdy workers started emoting over such
inconsequential little distractions, then who would do the blood squelching
hard work for them; without losing any time in the shallow depths of their
brains, these fellows very quickly roughed down the offensive edges with a
totally uncalculating brain. The unflinching motto of their lives, ‘Work with
toiling blood for even a mouthful of food, a crumb, a morsel,’ required only
this sort of character.
Whiningly the lame
boy took his former place. Nobody spoke to him during the journey. But he didn’t
care about it. A child going to the fair, and especially the first timer, is
lost in a riotous symphony of dreamy imaginations. Drawing inspiration from an
exciting introspection over the world of scuffing clamour in his granny’s
tales, the boy let loose his foreseeing imagination to match his wildest of
fancies about the fair. Vague signs of the fair’s existence came down to
welcome him as the cart neared the teeming festivity. Flickering colours at a
distance tugged at his heartstrings. Sounds of whistles, balloon horns and
bestirred men, women and children scampered towards him in their wildly
gyrating beats. His heartbeats responded resoundingly. Clairvoyance in its
childish finesse took hold of his temple nerves. At the forefront of mysterious
hap and happenings his face was riven with a reddish glow. Certainly he’d
looked like a fascinated angel.
A big vertical swing with its wooden
sitting-crates full of excited humans was the most discernable object from the
distance up to which they had carted up. Cramped in those wooden trolleys or
rather boxes people cackled a mixed wave of fear, excitement or something
between the two as the large circular wheel took them upside down during its
little flight of fancy. Other children in the cart gloriously chirped about
their plans for the day as they came to the fore of familiar spectacle. His wonderment
was like when one comes across the huge Himalayas
for the first time in life. As the cart wended its way into the festive
congregation, it seemed to him a strong gust of wind which could blow him away.
Apparitional figures from the tales of his old granny seemed to authenticate
her warnings. He feared he’d be lost once the cart stopped and the children
took to their heels to catch up with the riveting charm of the fair.
Distraughtly
bewildered boy didn’t know when and how someone else happened to share the
shaft with him. His squirting thoughts suddenly frittered away fearfully as if
a demon had appeared suddenly to kidnap him and hang him upside down over a
boiling oil tub, like so many other infirm boys in his demonic cubicles. That
was how his foes accursed him during quarrels at the village, yelling at him langda,
his nickname derived from his lameness.
He found an old sadhu
morosely sitting by him. His rusted trident seemed to be suffocated by a
saffron coloured ribbon tied below its triple-pointed end. His kamandla
was bulging with prasad, holy oblations mostly sweetmeats. A shaggily
stitched croceous bag supported itself upon the shaft, its cord hanging loose
from his shoulder. A small mossy leather pouch was tied around his bare belly. Its
moth-eaten straps tied to the holy thread passing over his left shoulder and
crossing his belly like a cross-belt of spiritualism to fall around his right
side near the waist-knots of his old ochre coloured loin cloth. A new
reddish-coloured angavastram, a shoulder cloth presented on auspicious
occasions, was shinning in gleaming forenoon rays. Its distinct sheen clearly
discernable against the background of his otherwise faded aura. The lower end
of his crutch followed the cart skiddingly on the earth, as he lazily held the
staff by its head crosspiece heavily bandaged with a thick covering of rags. He
seemed overburdened than the cart itself, which had meekly adapted to his jerky maundering as he gave a big, cumbersome jerk with his heavy
fall on its back bar.
He seemed mawkish,
tired and worn out under the hotly approaching noon , but was worldly prudent enough to perch upon this
conveyance. His weight, however, imbalanced the cart’s poise. The farmer
realised this by the yoke’s position as well as the lost rhythm in the bullocks’
steppings. Now, things could aggravate to any extent if someone dared to
off-tilt a farmer’s pride in this way. It was taken to be almost blasphemous against
the religion of agriculture.
“Who’s this stupid
mother-fucker?” he belched loudly. The farmer completed even before he could
turn his face backwards to see who it was.
The children giggled.
Before he could say anything further, his eyes met the unworldly musing face of
the sadhu which promptly checked his bull-whipping tongue habituated to
such sudden abusive spurts due to those endless hours spent behind the
ploughing oxen, sweating and endlessly shouting at them to go on and on.
