Journal : Serialised Story

Lifetime In 36 Hours

The last you heard of it was when the Chapter I concluded with :

… There was nothing I could add right then to what she was already doing to fill on her want.

” Telescoping our sight on our being does bring much of our life into focus. They reveal the emotion being for us to know all that we are not. It is what we want in it that roots us, and lets it defines us. The want is the error. What is ours is the curiosity, the quest to know. Spot it and resume with the being in quest. Know and move on. There is nothing there to hold on to, nothing in it to claim as yours.”

The distance must have shown on the visage, as she gravely pored over my face for the longest moment with a firmness of resolve.

I picked up the book but soon snoozed over it. I had poured the oblations on the crackling fire within her. The result would arise. Read more here …

Chapter – II

I woke up to call for lunch. Silence through that tête-à-tête with food, the body and its vitality, served well. The train was rushing over land rich in Vedic spirit, Muslim life, British colonialism and Indian revolt. I was still at the window, legs folded, a pillow at my back. She, at the other end, a leg up, half folded, the other on the floor. Simple trapezoidal lenses in a light frame rested easy on the bridge of her nose. I felt, we were friends … a happy sense of togetherness. Priceless, I thought.

” There is an integrated form of grouped impressions behind this sense of being we have of ourselves, as this individual we each are. It appears to us as exclusively ours and extends all over the space our lifetime has covered, the experienced impacts impressed in the vital-mind, shoring up our I-sense. Its roots go fathomlessly deep into time. In effect, it subconsciously limits the content in our interpretation of what we experience to forms of reactive feelings — emotions that end at want or desire. All our animated life is lived as emotion.”

” I do see, above all, in my own instance. But where specifically is the problem with the process ? We do not seem to mind it. Why should we seek to change that ?”

” Because we are allowing what has been in our past to interpret what is happening in the present, now. We are not listening to what is before us, but to impressions from the past.”

” That’s horrible, like a prisoner blinded decades ago … who has no sense of what is in view now, has not connected with the present in a long long time. Horrible ! And he doesn’t even know. Most horrible ! Terrible ! Terrible !”

The reaction seemed a shade hyper. But I could se she has taken it very personally, intimately. She had pierced her heart with the thought of her wasted years, a life futile.

” It’s alright, Pam. The horror of this realisation is invaluable to rise of satya in our vision.”

I was concerned but could relate and empathise. In this country, people didn’t kill themselves with such an enveloping sense of annihilation. They renounced the world and walk away to heal themselves, serve in a temple, live with an ascetic, enter a monastic order, or simply disappear in the wilderness of forests and mountains. This darkness over the spirit was terrible, before the purge.

I could see her body heave ever so softly to her barely audible sniffs. She remained bent over forward for a while, closer to the ground, her head almost between her spaced out knees. It was exceedingly painful for the person with her pride, a life full of achievements and self-belief, I sensed. The universe was sombre just then. The noise of shattering completely clouded the pregnant opportunity for freedom and light to take over.

I was pained. We might know better but invoking that privilege for securing apathy was a greater darkness than all else. I could be as the train, railing forward without a mind to all that its passengers carried in their body, heart and soul. But the truth was that this being that was in me was also everywhere else, in all things and people.

She looked up. I gestured, if she felt better. She nodded. I sat a little more erect, breathing in deep and deeper, throwing out as long as it would. After the third, I let it on a more even course, deep but without the effort, more thin and easy. She straightened up, looked at me and held herself, and thought of using the washroom. Nothing would have worked better, to break the spell.

” Vam …”

The pause seemed significant … the sound of it certainly eased my concern. For a rebound, it was firm and clear. Seemed miraculous to me. I was all ears with abundant expectation. The smile was a consequence.

” Could I go back to truth ? It’s important.”

” Sure.”

” How do I regain myself ? My truth ?”

