by Vivek Mehra
As I take the little form and lay it in its crib, the left hand continues to move, the right having gone silent. My hands gently reach for the left clenched fist, to pry open the fingers. There is nothing in them. My eyes follow the rapidly clenching fist, and I see something near the thumb. The fist clenches again, and my hands turn it around ever so gently to see the thumb. There is a small mark, a reddish discoloration on the loose flesh located between the thumb and the first finger. The mark has a stem from which arise three others in the shape of a trident, a Trishul, a weapon wielded by many Hindu Gods and Goddesses and also by MAA!
I unclench the fist once again, and an open palm makes the trident disappear into a reddish discoloration, disjointed and meaningless. As I let go the fingers the fist clenches, the trident returns. My thoughts go into over-drive: could it be…?
I frantically look at the upper left arm.
There are three distinct marks on it, in a series, all dark red.
Frantic brain prompts frantic fingers to open the cloth bundled around the lower body of the baby, freeing the legs and finally the feet.
My fingers race to grasp the left foot, to look at the toes.
There is a clear discoloration on the second toe, a band of light-colored flesh circling the base of the toe - a very strange birth mark, as if a toe ring had been worn on that toe!
Tears stop flowing.
Eyes open wider.
Hands start to tremble.
A thousand temple bells clang.
My heart beats faster.
And a sudden calm descends on me.
‘What are you doing?’ a feeble, familiar voice calls from behind me.
I turn to look at the voice. My tranquil dazed and glazed look surprises my wife. I take a deep breath, still gazing with peaceful eyes at her.
‘What are you doing?’ she inquires again.
‘Will you believe me if I tell you?’
‘Believe what?’
‘MAA has come to me.’
‘Yes, I know; it’s a daughter.’
‘No, Dolly, not because it’s a daughter. This is no ordinary daughter. She is MAA! See for yourself.’
I reach into the crib, picking up my naked daughter and gently placing it her in Dolly’s lap. Calm mind prompts calm fingers to show the trident marked left-fist, the three marks on the left arm and finally the toe-ring like mark on the left second toe. No words are said as two pairs of eyes behold the stupendous miracle lying gently twitching before them.
Dolly’s eyes turn to meet mine.
The tears have dried from both pairs lovingly looking at each other.
‘You know what the date is today?’ her lips inquire.
‘I can’t remember, what is it?’
A finger is raised pointing to the calendar in the room. The calendar displays all the dates in the month of August. A small red square housed on a plastic band marks today’s date. It is the 3rd – the third of August!
Coincidence?
‘It’s the third of August, the date Dolly Nair was born.’ She has not forgotten.
I am calm.
I silently take my daughter back to her crib, gently wrapping her as she had been earlier. She is silent, peaceful, the left arm still twitching. I continue to gaze at her. There is nothing else that my eyes see, nothing else that my mind thinks; serenity is all engulfing. Just for a second tiny eyes open. They look at me with love, and instantly a thought is beamed from them.
‘Baba, I am back!’
A chill runs down my back as I watch the eyes close again. The eyes are big for a baby, the thought from a different time, from a different person, meant just for me, to stay with me as long as I live. Serenity still envelops me, a strange placidity that is complete in itself.
I tiptoe from the crib to reach my wife’s bedside.
‘She will not leave you now.’ She has not forgotten!
‘I know.’
Before I can say anything more a gentle tap is heard on the door, just before it swings open. A man in a doctor’s coat, stethoscope hanging limp around his neck, enters the room, an angel in tow. A smile makes its way to his pleasant face, and for the first time I notice how tall he is. As he makes his way to the other side of the bed the room light hits his face, illuminating it. I have never met this doctor, and yet his face is familiar, a face from my past, from my dreams. He informs me that he is the resident doctor doing his rounds for the day.
‘You have a courageous wife, Mr. Singhal,’ he says.
My serene self arches my brows, inquiring into the statement.