“Calm down, calm down
son,” the old mendicant pacified, without even caring to turn his head.
Much to the surprise
of the lame boy, the belligerent looking farmer instantly fetched a guilty
smile around thick lips beneath his well managed whiskers.
“Oh, I’m really sorry
maharaj! I couldn’t see
it were you,” he said politely with such familiarity that it created doubts in
the boy’s mind about their acquaintance.
The old friar on his
part just raised a careless hand above his head gesturing all was well and he’d
forgiven the farmer. A staid grimace spread over the old religioner’s face as
if out of repulse for the staggering stagery of this world. As if to forget
this world of vanities he rummaged his hand in the bag and drew out his small chilam,
a smoking pipe. Struggling to manage his belongings he brought out ganja from
his leather pouch, or was it some nefarious mixture of opium, marijuana, poppy
seeds and belladonna we’re not sure, and filled up his chilam. A few Cush
The boy looked at the
strings of strangely perforated beads coiled around the old man’s neck and
there onwards his gaze followed all his ritualistic provisions, finally coming
to a halt at the sadhu’s crutch. His own smooth dark-brown mulberry stick
seemed a crutch-child under the shadow of big and broad support of the sadhu,
which like its master seemed to be outworldly, and rustically off coloured
amidst the multicoloured festive environment. In a sense, those few colours of
abandonment, of asceticism, of the ecstasy of an unbounded soul looked divine
but still dull and grave in that market of multi-rainbowed interests.
Yes! If mendicancy
finds even the ordinary world as misfitting in its religiously roving shoes,
then this full fledged fair of commoners was definitely bulging with pinching
vanities and blasphemous noises. The old sadhu thus seemed an exotic migrant
species grafted to the place. The boy too was a considered ‘unfit’ for such
fairings. Starting with their supporting parallelism, the woods, he bent down
on the hindbar and looked for the congenital counterpart of his infirmity. It
wasn’t too far. The old man’s weak limb was swinging to the cart’s bumpy jerks
in synchronism with his own.
Divided in three
parts the reality was perhaps like this: the front part, forcing a way out of
the mob’s gaiety with the oxen sweating and the farmer yelling while looking
around for a place for stoppage; the middle part of the cart laden with
childhood vagaries and imagination lost in the frenetic, festive chaos
scattered around; and the rear part struggling to avoid being lost in this
spiteful and buzzing world. Of the last, the old man had almost succeeded with
the help of his mendicancy and religious credo. At least he seemed to survive
bravely as well as respectfully. The lame boy on the other hand sensed his
uncertain future, though in the form of a vaguest of tinge inside his heart
which surfaced on his boyish conscience in the form of a fear for getting lost
amidst this ambiguous worldly fair.
“Come to enjoy the
fair, young man,” the old man patted his shoulder.
He was by now in
fairly free spirits, where this world as well as the invisible world of
spiritualism was engaged in a wrestling game in the hallucinated palestra.
“Yes maharaj,
I’ve come for the first time,” the boy spoke inanely.
He didn’t see any
sarcasm in the old man’s free gesture. Presence of a crutch with the sadhu
whisked away all possibility of the old man turning out to be a natural,
bantering foe.
“For the first time!
Why? You’re quite grown up. Or you were born big?” the old man jested, exhaling
a cloud of consumed smoke.
“No, it wasn’t that.
But I was born with a lame leg,” he said it with a sullen ease without feeling
any insult because of the similarity with the old man.
Inhaling deeply, as
if he wanted to puff down extra smoke for the boy’s sake, the old man sighed, “And
your family found it improper to send you to such a crowded place...hope they
think well of you. Caring that you’d be lost... ann... not like maaine. Go... t
ooff thaa liabiliti inn a fair aat Haridwaar. Naaow they mst ave even phogoten
that a ch... childe oof theirs aas lost att ai fair,” he stabbed the secret as
the pal of hallucination gradually took hold of the most of his brain’s chambers,
making him feel free to divulge the pathos and angst out of a corner where the
faint memory still lighted a feeble reminiscential lamp.
