Climbing Chamundi Hill

by Ariel Glucklich

  “I tried, sir,” said the gardener. “I gave them grain, but they wouldn’t touch it.”

  “This is correct, Your Lordship,” said the male of the couple. “He very graciously offered us a meal of grain. But you see, we are from the great Mansarobar Lake, where all the swans have lived for generations, feeding only on fresh unpierced pearls. A drought has now dried the supply of pearls in the lake, and so my dear wife and I flew away, looking for fresh pearls elsewhere. Pearls are all we eat, Your Majesty.”

  The king was impressed by the dignity and beauty of the two swans and touched by their plight. He promised to feed them as best he could and immediately ordered his secretary to bring a basketful of pearls. The swans thanked him effusively and ate to their heart’s content.

  This continued for several happy weeks. One day, as a basket arrived and the swans calmly ate, they noticed that one of the pearls was pierced. They reasoned, correctly, that the king was running out of pearls. This made them sad, not for themselves, but for the dear king who had been so generous with them. They both knew it was time to fly away and search for food elsewhere. King Vikramajit tried to persuade them that his store of pearls was holding up, but one early morning they were gone. As they flew over the countryside, they sang Vikramajit’s praises, matching the rhythm of their majestic wings with the glory of his illustrious name.

  That is what King Karan heard one day, as he was getting ready to distribute the gold. “What is this?” he thought, looking up. “Who is this king? I fry myself every day and no one sings my praises, let alone the birds in the sky!” In a jealous pique he ordered his bird catcher to capture the two swans. As soon as he had the birds caged up, he demanded to know who this King Vikramajit was and what had he done to deserve such praise. When he heard what the swans had to say, he immediately summoned plates full of pearls for his forced guests, but to no avail. They would not touch the precious food.

  “A righteous king, which you pretend to be,” said the female swan, “does not imprison innocent animals. With King Vikramajit we were honored guests, free to come and go as we pleased.”

  King Karan, noble and magnanimous as any rival, or at least as circumstances allowed, released the female. The beautiful bird took to the air and immediately flew back to Vikramajit’s palace. There she breathlessly told her benefactor everything. The king wasted no time and set out to rescue the male swan. He knew that if he was to avoid war, he would have to act discreetly, so he entered King Karan’s capital disguised as a simple servant and obtained a position at the royal palace. Every morning he helped carry out and distribute the gold among the cheering throngs of citizens. He realized early on that such a vast quantity of gold could be obtained only through unusual means. On a hunch he began to follow King Karan, and his efforts paid off when one morning, before dawn, he spotted the king on his way to the Tantric magician.

  Vikramajit stealthily approached the window and peeked in just as the king was gingerly lowering himself into the boiling vat of oil. He saw the sorcerer testing the king with a fork, eating him greedily, and licking the bones, and, finally, to his amazement, he saw the assembly of the bones turn back into the chubby old king. Then Vikramajit saw the filthy rag of a coat yield its crop of gold coins. It was then that he came up with his plan.

  The next morning King Vikramajit woke up before anyone else. He went to the kitchen and prepared himself for cooking. Using a sharp knife, he slashed his entire body till he was marked with hundreds of bleeding cuts. Then he made a special curry mix using salt and pepper, spices, ground pomegranate seeds, and pea flour. He rubbed this seasoning all over his skin, working it nicely into the cuts. Smelling like a rare Kashmiri tandoori, he showed up at the house of the Tantric sorcerer. The old magician was short-sighted and failed to notice that his visitor was a different man, but he loved the new smell. As soon as the oil vat began to sizzle with the new dish, the diner made impatient smacking sounds and rubbed his hands in relish. And the taste, the taste was too exquisite to describe—better than ever.

  That morning the magician could barely keep from eating the bones as well. He managed to stop only by thinking about the next day’s meal, but by then he had munched down the king’s right large toe. Embarrassed by losing his self-control and feeling guilty, he said, “You were so much tastier today, Your Majesty. What has changed? Tell me how you did it and I shall give you whatever you want.”