” First, you need to appreciate that the entire thing is a process of allowing ourselves to be charmed but refusing, in our awareness of ourself, to be claimed by anything, any person, any issue, any event, situation or experience, thought, idea or belief. They all are the other, not the stark self we each are. We can live without it all and must check ourself up on that. For a time, at least, we must be and know that being.”

” How about desire and want ? Surely, we are there where they are. Can’t say they are not what I am. They are our truth.”

” Seems like but no … you only have to look at a renunciate like Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Ramana … we have a whole tradition.”

“ Hmm … so why am I so completely identified with them ?”

“ Because you want to, you want the experience that identity leads you up to, something that answers the call of the starved mind. It gives the feeling then that you are now complete and quenched but only until another time, another occasion of longing.”

“ So why and how should I disrupt it, as it offers to happen ? I am out of it soon enough when it’s done with.”

“ Consider what you just lived through. It is suffering, misery and unhappiness. Besides, the craving is a carryover within you from a long gone past. It’s not, never was, about the object or the experience we ever again crave for, and are poised on having every now and then. The incompleteness is ours, on account of absence of our self in it while the experience happens. Only by restoring our self in our knowledge that the lack can be fulfilled, not by the object of our desire or by more of the same experience.”

I let the insight complete itself : “ I believe, every experience brings out something from within our self. What we desire is that which is within us, which we forget in time and long for again and again. The desire belongs to the past, which our first experience with the object left us impressed with; the same object now before us has more dimensions than the one we hold it in, out of our desire for it.”

I looked away, into the afternoon outside. It was rich and deep, resting in itself, in the distance. Speech must take a pause, a long one I felt. The sheep were there but I wasn’t counting. I knew she was heading towards a circularity, a singularity that she was just not in a position to accept. We never do … because what the dualistic position offers shocks us, mesmerises us blind and enslaves us.

I noticed she felt alone and wished she would break the spell, out of the emotional depths and go on top of her thoughts. A walk in the coach corridor or a splash of water on the face would have served well. I could create a light moment but that would let the opportunity take cover. The rock would then have to be raised uphill at another moment of intensity, which do not come easy for lack of our invitation; the demon of our ignorance would live to be met another day.

Presently I stood up, told Pam I’d walk the corridor and, perhaps, open the door to the coach and spend some time. She nodded, then blurted if I was disappointed. It made me sit back, closer to her. I reached for her palm and held it in mine.

“ I’m sorry, Pam, if you feel that it mattered. Let me tell you that it doesn’t, for one; I am unimportant, if not irrelevant. And besides, I have nothing to be disappointed about. Quite the opposite, without any hyperbole, allow me to say : you are one of the bravest person I have known. You’ve been great, so frank and deliberate. And I’m so glad, grateful, to have known you. Just get on with the task you’ve chosen to deal with and let me know if I could be of any help. I cannot do it for you but you only have to reach out and you’ll find me happily extending whatever strength I am capable of. You are stepping up to attain what I know is of herculean dimensions.”

I sat with her, her palm in my warmth, for long enough while… till her moist eyes were clear again. She nodded, looking me with a togetherness that that was enveloping. I leaned over to hug her ever so slightly. She stayed. Pulling back, I thumped on my knees with vigour before raising myself. I went straight to the coach door and opened it to the gushing wind on my being.

The Sannyasi Rebellion

I use here material entirely available on wiki page @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sannyasi_Rebellion

The Sannyasi Rebellion refers to short period of a dozen odd years through the 1770s, after the Battle of Plassey that Clive won in 1757 and the great famine of 1770 in Bengal province. Those involved were Hindu renunciates, who were avowedly without any root in the world and were not attached to anything material or mental, including their very body. The movement, if it could called, also had Muslim “fakirs” who had taken to ascetic life along lines institutionalised in Sanatan way of life.