“Is’t sure baba,
they left you intentionally. It could’ve been that you were lost yourself,” the
boy philosophised unsuspectingly, unaware of the rancid social facts of the
grown-ups.
“Yu don know aal
thiss... sttil ttoo yung for that. Asz a lamey little toyy theey may playey
weeth yuu...bBut syou vil ggrow a bBig la...ability onn themnn. Leeve... oOn
theer crumBs,” the old man completed his tizzying flip-flap.
The fair’s
mountainously concoctious clattering jammed his senses. Ecstatic children in
the middle of the cart seemed sibilant and just ready to escape to the four
winds, leaving his pusillanimous heart floundering.
“... Ae lame fitt
four nothing. Yuur brrotherrz w’eel... kkik you,” he struggled with his
foretelling.
The boy turned his
head and saw the excited pack. His brothers and sisters seemed cohorts of his
sworn foes.
The old sadhu
in delectable spirits raised his hand and blessed a nearby vendor, “Alakh
Niranjan!”
Vendor’s much obliged
soul ran after the cart with a handful of sweets and put it on the heap inside
the sadhu’s kamandla.
Nibbling a crumb, he
offered a yellow piece to the boy, “Eet son eet ...by tha grase of godd theree
ez plenti off...ffor peepul laike yuu an...mee,” he patted the boy’s afflicted
leg.
Involuntarily the boy
took the piece and put it in his mouth; its chunky taste of colouring and
sweetness pulpified inside his mouth. He was unaware of the looming permanence of
this taste on his soul: the taste of an infirm religioner surviving on the
morsels of mendicancy. As he gulped down the mollified semi-fluid it seemed a
pleasing iridescence holding him up amidst all that sniding charivari fairing
around. Mightiest of impressions, in fact the life-long imprints chancily flash
suddenly, almost as an impalpable shove, over a platitudinously dozing subconscious
surface. The unfit, old and lame mendicant misfitted in a multicoloured brawl,
where nobody seemed to get anything, or reach anywhere, drawing a respecting
and decent look as well as sweetmeats! The old, infirm, religioner walking on a
path without being lost in a world beeming with spoofing spooks. Such scuddling
and ambiguously tinkling impressions unassumedly survive to validify their
practicality over the future’s circumstantial emergence.
The old man put his
fingers into his pouch and fetched out a two anna coin. “Haave thiss mye
deer... thaat pokit of yuurs mus be ampty,” he swayed his index finger at the
boy’s empty pocket.
Tentatively the boy
took the coin, not daring to refuse. And before he could think or feel anything
the old man alighted from his side as the cart slowed down almost to a halt.
Even in those boozy spirits he nullified any chance of a fall by outmanoeuvring
the physical law of inertia with the balance of his crutch. The place where he
got down was ringing with a lustrous devotional music. Mandolin, harmonium, tabla
and sarangi were pouring out their notes in embracing swirls.
Holding the coin in his hand he saw the old religioner valiantly mixing into
the musical mosaic. As the cart took him away his eyes fell upon the players of
those instruments sitting on a wellcurb. A young sadhu in flowing dark
beard was singing in devotional tones. Around the wellcurb, on the ground, a
circle of reverential humanity was swaying its head, completely forgetful of
the vapid jingoism bumming around.
Happily he looked at
the rusty bronze coin, as the cart fastidiously jerked forth searching for an
open space. Faded sheen of the coin reminded him of the old sadhu and he
stared into the clanging and booming enthusiasm. But the ascetic had swarmed
into the mobbed festivity. He vanished like the proverbial ascetic mentioned in
Mundaka Upanishad:
Knowledge of peace and tranquility on their palms,
To the
divinity’s delight they survive on alms,
They
take their dispassionate bodies and souls pure
Through the bright, sunny door
To mix
with the ultimate and immortal lure;
With
His indestructible soul,
And
imperishable spirit
Unburdened with the time’s toll.
And that lame Shaivite
ascetic, living on alms and grace of Lord Shiva, swam across the colourful
hazard, in the search, in the realisation of that Omnipresent whose followers
pass the test of mendicancy with an uninhibited tamanna, soul’s full
hearted passion or compassion, be that in the form of intoxication, or smoking.
