River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  At night he went to the river bank to sleep on the cool sand. He was deeply in love, and she was not indifferent either. Perhaps he compensated for the absconding Rajkumar. At last, he was not lonely. He closed his eyes and felt light and airy like a cloud . . . He was not alone in Brahma’s palace of light. A being of light had dropped from somewhere, a companion, a woman singing Sri Raga. All the grace of the universe emanated from her. After a long time Gautam slept soundly and had no dreams.

  He rose with the sun, bathed in the Rapti and felt as usual for the ring tied to his waist. He got a rude shock—the ring was not there. He had been trying to find the right opportunity to break the sad news about the prince to the two women, and now the ring was gone. He searched for it frantically on the sand, in the shallow waters, in the shrubs. It would be impossible to find it in the dense forests he had been roaming all these days. He felt weak and sat down. So that’s it. All happiness is short-lived. The monk Hari Anand appeared in his vision and said, laughing, “I told you so, stupid!”

  It was possible the ring had been stolen while he was fast asleep. Lots of loafers and thieves were around. They had come from Shravasti hoping to gain from the royal hunt party. Then he caught sight of a fisherman casting his net on the other bank. A ray of hope flashed. Foolish, but hopes are usually foolish. He remembered the Shakuntala story. The ring Raja Dushyant had given her had fallen into the river and was swallowed by a fish. A fisherman caught that fish and sold it to the royal kitchen. The ring was found. Once again, poor Gautam hotfooted towards the camp. He went straight to the kitchen and asked a maid, breathlessly, “Have you fished any cook today . . . I mean . . . have you. . . .”

  “Listen, what’s going on here?” A guard lurched forward. “Who are you?”

  “A Brahmin student,” he croaked.

  “A Brahmin demanding cooked food? Who do you think you’re trying to hoodwink?” the fierce-looking man thundered. Gautam was tongue-tied. “A whole lot of crooks have turned up from the city and thugs are masquerading as students and sadhus. Things are being stolen from the tents.” The burly sentry caught hold of Gautam’s arm and produced him before the princess. She sat by the lotus tank colouring her toes with alta. She was horrified.

  “Rajkumari ki jai ho . . . ,” the sentry announced. “We caught this man loitering in suspicious circumstances near the kitchen. Maybe some enemy Raja has sent him to poison the royal food.”

  “You have made a mistake!” the princess cried indignantly, “He is our special purohit, he comes every day to perform certain rites. Please forgive us, pandit.”

  Champak came out of her tent.

  “I would like to speak to both of you in private,” Gautam said grimly.

  Nirmala ordered everybody to leave and spread a mat for Gautam to sit on. He took a deep breath and narrated the entire story, starting from his encounter with the “Greek” traveller. He was distressed to find the two girls reduced to helpless tears. Jamuna, their maid and confidante, had joined them and was sobbing hysterically. He tried to reassure them. “He may come back . . . He is still a novice monk, he can leave the Order. And I think he has not entirely got over his fascination for you, Kumari Champak.”

  In all eastern lore ministers’ daughters are proverbially wise and sagacious. Champak was no exception. She wiped her tears and her nose and said calmly, “Has the hermit prince forgotten what Sakyamuni said to Mahamati?” She stood up and declaimed. “O Mahamati, just as one attains perfection in the arts of drama, dancing, music and the playing of the lute gradually, in the same manner one doesn’t become an arhat in one day!”

  There was silence.

  “I lost the ring,” Gautam said at last. “I’m sorry.”

  “I am not,” Champak replied, stoically. “This was all my karma. What’s done cannot be undone. Don’t you think so, Myna?” she asked the bird.

  “Done! Done!” the myna cried.

  5. The Autumn Moon

  As the wind shakes the grasses

  So I shake your mind

  So that you may desire me

  So that you may not go away

  Champak recalled a poem as she waited for Gautam. He had not come for several days. He had been sent here by Hari to convey a message, had done his duty and gone away. She stood near the tank, feeling lost and somehow betrayed once again. As though Hari’s treachery was not enough.