  The king told him that since the frying was so painful, he decided that he might as well taste good. He promised to spice himself again the next day. But then he added, “I’d like to have the coat. The gold is so heavy—why not just let me have the coat? I promise to return next morning.” The magician, who was getting drowsy now, gave him the coat, and King Vikramajit returned to town, limping on his right foot.

  An hour later King Karan came as usual, whistling and kicking up stones. He let himself into the house, but the old man was in bed, napping contentedly under his covers. Oddly, the large vat was empty and cold, though a strange smell lingered near it. Karan called out and woke up the sleeper.

  “Who are you?” asked the drowsy magician.

  “What do you mean ‘Who are you?’? Who can I be, you old fool? It’s me, King Karan, your breakfast! What’s going on this morning?”

  “I already ate you—have you forgotten?” mumbled the sleepy man and turned over. “You were delicious today.”

  The king was stunned. “That was not me, idiot. What did you do?” he cried out loud. “Get up and eat me now!” He shook the figure under the blankets, but it was no use.

  “I can’t eat. I’m stuffed…Come back tomorrow.”

  “In that case give me the gold. I must have the gold.” But the coat was gone and the king, devastated and feeling betrayed, had to return to the palace empty-handed. That morning he found enough gold in the treasury and ate his breakfast. But the next day he had none. The citizens were surprised—they had become accustomed to charity. Many planned their budgets expecting the daily windfall, added rooms to their homes, purchased horses on credit. Now they quickly became angry and started to chant obscenities at the king. The poor man spent the day fasting in his quarters, and by nighttime he was starving.

  As another day went by in sorrow and hunger, the new servant came into the king’s private rooms and tried to persuade him to eat. “Your Majesty, the kingdom depends on a healthy monarch,” he said sensibly. “It is better that you break your promise than jeopardize the future of the royal house.” The king said nothing, so his servant continued. “Sir, don’t starve yourself. It’s a slow and painful death. So many people who love you will be heartbroken, and the gods will frown on this waste of life.” Although he used every means of sweet talk and common sense, Vikramajit could not persuade the visibly upset king to break his vow. He was impressed. Returning to his own room, he fetched the coat and brought it to the royal quarters. Then Vikramajit revealed himself to King Karan, showed him his foot, and told him everything. Then he said, “Here is all the gold you need, good king. You may keep the coat—but only on one condition.”

  King Karan did not hesitate. “Tell me what it is, and I shall immediately comply.”

  And so the male swan was released, and King Vikramajit left King Karan with the coat. The latter no longer resented it when the swans flew away praising their liberator. He now realized who the greater man was. Although he allowed himself to be fried for the sake of his reputation, the other was fried and lost his toe for the freedom of two birds.

  I had grown up with Grimm’s fairy tales, where people—usually children—were cooked and served up as food and often returned to life at the end. This story felt different because the kings volunteered to be cooked, and there was something very culinary about the whole thing—the story was almost appetizing. “I think I’m hungry!” I said.

  My guide laughed. “Yes, I quite agree, and I’m a vegetarian! Would you like a little snack? I have an apple.” He fished a red apple out of his bag and broke it in two, a
nd we ate in silence for a few moments. The steps were unusually steep, and several were broken with sharp edges. The lotion was still giving off its magic, but that made my back feel worse. The scattered clouds in the west coalesced into a distant bank—then I saw an Indian robin dive over a bush, dropping a little white load.

  “Do you know why fruit tastes sweet and looks appetizing when it’s ripe?” I asked the librarian, now playing the role of guide myself. He shook his head. “Trees have a deal going with the birds and other animals—‘You can eat my fruit, but carry my seeds in your gut till they’re ready to come out!’ It’s quite clever actually: tree and bird together.”

  The old man laughed at this and said, “That’s the smartest thing I ever heard about bird shit.” Our eyes locked then, and we both threw away the apple core at the same time.

  Then he asked me, “So what do you make of that strange little tale I told you?”

  “It’s clearly about self-sacrifice. Agreeing to undergo pain, even death, to achieve your goals.”