The rebellion was limited to Murshidabad and Baikunthapur forests of Jalpaiguri, in north-west of the province. It has been variously considered in significance as : a law and order problem; early war for India’s independence from British rule; reaction to atrocities during tax collection, especially at a time of severe and widespread starvation, since British East India Company had acquired that right after its victory at Plassey.

The Rebellion itself prompted recognition as a phenomenon with three distinct extended events over a couple of decades …

One, refers to a large body of ascetics – Hindu sannyasis – who traveled from North India to different parts of Bengal and beyond, to shrines in north-east region including Assam. En route, it was customary for many of these holy men to ask for monetary support from village heads and local landlords who, in better times, generally obliged. However, with “diwani” or collection rights won by East India Company, the regime’s tax demands from the populace increased and local landlords and headmen were unable to pay both the ascetics and the English mercenaries. Crop failures, and famine, which killed ten million people, or an estimated one-third of the population of Bengal, compounded the problems when much of the arable land lay fallow.

In 1771, about 150 of the renunciates were put to death by the British Company troops, for no apparent reason. It led to a violent retaliation, especially in Natore in Rangpur, now in modern Bangladesh. Some historians however argue that the particular reaction never gained popular support and hence could not be considered a major cause behind the rebellion.

The other two movements involved a sect of Hindu ascetics, the Dasnami Naga sannyasis. It was alleged that they engaged in lending out money on interest while passing through the region and collected it on their way back. The British looked upon this as an encroachment on their domain and declared the Dasnamis as brigands, liable for criminal offense. They arranged not only for prevention of such money gathering, which right they felt belonged to the Company, but also to stop their entry into the province. The entire propaganda may have been a cover, since a large body of people on the move would always be a challenge and a possible threat to law and order administrators anywhere.

Most such clashes are recorded during the years following the great famine; but they continued sporadically up until 1802. The rebellion actually spread all over the province during those last three decades of 18^th Century. Attempts by Company’s forces to prevent the sannyasis and fakirs from entering the province, or from collecting their money, met with resistance and fierce clashes often ensued. In these instances, the regime’s troops were not always victorious, inviting cheers from the oppressed population of the day. The Company’s hold was poor over territories in far-flung and forested areas of Birbhum and Midnapore districts, as a result of which it often faced reverses in their clash with Naga ascetics and suffered humbling losses.

The Sannyasi rebellion was the first of a series of revolts that the British faced in western districts of Bengal province, which included practically the whole of present-day eastern states of Bihar, Odisha and Paschim Banga. The Chuar Rebellion of Midnapore and Bankura took place 1798 – 99, Laik Rebellion in Midnapore extended through 1806 – 16, and the Santhal Revolt posed a severe task in 1855 – 56.

The inspiration the Sannyasi Rebellion gave to these uprisings that followed is without doubt. Later, it was instituted in vernacular literature by India’s first modern novelist, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. His novel, Ananda Math ( Monastery Of Bliss ), inspired many a rebel in early 20^th Century and its song, Vande Mataram, is regarded as the National Song of India.

Story : LIFETIME IN 36 HOURS – II

The story untill now …

https://vamadevananda.wordpress.com/category/serialised-story/

” Perfect. Let’s introduce ourselves.”

I was nodding at her ‘free-bird’ boldness and smiling of pleasure at having as frank an interlocutor as she was … of amazing mettle. I was again abrim with gratitude and gladness.

The suggestion seemed to have finally broken the ice, in a manner. We spoke with some familiarity, then animatedly, as friends would. She was Pam : for Pamela, a professor of humanities. I very truthfully bared the mystique : I was Vam, for Vamadevananda, a nomad. That, I had retired early and did nothing for livelihood. I did things that served my peace, truth and happiness.

Kalka was not my destination and I did not know what was. I would be taking the connection to Shimla but would head for the bus stand, for proceeding to Kalpa. The district administrator, a younger man who knew me, had arranged for my lodging in a village nearby. But right then, sitting in the coach a thousand miles away, it was all tentative. It was somehow tiring to speak of myself.