‘She has been in labor for hours, and there were times when we sought her permission to intervene with medication, to ease the delivery process and the pain. She refused every time. We were also told not to tell you about this at that time, but now I am sure she won’t mind.’
My astonished eyes turn to my wife, hers gently closing, lungs drawing a deep breath.
‘Why, Dolly?’ a quivering voice makes its way to my lips.
Her eyes open. Her gaze meets mine, and I see love, tons and tons of it.
‘I wanted it to be natural, wanted to see the baby come out of me, wanted to make sure that I was fully conscious and that it wasn’t a dream.’
The doctor checks her vital signs and leaves.
And my arms open wide again, this time to embrace my sunshine, the love of my life, the half of me without which I am incomplete. No words are spoken, no tears flow; arms lock around bodies and two souls merge once again.
‘I knew it was a daughter, fatso. I just wanted to see her when she arrived. She was bathed in my blood, and I could only think of you and MAA.’
My closed eyes don’t weep anymore, and in their dark depths a light begins to glow. I am soon bathed in this light. My eyes see me sail into this light, yearning to feel it, to merge with it. She comes, tongue dripping blood, eyes blazing with love, and I am lost in MAA. At that very moment I understand why a simpleton called Narendra became Vivekananda. Vivek means knowledge - awareness of the truth, belief in the one that created every atom, gave life to every creature. Ananda means happiness – joy that comes when desire dies, when there is no want, when Vivek chooses to live in a heart.
My world is complete once again. I have another soul to look after, and this new soul has taken birth to look after me. The love that I have professed to possess has to be shared with this new soul.
‘A soul sheds an old body to take birth again; this is the supreme truth that man forgets.’ These words from the Bhagavad Gita come back to me.
God cannot be a manifestation of fear.
The dragon dies.
The miracle of life that is before us cannot be rationalized. For eight long years we had visited doctors only to return empty-handed. Then one day Dolly conceived without the assistance of any medication or doctors. Was this a miracle or would a rationalist try to explain this to me?
The air I breathe, the water I drink and every other form of nature are manifestations of God, blatant clues to His existence. No human can sit in judgment because no human possesses the power to recreate this. Science has been nothing more than another tool to understand the hidden mysteries of nature; yet the Maker is being subjected to abject scrutiny. For every reason attributed to God being the creation of the mind, I wonder what created the mind in the first place. Happiness, sadness, guilt and laughter are only projections of thoughts, but I still wonder who gave these thoughts to me? Today I have no fear left inside me, so has God ceased to exist for me?
I don’t think so.
Maa could never have given me a life partner who understood me more. Life could never have been kinder to anyone else because I have understood and experienced Selfless Love in my own family. My friends too are my family. There is no name that I can give to their relationship to me. Every relationship has a want and a desire attached to it, but my friends have helped me cross the boundary of each desire.
The love of God could not be greater than the love of my
fellow human beings, as long as the love is without any kind of want or desire. The people who gave this love to me have made all fear of life vanish from me. I remember each one of them, every single day of my life. There is not a moment that passes when I don’t share my thoughts, life’s experiences and my prayers with them. Marilyn, Reshma, Bindu, and of course Aviva, are all a part of my life. I may not talk to them, and may never see them, and yet they live inside me. Each one of them contributed in their own way to help me find out who I am. In turn they have learnt from me.
Society is nothing but the interaction of humans, and here was technology doing its part in creating a new society. The love that sprouts in my heart makes me one with the Grand Architect of the universe. The Quest of the Soul is to find this love; once it is found no other God need be sought.
For all the pain that this woman called Dolly Nair caused me, I can do nothing but continue to love her. It is in this pain that I understood the meaning of love - Selfless Love - a love that has no wants and desires nothing; a love that transcends geographical locations, diverse cultures and political boundaries; a love that binds with love and rises above a carnal need for physical contact; a love that strives to start with a spark, blaze like a torch and spread like a brush fire in the hearts of all mankind. And it does.
In my teenage years women helped me understand the female species, and now a woman helped me realize the true meaning of love. A woman once made a village bumpkin become Kalidas the poet, who found his Lord. The Internet brought this love into my life, and this technology made me evolve as a person.