The boy’s
impressionable self in the womb of his conscience found it friendly related to
that old ascetic. He liked his brave exaltedness; decent and respectful
survival in a world stricken with archetype lecherousness swirling in a disputatious
air.
“I’ll look exactly
like him when I grow up,” his lips parted for a whisper.
After crossing the
fair’s main mass, the farmer stopped under a tree some paces away from the
dusty road. Fastening the oxen to the tree and tying fodder sacks around their
muzzles, he let loose the children into the fair but not before heaviest of
instructions; warning them not to get lost, remain in a group and reach the
cart in afternoon well before the wrestling competition because at that time
the crowd will almost double.
With jangling hitches
in his strides, the boy tried to keep with the pack. But carried on wild winds
they quickly surged away. He caught up with them, while they stopped for some
naughty bargaining or eating something, but bored with that temporary halt they
soon drifted away. After all, whole of the fair waited pleasantly to be marauded.
Finally, he gave up chasing them.
“Sadhu maharaj
didn’t get lost in a whole world. I can certainly reach the cart after
wandering as much as I like,” he braved himself up, as the strange, puerile
hoot of the fair wavered his heart.
He was thus left with
a two anna coin grasped firmly in his palm amidst that friskingly
dispersed fair. His stick seemed supporting him on this maiden venture. Attention-hungry
vendors let out clarion calls from their make-shift outlets as if they could
clearly see the coin in the safety of his fist. Not bothered he moved further,
much to the rogue’s chagrin. The fairings’ spire imputatively looped about for
almost two kilometres. There was sorcerer’s witch-hunt in all its jittery
drowsing and cold disdain. A chump and a hunch were mocking and gimmicking at
the putrefying and stale social seriousness through their comical profligacy, while
a jimp jill collected coins beating a dholak hanging down her neck. With
a clattering heart he raised his hand to open his fist holding the treasure,
but drew it back. Unmindful she slantingly smiled and moved ahead. Farmers
wonderfully controlling their sodding tempers went on with cattle business
masking a fake smile over their agitated faces. A muezzin and a sadhu
were growlingly smattering a debate for their religious upmanship. He clapped
from the sadhu’s side believing himself to be a Hindu. In a fight, a
narcissistic cock smothered down its opponent, which dejectedly limped away
with its torn and tattered feathering. His heart poured out in its embracing
swirls for the poor cock with broken leg. For a moment he thought of redeeming
the loss of its sulking master, but the coin had tasted the protective sweat of
his palm and thus won’t go away. A parrot was drawing tarot cards. Its mentor
was sitting with a prophesying look. But the boy seemed dubiously sure about
something, so the conniving glint in the parrot mentor’s eye met no consent. A
beggar, a very old woman, squiggled around him turning him pale whether she was
that wrinkled witch of grandma tales who ate children’s soft hearts.
Distraughtly he straggled away and perspiring profusely beat her in the run.
As the afternoon sun
reminded him of the farmer’s deadline, he opened his palm and cast the look of
a grave camaraderie. ‘Why not take it back to the village?’ an inner voice
advised. ‘No! Someone or the other is bound to snatch it away. Worse, charge of
stealing could be forced upon,’ countered another one. For sure, he wanted to
spend it now to get a symbol of the fair which he could boast to his foes.
He stopped by a
rickety divan. Bleary bottles contained coloured fluids. The man behind
mechanically drew a dank smile. “A glassful of lusciously sweet sarbet
for one anna”, he proffered.
“Is it really sweet?”
the boy questioned, imitating the elders respecting the value of their money.
“Yes! Or do you
expect me to sell mud water here. Have a glass and you’ll know it yourself,” sarbet
hawker lost the sweetness of his tongue.
The boy gloomily
peeped into the colours and seemed to taste the liquid inside. This done, he
trudged on wiping his mouth on his knuckles.
“A lame bastard and
got the pretensions of three legged one!” the hawker nursed his irritation
after failing to bait the boy.
The boy halted by a cart
adorned with burfis made of wheat flour, coconut strips and sugar.