She wowed, looking wistful. I looked at the fields passing by, at the transient objects afar as they gradually came in and receded from the view. The being, of which they arose, brimmed in my heart.

” I’ve decided to spend the summer interlude with my sister, in Shimla. I expect to finish these essays during my stay and hope they would yield their truth to my contemplation. Do you think they will ?”

” I wish they do. Sincerely. They might too.”

I knew, that transforming featureless fullness seldom happened with reading and thinking. It does not impact us enough to self-inspect the station we are at, along our inner journey : the purity and extent of love in our heart; and the knowledge at source in our eye. But everything helped … if the drive to restore our self, to the self in its solitude, was intense enough.

” You’ve done well till now, Pam, through over half a century, if I’m not wrong. Why are Vedanta truths so important for you at this late stage ?” I saved the thought to myself, ” Especially since you seem well off, and without any apparent crisis that might occasion the necessity.”

Truth, our truths, do not have a formal form. It is too tied up with ourselves. The subject could not be discussed from our surface. It needed informal communication of what we were perceiving in our mind just then, without also causing it. I was hoping to know her, in order to understand her words more fully, more accurately.

The introspection process does take its time. It demands that we wait. Time was essential to effective and efficient communication.

” Vam, I never married. When I looked about, after finishing my doctoral studies, I couldn’t be listed in the 20’s column of matrimonial pages. Too, I discovered, I wasn’t keen to hitch on. Life was engaging in the university, in the classroom and in my chamber, where I wrote scholarly papers that got noticed and always lead to more work, research and papers, more conferences and seminars.”

Concise, deliberate, critical and frank. Filled with truth.

” The campus was quiet, simple enough for my pleasure, liberal and liberating. I wouldn’t have given that up for anything just then, much less for playing second fiddle to someone who had priorities for himself, his career or business. The fullness I was living meant everything to me. I was happy.”

“As was I, to have met her,” I told myself.

” There was money enough, which meant little to me except when it enabled me to travel. Have never been a shopper and had felt no need of more property than I’d already inherited. Investments other than some tax-savers like insurance policy, mutual funds and fixed deposits were completely off my radar…

“There were men who saw a future with me but no one I felt over time whom I could admit into my life for all time, into my house and in my decision making.”

” Does that make you sad, today ?”

” No … but I am seized by the need to make amends for not having a companion I could call my own, who would speak to me, be with me during my solitary departure from the world. Someone who would hold my hand and miss me while I breathed out my last. Having lived in the present all my life, I cannot ignore preparing well enough for what I am walking into, at the eve of my journey’s end.”

It showed in her eyes. A developed intellect that had sincerely fashioned a values system for all matters, moral and ethical. The moment was pure and fascinating.

Reflexively, I picked up the water bottle and drank to a thirst that seemed unquenchable. It was still in my clasp, while I assessed the need for more, when she reached for the bottle unasked, without a word. Our relatedness could now be categorised as informal.

” I sense that you need the skill to complete yourself in solitude, by and to yourself, and the capacity to choose emptiness than abhor it, even more than something intimate and substantial. It will likely free you from the need of having someone by the death-bed.”

There was nothing I could add right then to what she was already doing to fill on her want.

“Telescoping our sight on our being does bring much of our life into focus. They reveal our ego-emotion-being for us to know all that we, in truth, are not. It is what we want in it that which roots ourself in it, and lets it defines us. The want is the error when we need to be free of it…

“What is ours is the curiosity, the quest to know. Spot it and resume with the being in quest. Move on to knowing, and persist with moving on. There really is nothing here to hold on to. We could give to it, but give up we must because there’s nothing that would accompany us through our great departure, except what we are to ourself.”

The distance must have shown on the visage, as she gravely pored over my face for the longest moment, with a strange firmness of resolve.