When my mind is free of bondage and my heart weeps for my Lord, then can the one I seek be far from me now? Man sets goals to achieve and then revises them with time. The soul still seeks love and, once having found that, searches for nothing more. Love too is the manifestation of the maker, and I have understood that now. To those who have moved on, I can only wish them well in their quest.
It is also time now, for me to move on.
The question is, can I?
16. Seven Shades of Grey
August 4, 10:00 am Indian Standard Time.
A man clad in denims and a white shirt gets out of his car, heading to an ancient building on a derelict piece of property. A thriving textile mill was once housed here. He makes his way to a newer looking door and inside is a plush office. An office boy opens another door reaching to an inner chamber, his private office. As he strolls in, a lady, his secretary, greets him. There are flowers decorating every inch of the office. Oodles of traditional Indian sweets are being freely circulated among others present there. The man smiles at all there, not breaking his stride. Once inside he lights incense at a small altar, bowing his head in reverence to a picture there, sweet smell permeating the air, serenity all prevailing. He reaches the computer on his desk, quickly hitting switches to turn it on and connect to the Internet.
The machine whirrs, clicks, and clangs in strange tones before displaying a web page. His hands fly to type. The web page changes to one that resembles an email-compose-page. His fingers continue to type. The message is short and clear; he is informing the recipient that he has become a father of a bonny baby girl and that both mother and daughter are fine. The same message is sent to more than one recipient. Once sent he sits back in his chair.
The message races through a series of servers eventually lodging itself in the Inbox of intended recipients.
In far off Canada a woman is seated at a similar computer chatting with strangers when a message flashes on to her screen. She has just received an email. She quickly clicks to open it and reads it. Her eyes turn moist, breath coming in short gasps. A sound escapes her lips, one that attracts a man nursing a beer while watching TV. He rushes to her side, she frantically pointing to the screen. The man reads the screen display. His eyes look at his wife’s moist ones. Both hug each other, each saying a silent prayer for the sender and his family.
In Bhopal the message arrives in a similar fashion at the desk of a lovely-looking woman. She opens the email, reads it and yelps with joy. Her office colleagues stare at her, wondering what has possessed a hitherto poised woman. She picks up the phone, dialing a series of numbers, and in another office in the same city another phone rings. A distinguished gent answers it and is soon speaking in excited whispers to the caller. Two telephone lines are soon disconnected. The woman makes another call, ordering a giant bouquet to be sent to Bombay to her friend Vikram Singhal. The call made, her eyes turn heavenwards, and another prayer is said for the sender.
In New York City the same email is received by another woman of Indian origin. She is locked in chat with another man, one she met one day and married on another. She too quickly opens it and reads. She is alone, for her husband has yet to obtain a visa to live with her. Her frantic fingers relay the content of the email to her man sitting before yet another computer, in far off Madras. Two more souls are happy, and more prayers head heavenwards.
It is noon, hot and sultry in suburban Singapore. A man in his early 60s arrives at the porch of a palatial house. He is of Asian Indian descent, rotund with a pudgy rounded nose and black horn-rimmed glasses adorning a tired face. Besides being related to the residents of the house, he is also a priest at a local temple. As he gets out of the car driven by another, his eyes turn upward to the first floor, to look at the one window that faces the front. It has iron rods criss-crossing it, quite like a prison window. It is a prison, with just one occupant, his niece, serving a life sentence, one that was ordered by no court of law and no judge sitting in raven black robes.
His leaden feet make their way slowly up the three steps where an elegant couple also in their 60s stand to greet him. His eyes gaze into their equally tired ones; no words are said as the three of them make their way to the living room. Every creature comfort that money can buy has been placed at their disposal. And yet a ghostly, graveyard-like, eerie calm silently makes its presence known. Three tired bodies slump onto plush cushioned chairs. The couple speak in an Indian language, and the old visitor nods in acknowledgement.
