by John Harker
DISCOVER YOUR DESTINY.
What is destiny for a man who merely gives in to his fantasies? Destination was something I was looking for but was it worth all the hype? Can a trip to twelve different exotic locations be decisive enough to use such strong word as destiny? While on the other hand, a trip was perfect to distract me from my guilt. I stood there looking at the poster.
‘Very irresistible, isn’t it?’ said a voice from behind.
I turned around and found a middle-aged man dressed up in saffron attire like a sage. There was a sense of mighty knowledge in his eyes and his smile carried ounces of positivity.
‘I do not know.’ I replied.
‘What holds you back?’ the man asked.
‘The agony of making a choice.. On one hand, I want to take my mind off things that are hurting me. And on the other hand, I am not sure if I can dispose my duties as a husband or a citizen and run away for an adventure just to overcome my inner fear.’
‘Dear young man, sometimes you have to lose yourself in order to find yourself.’ The sage smiled with the wisdom of the ancient Vedic sciences.
‘But what if I end up losing everything I have and find nothing.’ I presented my dilemma.
‘Well, toss a coin then. Let your fate be decided by…’ he breathed out, ‘fate!’ The holy man started walking away into the prayer room.
Of course, a coin! That is exactly what I had with me. The coin that my wife had presented me on that moonlit first night of our marriage, ‘This is the symbol of luck and I have prayed to all the gods to bless the holder of this coin at all times’, she had said. For the first time in my life, I was going to let something as absurd and uncertain as fate to make a decision for me. I needed solid luck.
I ran back to my room, pulled out my attaché from under my bed, and opened it. I juggled through the miscellanea that I was carrying with me and there it was neatly rested under my Wednesday blazer; a bright silver coin that carried the head of King Martin on one side and floral tapestry on the other. It was a half-rupee coin. Nothing special about that piece from a mintage of millions, yet it was the only one chosen by my beloved wife. I closed my eyes and held the coin close to my heart.
“I must be utterly foolish to do this, but I believe a man’s guilt drives him insane and this is one of the early symptoms of the same. Guilt has made me so vulnerable and weak that I am about to succumb to chance.” I opened my eyes and looked at the coin. It was the head side, ‘Heads and I keep my principle and duties and go back to Calcutta, lead a normal life, squandered by guilt until it kills away itself or kills me.’
I flipped the coin onto my left hand’s palm; the back had one of the most amusing floral carvings. It had four concentric circles; three of them were at close proximity while the fourth one was half the diameter of the third one. Engraved inside the circumference of the fourth circle in bold face was,
*HALF*
*RUPEE*
*INDIA*
‘Face and I choose to go back to my city and lead the rest of my life in an ocean of guilt..’ I told myself.
It was time to make the toss. The toss of fate. It is funny for a rational man like myself to toss my fate this way, yet I was about to do it.
I coiled the fingers of my right hand into an upright fist, holding them loosely. I placed my thumb gently on the edge of the index finger and slid the coin on top of the pit formed by the tip of my thumb and the middle of the index finger. Then I tossed the coin and off it went in the air, swiveling. I breathed in and out in long sighs. Upon hitting the point of saturation, it started its descent and I caught the coin in midflight between my palms. I closed my eyes and slowly removed my left hand’s palm from over the other one.
I opened my eyes slowly and saw the side of the coin that decided my fate.
Yes, I had to discover my destiny, I had decided that very instant that I would go to each of the twelve destinations displayed in the poster. It was a charade to drown my sudden gush of guilt. A charade to follow uncertainty.
An uncertainty called Destiny.
It had been tail.
