UNDYING FLAME

-MAUNI-
(Tr: Lakshmi Holmstrom)

That day, unusually for me, I did not go to see him in the morning. The sun had been beating down with
a fierce intensity since its first appearance. Overcome by a sense of alienation, which was
incomprehensible even to myself, I had not stepped outside die house at all. Deciding that I would see
him in the evening, I spent the sweltering morning at home.

This was the day before yesterday. I reached his house at about four-thirty in the afternoon. When I got
there, I found him, as usual, seated in a chair in the front room. We had been friends since childhood.
Seeing him like that, sitting at the open window, deep in thought, I stood at the threshold of the room
for a moment, hesitant to come upon him too suddenly. But he surprised me by calling out to me to
come in, even though he had not turned around to seo me. There was something truly startling about
his appearance at that moment. In the room was a single chair, and a table beside it. The window in
front of him, facing the street, lay wide open.

I entered the room, asking him, "Have you had your coffee yet?"

"No.

"What?"

"Yes, I have been sitting here all morning. Thinking ..." He laughed lightly as he said this.

My friend has almost forgotten bow to laugh and, to my knowledge, he has not laughed at all in recent
times. And, even at that moment, his laughter sounded as if it lacked the warmth of emotion. The tone
of his voice, and the intensity with which his gaze was directed outside - not once did it turn towards me
- made me feel uneasy. Before I could think about this, he began to speak. Of late, he had changed
subtly, I feel.

"Come here, my friend. Come and sit here and look ahead of you." Saying this, he rose and perched on
the table. I took his place in the chair.

"What do you see out there?” he asked.

A huge tree, stripped of its leaves, looking withered and dead, stood in front of me. Nothing else crossed
my vision, not even by chance. The tree seemed to me to be standing there alone, unkempt,
dishevelled, mourning silently. Birds which came swooping through the air to perch upon its branches,
suddenly grew still, as if they had lost their lives and become one with that tree. Their cries sounded
intermittently, like death-calls. After a while, with a quick flutter of wings, they flew away, as if with
renewed life. I didn't think about the tree's appearance for too long. I could not quite understand how
and why the sights that my friend had seen during the morning of that hot day, staring vacantly with
half-closed eyes, had agitated him so much.

When I heard him ask me, "Well?" I was totally taken aback.
I said, “There's just that tree."

“What? Yes, only that tree," he said, as he bent down a little from where he sat, to look at it. Then he
began to speak. “Yes, that is it. Can you see it groping for something that the skies do not possess, hands
outspread, eyes shut, always searching? It stands there, swaying and moving. It cannot rest; its play is
not yet over. Softly, the western wind wafts over it. Clouds come and rest upon it, heavy with love. It
shudders, unable to bear their weight. Is it a royal whisk, outspread to cleanse away the clouds from the
pathways of the skies? Or does it stand there, yearning for the raindrops which will bring new shoots?
Why does it stand? Why?"

I did not care for his tone, nor for his words. “What is the matter with you? When did you become a
poet? Why this excitement, and this frustration?"

"Listen, I'll tell you. My mind stepped into the past, yesterday by yesterday, until it came to a standstill
at an event that happened nine years ago. I have been restless ever since. I am agitated by everything in
an indescribable way. That is all." He stopped. His eyes shone as they had never done before, as if eager
to look upon that which is unseeable, ordained by an asariri, a voice from heaven.

He began to speak again. But it was clear that it was not me that he was addressing, “Yes, nine years
ago. I was about eighteen years old then, a college student. An incident from those days has played like
a refrain in my imagination since this morning. You might remember what I looked like in those days."

"Very well indeed .... You..."

"Yes, yes, I know. I had a long nose, with a slight curve to it, as if to hook and pull back people who
moved ahead of me. Beneath that, finely-chiselled lips, partly revealing a set of teeth fit to dazzle. I had
always had long hair, worn in a firm knot at the nape of my neck. But, then I got my hair cropped and I
would often stroke the short hair, deliberately reminding people of the thick long black locks that I had
sacrificed. Lost in the beauty of my own bright eyes, I thought I had worth and value. Perhaps many
people looked at me in those days, and looked often. I was not aware of what they thought about me.
But now, now I look about me with an empty gaze. My eyes are lifeless. My good looks seem to have
died with my youth. But my life did not end in my youth. She too looked at me then."

