Exuberance

Early morning,

Suburban

Mumbai,

A frail boy,

Half-pants,

T-shirt,

Tiny hands,

 Raised up,

Forming circles,

In the cold wind,

Outside,

His cheerless hovel,

Happy feet pattering

On the bare tar road;

Contentment,

Spontaneity,

Smile,

Missing

In nearby

Affluent homes,

Going up

And up in

The polluted sky;

The dark boy,

Untutored, and

Bereft of

Everything,

Dancing with

The gentle wind,

The road---a stage,

Passing cars--- fleeting audience,

Self-absorbed,

Spirit soaring,

Despite tatters,

A true example of

 Rich exuberance and pure

Joy.

Creation: Pain and bliss

Drowsy, he roams,

The neglected poet,

Often starved and ridiculed,

The fabled Elysian Fields,

Seen by the likes of Homer, Hesiod,

Pindar and Virgil,

The poor soul,

Sampling happiness,

Otherwise denied on

Plain earth by indifferent

Family and friends;

He watches the dancing sunflowers,

Transfixed as an ecstatic kid,

Like the misunderstood

Van Gogh, driven mad

By the general callousness,

Later declared a master by

The laughing same world!

He---the special child,

 Finds pleasures in the

Brilliant starry nights;

Wandering in the heavens

And the care-worn but

His dear earth, his real home,

The artist creates beautiful worlds,

For others, and, living in both realms,

Earth-bound, yet gaze fixed heavenwards,

The tattered maker of images divine,

In every age, through such acts,

 Recovers his sanity and

Delicate balance and gets temporarily restored,

He, like Shelley and Keats,

Prepares daily for the fresh brutal assaults,

On his senses, sensibilities,

Values, deeply-cherished,

Beliefs, profoundly held,

By an ugly, uncaring,

 Monetized world,

In search of fresh blood,

After crucifying a Plath and Wolf!

Names

I could not sleep

In the night, dear,

Said the old man

To his coughing wife,

Because,

---Although she had not asked the why? He decided to explain anyway

On that foggy day, amidst the silent fir trees, and phantom villages---

I tried to recall the name of

The younger brother of my

Child-hood friend that I have left

Behind in that dusty old town

In the North,

Some thirty years ago,

I could never find him or

His younger brother there,

During my subsequent visits,

Becoming rare and rarer,

 Till I

Finally stopped

Going altogether!

What does it matter?
Asked the spouse,

A tad irritated,

When it is the popular culture;

A lot, dear, a lot,

Said the old man,

Tone suddenly strong,

To

ME, at least,

IT MATTERS

A lot!

Nights bright

When night gets younger,

And brighter with the each

Passing hour,

The stars come out and glitter,

In a clear blue sky, stretched forever,

I am reminded of your oval face,

That shines like the new moon,

Over the ivy-covered old stone bridge,

On lonely winter nights, buffeted by

Screaming winds, roaming like a

Maniac here and there, searching

Something in the debris,

In an abandoned village,

Where a mad Van Gogh,

So goes the legend here,

Once painted furiously,

His frantic series of

Fav sunflowers,

That still dance in

The tranquil air,

On his canvasses,

Admired now---

Everywhere!

My Works

My Published Works

                                         

Not seen/Not heard

He is as

Unheard

And

Unseen

As the

Brown

Tiny

Timid

Sparrows

Twittering

Outside the

Big windows

Of the glass- cages

Alternately called

Swanky homes

By their greedy promoters,

In the slender high-rises,

Each one

Invariably called The Paradise

And climbs up only

To the polluted skies,

In a crowded

Chaotic

Carbon-dioxide filled

Urban

Jungle,

Where,

Surprise of all,

 Drunk-driving

And

Big-screen TV

Kill more

Than any

Bloody war-fronts.

Homes

Searching home,

Away from home,

He wanders---

Odysseus-like,

Alien lands,

Weathers unseen earlier,

Helping hands,

Smiling faces,

Each mirroring a rich nation,

Languages different,

Gestures common,

Each journeying

In the Odyssey,

Bound by goals,

Middle-class and global;

Cooped up in a small

Sublet, doors shut,

Cooking, ironing, studying,

Talking on Skype,

Remembering Mumbai coastline

Drenched in rains or sun,

Now---

Dreaming of the golden Florida shoreline,

The young lonely student,

Away from the bustle of an Asian mega-city,

Secluded,

Doing lessons and Internet,

An international,

Searching love and home,

After every three months,

In grey Aarhus,

Moving about like a tramp,

Powered by a soaring young spirit,

And determination,

In the university European town,

Where identical aspirations,

Come to

Complete disparate fellowships

Of mutual support understanding;

In Aarhus, dear,

A welcoming invitation,

For coffee with friends,

From varied locations

Is very fulfilling, very much

Like chatting at your

 Own lost home!

