A Short Story by Siva Gopal Ojha

 

On the left corner of the market gate every morning one can find Surdas, the tramp squatting on the ground with an outstretched hand in a symbolic gesture of seeking alms. The busy marketplace hums with activity right from early morning well into the day. This is a vegetable and fruits market with several provision stores doing brisk business as well.

 

Well to do gentlemen and pretty ladies enter and leave the market through this gate with bulging bags dangling from both hands. While entering the market they cast a pitiful glance at the tramp. But there is no spare change for doling it out to him. Some of them are kind enough to resolve to throw a coin or two at Surdas during their exit. But the problem is that on their return journey both their hands are full with loaded bags. The tramp, of course, cannot see all these because he is stark blind. When nothing strikes his hand for a long time he starts reciting a couple of Tulsidas’s dohas (couplets) from the Ramayana praising God and his benevolence.

 

A stray dog is not as inconsiderate. It sits beside Surdas and sniffs at his outstretched hand just out of shear habit. An Aluminium bowl is kept in front of Surdas for keeping the few coins thrown at him. It is early morning and so the bowl is empty and so are the bowels of Surdas and the dog.

 

After chanting a few couplets a number of times, Surdas switches over to singing them repeatedly. He is no singer but attempts to introduce some music into the words all the same. Passers are not interested. They expect a blind tramp to sing well. God compensates for one quality with another normally. If a person is denied the capacity to see he is normally endowed with a melodious voice and the capacity to sing. Surdas is denied both. Yet he remembers God all the time and prays to Him for everyone including himself. God seems to listen to him partially for everybody else is granted the prosperity prayed for. Only Surdas remains as poor as ever and so is his companion, the stray dog.

 

Occasionally, though, the adjacent tea stall boy throws a slice of stale bread or yesterday’s left over at the dog. The dog munches the foodstuff happily. Surdas smiles because at least his mate gets the first food of the day. The boy who works at the tea stall brings some hot tea in a small glass tumbler and places it beside the blind man telling him to finish it off quickly before the owner returns back. The boy feels for the pair of destitutes and tries to help them as much as he can. Proximity induces kindness in him. But the same cannot be said of the tea stall owner.

 

Surdas occasionally gets a coin thrown at his bowl by a compassionate passer by. Whenever that happens decibel of his chantings goes higher. He starts praising God with renewed vigor. But howsoever may he try; God’s name fails to evoke much charity from the market goers. At the end of the day, Surdas returns to the shantytown where he stays, with barely anything worth its name.

 

Surdas sleeps in a small space eight feet by two feet with one side open just outside the door of a small room which is home of the tea stall boy and his parents. When it rains or weather turns rough, a plastic sheet is hung on the open side to give a semblance of protection. The tea stall boy does all that is necessary to keep Surdas alive.

 

It is very difficult to stay there in the winter months. Rains are equally disturbing but life goes on like this for years together. Early morning everyday Surdas calls the boy’s name aloud several times from outside his door. It is toilet time for the tramp. The boy leads him by the hand to the community toilet of the shantytown and helps him to take his bath. Without the boy Surdas cannot survive for a day. Surdas says that the boy must have been his son in some earlier life. Otherwise why should he do so much? He even shares his food with Surdas. The boy’s mother knows that. She gives a few chapattis (Hand made bread slices) and some curry everyday to the blind man.

 

Surdas has become an old man now. The boy still works in the tea stall. On a cold winter morning the boy is not awakened by loud calls of the tramp. He opens the door of his room to find Surdas lying motionless in his place. The dog wails deeply on seeing the boy. The end comes so easily that it is unbelievable.

 

Time waits for none. Everything becomes normal again. The plastic sheet remains bundled on the wall. There is no need to open it now. The dog has vanished. The boy finds that time hangs heavy on him now. Nobody wakes him up in the morning. Nobody recites Tulsidasi Ramayana outside his door day in and day out. Many couplets of the great epic spontaneously ring in his mind without an effort. Surdas used to chant particularly those couplets that described the Godly qualities and the beauty of Lord Rama.

 

The boy looks at the vacant corner beside the market gate where Surdas used to squat daylong. The space does not remain vacant for long. An umbrella repairer does brisk business there now. By mistake the boy runs there with a cup of tea only to realize his folly moments later. The umbrella man looks up at him in surprise.

 

As days pass by the boy’s mother notices certain changes in him. Nowadays he gets up early in the morning and chants the couplets from the Ramayana in a melodious voice. The boy can sing very well now. He keeps on singing the verses in the small space where Surdas used to sleep. The boy doesn’t like to go to work in the tea stall any more. His mother doesn’t compel him either. After all, the boy has turned into a young man now. He should be left free to pursue his profession.

