Second Comings

About four years ago, during the end of my epic battle with several demons (and the war's not over), I wrote a story and in an incoherent moment submitted it to an online magazine called Sulekha, who after murdering it a little, put it up. Now Sulekha's become a blogsite of sorts where all and sundry can put up whatever they want and they have posted this there as my post. Which is a little embarrassing because now I find the piece a little juvenile and see the possibility of doing several things to it. I tried to erase the damn thing from Sulekha but the thing just wouldn't go. Moreover when I google my name this is the first thing that pops up. So I thought, since this forms part of self-history, maybe it's a good idea to let it be as is. And also, as my fourth standard teacher says, when you are ashamed of something, exhibit it flaunt it and that is how the shame demons die. So here goes to hell another demon of mine...




SECOND COMINGS




I woke up in the afternoon with a shiver in my mind; the tremors, I knew, would follow. I was not surprised. I headed for the bar. It was not a long walk and as I walked I saw the flowers, the trees, the tresses of a woman, and as I passed the pond, the man joined me.

Who are you, I asked him.

He replied, I am the translator and destroyer of histories, I build second heavens for you, I make the dreams shout at you, I make myths and I am a myth, I create you and let the dreams that I weave in you make you be. I am madness but I am also redemption and I always give you a chance to reject me, destroy me.

Destroy me, I told him.

I am also a storyteller, he said, and therefore I shall tell you another story. About the temple and the temple's door which no one could pass without knocking the head at the awning unless you want to pass not the door but enter what is inside. And this was the story that he told me:

The man and wife climbed the hill, stopped to look at the waterway winding through the fields, saw the pumpkins growing at their feet and then moved ahead to reach the temple, tried to enter the temple and got knocked on the head good and proper. They entered nevertheless, prayed to the god with a flute stuck on its mouth and then rang the bell. A single chime resulted and they remembered the time when they had come, not as man and wife then.

They remembered the bell as it had rung then, when the chimes echoed to more chimes and then more chimes and the cadence ascending to a harmony. They remembered looking at the god then and then realising that if there was only something added, everything would be complete and proper. But they were satisfied then and had returned satiated.

Now, as man and wife, complete, they had returned and not only did they find themselves incomplete but also unwanted. They returned home looking at nothing, not even the future, promising to never return. They grew up slowly together, prospered, begat children, who begat children. They grew old. They grew tired of each other but continued in the habit of their presence.

And then one day the woman fell from the bathroom and was bedridden. She was afflicted by bedsores, by memory which passed her by, by odd stenches, by unusual dreams, by terrible nightmares until she stopped to think and waited to die. Her leg healed when she was told about a terrible disease which would make her a vegetable soon. The man too waited for the woman to die, scared at the loneliness that would ensue but reconciled. He was reconciled.

One day, as he sat beside her bed and watched the television rerun a movie which they had once seen together and laughed at together and had then gone for a walk together and had laughed together as they walked, the woman told him, take me to the temple. Let us try once more, to enter the temple and see the god. Let me walk for the one last time in my life.

Yes, said the man. We shall enter it together.

And therefore they again made good the arduous climb and saw from afar the awning and the temple door and as they entered, got knocked on the head good and proper.

They did not enter then. The woman leaned against the wall of the nearby well and slumped down onto the floor, beaten and bruised, and the man sat down near her as he thought it was the proper place for him in their moment of defeat.

And he saw his wife, founder of lost battles, in wait at last for uneasy rest. Most excellent once in beauty, withered, wizened, done in by the juices of life. He saw himself, victor in everything we call life, a good life. It was a good life, led by good people. And he felt anger.

He saw the blue skies and looked at the god inside who had spurned them. No god shall spurn us, no god can spurn us: he started chanting the mantra and then he remembered, once, when he had seen and had fallen deeply, deeply in love with her in the computer laboratory where they both were students. And he remembered, in the evening, when she was away and everyone was away, he had opened her computer and had kept on typing:

Doe eyed
filter toed
Minerva in disguise

Doe eyed
filter toed
Minerva in disguise

Doe eyed
filter toed
Minerva in disguise

Creature of right
Little love
In easy flight

And the man as he sat watching his wife near the temple changed his mantra and started chanting: Doe eyed, filter toed, Minerva in disguise and he got up chanting and picked up his wife, she had never felt lighter before, never more beautiful, he was never as comfortable in her proximity and he carried her in his two arms towards the awning, beyond the doors which seemed to grow and grow till they touched the very heavens. The man carried his wife inside the temple and together they took the bell and swung the gong and the chimes began, and once beginning never seemed to stop. Not even, smiled the wife, for the flute which the god vainly tried to play.