To my Valentine dear

Love is---

Beyond the glitter

Of the yellow metal,

Advertised furiously,

On TV/print space,

Or,

 The diamonds that

Gleam under the soft lights

Installed by the clever jewelers

To entice via messages of love;

Love is not thus commodified,

Rather it is---

Reaching out to the silent other,

Crying out silently along

With her, on moonless nights,

When bitter winds roar

On deserted streets and ruined homes,

It is sharing anguish felt like a cruel stab,

When she suddenly remembers a

Recently-deceased mother,

In far-away home that was

Left years ago,

When she was a mere teen;

She chokes, tone thick,

A grieving daughter remembers, while

Others mostly have channelized or

Erased her;

It is, love, my dear, ---

Opening of the secured heavy doors,

Before your Valentine even rings the bell;

Talking to her, quietly by her side,

Busy in the humid Asian kitchen,

Preparing the hot dinner;

And, gazing lovingly,

Again,

At her tired oval face,

With long fluttering,

Black eye-lashes,

That tenderly cover a pair,

Of pure almond-eyes,

Reminding you of the young doe,

Trapped in an urban jungle,

Full of ugly predators,

Masked as friends and co-workers,

It is gently caressing her prostrate,

Worn-down body,

Like a tender mother,

When she is asleep,

And roaming in a

Free, equal,

Different world,

Where she ceases

To be, for an instant,

In a strange dream,

No unpaid

Unacknowledged

Constant care-giver

To a demanding, forgetful family.

The culvert and the tree

The tree, at the corner of the locality,

And the culvert underneath its branches wide,

Twin companions to a forlorn mourning me,

Recovering temporarily from a loss

Permanent, of a father loving, now

No more, his broad visage haunting

My young teenage troubled sleep,

A man simple and honest, reading romantic poetry,

During his free time, travelling with his

Favourite Wordsworth and Keats,

In green meadows and verdant vales,

Seeing daffodils dancing and

Hearing song of the solitary reaper

And the enchanting nightingale,

The man always smiling, bearing the angina pain lightly,

My dear dad, battling life, never giving up,

In an India of late70s

Teaching us the finest values, his three kids,

And instilling in me, a love for great arts,

That fine man---suddenly gone forever,

To reside with gods,

And this pain, this yawning void,

 Left behind due to a lingering

Bereavement forever living

In an aching heart;

I, a thin sad lad,

In perpetual mourning,

Always---in remembering mode

Of the joys of his endearing company,

Now gone, this great man,

I came often here, sad and battered,

And sat on the lonely culvert,

And the tree, on long summer nights,

And early winter evenings, cold and desolate,

Smiled and whispered,

Here we both sat---Father and I,

And he told me about richness of life,

Alone sat I, bereft of his soothing presence,

And heard the old tree talking to me,

Like a caring companion that understood well

Mortal pain, loss and shortness of human life,

The culvert---solid and broad---like the lap of

A father departed, comforted my anguished heart,

I sat stock still and watched people go by, and felt

As if rocked by a pair of invisible hands broad and gnarled,

The hands of a working honest man, now living in

The glittering stars, and remembering him,

As the cold gloom descended upon the quiet

Environs,

Often, unseen and unheard by the cruel world, I cried.

 And then, the magic would happen---

Years ago, a cold wind would spring up

From the heavens and blow down,

The old gnarled tree would fan my

Pale-thin face with its hands

In order to dry those big tears,

And calmly whisper in my ears,

Weep not, my solitary child,

Those who get enthroned and totally,

Consecrated in a caring, full and

 Longing heart, their scented shrine,

Never fade away and die.

After the brief communion,

Cleansed, my pain dulled,

I would leave both my friends,

The red-bricked culvert and the

Neem tree behind, to be hugged

By a sweeping December mist,

And perhaps, visited by some

Other grieving mourner,

Seeking this solitude divine.

The whispering rooms

 Sunil Sharma

In rooms bare and large, the past lies curled up like the brown alley cat and faithfully follows the old man, in his tireless indoor- roaming.

Memories keep him connected with people dead or absent, and, make his aged mind meditate on the process of change. He visits and revisits them just to remain sane in an empty haveli.

Mostly, the early memories are of the happy childhood spent in the haveli with his brothers and sisters, now either dead or on the verge of death. The surviving kins talk occasionally. That part of the extended Indian family is dead. The echoing laughter of shared dinners and days with his caring brothers and sisters fills up his heavy heart with lightness and brings back a smile. The innocence is forever gone but the fragrance remains.