"She?" I asked.

"Yes! She did too. Listen. How many years is it since I went to the temple? I have not been there after
that day. Not until yesterday. I used to go often once. Usually, with you. In fact you were with me that
evening.

"It was not a festival day, but there she was, at the temple. I had not known that she would be there. As
we were leaving, we crossed her at the entrance, as she was about to go in. She was then perhaps about
thirteen. Suddenly, she turned and looked at me. Perhaps it was I who impelled her to turn her gaze
towards me. But what was it that drew me, that made me turn and follow her, taking you with me? I
don't know. It might have been my own immaturity. Don't say it was love or some such thing, though it
leaves me dissatisfied to say there was no reason for what I did. Call it a kind of arrogance, if you like.
Something that happens spontaneously, without a cause, itself becomes the cause. Or so it Seems,
when we seek a cause.
"Well, I followed her. I followed her so closely that I could have touched her. My lips involuntarily
muttered some words. I knew it wasn't because I wanted to say something. There was nothing I could
say.

"At the Ishwara sannidhi, she came in front of the deity, bowed her head and stood for a while in silent
meditation. I was behind her, immediately behind her. Through the gaps between her folded hands, I
glimpsed the innermost sanctuary, its hanging lamps shining dimly, as if from a great distance. Her eyes
seemed to have gone beyond the image of the god, past the boundaries of life's beginning and end, to
rejoice in some extraordinary happiness. How long we stood there, I don't know. Time stood still, lost in
her form, in that Presence.

"When at last, released from her meditation, she turned towards me, I spoke out of a state of ecstasy,
and in spite of myself: For you, I am ready to do anything. I am capable of doing anything.

- You and those who came with her were standing a little distance away. You could not possibly have
heard those words. But I am certain that she had. She smiled.

"At that moment, a doubt entered my mind. Was she the only one to have heard me? The image within,
and the yaali that was one with the pillar in front of us - these, I thought, had heard me too. When I
looked at the lingam again, the deity, resplendent in sandal paste and sacred vibhuti, suddenly took
form, his brows knitted in anger. Startled and frightened, the yaali which was one with the pillar
frowned at me in rage and fear. It rose, rearing on its hind legs, threatening me. I looked towards her.
She was looking the other way and she walked away slowly with her companions,

Sannidhi: The sanctum sanctorum. Yaali: A mythical animal with the face of a lion, and the trunk and
tusks of an elephant.

her long braided hair hanging straight down her back. For a while I followed her with my eyes, as if only
her footsteps could break the deep oppressive silence of that world. Joining her companions, chattering
brightly, anklets ringing, she walked away. The silence of the sanctuary was shattered by the echoes of
those sounds ... Bats crisscrossed overhead, shrieking."

My mind raced while my friend was speaking. Spinning out of control it began to draw pictures. The
temple, the sanctuary. Yes, bats which are abroad even during the day, wandering about, unaware that
it is indeed day. Within that inner space, where daylight hesitates to enter more than halfway, in that
dim twilight, the images stand, taking on radiant life. Were temples sculpted in order to nourish that
great happiness at the silent centre of our deepest and most private experience? What truths does that
sannidhi wish to communicate, surrounded as it is by the corridor with hanging lights, where, to one's
shocked surprise, there is no difference between the devotees and their shadows? Are all of us merely
shadows? Of what then are we the moving shadows? My mind threw up these questions, and for a
moment my hair stood on cod.

There was something magnificent about any friend's expression. His words resonated in my ears as if he
had been made privy to some special secret. He paused at times as if he thought it was impossible to
communicate his feelings in words. His eyes shone with a bright light then.
"She moved away to perform the ritual circumambulation of the temple," he continued. "Her long
plaited hair swayed gently as her footsteps impelled her forward. Follow her, follow her - the words
sounded in my mind. impossible to resist. I did not speak the words out loud. There was a vilva tree at
the entrance of the temple. While splinters of moonlight fell through its leaves and lay scattered about. I
spoke to her silently, wordlessly: Love, look at me.

"And she did turn around. Her eyes too spoke: Follow me.

"I heard a sudden noise. The squeaking of a bat, hanging upside down. It sounded like laughter to the
ear, but sent waves of deathly fear into my heart. I stood for a while under the vilva tree, staring after
her.