This was an unknown, unpredictable domain. I picked up the book but soon snoozed over it. The oblations had been poured in the crackling fire within her. The result would arise.

End of Chapter I. To be continued …

Serialised Story : LIFETIME IN 36 HOURS

What transpires between a man and a woman when they spend time together in an small coupe all to themselves, on a train that will take them to Kalka and, from there, to Shimla through a journey of about 36 hours … ?

There’s absolutely no chance of it being a love story … but I do see a spiritual thriller in the situation.

“ What remains with two people who come together on promise of love but do not empathise in their unity, and diverge away from-each other ?”

“ What remains with two people who come together on promise of love, deepen their empathy, and unite to mean everything to each other ?”

[ These questions would occur to me when younger and I’d actually posed them to a couple of my friends who were in a relationship then.]

Chapter – I … contd.

I could sense the difficulty in actually fathoming the difference between formal and informal phenomena. Living on the outside, among other matters and things, people and beings, and thinking … of all our concerns in terms of ‘others’ to oneself. We seldom look inward and observe this universe that is us, oneself, to oneself… in the manner of a research project for mapping the processes occuring within – body, vitality, vital mind and associated subconscious phenomena. The start was difficult; progress close to impossible for most. I prayed to this absolute prime mover within me.

“ I can see now, why the word would seem so empty of content despite its familiarity. I’d heard of Satya all my life but always associated it with facts, the few I knew and the rest I still had to.”

” We all did.”

She was very serious, thoughtful, as if she were speaking to herself. I nodded, smiled with complete empathy before looking away. This needed a longer interregnum for the shock to subside.

Sitting cross-legged at the other end of the berth, it was the longest she’d gone self-absorbed, in complete silence. Her state of crisis, probing into the darkness, unable to switch her own light… drove me up into my soul. She was physically still and her breath even, not truncated on its way in or out. A happy surprise, and a good omen.

Looking back on events from that time she had boarded, I felt within an underlying gladness for having an evolved travel companion such as she was. Spiritually, it had been exceptional.

A piercing whistle from the train caused me to glance at her, while the sense of gratitude still rested on my heart.

She was eying the floor in front of her, rested but still absorbed. Amazing, I thought. She looked up from there, straight at me.

” Yes, I can see the person, the events and mental space-time universe. I want to share it with you so that I can ask some more of you. I believe I am trapped in a fulness that has proved empty.”

I wasn’t sure she should. I was no teacher. Nothing in my perspective or way of life resembled those set by the ideal ones.

” Are you sure ? I would suggest you don’t, especially the personals that have remained private thus far.”

” That, I realise, has been a mistake. They all now seem more universal than private. It remained with me because of the absence of someone I could confide to. And because I never felt the need or urgency to do so till this moment.”

” And why do you believe you could share it all with me ?”

” Because you have compassion towards my failings and the kindness to extend help. And you have no interest in possessing my body or mind. This is how fearless and venturesome I feel with you.”

This was a high I was wary of. Very. But a hovering look at the being out there, reaching in through the window, set the matter to rest.

” Yes, it is all more universal than personal; just the degree varied. They are aspects that qualify and distinguish the ‘ packet of being ‘ in an individual’s life from another’s. It wasn’t immaterial, for those variations of degree made a man’s experience rich or poor, but that still did not render it personal.”

I looked askance when she looked up to me as if in awe.

” How do you know all this… so exactly ?”

” It is incidental that you find it to be so. I drew from what I know of myself. That makes it commonplace.”

” So help me now. I can see myself but do not know, in the way you do… enough to know everything else.”

” Lead me on to how I may.”

” First, why isn’t my truth not filled with as much content ? And, why does it not leave me free, to rise into its cause within me … and that into its ?”

” Because, whatever is the context in your thought, its relationship with you leaves you dissatisfied. And, because it’s vital, that leaves you discontent with yourself.”

” That should have been obvious. How to deal with it, as to move on ? That would be helpful.”

” There is no set rule I know of, valid for every individual. Perhaps, if you keep the matter in your understanding without forcing a solution, a way out would appear in view. In the meanwhile, you could spot another context with which you happily relate, to restore the sense of well-being and gratitude for being how are. Everybody is dissatisfied in one context or other.”

” Excellent. However unawares, I have actually followed the suggestion all my life. Yes… it is plain here and now.”

” No wonder, you are so spiritually qualified, if not actually evolved.”

” You really believe so ?”

” Yes. It’s been, as you said, plain to me … here and now !”

We laughed. The beauty of laughter wiped away her stress and anxiety of moments ago. I felt glad and grateful. The rhythmic rat-a-tattle of the train, cutting through the day, could now be heard, clear and pleasantly normal.

” I was introduced to Truth formally, objectively, as a third or second person. I now find it positioned within myself, pertaining to my very being and to this subjective self. I have a notion it is independent of that too … that I may realise and raise myself free of my own subjective being. Please tell me it is true.”

” It is true. And you will, one day.”

” What should I do now ?”

” Keep to it.”

” And …”

” Be happy among those who are, compassionate with those who aren’t. Be without fear, but not unwisely. Be kind to the miserable, unconcerned with ignorants. And be joyously forthcoming with one who truly knows.”

I turned to another live page of my book of rules.

” Be mindful of all you perceive, within and without. Be aware of everything in your experience. Be giving, not wanting. Never use a word without holding its truth within. And, always … always believe that there is someone looking after you, that you are not alone. “

” Wait … I wish to write that down in my diary.”

Serialised Story : LIFETIME IN 36 HOURS

There’s absolutely no chance of it being a love story … but I do see a spiritual thriller in the situation.

“ What remains with two people who come together on promise of love but do not empathise in their unity, and diverge away from-each other ?”

“ What remains with two people who come together on promise of love, deepen their empathy, and unite to mean everything to each other ?”

[ These questions would occur to me when younger and I’d actually posed them to a couple of my friends who were in a relationship then.]

Chapter – I … contd.

Breakfast was timely and a silent affair. I ate without the dramatics but quite as animals do… single-mindedly. She smiled her satisfaction, looked out, read, but was mostly hesitant to launch an engaging conversation. I picked up the book barely read a paragraph or two, and snoozed.

” You know, this term for truth, “Satya,” keeps coming in but remains empty of content. It’s so familiar, almost intimate as it rings in the ear, but sort of undefined and unspecified.”

I woke up. Anybody interested in truth was more intimate than a mere contemporary.

“What is the truth ? What would you look for and how would you recognise it ?”

“ I really wouldn’t know… maybe facts…”

“ To start with, look for what has stayed with you for the longest in effect.”

“ My education… my parents home I inherited ?”

“No, in effect… it would mostly be food and sex, thirst and breath, the need and freedom to speak out, to choose, to love and be loved, to know…These are intimate in their effect on us all.”

There was a deep hush for long. She did not turn her gaze away from me. Nor I. She took a deep breath, looked down and slumped against the backrest.

I added, with a kindest tone I was capable of : “ Truth begins with parents, the body we have, the vitality, emotions – the vital mind, doubts and thoughts – the thinking mind, knowledge – the intellect, and the conscience – the soul being – that inexorably persists. These are our truths.”

“ Where does sex come in ?”

“ Through the vitality, the vital mind. That is how we all are created. It is through dealing with it that our thinking mind develops. All that is vital within us, that we refuse to acknowledge and deal with upfront, remains subconscious. Our emotions or interpretation of all that we sense, feel and experience, is then determined subconsciously. And we must be consciously on guard not to reveal to others what we do not wish to acknowledge to ourself.”

“I see. Indeed …”

There was something stunning about this silence upon her. I was concerned but could only pray.

“ Come, you are not alone.” She hesitated, then put her palm over my extended right. I sealed the gesture by placing my left over hers.

After we withdrew, she was more at ease, uplifted, but thoughtful. As it was, she was forming her question.

“ Is the truth one for all ? Or, is it many, one or one set respective to each of us ?

“ From where we all start, it is the latter – one set for each. Where the journey evolves to and the seeking ends at, it is singular – one supreme truth.”

“ Of course … So, what do you feel, how should I proceed ?”

I turned away from the window to look into her eyes. There was a self-deprecating smallness she did not deserve.

“ Books are a great way to start. Apart from what you have in your hand, you could choose one on Raja Yoga. The formal introduction is very helpful but truth, its knowledge, is an informal matter. It is known first and fully in our own context.”

“ Formal … objective, one among others, intellectual idea… hmmm.”

” We all did.”

She was very serious, thoughtful, as if she were speaking to herself. I nodded, smiled with complete empathy before looking away. This needed a longer interregnum for the shock to subside.

… to be continued.

Story : LIFETIME IN 36 HOURS – I

I am encouraged to pen down this strange story of a reclusive middle aged man and an erudite lady who hitched with him to a strange hidden enclave in the Himalayas, where exalted sages and great stalwarts of early and later Vedic ages continued to live alongwith heroes and historic changemakers of later eras. It was a mountainous, densely forested wilderness where, at first, one sees nothing exceptional; one meets no one until someone authorised, from among those happy, glowing and fulfilled cave residents, came forward to introduce… It was an uber fabulous space apart from one bound in time.

It is a story that happened to yours truly but is not about me. So, here we embark.

Chapter – I

”I too am going to Kalka.”

I put down the book. She must have seen my travel itinerary on the reservation chart posted at coach entrance. It was quarter to ten in the night now and the train had rolled out of Durgapur station. My co-traveler looked middle-aged but seemed all eyes, weightless and sprightly. It’ll be one more night before we will disembark at Kalka.

The occasion needed a few words to stabilise. But what was there to say, i searched. All that I found was that I was glad, which couldn’t be mentioned without a context. The nod of acknowledgment was all I could reflexively put out when our eyes met but, as I later sensed, the smile on my countenance had stayed on. The juncture was loaded with a tentativeness, I felt. It would unravel, I told myself. It always does.

She did her bed on the upper berth. It was a two-berth coupe. I had the lower one. Despite it being late, she chose to sit at the other end of mine. She looked out of the window and I followed suit. It was dark and rushing out there. The wind on my face left me indescribably connected. Looking back after a while, I found her watching me.

“Not sleepy, eh.”

“Yes, the excitement of embarking is still to subside. Perhaps you would …”

“No, I hate missing out on so much of experience to sleep. Perhaps, by the early hours of the morning I’d allow the dark lady to take over. Are you, by any chance, a little taken up by apprehension, on account of this forced situation of spending the night in the company of a stranger… ?”

“Could be, subconsciously. Anything could happen but I perceive no cause that it would.” Her eyes were direct, locked with mine. “It’s your perspective to sleep that I am curious about. Most would find it not so normal. Especially at your age …”

“How do you see it ? And what’s my age, I wonder ?”

“You look late middle age. What exactly do you experience, looking into the blank depths outside the window ?”

“ It’s pathologically human, I guess, to presume of what it is from what it looks to be. At what age should one stop appreciating the night ? It’s healing, wondrous, quietly alive and so very gathered in peace. But I am supposing…”

“Are you a monk ?”

“No, just a recluse.”

Sometime after a long quiet interlude, she moved up to her place. I stretched out on mine and felt good to be traveling with someone. I embraced the track and wheel sounds for long, the wind on my face, the indistinct hills and trees in a darkness beyond regularly punctuated by the amazing presence of lit zones framed in black.

”It felt good to be travelling with someone,” she said, zipping close her utility pouch in the morning. I smiled. It was the thought I had slept with… There was no point to it but the wonder turned in my gut. An extra dose of vitality shot into the nerves, if you know.