  A few nuns shuffled by. They looked so peaceful, for they had all entered the Stream. They were traversing the path of No Return. They had conquered the World of Desire. How and why? The Convent of Golden Mists was situated at a short distance from the camp. Champak left the myna’s cage at the corner of the tank and began to follow the expressionless bhikkunis. They were trudging back from the city with their begging bowls full of rice. Some of them had been princesses. Shravasti had become the greatest centre of Buddhist nuns, and the convent was the Mother House.

  River mist mingled with the dying rays of the sun. That was why it was called the Convent of Golden Mists. Champak reached the close-walled building and hid behind a door. The nuns trooped in. Somebody lighted an earthen lamp in the forecourt. A shadow appeared in the doorway. It was a sanyasin who had noticed Champak’s presence.

  The young woman was scared. She turned round and saw the distant lights of Shravasti. The sight of a human habitat reassured her. Somehow the nuns were not quite human, they were a breed apart. She looked at the distant lights again and now it seemed to her as though the city was on fire.

  The sanyasin had apparently guessed her apprehension for she began to speak rapidly. She was repeating the terrible words of the Fire Sermon:

  “All things, O priests, are on fire. The eye, O priests, is on fire; forms are on fire, eye-consciousness is on fire . . . the ear is on fire; sounds are on fire, the body is on fire; things tangible are on fire . . . the mind is on fire; ideas are on fire . . . with the fire of passion, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation, with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief and despair, are they on fire . . . fire . . . fire . . . The body is like a house which is on fire, but we keep talking! We keep talking till the house is finally burnt down.”

  Then the woman broke into a song:

  Thou that art come from where the fragrant trees

  Stand crowned with blossoms,

  Standest alone in the shade, maiden so fair

  and foolhardy

  None to companion thee . . . fearest thee not

  the wiles of seducers?

  “No,” Champak replied briefly.

  “Dost thou not know that Mara is in ambush aiming at frail human hearts?”

  “I fear him not,” said Champak staring back at the eerily youthful nun.

  “In a former era, a girl very much like thee sat under the sal tree grove and lo, Mara appeared to her in mid-air and said, ‘Thou that art come from where the fragrant trees stand crowned . . .’,” the bhikkuni resumed her singing. And darkness was torn asunder by sudden lightning which lit up the night sky from horizon to horizon, and in that instant Champak saw that the old nunnery had disappeared and a strange fragrance filled the world for it was springtime in lovers’ hearts and dark-eyed cowherds played their flutes on shady riverbanks, and village lanes rang with youthful laughter as young girls went forth to worship the God of the Woods, and the world was made for falling in love; for there was power in love and impotent misery in renunciation.

  The lightning vanished in the horizon, darkness returned and the nun’s voice continued, “But love lasts only an instant, it is merely a moment involved in eternity. Dreams, and the shadow of flowers and physical love, all have one thing in common . . . they fade with the light of the moon. At first Uppalavana also thought what thou dost think . . . dost know her story?”

  “No.”

  “She, the lotus-hued, was born in Hansavati when Padmauttara was Buddha, and reborn in Shravasti in this Buddha-age as the daughter of the Treasurer. She joined the Order instead of marrying one
of her rich and handsome suitors and . . .”

  “Were there many Buddhas?” Champak interrupted, confused. The nun ignored her question and continued. “Uppalavana became especially versed in the mystic potency of transformation. I am Uppalavana! On this thirteenth night of the Autumn Moon I am a hundred and fifty years old.” The ghostly speaker faded into the shadows.

  Champak was terror-stricken. She clutched the twigs in her fingers. The leaves fell. Run, run, she said to herself. Curiosity overpowered her fear. She tiptoed up to the main hall. Worse was to come. A nun known as Sister Nanda, an ex-dancer, was ominously leading a chorus:

  Behold Nanda! the foul compound, diseased,

  Impure! Compel thy heart to contemplate what

  Is not fit to view . . . ! Behold Nanda . . . the

  Foul compound . . . the foul compound . . . the foul . . .