A servant arrives with freshly squeezed orange juice in an exquisite and expensive French lead-crystal glass for the visitor. He does not want it, asks for a glass of chocolate milkshake instead. The servant departs and the eerie silence continues. The servant soon returns with a battered steel glass full of the desired drink. Four pairs of sad eyes stare at the glass, understanding all that it represents. The visiting man rises walking towards a flight of steps that will take him to the prison, the servant following, still holding the fare, soon reaching a landing with just one steel door bolted from the outside. The visitor takes the tray while the servant proceeds to slide the bolt back on the steel prison-door.
The visitor nods and the servant acknowledges by silently descending the stairs. The steel door is pushed open, and the tray-holding man enters. The room is painted pale blue, in stark contrast to the rest of the house. The walls have no pictures, no photographs, and are scarred, quite as if pitted by cannon balls. There is a single bed located to the north of the room, near the eastern window, allowing sunlight to reach it. An old cupboard stands in the far corner, away from the door and the window. A single table holds a computer, an external modem, a telephone and a chair in front of it. A mirror stands behind the computer-bearing table. At first glance the room looks normal, although a little under-done when compared to the rest of the opulent house. A closer examination, however, reveals its secrets.
Every item in the room is firmly bolted: the bed, cupboard, table and chair to the floor and the computer, modem, monitor and telephone to the tabletop.
The sole occupant of the room is a woman clad in a white, sleeveless, single-piece gown. Not much older than thirty-two, she is lying curled up under a sheet, face staring away from the door towards the window, where sunlight continues to bathe her and the room. Her shuddering form and soft sobs suggest that she is crying. She has been doing that off and on for the last three years and continuously
since yesterday. The uncle has been summoned because he is the one person on the planet to whom the woman relates and listens. She does not turn as he places the tray in the sparse space available on the lone table in the room. She continues to sob. He turns and bolts the door from the inside.
He looks at the shuddering form. He knows all about her. He was there when she was born. He had read her horoscope. He knew she would either be a hugely successful genius or a schizophrenic confined to a mental asylum for life. He had fervently prayed for the former to be true, but then again he was not God, just His humble servant. He knows how it all happened. In a trembling voice he speaks to her, trying hard to sound calm.
She is surprised and turns to look in his direction. Her face is beautiful: bronze-colored skin, a nice pointed nose housing trembling nostrils, large moist eyes, cheeks tear-stained, unkempt hair rising like an afro all around her, gracing her shoulders. She gets off the bed, rushes to meet the man and hugs him. A loud wail floods the room. He tries to console the feverishly trembling and weeping body resting heavily on him. She is inconsolable. He continues to hold her near, caressing her thick mane, and soon the petting calms the woman. She lets go of him sitting on the bed while he tries to make himself comfortable on the lone chair in the room. She pulls her knees up to her chin, continues to sniffle.
The man speaks and the effect is calming. She has stopped wailing, continues sniffling. He reaches for the glass of chocolate milk, offers it to her. She looks at it with child-like eyes, gulps it down, small chocolate-colored streams racing from the edge of her mouth, forming chocolate-colored stains mingling with other chocolate-colored stains on her once pristine white gown. She holds the glass for a moment, panting after her ordeal of gulping, and then flings it. It rebounds from the already cannonballed walls, creating another cannonballed crater. The glass comes to rest in a corner of the room after a few more clanging sounds.
The uncle speaks to his niece in an inquiring voice, probing the reason for her daylong sobbing. She stares back with blazing eyes, no words escaping her lips. She rocks back and forth staring at him, clutching her knees to her chin, hair flying, eyes blazing. He probes again. She does not say a word, continues to rock. He is used to this, has been witnessing the same reaction for the last three years. Others in the family have not been this lucky. The only difference is that she actually allows him to come into the room, remains passive, while with others she is more aggressive, lashing out at all who dare enter her domain. A few minutes lapse, he inquiring, she rocking. He sees that as before, his mere presence has calmed her. He looks at her and knows there is nothing else that he can do.