  “Which are?”

  “Fame in the case of one, compassion in the case of the better king.”

  “Of course. Now, isn’t it strange that the kings die—fry—and then come back? Don’t you think their sacrifice would be more impressive if they just simply died?”

  “That’s true, but I expect there’s some kind of resurrection symbolism here. If you’re a good Christian, like my Catholic mother, death and rebirth are the highest currency of holiness and sacrifice.”

  “That’s quite impressive. Your mother sounds more and more interesting all the time, if I may say so. But notice how important food is in this tale. The first king cannot eat breakfast unless the magician eats, and the second king is consumed with the need to feed the swans. And there’s more. The swans eat expensive pearls, while the citizens receive gold as part of their king’s generosity. So there must be some hidden connection between the kings’ willingness to cook themselves and the welfare of others, which takes the form of treasures. Do you see all of that?”

  “I do, but what does it mean?”

  The guide looked around till he found a small bush with dried twigs. He broke one off carefully and, as I waited, he began to pick his teeth. “Sorry, young man. Apple always gets stuck in there.”

  Finally, he spoke. “You might wish to read it as a lesson in psychology, a story about who we are and who we want to be, or about the ‘I’ and the ‘me.’ The ‘me’ is ravenous and must always be fed in order to survive. The ‘I’ is the one who tries heroically to feed the ‘me’ its most precious commodity. Do you wish to guess what that might be?”

  “I don’t know. Self-esteem? Will?”

  “Consciousness, young man, consciousness. Unfortunately, the act of feeding ‘me,’ who is a social creature, consumes the ‘I’ to the point of death. That means that the true self gives away its consciousness to the ‘me’—it becomes dissolved in or identified with the invented self. It dies. But you should know that this death lasts only an instant, the ‘I’ must be reborn immediately in order to feed the ‘me’ again. So it takes on a new life in the new instant that follows its depletion, and the cycle goes on and on.”

  “Is the whole thing inevitable? Does it go on forever?”

  “No, not once you get a hold of the coat. I believe the story hints at a solution by contrasting the two kings—their motives—and by offering true compassion as a model of going beyond this cycle. But it’s just a hint—the story is no more than that.”

  I sat down again, vainly trying to conceal from the old man that I was tired. My feet were suddenly hot; they seemed to melt into the stones. But that was not the worst of it. It was my lungs again—the air seemed too thin and hot to provide my brain with oxygen. I felt light and transparent, dissipated into the hot sunlight and weak. I needed some shade; I yearned for water. Again, the old man showed no obvious concern, but looked through me in his unwavering, intense manner. He told me to rest and said he was going to get some water; there was a small spring down a side path. As he shuffled slowly away, I couldn’t stop thinking about what he had been saying about the self and the ego, the “I” and “me.”

  Those weeks in the hospital in Staunton had had a devastating effect on my ego. I was twenty-six at that time, and it had taken years to cultivate a solid, if not shining, sense of self-worth. Unfortunately, half of it was tied up in what I thought I had achieved, and the other half, in what I was planning to accomplish in the wide-open future. Some of this was intellectual, but too much got invested in my body. I had been a high-level amateur soccer player, all-American in college. I had always moved easily, like an athlete. I climbed the trees for the electric company despite the fact that they paid the ground crew just as much. It seemed only natural that I should climb.

  Once, in high school in Tucson, I did a research project on desert scorpions. As usual, it was a monumental job; it had to consume me—so I could win that National Merit award. I collected dozens of specimens from the Sonora Desert south of Tucson—turning over rocks and stones and gathering up the scorpions in jars for measurement. There were the pale wind scorpion, the giant desert hairy scorpion, and even the lethal Centruroides sculpturatus. Largest of all were the African scorpions my father—also a biologist—had smuggled in from Ghana. I kept them in my room—my folks lived in a tiny house near the campus. Every now and then some would get out and terrify my mother. I lost several to her broom. Mother never came into my room during that semester, and she kept her killer broom with her whenever she came near.