  Voices rose higher and became more terrible. Champak realised that she was present in the very corridor of Time—this Sisterhood of Shravasti founded by the Lady Gotami Prajapati had been blessed by Lord Buddha himself when he had walked by this river a century and a half ago. They were seeking the end of being—frail women whose only lot had once been to attract men and bear children. Proud princesses, generals’ daughters, housewives, all turned into gentle Setters of the Wheel.

  Am I a woman in these matters or am I a man, what am I not, then? Thus spake Sumedha, living in the Sophists’ Grove. It was said that, incensed with the bloom of her beauty, she would talk to lads standing at harlots’ doors like a crafty huntress devouring the virtues of many. Now she went about with a shaven head, wrapped in yellow robes, begging.

  And Kundal Keshi, the one with the curly head, had toured the country with a rose bough in hand debating with sages, intoxicated with the pride of her intellect, before she went into a life of humility. Champak had heard about these women during her stay in the camp. Now they began to sing:

  On fire is all the world, all is in flames

  Ablaze is all the world, the heavens do quake . . .

  The nuns chorused in sombre tones:

  By reason of a cause it came to be.

  By rupture of a cause it dies.

  A high wind rose, scattered the clouds and fell. Champak came out. Even the moon looked like the placid face of a shaven-headed bhikshu.

  “Champak—come back, come back . . .”

  She heard her myna screaming away for all it was worth. Gautam carried the bird’s cage. Nirmala stood beside him. The myna sang out—“Champak is a fool!”

  “I have been in there and found Nothing,” she announced in a hollow voice.

  “This is a ghostly place,” Nirmala was saying. “Gautam Pandit had just arrived when we saw you going behind the nuns, so we followed you. Gautam says it is a dangerous area known for its scorpions and snakes. Come along.”

  So, he had turned up. But now she resented this rapport between the princess and the pandit. Am I jealous? Quietly she began to walk back with them.

  “How do these frail women live in such a frightening place full of whispering shadows?” Nirmala wondered aloud. “I think some of them could be victims of circumstances. I have seen some pretty young sanyasins over here.”

  “Young women can also hear the Call!” Gautam objected. “Anyway, most of them are bent double with age.”

  “Yes, it’s heartbreaking. I saw one old sanyasin limping badly.”

  “Well, that is what Buddha’s teaching is all about—to understand the extent of Sorrow.”

  “Why didn’t you come the whole of last week?” Nirmala asked.

  “I had gone to Jetvan Vihara to tell the ex-prince that I had done the needful, minus the ring. He wasn’t there—gone to preach among the Chandals. Waited there for a couple of days, he did not turn up. May have gone further afield. Anyway, wherever they are, they come back to spend the rainy season in the monasteries. He’ll be back much earlier. I’m sure he will visit Saket and bless you all.”

  Yellow leaves crackled under their feet. He escorted them back to the encampment. “Come tomorrow to inaugurate our Festival with your shlokas,” Champak said a trifle dryly before going into her tent. Gautam noticed the subtle change in her tone. Women!

  He had got this hint from Prince Hari. You can go through life incognito—as a Greek traveller, a hermit, a fop, a dancer, and nobody will ever know the real you.

  A corner of his kutir served as his “studio”. He took out the requisite material and made himself up in the mystic image of Natraj. Shiva’s body was yellow like autumn leaves, covered with ash, and he wore an elephant hide. The crescent moon shone on his head. He seldom laughed. He danced the Cosmic Dance and Time turned into an ocean of light . . .

  The sound of dance-bells, reed pipes and drums could be heard from a distance. They were celebrating Sharad Purnima. Champak was singing Chhaya Raga, Melody of Shadows. Servants were going to and fro carrying jugs of wine. The King was fond of his goblet.

  “Natraj” entered the mandap, rattling his damru. Everybody was taken aback. This was high drama—the people of Shravasti were noted for their theatricals. This was obviously a dancer from the city. Champak and Nirmala guessed his identity and were astounded as he burst into Sandhya Tandav.

  He danced in a frenzy till dinner was served on banana leaves. Women retired to their enclosure. The Rajan also took him to be an eminent performing artiste of Shravasti and made him sit next to him on the gaddi. Gautam ate roast meat and drank cup after cup of strong madh. The King and the Court were all gloriously drunk.