“Then I began to follow her. The moonlight was as bright as day. I followed her, as if I were her long
shadow. She turned to look at me just before she reached the corner. That look seemed to plead with
me to take back the words I had spoken. There was an allure even in that look of anguish. I had come
close to her and had started to say the words once more: For you. I am ready ... But I could not finish
what I had begun. She went ahead, while I returned hastily to the vilva tree where I had left you. We
walked home in silence."

When he had paused for a while, I asked, "Who was she? How is it that I cannot remember her?”

He took no notice of my question and went on speaking. I began to get impatient.

"Since that day I stopped going to the temple. I did not know why I did so. It seemed to happen
naturally. Last night my mind was restless. Unanchored, my imagination wandered about. I set off
suddenly, on impulse, walking towards the temple, the deity. It was late at night when I arrived there. I
had wished to get there when the crowds had thinned. That way, I could see the deity, in the innermost
shrine faraway, even from the entrance to the temple. And in that quiet, there would be that huge lamp
with its single great flame shining beside the lingam.

"And then I saw it dimming slightly, then returning to its usual brightness. Some devotee must have
been praying there. I moved forward, slowly. That flicker, the sudden dimming and resurgence of the
glow was as if the last soul in the world had finished its worship and gone, leaving on earth only that
light, inextinguishable even to the very end. This happened yesterday and it revived that fire within me
which had been about to die for lack of care, making the flame stand tall again.

The temple was not empty as I had expected. She would be about twenty-two now. She was dressed in
the height of fashion. When I saw her this time in the temple, I felt a sudden pain. I even registered a
kind of repulsion at this unexpected meeting. She didn't seem to recognize me. Because my own notions
of culture and conduct have faltered and are in a state of flux, her fashionable appearance and
refinement were in fact of some consolation to me. When I remembered what I had said in her ear, her
new appearance stopped me from hating myself. I found myself disliking her instead, with a sudden
intensity ... But when she stood in meditation before the deity; she lost that outward veneer. I
understood then how human beings acquire beauty in the presence of their god, and to what inward joy
they surrender.

"The strength of her meditation drove me a little mad. It made me stand there, staring starkly in a kind
of joy. Ecstasy filled me. When she turned around and saw me, she recognized me instantly. Then, for a
while, she looked intently at the pillar in front of us. I saw the yaali, indestructible witness to my words,
stand up and dance wildly. When I looked upwards, ayyo! - another yaali was watching me, bending low,
enraged. Standing there, turning my eyes towards what she was watching, I was seized with anguish.
She looked at me as if she were giving me some kind of command. That look pierced through me. Then
her gaze left me like one who half gives away her innermost secret in the delirium of a daydream. Before
my feelings could be translated into thoughts, before my mind could understand what it was she had
said, she had gone away. When I lifted my head I saw that she had turned towards me one last time.
Like two gemstones at the end of a deep dark tunnel, tears sparkled in her eyes - I am destiny's shadow.
You see in me the seductive harshness of love.

"What did she say? What had she asked me to do? Was it, after all, a dream? No, she never spoke. But
what is there in sound or in words? Or indeed in form? They are all meaningless. They cannot make us
aware of the truth, they all grow dark, darken. However tightly we hold on to these things, they slip
away like smoke. There are these pointing fingers, though, which tell us that all is not quite maya. They
point to something else - Look, up there! - yet they themselves disappear even before we learn to move
in that direction. In the uncertainty of darkness, we are left with just the belief that unless we make that
leap of chance, we may never reach the right path ...

"Look at the tree there, its widely spreading wavy lines, its every living atom, can you not see them
merging with the colours of the sky? When it sways gently, it is searching in the wide spaces of the sky.
Is it not blindly that it searches?

It had become completely dark. While he sat there, still gazing outwards. I slipped away, without saying
goodbye.

When I came outside, I looked upwards. Numberless stars were strewn there, like chalk-marks made by
children on night's arching blackboard. They shone with an undying light, as if no matter how much each
single star poured out its light, it would never melt nor die. I heaved a great sigh, exhausted, aware that
we will never really understand what lies above us. I walked and walked and at last went home.

This morning he is not to be seen. Where he went and why. I do not know. I do not know if he knows
that either. My only thought is that He alone knows everything. If indeed there is a He.