Chapter 22
Vypeen Island, Travancore-Kochi
9th December, 1947
After having my guilt and fate intertwined by the toss of a coin, I had travelled the length and breadth of India; from the highest peaks of the Hindu Kush in the north to the deepest valleys of the north east; the desert in the west to the plateau in the southeast. However, I was yet to make a fateful encounter with destiny. I had left my wife in charge of our home. I took a short interval at Calcutta and stayed there in the autumn of 1947 with her. I fell in love with my wife a couple of times again and that made me almost discontinue my crazy journey. The old opera houses and the tramlines only brought back memories of my mother. I was not strong enough to survive the guilt, for I believed that the aroma of my final destination lingered close by. The aroma from a city I had never touched in reality, but had conceived in the deepest of my dreams. The only place I had not visited from the list of destinations was the city of Cochin in the south west coast of the Indian subcontinent. I knew I had to visit the Queen of the Arabian Sea before deciding to settle down. In December I made my way southward.
By the time I arrived in Cochin, the world was preparing to welcome the year 1948 and the city was under the Travancore-Cochin or Thiru-Kochi as the locals called it. There were talks about inclusion of the northern region of Malabar into the current state of Thiru-Kochi based on the common language spoken in these areas; Malayalam. I travelled throughout the entirety of Travancore, Kochi, Malabar, South Canara and Coorg.
One day, I was walking, with my silken umbrella over my head and the same half rupee coin (that had directing my fate) jingling inside my fist, on the sands of the Island of Vypeen, when I realized I had hit a dead-end. There was just the sea ahead, and the emptiness of the horizon beyond. For a moment, I felt dizzy. The smell of the sea punched me in the center of my nose and butterflies hit the walls of my stomach.
This is the end of the land, but my quest yet unfinished. I thought, closed my eyes and sighed. Suddenly I felt the lingering aroma again which slowly transformed into an orphic Gregorian chant. I slipped the coin inside my trousers’ pocket and was forced to turn left and slowly opened my eyes to be mesmerized by what I saw.
A decaying mansion stood at the edge of the shore, enthroned on the top of a great cliff, with the violent depth of the sea right below. He heard church bells ring to the tune of the hour and breeze from the sea calling his to the mansion. The view itself was a splendid portrait: the sun at the top left of the picture with a bed of clear blue and mildly quivering water under the line of the horizon, while on the left stood the great mansion. A Victorian building coupled with a traditional Chera architecture in holy matrimony on the edge of a thick brown cliff. A captivating sight which any artist would love to replicate on her canvas, a frame so enigmatic which every photographer would dream of capturing in her camera. A visual so pompous that it filled the mind with a million words of praise yet left the man speechless.
It was time to decide. I curled up my fingers once again, placed the coin on the spot, and tossed it in the air. I would leave the place and go back to Kolkata if it was Heads and Tails would make me stay there forever. In all the previous destinations, the coin had turned up Heads, thus, stretching my journey to this ultimate destination on that list. However, this would be the last time I would be tossing the coin.
The final decision; never again would I depend on a coin and put my life on the lines of fate. I had always been a rational man and would continue being so, excusing myself from this small episode in life. I was afraid to go back to Calcutta, as I knew I might punish myself under an infinite spell of guilt. Change is what my soul requested and I hoped the coin would give me the necessary change this time.
I let the coin drop on the sand.
The coin had decided; it was tails. I had made my mind. This mansion on the tip of Fort Cochin was my final dest
ination.
My quest is over. I prepared for the arrival at the destination.
The Clifford Mansion I shall call it.
Chapter 23
It was afternoon and the sun did not show any mercy on my tanned skin. I walked around the deserted beach. I found a small teashop in the corner of the yard, there was just one customer and then the owner of the tea-stall, a veteran of native origin. Upon seeing me approaching him, the veteran tea-stall owner welcomed me with the widest grin ever seen on the shores of Cochin. He muttered something in the native language. I could not understand what they said for I had no knowledge of Malayalam. Some words were vaguely similar to the Dravidian language of Tamil. I had spent some time in the Madras Presidency couple of years back. Therefore, I spoke Tamil quite well.
‘Chaaya Edukette?’ The veteran asked him in Malayalam.