The later adult memories are not mostly pleasant. Strife, comparisons, status, domestic tiffs, generational gap between sons and fathers, changing civil society----well, it is a long litany of bitter woes. Breathless changes that leave him bewildered, broken, angry and confused.

But the old man continues interrogating. This is how it happens.

During the hot afternoons, the exhausted past reveals itself to him, in all vividness.

Daily, in these dusty empty rooms connected with each other with internal doors, the old guys recovers the lost voices from the underworld. A rough wind blows through the windows, dispersing the desert sand that enters via windows. Nobody sweeps this big village house, fifty kms away from Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. The red-tiled small haveli stands on the edge of an arid expanse of shifting dunes and fierce sandstorms. A young neem tree stands at the corner of the low outer wall. A dog barks. The old man feeds it every day with the leftovers of the frugal meals he cooks himself. The village has few men. The adults have migrated to the cities across India. Only the very young and feeble old are left. It is small decaying village. Calmness prevails at this hour. You can hear the song of the wind. At this quiet hour, images pop up. The departed moments float up like tiny shimmering visual particles for Kunwar Ram Bahadur Rana, the owner of the haveli and the proud brigadier who led the army against Pakistan in the war of 1972 and got decorated.

The tall proud man wanders these interlinked rooms built up in a line, along the covered veranda. The rooms are high-ceilinged and cool, despite the 42-degree Celsius on this late- May afternoon. Unshaven, the lonely brigadier paces up and down. He can see the dissolved moments with complete lucidity, thus shrinking the temporal distances between past and present.

The rooms are his province. The gone instants get freshly revived here, in the unadulterated solitude of the haveli and the village, details vivid. He can feel the breath of the people and see the curves of their faces across the yawning gulf.

They connect him with his history and India’s post-colonial history.

The old man has stopped dying hair these days, finding the long exercise bothersome. And accepted ageing. The crows’ feet, sagging skin, black circles, receding eyebrows and deepening frown lines can no longer be hidden beneath costly facial creams. The mirror reflects a hollow face. Being elderly in a youth-obsessed urban society is demeaning. The aged are new outcasts. In fact, this and other factors had compelled the brigadier to return to his forefathers’ locked haveli and live the rest of his life in their shadows in the village that still does not have a railroad station or a regular bus depot, decades after freedom from the British Raj. Folks have to walk a lot to reach the nearest station or bus depot. Two Indias, so different! But Rana prefers the uncomplicated life of the non-competitive village.

 I have found peace here, said he to his old friend, a village cobbler, now retired and dependent on his son’s family.

 The solid physical dimensions of the empty rooms get further amplified by the hovering gray-bluish silence. In the white antiseptic rooms, filled with expired moments, the old man can still hear rustlings of the dress of his dead wife and runs into his happy brood of young children.

All that is over now.

 Sleepless, the widower walks. The buried moments resurface. The rooms are his passage to yester years. The rewinding refreshes or alternatively, tires the widower down but he loves time- travelling, returning to a hidden continent of images, all stored up in a tiny cell of the brain.

Whispering rooms, he calls them. They talk to him and bring back the elapsed fragments of life.

And they contain a secret.

The old man is 65 and suffers from diabetes, osteoporosis, hypertension, a defective heart valve and glaucoma in his right eye. “I have become a faulty piece now, fit for junk yard,” he writes carefully in diary. “I am past my age of utility. A piece of trash. Awaiting death and redemption.”

 Mornings, he watches the criss-crossing sand dunes, finding meanings in their shifting patterns. Nothing is permanent. The desert tells us that. Watch the hot desert, the wind. It speaks to you.

And I can hear the others also.

And a voice travelling from the desert. The voice of his dead father, talking to his living son in the whispering rooms, where he had lived for forty five years of his simple life. His father whispers to him in these large airy well-lit rooms. His voice comes from desert into these rooms for a dialogue with him. It is the only comfort left for the old man who has no family to talk to these days.

Rana Vijay Kumar was the village doctor. He treated villagers freely, having inherited properties in Jaisalmer from his childless maternal uncle. Uncle’s Vilas Hotel was a hit with the foreign tourists for its courtesy and local cuisines. Rana was his adopted son. He had studied the medicine, as he wanted to ease the pain of the poor villagers with no medical access. Rana Vijay Kumar was a revered figure. He worked hard for the upliftment of the poor and made the village his last home. When he was dying, he had called his youngest son Kunwar Ram Bahadur to his bed and said in a strong voice, “You are caring and loving by nature. Come back to this house after doing your bit for the country as a soldier. I am leaving the haveli to you. It is a debt that you owe to me. The parental debt is to be paid. If not, a curse follows. They will have everything in life, yet nothing and die unhappy.”