Showing the coin to
the man behind, he asked seriously, “How much can I’ve for this?”
“Enough for the
satisfaction of your little belly,” morosely opulent figure came to life for
having got a chance to cheat the boy, because the coin was worth at least a
kilo of sweets.
“But how much?” coin’s
proud possessor emphasised.
“Told you na...enough
till your last burp!” the man exclaimed.
“No, tell me how many
pieces can I have,” the boy said steadily.
“Numbers! Oh Ramji,
why the numbers. You are not taking these for learning the count. All you’ve to
do is to chew and gulp down for the sake of your tongue, young man,” the burfiwala
somehow reined in an impatient fit of angst.
“I need to save ten
for my grandma,” the boy scooped almost a war against salesmanship.
“One-and-half legged hazard,
you want your grandma sweetened by these...” he fumed.
“No, she is already
sweet,” the boy interrupted uncannily.
“Run out of here, or
I’ll fuck your sweetened grandma!” the hawker belched impiously.
Tormented by the
thoughts of a suitable way to spend the coin, he had unsuccessful flings at
many things like trinkets, beetle nuts and even beedies as the chance
was ripe with a golden opportunity to have a go at the much tabooed smoking.
Beautiful toy world spread out on the chadors over the earth seemed too
cheap and unworthy at the cost of precious coin. Even the first object of his
fancy at the fair, the big swing, seemed a foolish vagary as he doubled his
fist around his coin.
Then he stopped
exactly at the same spot where the coin’s previous owner had alighted from the
cart. He seemed to be aware of this fact. A narrow pathway branched off into a
less crowded direction. Fed up with the imposing mass, he turned into it,
curious to know how far the hawkers were lined along that dirt pathlet. This
path led to the small temple of the local deity in whose commemoration the
annual fair used to be held. It bore less festive look. Without any conscious
discernment on the part of the lame boy, texture and type of the commodities
sold along this path changed from the mainstream multicoloured festivities to
the religious ones. The path had a definite directedness of soft penance and a
little pilgrimage in stark comparison to the apathetic pervertiveness of the bleary
festivity wildly scattered around. Beautiful toys of the latter here changed to
the subtle spiritual sobriety of numerous idols of Gods and Goddesses. Chutney
and sweets reverentially gave way to God’s prasad. Instead of trinketish
fracas, here one came across weird unearthly world of amulets, rosaries, beads
and stones to rinse the malevolent dirt off the wearer. Sinuous double-tongued
bargaining was proscribed and in its place a devotional fervour veneered the
worldly bargaining of holy objects, that is, make mild profit in a most polite
voice and gestures, otherwise the Gods would go irate.
“Have this amulet and your leg would be
cured,” a very poor religious friar from caves scowled pleadingly.
The boy stopped for
him and searched for any intended pun. But there was nothing quizzical about
the pathetic religioner, who seemed very near to a beggar.
Happy for not
smelling a rat, the boy exclaimed, “Really! Will it cure my leg?”
“Yes son, it’s made
for divine succour. Inside is the holy vibhuti and a great mantra
chanted upon it. And of course the metal is highly auspicious,” he spoke in exigency.
For a moment, the boy
felt drawn to the ironical spiral of the miracle spooled around the object. But
the robust enormity of the task to be performed by the tiny amulet blurred his
potentially believing mind.
Once again he shrank
back.
“No! It can’t,” he
said somewhat sternly.
“Then rot with your
three-quarter-leg,” the religioner-cum-hawker mildly frisked. His pungent retort
laced with genteel piety.
On moving further, he
saw the sanctum-sanctorum of the female deity. It was a three-feet-high
circular structure curbing around a big peepal tree. Cracks had appeared in the
plastered brickwork, as the holy trunk had forced its growth into the curbing
around it. Earthen oil lamps were burning inside the small alcoves around the
circular pedestal. Incense, turmeric, rice, milk, vermilion and sugar-coated
balls of puffed rice had heaped over the deity’s abode. Devotees were praying
for good fortunes putting their brows on the curbing.