‘Yes please.’ The word was same in Tamil and Hindi, Chaaya meant tea and I could surely make use of the tea to strike a conversation with the native.
‘Saaippu Englandil ninnaano?’ The native asked with the same wide smile.
I looked around, the other customer was eagerly waiting for my reply as well and smiled at me instantly, exposing his bright white teeth. I forced a smile.
‘I… I don’t understand. Yenna sollarathu?’ I tried asking in an uncanny British variant of what I thought was Tamil, hoping that the native would be able to understand.
‘You…’ He said pointing at Richard’s chest, ‘England?’
‘Oh Yes. I am.’ I replied instantly.
‘You kill India? We Simon go back you.’ The tea-seller chuckled. Beneath the chuckles lay an innocent warning of what they would do in case the white man showed his true color again. The mutiny and freedom struggle were still fresh in their minds. Although it had happened way up in the north, even the natives of the southernmost tip were well aware of the slogan.
‘No…no… I want to buy that house, up there on the cliff.’ I declared pointing my walking cane towards the picturesque frame.
Suddenly, an expression of pity and uncapped fear grew on the tea-seller’s face.
‘Ithu pretha kottaaramaanu… Venda Saaiyippe. Buy… no…no!’ He said.
‘Yes… yes… I want to buy it.’ I spoke without recognizing any word other than ‘buy’.
‘Pretham… Bhootham in house!’ He tried to make me understand.
‘Yes, the house. Who is the owner?’
‘Ownera?’
‘Yes… yes… the owner, where can I find him?’ I was delighted to see recognition in the native’s tone.
‘Owner dead. He no come.’ The tea-seller slackened the porous cotton cloth that was adorning his hip, ‘You talkku Saami, Broker Saami.’ The sun shone its brightest ray on his balding head.
‘Sammy?’ I reconfirmed.
‘Saami. Go Tripunithura, Saami thanthri in big Vishnu temple.’ The native spoke each word distinctly as if he were teaching a three year old the first words of her life.
‘You mean, Saami is a priest in the big Vishnu temple in Tri… Tripunithura?’
‘Yes!’ The tea-seller smiled, but it was short lived as an expression of grim terror replaced that smile again. He moved towards me as I placed the hat back on my head, preparing to leave, and warned ‘Avide Duratmaavinde nivaasam undu. The house is haunted by a visitor… the frequent visitor…’
Chapter 24
Shree Poornathreyeesha Temple, Tripunithura
10th December, 1947
I arrived an hour before the scheduled meeting time at the outer sanctum of the great temple of Lord Poornathreyeeswara. After running brisk enquiries with the locals at Fort Cochin, I had learnt that the mansion had been abandoned for a long time. However it had a caretaker in the royal town of Tripunithura, a Hindu priest by the name of Krishnamurthy, locally known to everyone as Broker Saami. I looked around, the place was beautiful and the air was piously diluted by the aroma of sandal flavored incense sticks and camphor.
The smell of Hinduism, I thought. I loved the smell coming from temples. As a kid I would wake up early in the morning just to attend the early morning aarti at a Shakti temple across the street. I would wait outside the temple until the smell of the incense and camphor was completely toppled by that of motor vehicles.
I got the shuvo coin out from my breast pocket and looked at it,
‘I must be one crazy young man’, I thought and smirked.
I started drawing elliptical figures with my fingertip on the carved surface of the coin. I saw a pair of naked feet stepping into my line of sight. I slowly looked up at the face of the new entrant. It was a bumpy face with spots of oil pits and thickly furnished by a tanned complexion, typical to the tropical sun. The forehead coiffed with a thick vertical stroke of the Gopichandana and hair trimmed to what was just short of an inch. Two small eyes and a blunt nose placed themselves firmly on the disproportionately smaller face as compared to his body which had nothing on the upper half but a white silk shawl lined by a golden stroke for a border covering the chest over the shoulders. His face and body had little hair and the abdomen was unusually flat for the particular kind of people from this region. He was a Brahmin, a Vaishnava; something that the vertical stroke of holy clay called Gopichandana symbolized.