  One day she had had enough, and she almost raised her voice at me—she never yelled. Her curly black hair seemed unusually wild that day; she looked younger, crazier. She accused me of trying to assassinate her. She even stooped to make the ultimatum so many sons have heard from their mothers about one thing or the other: “It’s me or them, mister. Take your pick!” So I ran into the room and brought out one giant desert hairy specimen. It looked the most ferocious, although it was not. Then I stuck my hand in the jar and let it sting me—keeping my face calm just to prove to my mother that her life was not in danger.

  The scorpion affair came to an abrupt end when one of the huge African scorpions got loose in the house. Mother locked me out along with my father. The two of us sat on the front steps for hours, wondering when she would back down and let us in. Eight hours later it was I who caved in, and the scorpions returned to the desert.

  For weeks after my fall from the tree, I lay suspended in that contraption that kept my back in the air. Everything I needed required the help of strangers. They took turns coming in, just voices and efficient touch, not persons. I was meat on a rack. Sadly though, I felt neither humiliation nor shame, not most of the time anyway. My day was filled, almost completely, with pain, the fear of pain, or drugged semiconsciousness. It was not the sharp, throbbing, idiotic pain of the scorpion sting. This pain was my life itself—I woke up with it and spent the whole day wrestling with it. There was no place for me to hang my ego. There was no center, no room for the observing witness, which is who we usually are when we experience the world as though it were around us. At the center was just pain, and next to it, coming and going, coming and going, the fear of more pain.

  There were only twenty minutes of grace each day, always at mid-afternoon. A single wintry sun ray made its way through the window, struck the rear wall, and glided slowly the full length of the room. Suddenly, as it reached a mirror, it exploded into golden fragments that showered me with imagined warmth. That show lasted only moments, followed by a gradual softening of the light, until the room sank back into darkness.

  I refused to let my parents visit. The thought of my mother’s demonstrative anguish frightened me, and I didn’t trust father to keep her in check. It was a hard time for Mother; her letters were confused and mournful about my shutting her out.

  The doctors put me on morphine and anti-inflammatory medication. That meant either sleep or drowsiness. Eventually, as the healin
g progressed, I was given antidepressants and willow bark extract, which is what I was taking when the hospital spit me out onto the streets of that lowly Virginia town. I had a choice to make: return to my apartment in San Diego, where I was studying, or move back into my old room in Tucson, at least until I got well. I opted for San Diego, though studying was out of the question. Instead, I floated between narcotic insensibility and chronic pain, with depression as my best friend. Mostly, though, I just waited for Rony to pull me out of that hole.

  “Here’s some cool water, my friend.” The old man’s voice jarred me, and I was suddenly embarrassed that he had gone to bring me the water. It should have been the other way around. I thanked him and drank the sweetest liquid that had ever run down my throat—cool spring water.

  THE TEST

  An ascetic once arrived at the doorstep of a king named Kushika. The king immediately recognized him as a holy man and showed him into the white stone palace. The ascetic strolled into the great entry hall without a glance at its grand fixtures, then announced that he would like to move in and stay with the king for an unspecified length of time. His exact words were, “O faultless man, for some time now my heart has desired to reside with you.”

  The king was taken aback by that unexpected declaration and confessed how childish he found it to be. “Nonetheless, holy one, I shall do as you command,” he quickly added.

  The sage smiled to himself. He told the king that he was tired and would like to be refreshed. The king, now joined by his wife, led the holy man to a gem-covered rosewood seat and brought a bowl of jasmine water for washing the holy man’s feet. The sage allowed one royal servant to wash his feet as he cooled down beneath a fan waved by another. In the meantime, the scent of fine incense pervaded the room for his olfactory pleasure. After the guest was thus refreshed, the king brought him some honey to sweeten his palate.

  Then, with visible trepidation, with hands folded, the king betook himself before the great man and said, “Tell me, O holy one, how I may be of service to you now. Whatever is mine you can have. The palace, my wealth, my very throne are yours to enjoy if you so wish.”