 

The dog has returned from nowhere. The begging bowl has been retrieved from a corner of the small place of Surdas. One fine morning the boy and the dog appear at the market gate with the begging bowl. The dog barks furiously at the umbrella man and drives him away.

 

The place becomes theirs again. The boy sings the Ramayana so well but still no body is impressed. It doesn’t matter any more. For the boy is not able to see very clearly. He is slowly turning into a blind man.

 

Only the boy’s mother sheds a few drops of silent tears from a distance.  

 

    

A Short Story by Siva

 

I met Ramananda Pande in the office of a stone quarry. Usually one wouldn’t find him there till late in the evening. Luckily for me he came at around nine. Clad in a dhoti, baniyan and a white turban, he walked in gracefully, a torch in hand. For a person who was 60, Pande looked very composed and cheerful. He had been a celibate till quite late in life, and had married only recently. “Did you meditate in the sacred seat beyond the cremation grounds in those days?” I asked.

 “Yes, I was a very young man then,” relied Pandeji in colloquial Bengali, which he had picked up rather well.

“ It must have been 30 to 40 years back,” he continued. “The place was a dense jungle. There was a dilapidated temple and a pair of great banyan and pipul trees under whose shed the sacred seat lay. You could also find medicinal plants there. It was difficult for human beings to make way through the thorny bushes even during the day. A sage, so the story went, used to meditate there long ago. He had a tiger for company, for whom he created the forest.

“The sage could take out his intestines and wash them in the river. He rode the tiger occasionally. When the river swelled in the rainy season, he effortlessly walked over the water as if it was a bed of rock. One could hear the sound of his wooden slippers striking against the water as if it were a block of stone.

“ I came across the sacred location when I was roaming around as a young ascetic. The place was attractive to anybody who aspired to reach a higher level of human perceptions, through meditations and self-denials. I wanted to start right away.

“ One day I felt really hungry and went to the neighbouring locality to look for food. I managed to get some from the villagers. But once I was fed, I began longing for sex. Women came voluntarily, as I was handsome and strong. You can imagine what that led to. Recently I married for the third time. My desire never allows me any freedom.”

“ But what happened to the sacred seat of meditation?” I asked.

“ I resumed the meditations after the brief interlude. But by then I had been marked. I stopped going to look for food in the village and started living on wild fruits. I was making a rapid progress towards realizing my objective. It was now a matter of time before I would reach my goal. But something came in the way.

“ Kindness, like sugar in a cup of tea, creates many problems. It enters one’s blood stream and disrupts the biological processes. You call it diabetes. But would you like to have tea without sugar? Kindness is like the sugar in human nature, it adds beauty to one’s character just as sugar enhances taste. But kindness does not allow one to function effectively.

“ Some of our senses are sharpened as we go through the process of meditation. We can feel things that are otherwise imperceptible. In such a state of mind I found many human souls begging me to liberate them from bondage by making offerings at Gaya for all of them. I complied. They earned freedom.”

“ What about you?” I asked.

He said that he suffered from self-inflicted diabetes, as he was unable to ignore the cries of the distressed souls.

He was thus reconciled to being just a night guard in the stone quarry.

 

I was enrolled in Nripati Sir’s class in the primary school at the age of eight that monsoon. Long back he had also taught my father. It was strange that in spite of sporting a name that meant ‘king’ Nripati sir had to work   as a primary school teacher. On the first day of my school when my father met him, he addressed my father with a complementary ‘sir’.  So many of his erstwhile students had secured respectable positions in the course of time but Nripati Sir continued as before. There was no change in his life style for ages, or so did it seem.