‘Bhavanti Namrāstaravah falodgameh navāmbubhirbhūrivimbino ghanāh.’ The Brahmin chanted into my sober eyes, ‘I am Padmanābha Krishnamurthy. How can this humble servant of God serve your highness?’
‘Oh dear, I must correct you, I do not belong to the royal family. Not even the farthest of my kinsmen. I am an ordinary citizen of this great country and the name is Baxter… Richard Clifford Baxter. How do you do, His Holiness?’ I introduced myself in the most humbling manner.
‘You win my heart with your humility and that elates me. I am not well accustomed to the British way of conversational formalities. Kindly pardon me for that.’ There was the thick Malayalee accent to the priest’s English, especially in the silence of ‘h’s and coagulation of ‘l’s; typical to people from the region.
‘Oh, that is not a problem at all. I respect your efforts to talk to me in such grammatically sound English. In fact, earlier I was a little worried if we could even get into a conversation without making ape-like gestures, but seems that you are well versed not only in Sanskrit but English as well.’ I burst into a light gag.
‘I speak a dozen languages, you see. English is just one of them.’
‘Enough for me, I believe. However, that person from the port told me your name was something else. Something Sam… Sammy.’ I presented my doubt to the priest who was waving to his assistant to leave the inner sanctum.
The priest was disgusted upon hearing my doubt ‘Oh! Those silly low caste folk! They have given a really unwanted nickname to me because they cannot get my name right. You see they don’t clean their tongues so they can’t pronounce my name.’
‘I clean my tongue, but I think that I can ever pronounce your name correctly either.’ I joked.
‘You see, us Brahmins are the men of God. We are the only ones authorized to perform any form of pious duty or ceremony.’ He boasted.
‘And who authorizes this authority?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘You belong to a false religion so you are not qualified to receive the answer.’ The priest frowned.
I giggled within myself at the priest’s narrow-minded beliefs. I had always been a rational person, and placed religion on the backseat of my carriage. To me, religion and rituals were nothing but what I said before- mumbo-jumbo. The only time I chose an irrational path was when I decided to rest my life on a coin penned by my wife as a shuvo mudro or lucky coin. I was yet to surrender to this joke created around God and different religions, however, I chose to avoid an argument with the indoctrinate man of God, ‘I am afraid I was born with that.’ I said and smiled.
‘So, we are initiated men. We follow the ancient principles of the Vedas. We are called swami or the masters.’
‘I am sorry
to interrupt, but is that like an educational denomination? Like Masters in some field of science?’
‘The mastery over one’s own self, the body and soul and its habitual patterns. We have forfeited everything to walk in the path of God.’
‘Do you have a family?’ I asked.
‘Yes, one wife, and eleven children.’ The Brahmin announced proudly.
‘There goes your ‘everything’. I am not sure about forfeiting everything for God, but you do have ‘everything’ to build your own team for cricket.’ I cracked out laughing.
‘I find your jokes very rude, Mr. Baxter.’
‘I find your beliefs very crude. How long are you planning to claim yourself superior over others? All of you belong to the same religion yet you are divided. I pity your beliefs. I pity every religious belief.’ I declared.
‘So, you are saying you do not believe in God?’ The priest said shocked.
‘All I am saying is that I believe in myself.’ I corrected him.
‘Aham Brahmāsmi.’
‘I am sorry? I do not understand Sanskrit.’
‘I am God.’
‘O Really? Which one?’ I asked.
‘No! No! I am telling you the meaning of Aham Brahmāsmi. It means I am God. It is a principle in Vedas, the Aghoris follow this.’
‘By the way, which god do you represent, Swami?’
‘I represent the Supreme God,’ the priest closed his eyes and went into a short trance and chanted the name of His God, ‘Hari!’
‘Oh! The priest from the temple on the west said it was Shiva.’