That scene is etched forever in his mind. The old doctor died three days later. He performed the last rites of his father, locked the haveli and then left for Rann of Kutch, his latest posting in the army, facing the enemy across the border, forgetting temporarily the last conversation with a dying father, of the parental debt and the curse. He rarely visited the big haveli in the Thar Desert. The place did not exist.

Then, the haveli in the Thar Desert called, after a long hiatus.

 One night, five years ago, he saw his old father in a dream in the New Delhi upscale apartment where he was staying for last six months.

 He saw the old haveli, in ruins, overgrown with weeds, doors ripped apart, furniture stripped, a neem tree in the corner…and the old man, a white shadow, walking in the ruins, eyes sad, smile gone from a gaunt face and clearly beckoning him with a hand. He followed him on an uneven terrain and the dead father stopped, eyes sad, saying, “My debt? Until you pay that, I will not get salvation and remain unhappy in the afterlife. So will you be, my son, in your life.” Then the apparition was gone, swallowed up in a dust devil. The desolate haveli cried, the sobs magnifying in his ears. Then, it disappeared along with the shrunk village in the desert. And the dream was over.

That morning, he got the clarity. Early morning, he washed his mouth by gurgling the water three times loudly, ran his thick index finger on his old gums, expelled the water and blew his nose three times, an unconscious act done daily. His youngest son came after five minutes and said, “Dad, your noisy actions disturb the sleep of the kids and wife. She cannot sleep due to the loud nose-blowing that is very nauseating for us all. It is very uncivil and offending.” And he went back to his air-conditioned room in a huff, slamming the carved teakwood doors fiercely on that second Saturday morning of February. The crude warning, the hatred implied in the loud tone, the vulgarity of its delivery to an army brigadier dad left Ram Bahadur badly shaken. There were signs earlier of hostility and pure negligence. You can fight external enemy but the internal enemy, your own son, a computer engineer and an MBA, now a senior manager in an MNC in Gurgaon, is a different story. As the dumped dad prepared his small suitcase, the dream came back as a divine sign and he understood the hidden meaning. He left the plush house of his second son quietly in flat ten minutes, without disturbing the sleeping family, sticking a farewell note to the refrigerator, “Leaving for good. My blessings, Papa.” The decorated proud brigadier reached the railway junction and booked a first-class ticket on the train leaving in the late afternoon for Jaisalmer, his heart broken, mind in spin. He composed himself in the journey, deleting the name of his second son in his heart. From Jaisalmer, he took a private taxi to his village set in the heart of the Great Thar Desert that continued calling like a lost kin. When he reached the ancestral house, he found it in ruins, in the same condition he had seen it in his dream. Time to redeem my pledge to my dead father. Along with grateful villagers, he cleaned the house and restored it to its former glory. The dream stopped recurring. He had picked up homeopathy and started treating the villagers for simple ailments, sponsoring the treatment of the poor.

The village was his family. When ill, the women would take turns to cook for him. They will clean the house and tend to him. The young ones called him the grandpa. What urban India had claimed from him, rural India had given him back.

“There is nothing called parental debt, Dad,” his eldest had son said clearly on the phone from Silicon Valley where, much to his dad’s dislike, he had gone and set up a start-up venture in software. That was two years ago. His wife had died last night. The eldest had expressed his inability to attend the rites, “It will take me at least 74 hours to reach the remote desert village. That will serve no purpose. I will come for the thirteenth-day ceremonies. Sentimentality will not do, Dad.”

“I need you my son in this hour of personal crisis. It is called parental debt,” said Ram Bahadur Rana to his son in America.

“I do not believe in this Asian crap anymore, Dad. Ancestral-worshipping, past-clinging, backward-looking ideology that has kept India a poor country. I am an American and believe in their values. These values can take us forward to the next century of tech progress and personal pursuits of happiness, money and democratic freedoms,” said his eldest in an American accent. Many years ago, he had suggested to Kunal, his eldest, to join army and pay back. Kunal had retorted, “Patriotism is dead. So is philanthropy. I want to live for myself only, on my terms. I want to see the whole world. Earn a lot of money and settle in USA, my dream country. Army is out for me. I do not believe in all this nonsense.”

The coldness of his tone and the calculative rationality, the blind obsession with money and power had left the army man stunned. The same remoteness in Kunal’s unfeeling tone left him hurt, angry and bitter. “Listen, young entrepreneur from USA. Your mother is dead, not some other woman. It is your grieving dad calling. Do not worry. Do not come here at all.” And he had disconnected.

Ram Bahadur Rana knew he had lost both his sons. Kunal, of course, did not come. And Ram Bahadur never talked to him. He was an extra. Parental debt was a notion beyond their money-dominated mindset. They lived in an instant, followed by another one, in an unending series of instants, day-to-day basis, mere consumers, drifting in a world of gratification, titillation and hyperacidity only. Everything was replaceable. Five years, car gets replaced. Six months, cell is replaced. Exchange economy. Exchange the old for the new. The process is endless. Deleting everybody past their use value.

The whispering rooms were calling.

“Why are you so sad?” Asked the voice of the dead father.

“I am feeling low again. Discarded. With zero value. Worthless as a human.” Said the son aloud to the whispering rooms.

“No. You are not. You are a sensitive and kind person. You follow the dharma.”

“Who cares for such old moral concepts these days? The past is getting invalid. The youngsters live in to-day only. That old philosophy is irrelevant to the changing country.”

“The past catches up soon. If they flout highest ethical norms, they will pay for their acts of defiance and moral transgressions. Every age has its code of conduct that cannot be trifled with so easily by the greedy wanton youth,” said the dead father, adding, “The past is important as it leads to your present. Nobody can live in a detached present. It is cumulative; everybody has to live in a continuum. Deeds of yesterday visit you to-day. Caring, compassion and concerns can never be outdated or outlawed. If they are, that selfish society is headed for disaster soon, moral, physical and ethical.”

“I do not see any logic in this. It is all nonsense. The young India finds it a bogus philosophy. Only money matters. Money and power for them.”

“Beware! Do not insult the ancestors who lived by these holy principles. Do not mock your heritage. Your own sacrosanct world-view so flippantly. Those who flout these sacred principles of life will meet a tragic fate. This will come true soon,” thundered the hollow voice from the land of sleep and peace and retreated quickly, leaving the 65-year-old Ram Bahadur Rana quivering with fright. Supernatural wrath will visit us now, he wrote in the diary, late in the afternoon, after this encounter with his deceased dad. The voice, issuing forth from the womb of the whispering rooms, could be heard by him only and mostly recorded in his diary, in the Socratic dialogic form. These hurried jottings he read leisurely and found them illuminating to a questioning mind, away from civilization, living in a desolate deserted village in the middle of the blazing Thar. The cool evenings brought the sounds of the desert to him and he could clearly hear the snakes and the lizards and other insects who have found a home there in the arid region. The camels’ sounds greeted him in the early mornings. The anklet bells of the women produced a soft symphony for his ears. The thorny trees, the alive desert, the changing landscape, the variations in temperature in 24 hours taught him how to live in extreme conditions and find nirvana in most frugal lifestyle of the hardy villagers who grew crops in a parched land under most tough circumstances. The deities in rude shrines gave hope to the ever smiling villagers leading a simple existence under a merciless sun.

Through diary, he communicated with his doubting self and a father who was still alive to him. Evenings, he chatted with the cobbler to remain in touch with toiling humanity.

In next 48 hours, the phone rang twice: The first call was from USA.

Kunal, said his grandson Sammy, is in ICU. “Too much work, insane competition, earlier devastating divorce with my mom, irregular eating hours, sedentary style and too much drinking led to the fast burn-out and a massive heart attack. He is on life support system and often, in drugged sleep, cries out for you. Can you come, Pa?” asked the teary 15-year-old Sammy in American drawl, voice pleading.

Next call was from Rita, the wife of Arvind, second son in New Delhi. “Papa,” She cried, “He has been sacked. Recession, you know. They just sacked him. No farewells. Nothing. He got hit inside. Never shared his anguish with me. Pretended to be working as usual in his old firm but snapped up under the pretense. Thought of committing suicide. To avoid the liability on us, this step he took. He consumed poison in the morning. Chances of survival are very slim. So many bad debts. No friends have turned up in the hospital. He wanted to take easy way out. We are broke and alone. In the suicide note, he asked for your forgiveness. Kids are scared. They are crying. We need you, Papa. Can you come, Papa?”

For a quick answer, Brigadier Ram Bahadur Rana looked at the whispering rooms of his dad’s two-storied silent haveli.

He heard only a moaning wind in the rooms and no voice from the land of dead to help him arrive at an answer to their cries of help from different geographical locations but having a common cultural centre.

 Torn and undecided, the old father stood up to feed the barking dog outside, while the ominous wind shrieked in the whispering rooms, signaling the imminent death of somebody nearby or far, as the villagers always believed after listening to the mournful wind…

Two black stones and an old God

---Sunil Sharma

They were an ordinary pair of two black stones.

Lifeless. Solitary. Forlorn. Buffeted by strong winds sweeping down the hills. Two  tall stones only: Sprouting forcefully from the ground like an upraised twin closed fists of solid granite. Propped up precariously by an unseen power, under the spreading old banyan tree, in the open, exposed to the elements. Hardly different from other odd stones of black found in plenty in the desolate area beyond the border of the rows of white neat bungalows arranged a-symmetrically on a rising mound on the property of the mills. They seemed to be hurriedly abandoned stones; left behind by somebody in a tearing hurry, on the left-hand corner of our Raj-era bungalow with a medium-size compound wall. Standing vertically, as two thick ram-rod columns, in the swaying grass, under the tree. Looking forever, across the green vegetable patches, in the direction of the tiled cottage with a covered veranda. We called them the double sentinels. The two had deep sockets in them, gazing steadily at the world, out of the gouged spaces. One of their eyes once, I am pretty sure, blinked at me! I was stunned! I looked hard again. I saw only the deep sockets. And, then, slowly but surely… a pair of wide eyes, drawn indelibly on the stones, staring at me. The eyes made by some crude hands. Two large fish eyes each, inscribed on the rough surface by persistent labour. The pupils large in the round eyes, as if swimming in them! Permanently etched, unaffected by the elements. You have to look hard to see them but they were there. When I looked again, I saw the round eyes smile at me, on that lonely hot May Sunday afternoon. The place was deserted. I had this creepy feeling. Of the presence of somebody there, whom I could not see but feel strongly around me! A similar sensation can be experienced easily, standing in the ruins of some forgotten old tombs, dotting the countryside and suddenly feeling the eyes of the long- dead guy on your sweating back! It has happened to me often, in those rubbles from the past. So that day, scared suddenly, I ran away from the shady spot, into the welcoming sanctuary of my dark home.  I told Pa. “Stones do not have eyes. They are lifeless. They cannot blink. It is all rubbish,” he said. “I am sure, it blinked,” I insisted. Pa smiled, “Your fertile imagination, kid. And stop listening to those funny tales of granny or Moti. Go, play outside and do not disturb me!”

I got confused. Stones do not blink. Pa claims so. But it did. I am very sure. I went straight to granny’s dark room. She was snoring on her large iron bed. A large table stood near her croaking. It was filled with different-sized medicine bottles. She got up after hearing my footfalls. “Come on in, my poor child. Come here to your granny,” she said kindly to me. Her voice was like that only---always soothing and gentle. She was never cross with me. Unlike Ma or Pa. I told her the incident. She smiled. “Do the stones have eyes?” I asked.

“Yes, Dolly. The stones breathe. They have eyes. Those two stones are very special. They are not stones but a breathing and benevolent old God. They keep an eye on us, protecting us from harm.” She told me in the manner of my class teacher Ms. Mukherjee, always confident and serene, knowing things we never knew. I was thunder-struck. God in the dead stones? “But pa says they are stones and stones do not have eyes, grandma,” I protested, a nine-year kid, many years ago, on that May afternoon, in that huge officer’s bungalow.

“Oh! Ramu does not know many things. He is my son but very different. He has no time for me or you. Always work, work and work. Always after money and nothing else,” said the white-haired granny to me. I still could feel the pain in her voice. The pain of being left behind by your own! But god in those stones! That was really surprising for my mind.

I felt very confused. Who is right? Pa? Granny? Me?

For pa, they were just stones. For granny, they were not. For me, surely these two were alive. It was a deepening mystery now.

Two black stones for others.  But an old God for the granny!

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I am. I talk to Him daily.”

“What!” I was hit by a punch in my stomach. “You talk to God?”

“Yes. I do. Daily.”

Gaping, I thought, it is too much now!

“Can I talk to God?”

“Yes, you can. He is kind to us. More for the children.”

“How can I talk to Him?”

“Close your eyes. Draw deep breath. Then, begin talking. Tell Him your woes. I always do that.”

“Does God listen to you?”

“He does. Go and find out. Listen carefully. You will hear Him soon.”

I was fully intrigued now.

I decided to find out for myself.

The stones were craggy, rugged, heavy and black. They were found placed haphazardly under the spreading banyan tree many years ago, in the back of the rambling bungalow. Resting against the gnarled tree trunk of the moving banyan where ghosts lived according to Moti, our ageing servant. Evenings, I was terrified of the knotted tree with the drooping locks and stout branches. The tree stood in a corner of the big bungalow. The forest started at the back of the bungalow, behind the outer compound wall of the mills. The long summer afternoons, a hot wind danced in the forest, shrieking mad. Then, it would come down to the bungalow, stark mad, dancing and whistling, driving the leaves away, knocking the tiles on the roofs. Creating a huge ruckus on the way. The wind is like the mad woman vagrant I found near the colony’s main gates.

The stones weathered all this. And more in the years long past. They stood erect. Two huge stone tablets under the whispering ancient tree. Immovable. Fixed in that desolate spot.

There the old granny found God in those two derelict black stone tablets daubed with crimson by somebody long ago. I went there and looked again, my heart beating fast.

The round eyes were resting. Two round eyes and large pupils. The fish eyes! I peered closely. The round eyes moved suddenly and blinked. I stood transfixed. The wind howled in the forest like a wailing baby. There was nobody around except the rustling of the leaves and the singing grass in the hot sun. The tree was my shield from the attacking fierce sun. I peered again. The still eyes moved again and blinked at me! The stones, granny was saying, were alive. She was right! There was a god residing in these two stones. Happy by this strange discovery, I rushed back. The granny’s room was in the extreme corner. She was now lying awake, breathing hard.

“Grandma?”

“Yes, my precious,” she said kindly to me.

“I saw the God move His eyes and blink at me from one of those stones!”

She smiled her toothless smile, her lines deepening on her small forehead. “I told you so. Only two kinds of persons can see the stone god.”

“Who are they?”

“The old women like me and the young simple girls like you.”

I felt very lucky and privileged. I could see what others could not.

“Granny?”

“Yes.”

“Who lives inside that stone tablet under the banyan tree?”

“The great God Shiva. In the other tablet of stone is Nandi, his carrier. The bull-carrier is also His manifestation only.”

I was taken aback. The mighty Shiva in the stone and I could see the God.

“But how can the God slip into such a small stone?”

“The Shiva is very kind God. He can reveal himself in any form you worship. He can live anywhere. In icy caves or small stones. He is everywhere.”

“Even in the dead stones?”

“He is everywhere. Everything is His creation only. You search the sacred in humble objects and you can feel and find the divine in them also.”

“How can we make objects sacred?”

Granny---the well-read retired science high-school teacher---paused, moving her rosary in her gnarled stick-like hands, then said, “Emotions. Your doll is precious to you, is it not?”

I nodded. “In the same way, these stones are precious to me. They are sacred to me. I saw the crimson on them, put up by some tribals, years ago. Smearing the stones with the crimson is an act of sacredness. It means for the Hindus, it is a holy object, not to be trifled with or defiled by any crazy person.”

“Ordinary objects can be turned into holy ones thus?”

“Yes. Crimson can do that.”

“And, if somebody tries to fool around or, defile these holy objects?”

“Disaster follows soon. “

It did very soon in our own family. This is how it happened.

Excited by the discovery, I would go daily to the site…to talk to the God. Often, granny would come with me. She would wash the stones carefully, daub them with crimson, burn incense sticks before them and then sit cross-legged, chanting hymns in Sanskrit, eyes closed in complete reverence, engrossed in worship, completely away from the world, into a different higher realm. I was always intrigued by her far-away look during these intense moments. She would mumble something in this trance-like situation. “What did you say to God?” I would ask. The white-haired granny, thinning and stiff, would smile very serenely and say, “Shiva is my father. I share everything with Him. I petition Him for everything. All my wishes get fulfilled by such a caring father.” Wishes! I also did the same. Closing my eyes, I said earnestly, “Oh, Lord, my father, I want to become a boy. Please make me a B-O-Y, please Shiva. You know my Pa always wanted a boy. Even my Ma. They are not happy with me. Pa hardly talks. Ma is always cross. She yells at me. Often, beats me for trifles. Only granny loves me. So, please turn me into a boy. Then, my parents will start loving me again.” I would sit cross-legged, eyes closed and talk to the stone-God in a sincere tone. The morning breeze would play with my curly hair and caress my thin oval face. In the deathly stillness on the bungalow---Ma was busy with her chores; Pa was in the office---I could hear my own voice loudly and clearly against the rustling, whispering leaves of the banyan tree. Daily I would pray to Shiva for a dramatic transformation that would delight my unhappy parents and make me the BOY. Whenever I would open my eyes, I would see the crude fish-eyes looking at me and find them blinking at me in an instant. One morning, I found granny crying silently. “Please, end my sufferings now. Nobody wants me to be here. Nobody. I have no other place to go. I feel very insulted. Please, end my sufferings by making me dead.” I cried, too. I got scared. Granny, my beloved granny, as dead. Who will then talk to me? I will become lonely again. Both of us grew closer, without realizing it. And then, one morning, the stones were not there!

It was the saddest day for both of us!

The most precious stones of our lives were missing. We cried bitterly. “The one who has done this will face the wrath of the great Shiva, the destroyer!” Pronounced granny, mad with grief. I, too, was broken in spirit and body. I lost my appetite. The corner looked plundered and empty. It was sacrilege. Somebody, granny said, had dared remove the deity and violated the moral code of conduct. Now, that somebody has to pay heavily for this transgression. I stopped looking at that favorite corner of mine---it looked empty and meaningless to me.

Three days later, quite inexplicably, Ma fell down and fractured her hand and Pa fell ill. He had come back from office in the evening, tossed a few drinks and then gone to sleep. In the night, he developed high fever and chills. The fever continued, despite the medicines. Ma called us and said, “Pray for him.” We did. The fever will not go. Both granny and I got worried. Granny prayed earnestly to the Shiva. I also did that. Then, he was rushed to the City Hospital. We both followed him there. Granny kept praying, hardly sleeping.  Pa started muttering in his sleep, on the hospital bed, fever running very high. The doctors said: 48 hours only. Ma cried a lot, so did the old frail granny, sobbing and wailing. Death was inching forward. Pa was in delirium now. Fever did not go down. The docs were all worried. Life hung by a thread only. Our destiny could alter suddenly by this tragedy. The two women were praying and praying to all the Gods. Granny hardly ate anything during those days. I also prayed to Shiva.

And then I saw the dream.

The great Shiva, trident and snakes and matted hair and damrus in hands, striding towards me and saying, “Get those stones back there, otherwise the defiler gets death.”  His eyes were flashing in anger. The snakes were all uncoiled now. They were hissing. The great Shiva was in his Rudra form, dancing angrily. The earth trembled. Thunder struck. I woke up, shuddering in fear.

I told my granny. She understood. Then, both of us went back to the bungalow. We searched and searched and then finally, unable to locate two stones, picked up two other similar black stones, much lighter and smaller, found in plenty in that area and cleaned and washed them. Granny placed them under the whispering banyan tree and again daubed these ordinary stones with the standard crimson colour, turning them into two sacred objects! We burnt the sticks, scattered flowers, poured milk and prayed with eyes closed.

“Please God, save my Pa. He is very dear to me. He is my Pa. I love him very much,” I said, tears running down my cheeks. I had seen Rupali, my chum, crying often, after she had lost her father in an accident a few months ago. She was forced to drop out of school and sell vegetables on the streets. Crying, I dropped to sleep, in the lap of my frail granny, before the newly-anointed stone God.

The healing was quick.

Pa was finally discharged from the hospital after a month. Ma’s fractured hand got healed up also. The life slowly returned to normal. I continued to find solace in the stone God. Granny would talk daily to Shiva under the banyan tree.

To-day, after twenty-one years, as a 30-year-old police officer, I stand before those two stones, under the banyan tree, in the big bungalow. There is no forest left now. It has all been cut down by the timber mafia. The mills have closed down. The bungalow is abandoned. The nearby bungalows are also closed. There is no body living here anymore except the security guards.  The mills’ property is on sale. I was posted as the Deputy Commissioner of Police, the first woman police officer in the state so far, in the town near Ranchi, where I had spent my childhood. I decided to visit the property…and my childhood. The bungalow looks forlorn. Only cob-webs and dust are there where we once lived. The stones are still there. And surprisingly, daubed with fresh crimson. On every Wednesday, people come to apply crimson to the stones. “A whole cult is there now, madam,” informs the chief security officer, a retired colonel, “Every day, women come to pray and on Wednesdays, full crowd comes to pray here. People say all their wishes are granted by these stones.”

I secretly smile. The stone-God had granted my desire. I had become more than a man in a force known for its male ethos. “She is the only man here,” my superiors say by way of introduction. My Pa also revised his opinion about me. I thank my granny for all this. She told me to turn two stones into sacred things by applying crimson and worshipping them faithfully.

They are no longer mere stones but two sacred objects for an entire town. “Humans need sacred objects in their lives. If you do not have them, you are doomed. You must have two holy stones to guide you,” my granny had told me once.

I had found them years ago. The town was finding them now. I understood the message to-day, delivered by granny many years ago. I bowed before them again and stood up.

The fish-eyes were smiling at me again!