He saw the coin’s
giver sitting nearby on the ground surrounded by many of his ilk. Keeping a
serene face he was squatted with religious expedience. His new shoulder-cloth
was spread on the ground and an amalgam of offerings and oblations had risen up
in a heap on it. The crutch was lying useless at a distance. Unconcernedly he
raised his hand over the bent head seeking his blessings.
In commune with the
devotional festivity of this part of the fair, the boy limped forward. Stooping
with his stick he touched the feet of his benefactor with his left hand. The
old man who’d looked pathetically worn out in the forenoon, now seemed to have
got much needed rest at this little votive shrine after a tiresome, straggling
journey. The smoke seemed to have lost its hangover after propitiating the holy
spirits inside his brain chambers.
He recognised the
boy. “How’s the fair, son?” he asked in an old, wrinkled, blithe tone, a loud
fart escaping the loin cloth as he shifted his haunch.
“It’s been a good day
maharaj,” the boy started with inhibition, “but I’ve not yet come to
decide how to spend the coin you gave me,” he spoke a wee bit fastly, almost
muttered looking at the bright yellow shine over the western horizon.
“There’re so many
things in the market. Money can get you anything from the worst to the best,”
the old man vauntingly spoke as a preacher.
“Worst and...best...ummn...”
the boy tried to fathom the depth of the sadhu’s sermon
“Everything is bad if
you don’t look at it full heartedly, child. Heart’s true tamanna can
turn every thought and act into good,” the sage gave an ambiguous synopsis of
his lifelong sadhuhood without penetrating the boy’s head.
“Can I get tamanna
for this?” the boy innocently held the coin.
The religioner looked
at the coin. “Why not? Spend it in the service of God and it’ll turn to a good
thing,” he gave a nice, little and practical version of his enlightenment.
A head touched the sadhu’s infirm toe. Straightening up,
the man with folded hands pleaded for accursed death to his evil days. Very
piously the old man bade him blessings. In the boy’s eyes the exalted halo
around the sadhu brightened up even more. He arrived at a hazy
conclusion that under the guiding light of asceticism even a lame person could
live without bothering prejudices and puns of casteism as well as infirmity.
A little flash of
lightning struck across his puzzled mind, making him sure of the way to spend
his coin; on a nice thing with a full hearted tamanna. While coming towards
the shrine he had passed by a man with needles and dark green pigment---a
tattoo engraver to be precise. He strutted back to him.
Hastily he thrust
forward his hand. “Can you sketch a permanent picture of Bhagwan Shiva Shankar
here,” he gasped rolling up his soiled right sleeve before the tattoo marker.
The man looked at his
slender but hardening arm. “But it’ll hurt and as long as I draw it...” he
doubted the lame boy’s seriousness.
Firming up his arm
the boy convinced him, “I don’t care as long as it’s a nice act for the God.”
The tattoo marker
started to draw his art’s indelible mark on the boy’s soft skin. His needle
dipped in thick fluid punctured numerous little wounds. The boy clenched his
teeth to prevent even the slightest whimper escape his mouth. In a way it was a
religious artwork on his soul’s canvas. Indian ink, soot, gunpowder and charcoal
inside the dye ordained him into religionhood. This little tattooy cauterisation
gave him sweet satisfaction, as he felt a bit redeemed as well as empowered
against those touting taunts about his caste and lameness. That religious
acquisition initiated him into his boyish faith.
God’s big imprint
curved down on both sides of his arm. Lord Shiva with a small snake coiled around
His hair tucked in a knot at the top of head; big cobra, mythological sheshnag,
around His neck with its taut hood, lapping tongue guarding the God’s face; a
moon crescent over His head, from where the holy Ganga dripped down; a hand
raised in blessing by the God of destruction in Hindu mythology.
Religionhood
penetrated skindeep as the pigment closeted itself in the dermis of his soul’s
physical covering. He felt the excitement of commanding reverence and respect
fancying himself to be a grown-up sadhu. His neglected, clean substratum
now had a defining Godly figure on it. And it was to be seen whether his boyish
convictions about one sided aspect of reality would chime in consonance with
this new indelible impression making him a compassionate devotee and servant of
God or there would be a inconsonance of sorts leaving him merely a disabled sadhu,
so passionate about his religious practice, swinging and staggering in the mire
of passion and dispassion.