  A courtier shouted, “Sire, a young Brahmin seer has been frequenting the camp. He says the Prince has arrived in the vicinity.”

  In his state of elation Gautam hiccuped and blubbered: ‘I’ll tell you the Truth . . . your shun, Shire, has become a—hic—a bhik—hic—hic—a bhikari—with a begging bowl—hic . . .”

  The King was enraged. How dare he! “Throw him out. Out! Out!” He stood up, stamped his foot and roared. Gautam, meanwhile, had passed out. Two footmen carried him off the mandap and dumped him near the lotus tank. That was an equally dramatic anticlimax.

  The sun was going down behind the foothills. “Get up! Get up, lazybones,” the myna cried in her cage.

  Gautam opened his eyes and pressed his temples. The bird’s cage was lying on the tank steps.

  A honey-maker stung him on his nose and he sat up with a jolt. He tried to think hard—then he repeated, dramatically, “Where am I?” as though he was still on the stage. He looked around once again. No stage. No rush lights. No revelries. Total desolation. He had a terrible headache. A terrible silence—had he hit the Shunya of the Buddhists?

  He recollected slowly. He had danced, hobnobbed with royalty, eaten a lot of meat and got drunk, all in rapid succession. He had enjoyed himself thoroughly. Given a chance he would do it again. He had grown up overnight, become a man of the world. Damned good business, this Maya business. Except that he hadn’t yet enjoyed the intimate company of a female.

  Female. Ah, female! Where was she? He got another rude shock. She had gone away. Everybody had left.

  “Champak, come back, Champak . . .” The myna cried. Gautam looked around. There was nobody. He scratched his head, puzzled. Then he saw an elephant-trapper coming towards him.

  “What happened. Where are they?” Gautam asked him.

  “They were deceived by the Chief Thug of Shravasti. Now we can say with some pride that our practitioners of this ancient art have surpassed those famous ones of Kashi!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “See—the Chief Thug’s chelas turned up here last night while the King was having his dinner. They shouted, ‘A rogue has escaped the trappers’ hold and is heading for the camp!’ So the royal party left everything and ran for their lives. They got on to their barges and rowed downstream at full speed towards Saket . . .”

  “Then?”

  “The thugs set to work. They looted the tents in no time and went back.”

  “Whi
le I was sound asleep right here!” Gautam marvelled. “That is Maya . . . ?”

  “That is for you to comprehend, sir.” The trapper nodded. “That is indeed Maha Thugee Maya1! Do you need any help, sir? You are not really a dancer, are you?”

  “No. I am also an illusionist. I am all right. Get some seeds for this poor creature.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The trapper brought a handful of millet from the debris of the royal kitchen. Then he took his leave.

  Gautam turned to the myna.

  “So, your royal mistresses left you to die of hunger and thirst, eh? They could have awakened me before they left . . .”

  The bird stared at him with its beady eyes. It could not tell him the real story: when Champak and Nirmala were running towards the pier they had tried to wake him up.

  “Poor shastri. He danced so strenuously last evening that he fainted,” Nirmala had remarked sympathetically.

  “Fainted! He simply got roaring drunk. Succumbed to temptation in a big way. He may even end up as a rake. Just like your brother gave in to the temptation of being called an arhat. He has ended up a mere vagabond, neither here nor there.” Being the Minister’s Wise Daughter Champak made her little speech, then added, “Get up, dear Gautam, before your skull full of intelligence is crushed by a mad animal.”

  He continued to snore.

  “So, one who has been wide awake falls asleep one day, and one who is asleep wakes up . . .” Champak declared.

  “Champak, this poor man is lying in the jaws of death and you are mouthing platitudes!” Nirmala screamed.

  “Come along,” the Chief Minister shouted her down, and dragged both girls towards the jetty.

  Nirmala rushed back and left the myna’s cage near Gautam. “Wake him up quickly, Myna. Keep repeating, Get up—get up, lazybones . . .” Then she ran back to join the rest of the fleeing entourage . . .