It was raining incessantly outside. The cloudy sky had turned the classroom darker for there was no electricity. A thatched mud house was all we had for a school. But that was enough. None among us had any different idea vis-a-vis school buildings. We, the students of class three, were waiting for the teacher seated in the few non-descript benches in class. Our favourite primer ‘Kishalay’ was to be taught first.    We had to wait almost everyday for him like this. It was almost afternoon when our teacher appeared thoroughly drenched in the rain. It was not clear whether the broken umbrella he carried was of any help or had really aggravated his plight.
He was about sixty. A lean man he was, with white patches all over his face and thin hair. He appeared sickly at first sight. A palm full of coconut oil was rubbed on the head before taking a quick dip in the roadside pool. Remnants of the oil along with water were flowing down his cheeks, as he did not have any time to attend to himself. The lower part of the dhoti was wet and stuck tightly to his legs restricting movements. He was not expected to wear shoes in such wet weather. And the question of wearing shoes did not arise, as he didn’t have any.  He was comfortable washing his feet in the flowing rainwater, just in front of the school, before entering the classroom.  
There must be some reason why he was late for school everyday. But once he reached school he taught with all sincerity.    A poorly paid schoolteacher, he   had been so sincere in his work to successive generations of students. What prompted him in doing so? There is a belief among people living on agriculture that in order to survive one must have supplementary income. Teaching in a school located in the same village provided an ideal opportunity to satisfy that maxim. Being a schoolteacher also resulted in some private tuition coming his way and further supplementing his meagre income. Add to that the crops produced from whatever small holdings he had, Nripati Sir could somehow manage to make both ends meet by putting together his small incomes from various sources.
Though more inclined to teach language   Nripati Sir had to teach all subjects. There was no arrangement for exhaustive treatment of all the subjects though. He could not afford to teach at length for he was the only teacher of the class. Language, History, Geography was taught in tandem with arithmetic. In a lesson in the language class it was mentioned that a child was moving through various lands in his dream. The boy reached an island in a strange ocean where a living volcano was in action. Molten lava was flowing down like a river. Smoke was billowing out creating dark clouds totally cutting off the sun.
Nripati Sir had difficulty in describing what a volcano was like. Neither the children nor he had any conceivable idea as to what a volcano really was? Was it a river from a hill in which some kind of molten metal was flowing, creating a flood like situation? Were the clouds the same as the monsoon clouds with which the sky is usually overcast in the rains? There were so many questions, which remained unanswered. Never the less, the class listened to his soft voice, which evoked confidence, with rapt attention.
Some other day he would start with a poem which described Bengal as the most beautiful among all lands, where the creepers were greener, where you could not avoid squeezing the soft ‘durba’ grass while treading on them, where the golden crops grew and golden lotus bloomed etc. etc. Tears rolled down his cheeks and his voice was choked when he recited the poem.  He could never complete reciting the whole poem as emotions overtook him. He would then ask some one among us to recite and look outside the windows with starry eyes at the swelling waves of greenery in the rice fields.
He had been teaching like this for the last forty years to generations of children sitting on these very benches. He cannot clearly see the distant hills these days. Distant vision is failing him now. He is growing older.
His eldest son was a bright boy. His name was Narayan.  Sir was a devout Vaishnavite and wore a customary Kanthi round his neck. He was not dogmatic about his religion, but had named his son Narayan because the name brought him peace. His son used to study in the same manner as the children are studying now. He could easily grasp a subject and had a sharp memory. Sir started nurturing ambitions centering on his son. But Narayan gradually became a psychic patient for some unknown reason. Otherwise a normal boy, Narayan would become violent all of a sudden. He has to be kept under chains these days.
Nripati sir has to attend to his son before coming to school. He serves one Narayan athome and then rushes to school to serve so many of them there. That’s how he spends all his time. Hardly he has any time left to attend to him. He is a widower since long, lives on very little food, mostly fruits and milk during the day and a bowl of rice at night. He leads a very austere life and has no complaints against anybody. Nripati sir has a theory, which says that amalgamation breeds happiness whereas fragmentation causes misery only. He has many examples to cite including the partition of the country because of which no body benefited.
One day he asked us to write the meaning of our names in the slate. We obeyed him and did exactly as he told us. Then he checked all the meanings and corrected them. Suddenly an idea came to his mind and he asked.
-“ You know that I have a son. You know his name and my name too. If he were a normal person, he would have a grown up son by this time. Probably my non-existent grandson would have been your age and sitting somewhere in this classroom at this moment. Can any one tell us what his name could have been?”
We kept quiet as the question was beyond our comprehension.
Sir went on to tell us that he liked teaching us because of this reason. His grandson could be just like some one among us. He said he could feel the grandson that never was, sitting right herein the classroom and yet invisible, because of some unknown reason. He said it gave him so much joy to teach us for that reason.
-“ But what name he would have?”- Asked Nripati sir to the class, pleading almost.
None of us could answer.
Sir said –“ I give you a clue. Why don’t you amalgamate to get the answer.”
An idea flashed through my mind suddenly and I answered-“ Nripatinarayan”.

The End.

 

 

 

 

 

The Author's Note

This is the very first novel written by me, and this deals with adolescent and adult love. Noteworthy deviation from normalcy in this case is a nineteen year old's first love steadfastly remaining embossed in his psyche. The experience of the young person with himself is unique and leads one to believe that love is really sweet though painful at times. He can neither abjure nor embrace love so easily. His earnestness is exemplary and bears fruit at the end. Some of my friends who read the manuscript question the validity of love being so possessive. They asked me why this obsession with the lady love when the common belief is that love is only a figment of imagination prevalent mostly in fairy tales?