”A pleasure.”

I may have said that to myself because, a little later, she looked moist and fresh and strangely familiar. The book she’d opened was Narendra’s essays on Vedanta. I stared through the window. This existence out there, in passing villages now awake, never failed to empty the mind and rest my gut.

Breakfast was timely and a silent affair. Single-minded, to be exact. She smiled her satisfaction, looked out, read, and was mostly hesitant to launch an engaging conversation. I picked up the book, barely read a paragraph or two, and snoozed.

”You know, in this book, this term for truth, “Satya,” keeps coming up but remains without content. It’s so familiar, almost intimate as it rings in the ear, but empty, I feel. What is the truth ? I find the significance undefined and unspecified.”

”Perfect,” I said with a smile. “Let’s introduce ourselves.” There was no way for me to define the truth or specify it decriptively to her, without the context in her particular background. It would be tortuous even with that, I reminded myself. Word heavy academic conversations had long since ceased to appeal to my attention

The suggestion seemed to have finally broken the ice between us, in a manner. We spoke with some familiarity, then animatedly, as friends do. She was Pam : for Pamela, a professor of humanities. She had not married, ever, but had come close once and had thought of being open to it a couple of times. But her distaste for the chore involved had won each time.

I very truthfully bared the mystique about myself : I was Vam, for Vamadevananda, a nomad who had retired early and did nothing for livelihood. I had sons who did, who were glad to support my wandering. I did things that served my peace, my personal truth values, and my happiness.

Kalka was not my destination and I did not know what was. I would be taking the connection to Shimla but would head for the bus stand, for proceeding to Kalpa. The district administrator, a younger man who knew me, had arranged for my sojourn in a homestay double room suite that he had certified was spacious. But right then, sitting in the rail coach a thousand miles away, it was all tentative and somehow tiring to speak of.

She wowed, looking wistful. I looked at the fields passing by, at the transient objects afar as they gradually came in and receded from the view. The being, of which they arose, I sensed brimming in my heart.

”I’ve decided to spend the summer interlude with my sister, in Shimla. I expect to finish these essays during my stay and hope they yield their truth to my contemplation. Do you think they will ?”

”I wish they do. Sincerely. They might too.”

I knew, that transforming featureless fullness seldom happened with just reading and thinking. It does not impact us enough to self-inspect our spiritual station honestly and comprehensively, in all its evolutionary detail. First, there was the genetically programmed hump of survival and fear; then, procreation and the sexual muck clouding the purity and extent of love in our heart. Finally, the need for power to compensate for dissatisfactions and inadequacies, and addictions, we accumulate along our way in life. It reduces our being within egoistic eddies that have since turned habitual and automatic. They bear transactional fruits : few satisfactions on a sprawling expanse of emptiness sprouting mental chimera, organic depletion and physical exhaustion. More, the speed of their whorls raises an impenetrable wall, leaving our self occupied but our being stranded within its bounds. the knowledge at source in our eye. But everything helped … if the drive to restore our self, to the self in its solitude, was intense enough.

The introspection process does take its time. It demands that we wait. Time was essential to effective and efficient communication.

Concise, deliberate, critical and frank. Filled with truth.

“As was I, to have met her,” I told myself.

“There were men who saw a future with me but no one I felt over time whom I could admit into my life for all time, into my house and in my decision making.”

” Does that make you sad, today ?”

It showed in her eyes. A developed intellect that had sincerely fashioned a values system for all matters, moral and ethical. The moment was pure and fascinating.

There was nothing I could add right then to what she was already doing to fill on her want.

The distance must have shown on the visage, as she gravely pored over my face for the longest moment, with a strange firmness of resolve.

This was an unknown, unpredictable domain. I picked up the book but soon snoozed over it. The oblations had been poured in the crackling fire within her. The result would arise.

End of Chapter I. To be continued …