When he showed his
pride possession to the children, back in the cart, they had a hearty laugh at
him. “A lame’s God,” they jested, while showcasing their own colourful things
from the childish mainstream.
In a way he’d taken a
bold step in branching off the main, festive mass. In a tiny hole of his heart’s palette a
distinctly coloured idea had been dropped. And now earnestly he desired it to
spread over his whole tablet.
At the village chaupal
where some children sat under the neem tree to cram alphabets and
numerals, he could be found sitting there on certain days followed by month-long
lulls, without unnerving the teacher, because his name wasn’t in the torn-out
register. From now onwards he banished even those rare appearances. Loss wasn’t
grave. Even if he’d continued with it for years he might’ve, at the most, got
his thumb and fingers move haphazardly to scrawl his name. He could do the same
with the thumb-print on a paper much to the time’s satisfaction for not getting
struck at a ‘penned down’ halt. As for the name, Shakespeare could’ve well said,
“What’s there in a name?” They called him langda, the lame one. We for
our decency’s sake prefer ‘the boy’ or even ‘a lame boy’ is permitted.
Thus began the second
phase of his boyhood. He identified himself with his religious toy
acquisitioned at the fair. It soothed him as an oasis after that struggle
across the smouldering sand wherein the cacti giggled with farce. Respected
aura of the old lame sadhu swirled around his head. As his ideal, he
fancied the old man smothering down the prickled cacti, the children with their
taunting puns, and the prejudices accruing from his caste and congenital
deformity in his leg. Fancyingly he envisioned that one day all his foes will
roll at his feet asking for blessings and boon. And the excitement would
swelter down a racing cheer to have a look at his futuristic sagely appearance.
He began to insist
upon stories concerning religious myths, legends and folklore with their
protagonists as sages, stoics, ascetics like Parshurama, Visvamitra, Valmiki,
Bhrigu etc., who symbolised all powerful and miraculous Godliness almost to the
extent of superstitious awe. His unquenchable appetite for the subject really
tested the story box of the old woman and one day she hollowly jested:
“Do you want to
become someone like them?”
For answer the boy
just smiled with a proud look at the body art.
When his insistence
crossed the power of her story telling, the old woman promised to take him to a
keertan, a preaching-cum-devotional songs congregation, at a nearby
village, wherein the God’s people tried to arouse the Bhakti Rasa,
devotional nectar, inside the commoners’ hearts in this dark age of Hindu
mythology, the kaliyuga.
The age mired in
three fourths of evil, with only a quarter of goodness struggling as God’s
lotus. So the groups of religionists tried for the sake of outweighed Godliness,
some with true love and compassion for the humanity, some as a mere path of
livelihood in these dark times.
The fourth age of
Hindu cosmic mythology which started at the zero hour of February 17-18, 3102 B.C. , will test God’s
creation on earth for about 4,26904 more years from the time of our tale, when
God’s incarnation as kalki on a white horse will give a cosmic deluge to
the evil with His white sword.
In the same state of
Haryana, the epic battle of Mahabharata took place in Kurukshetra at a time
when good and bad were on an equal footing, sharing half-half proportions of
the humanity. And to tilt the scale in the favour of good, Lord Krishna was
born to preach Bhagvat Gita, right in the middle of the battlefield with
the forces of good and evil face to face on His both sides. His message was the
nectar which evinced itself after the churning of good and bad, in equal
proportions, in the same pitcher, for about 8.34 lakh years. For our knowledge,
the era was the third one called Dvaparyuga.
The previous one had
been the Tretayuga which lasted for 12.96 lakh years. Those were perhaps
good times with goodness holding three-quarter weight in social forces, while
the evil was raising its head with its one quarter roots in the humanity. Lord’s
incarnation, Shri Ram hadn’t that much of difficulty in disposing off the evil
during this Ramayana period.
And to top it all, the first era lasting for 17.28
lakh years had been of perfect purity, with its cent percent goodness, when there
was no need of any Godly incarnation, because the creation was in its
unstigmatised childhood.
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