But I think that love deserves more than that. It is the priceless extract of human perceptions secreted from deep inside. I have tried to portray love in that light throughout the story. Occasionally I had to take recourse to placing the baser qualities in some of the characters below the scanner only to show the purer form as a contrast. The frailty of human nature is also exihibited at some places as also the emotional outbursts only to accord real love the priceless status that it deserves.

Some of the ideas have been elaborated to enlarge the paragraphs. That might have added to the volume of the book. The ruminations have been necessitated to portray the inner feelings, as i perceived them. The reader may find them interesting.

Siva Gopal Ojha

("The Eclipsed Moon", ISBN: 0977966216, can be ordered on line from creativebookpublishers.com, amazon.com, barnesand noble.com, alibris.com)

One can search inside the book from the link:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/002-8563174-4335201?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywor

Excerpts:
The steps leading to the outer verandah of the house in the countryside were the happy meeting place of Nupur and Shyam. The bonhomie lasted for a few days only but it appeared to Shyam that the flow of time had stopped there. It was the beginning of a long relationship. In the beginning it was friendship alone. He could not dream that it would ever transcend beyond the platonic. Waiting for the evening was such a pleasure! Shyam was then still in his teens. Nupur was somewhat mature with her twenty five years. But both of them enjoyed each other's company.....

.....What was an innocent affair in the beginning gradually gravitated towards something different. Shyam was not aware of it. He was very young then and innocent too. Nupur might have realized that the turn of events could engulf her later on. But she did not pay much heed either....

..."What happened? Anything wrong with you?"
"Nothing. I think some insect hit my eyes. I have removed that. See, it looks greenish."
"Let me see." Shyam is worried. He says "This is a fire fly. But why did it run straight into your eyes? Do you know that it strikes only lovers' eyes? That means ... The legend goes like that. It should have struck me also. Anyway, let me fetch some water. You must wash your eyes immediately."....

.....Shyam sqeezes Nupur's hand mildly with utmost care so that it does not hurt. His hands are no longer trembling. He holds her passionately, embraces her and kisses her deeply. Nupur reciprocates. He reaches that point in life for which life is meant. They remain embracing each other forgetting everything else.

Nupur frees herself from Shyam and goes away in a jiffy, almost running and enters her inlaws' house.

("The Eclipsed Moon" can be ordered on line from creative book publishers.com, amazon.com, barnes and noble.com, alibris.com , ISBN: 0977966216)
One can search inside the book from the following link:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/002-8563174-4335201?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywor

Excerpts:
... "In none of his subsequent journeys will Nupur be by his side. The world will not be worth living without her. Being a very sensitive person he realizes that the bridge will remain, it will produce the same rythmic music to the accompaniment of the wheels,rails, peers, arches and abutment. The evergreen fields will welcome him with outstretched hands like today but Nupur will not be there....The broken ripples of the river water will still reflect sunlight like a thousand diamond beads as it is doing today. The blue sky, the bright sunlight, the world at large at this spot of the universe will remain frozen for eternityevery time he will pass through this place whether in this life or the next.....

"Some other Nupur will be sitting by the side of some other Shyam in the same compartment... Will he be able to recognize them? it does not matter.Nature will arrange its own observers...."

("The Eclipsed Moon" can be ordered on line from creativebookpublishers.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, alibris.com  ISBN: 0977966216)

One can search inside the book from the link:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/002-8563174-4335201?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywor

Excerpts..

"Shyam is a strange man for he told me that my letters were fragments of me. He also told me that the letters carried a very faint smell inside, which resembled my body smell. I wonder how could he recognize how I smelt inside. Such intimacy with him is yet to materialize. Then? He told me he did not have the opportunity to know me intimately earlier. But sitting by my side today in the train for such a long period he got a faint idea of my body odor. The smell rang some bells in his mind. He was not able to immediately place where from the bells rang. then all of a sudden he remembered the scent that came from inside my letters, which I wrote him earlier. Both the scents were similar if not exact. Another peculiarity of my letters was that the smell came from them only while he read it  for the first time. it stopped abruptly thereafter."
...
...
"Relations are not built up at all these days. It is simple hit and run. Beauty sells here at a premium though. Therefore I wonder how did I forget Shyam. He is so cute and loveable. There is some child in him for he demands love without realizing itsconsequences as if it is available just for the asking. Is a beautiful woman just a toy? How does he expect that because he is charmed, the object of his charm will spontaneously respond to his fancy?"

("The Eclipsed Moon" can be ordered on line from creativebookpublishers.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, alibris.com, ISBN :0977966216)
One can search inside the book from the link:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/002-8563174-4335201?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywor