Kiss of Death

Taking the walk down the memory lane has always been easy for me than to plan for the future. Be it pain or happiness, it was always good to look back as I don’t have to be there and go through it again physically to feel it.


It was one fine summer morning and I was happily in the train watching the beautiful picturesque scenery that painted both sides of the rail road. It made me think that life moves like this very train and we are like the standing trees waiting to be uprooted.
I was 13 years then and was going to my grandma’s for the summer holidays. I always loved the country side. I remember my parents telling me that even as a toddler, I spent hours sitting in the barn that houses the cows and keep talking to them and to me they are great listeners even today.

I especially loved the pond that floated the lilies and lotuses and twenty years after, even today, I could not reach its bottom. People in the village say that the pond has been dug deep some twenty five years ago and is their only source of irrigation for all seasons and the good old wise men told me that they hadn’t seen any man dive down to feel the land beneath.

The kids of the village were great swimmers and they always play catch me if you can in the pond. I asked my cousin to get me the biggest lotus that lay in the middle of the pond. He is a great swimmer and was at it instantly. These country kids seriously had nothing to hide. They play and jump around in the water naked. They did not have anything to cover them. The pond had timings for everyone. The men always bathe in the evening after their day’s toil in their farm land.

Delightfully, everyone owned a piece of land in this village. Not that they are well off by birth but they were once led by a great soul who owned the entire village. Eventually, he shared his wealth with the people who toiled long and hard for many years in his land.

The women were early risers and they came before the sun and washed the linen and bathed and left. The pond was almost unvisited in the noon. Only on weekends, when the children don’t have to go to school, the pond had company all afternoon.

I was wearing a long waist cloth from waist to toe (We call it LUNGI) and was standing on the banks of the pond. I always wanted to jump in but was a bad swimmer. I felt compelled and seeing even the little ones do summersaults hurt my ego. I just jumped and was not bad at all. I was an athlete and had a great physique and stamina at least on the land. I was floating and moving my arms and limbs haphazardly and was moving inwards and staying afloat. I found strength and targeted the lotus in the middle of the pond.



By the time I reached the middle, I was exhausted and tired and I screamed at my brother. He saw me sinking in to the water and coming out frantically gasping for air. The long cloth that I wore felt very heavy inside the water and I was being dragged down. I was using my arms to come out of the water for air and was kicking hard to let go of the waist cloth. The cloth did loosen up at the waist, but only to tangle below the knees. I felt the end of the world. When I went inside the water, my eyes were wide open all the time. In the first few dips, the water was green. When I started drinking more water and was suffocating the same water appeared blue and then black.



I was too tired to move my legs and they let go of their ambition to kick the cloth out. I thought I kicked the bucket instead. The moment my legs stopped moving, the cloth fell off and almost involuntarily I started kicking my legs again and was on the surface once more and was fighting for my life not willing to visit the other side of the world.



My cousin was a couple of years older than I and reached out to me attempting to help. I, out of fear, held on to him, choking him and sending him under the water. It looked like, I would not die alone.



He sensed the danger of dying with me and kicked my torso hard and left me sinking. The next time, I came up for a breather, I faintly saw him on the banks. He was screaming for help. Next to the pond was a bamboo grove, where an old man was selectively cutting the full grown bamboos, to be used for a hut.



The man sensed the danger and ran across and nosedived in to the pond. He was in his sixties and was very wise. When he came near, he started talking to me “Now boy, listen to me. I am going to get you out. If you try to catch me, I will leave you and go. Do not attempt to swim. Do not move a muscle.” He kept repeating the same thing myriad times before he caught hold of my hair. He lifted me high enough to let me have continuous breath. He kept repeating the same thing over and over again till we reached the banks. I got out of water and sat on the nearby stone motionless and it was not good to feel the water in my lungs. It was horrible.



The country side has its ups and downs. My visit was approved by my father as my ailing grandma wanted to see me and everyone thought that it was her last wish. But she was the one who was badly devastated by my drowning. Everyone openly verbally abused her on her face stating that she was the cause of my accident. They told that she could not die alone and wanted to take me along with her. As a kid, I did not want to kiss her because she had wrinkles all over her face. She was in her late eighties. When she cried asking me to leave the village immediately, I too cried with her and hugged and kissed her.



I never came out of the house a couple of days, for I feared that the water in the pond would come and take my life away again. The grip of fear made me unwise.



During my entire struggle for life in the water, I did not think of God even once. Over the next few days, I felt ashamed and there was no dearth of guilt pounding my conscious self. I wanted to be forgiven. I keep asking even today.



Twenty years went by and I still did not find God’s plan for me. I am still searching. I take life as it comes. I don’t complain much. I am preparing to hold God in my thoughts when I kick the frame. I struggle every day. In my moments of adversity and joy I remember him. I thank him in the morning for giving me another day and I thank him when I go to bed and pray that he be in my thoughts in the very moments if I don’t wake up to see the sun.



I wish and pray that he be a permanent resident of my heart.

Prayer to the unknown God

Getting away from the mundane and trying our best not to spruce around and being our raw selves have always been a distant dream for many of us given the kind of society, people, commitments and problems that we voluntarily surround ourselves with. At times I am surrounded by people, yet alone and many a times I am in no man’s land but hardly alone. I decided to embark on a journey to a village by an ocean. The co-ordinates, the lat long and the specifics of the location are not so greatly important. Being a man from India with long strands of hair and equally long beard that hides half my face & saffron clad clothing easily qualifies me to be perceived at as a saint in the eyes of my fellow Indians. While I know I am very far from sainthood, I neither make claims or qualms about it. Honestly, I don’t care what people think. Some look at me with utmost reverence while some with disdain and contempt. I am used to these and so I literally do not bother. My changes both inward and outward have brought mixed feelings for my wife too and she is not trained to hide her emotions. I have trained myself now not to hide my emotions. What comes involuntarily for her is a trained act for me. My wife sometimes loses her cool claiming that she has had enough and I have sometimes spent sleepless nights when she threatens me that she would cut my hair and shave my beard when I am fast asleep. I let her nanny me around and she truly enjoys that. Do I put up with her? No! I like the way she is. It is just that she has still not come to terms with my new look and my approach towards life. So, I boarded a bus and there were some beautiful songs playing in the tape recorder. The bus was half empty and I had a complete three seater all to myself. I was basking on the rhythm and music that was playing in the background when the bus stopped to pick someone enroute. A lady completely covered in a black veil from head to toe boarded the bus with her daughter. She looked around and without hesitation decided to share the seat with me. Only a sect of people, especially orthodox Muslims wear a veil (called pardha) on top of their dress. These women usually do not share their space with a stranger, especially a man. The bus commenced its journey forward and it was around 7:00 AM and through the window, I could visibly see the crack of dawn. Sun was slowly coming out of nowhere and spreading warmth and trying to swallow up the dew and the thick cold air started to lighten up and breathing became easy and painless. I did not pay much attention to the lady or her daughter and was slumbering and was already half dead to the world. The bus started picking more people and the seats were completely occupied with people trying to squeeze in as much as possible. Eventually the lady had to place her daughter on her lap and free up the seat for an elderly woman who proved her presence by moaning at every bumpy ride the bus took. Her face appeared like a wrinkled blanket upon an age old frame and she had a permanent stoop. I locked eyes with her for a brief moment and her eye balls seemed sunk in misery and her retina looked extremely dry. I wondered if she had any more tears left in her. I turned away not able to withhold her daunted look anymore. I could no longer be comfortable and felt as if all my sleep were just swept away. The daughter of the lady was around five to six years of age and she looked beautiful. She looked like a perfect fresh rose in full bloom. I did not look into her eyes. I was simply whiling away time. The baby girl let out a shrewd uncanny noise and the lady tried to silence her. I ignored the girl and thought she was playing pranks with her mother. She did it yet again and then I realized that the daughter is a mentally challenged child with no oratory skills. I had my heart in my mouth and for the first time I looked her in her eye. I tried to level with her but her eyes were wandering everywhere. There was no steady look even for a brief second. I wondered what her thoughts would be. I silently turned myself away and started to look at the distant mountains but could not hold myself. Tears started trickling down my cheeks and I never had such heaviness in my heart. I ensured that nobody notices me and closed my eyes down and pretended to sleep. The girl let out another shrewd shrill sound and was immediately silenced by her mother. She was like a beautiful wild flower. I did not want to embarrass the mother by looking at the child. The girl placed her hand on my hand and started playfully tapping my fingers. Her touch tore me to pieces. I could have put my hand on fire but could not bear the pain of her mere touch. The mother was sitting just next to me and was looking at me as if begging to bestow upon her daughter my blessings. I was scared. I did not know how to respond. I turned my face away pretending to ignore both the baby and the mother. I was screaming inside asking god to grant me one wish. I wish I had the power to cure the baby. I had this just one wish. All else did not matter to me. My family and my own kid were not even in my thoughts. I prayed to the unseen and unknown god. I cried and asked for the girl to be cured. I did not have anything at all. Not my dreams. Not my wishes. Not even my own salvation. I would have traded my life for this one wish. I would have agreed to be bound to hell till eternity. I understood reality. I understood that I am a mere mortal and can only just pray. I opened my palms and this girl placed her chin down, her right cheeks completely buried in my hand. I felt that the whole world rested on me. She closed her eyes for what appeared to be a long and painful moment. I felt her surrender in every cell of her body. But surrender to what? How could I know? I knew not what life holds for her. I knew not if she will ever be cured. I felt as if an angel touched my soul and made her imprint forever. I would die any given day for her wellness. One moment, I felt an overwhelming pain engulfing me beyond the scope of my emotional capability and the other, I felt as if all that is spurious and not essentially I was draining out spurting and gushing not withholding the essence of my true self. Hours passed by and the bus would have halted a long time back. The driver woke me up and told me that all of the passengers left and that it is time for me to get down and the bus has reached the destination. I opened my eyes and had absolutely nothing to worry about. The lady and her daughter would have got down without disturbing my sleep. I did not cry anymore. I just prayed and surrendered to god and told myself that any day, I would be ready to bear the cross for the girl and the souls alike. It was not a demand, not even wishful thinking. Just a humble prayer. A serene calmness and a void bliss took over. My guilt and pain just withered away.