The Soul of Truth Read online

Vishnu looked preoccupied after that. He kept glancing at my grave and up at the sky. His mind must have been full of unanswered questions. After a while, he turned around and ran into the house.

  How I longed to hug him, kiss him, feel his chubby little hands around my neck, caress his dark curls away from his forehead. Oh, why didn’t I quit the job and come back to him and Radhika? If only I had any idea about the cruel fate awaiting us. But isn’t that the same with all humans? If we knew what our future holds, most of us would change the way we live today. Almost all, I should guess. Except for divine saints or maybe philosophers.

  Radhika and I had constantly talked about our future, Vishnu’s future. We had even dreamt about his higher studies and jobs. I had joined some savings plans to fund his higher studies. Those should help Radhika now. Still, how will she manage? Even with my steady income, she had struggled to meet all the expenses of the large household. Now, it will be a terrible crunch. Why didn’t I think of this when I should have? The survivor benefits from my employer should help a lot. Once Sumathy gets married, it will be a big load off Radhika’s shoulders. But the expenses of the marriage? I am sure Robin would be understanding. And I had saved some money for her wedding. Radhika knows about that and will use it appropriately. Then, Oppol and her two small kids. And, of course, Deepu. He remains as a sorrow to all. Living dead. An active mind trapped in an immobile body. Oh, the thoughts that must ravage his mind! Despite everything, he never complains. He has a smile for all and appears to be at peace with the life fate has delivered him. But is he? He is a grown man now. Won’t he have desires and hopes just like any other man? … My dearest Deepu, how I wish I could give you back the life you lost.

  Books are his best friends now. He can never be found without a book by his side. Sumathy gets him all the books he wants from our village library.

  The library is now housed in a nice, new building. It was renovated a few years back. The old library was the home of Appunni Menon, the book lover who had donated the space and his collection of books to start the very first library in our village. The library was named after him—Appunni Menon Memorial Library. It was a true gift to the village. Many young minds have been moulded by the great books in that library. I was a regular visitor there. Before leaving for the Gulf, I had even volunteered there and helped the library collect more books from generous donors far and near. Man will perish but his thoughts, especially the written ones, will inspire generations to come. That is the power of the pen.

  The wind gathers strength. Threatening dark clouds appear. The rain falls with a vengeance. Flashes of ligtning duel with each other. The boom of thunder thrills.

  Raindrops fall on my grave like chunks of gravels. They seal the holes in the churned soil. The muddy grave glistens like a freshly waxed mound.

  The water that seeps into the grave mixes with the camphor and sand and salt and henna and speeds up the chemical process of decomposing my body. Very soon, I will be unrecognisable. Who thinks of these horrific, inevitable changes that take place in the depths of the soil?

  The Periyar flows in the distance. Silent. Does she mourn the loss of her Uthaman? The ripples must be her heaving sobs. She, who is so used to losses.

  How many times have I sat on her shores with burning thoughts? How many times has she soothed my fears and anxieties with the gentle breeze from her bosom? I could tell her anything. She would always listen with a smile. She had never failed her Uthaman.

  Sumathy is sitting on the verandah, thoughtfully watching Malu and Shalu doing their homework. Is she thinking of me or Robin? Love has a way of healing all pain. I am glad if Sumathy has found that healing power of love in this hour of unbearable pain.

  A figure approaches. It’s Robin. He is a pillar of strength for the family at this time. Radhika has relegated all mundane duties to him temporarily, and he is already like a member of the family, even spending his own money for household expenses. But she is proud. Very soon, she will realise her responsibilities and take control of the house once again. She should have enough money to tide over till the survivor benefits from Bahrain come through. Also, there is some money I had saved on my person, in the bag that my friends had sent with the body. Radhika has not yet opened it. I am glad it will be a pleasant surprise for her when she does.

  What dreams I had . . . I had hoped to build a new home to settle down after finding a measure of financial security. An unfulfilled dream.

  Why am I so consumed by these painful thoughts? Even in this formless state, why is it so difficult for me to let go of my dreams, my desires? Why can’t I be like the birds in the sky? Free, without worries. What would they do if after a day of hunting for food they return to their nests to find it destroyed? Do they despair? Or do they simply build a new one?

  Look at me. It is days since I left my nest. But I am still worrying about what I lost. Is man always bound to his carnal self, even when liberated from the body?

  I feel so alone. Though I am surrounded by the living and the dead.

  There are ancestors on one side, encouraging me to think only good thoughts, thoughts that will help with my onward journey to salvation.

  The evil spirits are always around, restless, gnashing their teeth, filling me with dread. Will I be forced to join their ranks? Doomed to wander the earth forever?

  One blemish in the rites and rituals…

  The impure state of the priest or the person performing the rites…

  A mistake in the observations by the family…

  My own unfulfilled desires…

  Any of these can result in a doomed eternal life.

  Focus, Uthaman.

  You don’t want that fate. That is the worst fate ever.

  The short but vital period between death and afterlife. That is what I am going through now. Forty-one days.

  Man, in his immense pride, thinks he has all the answers. He is so sadly mistaken. He has not yet mastered the mysteries of the body. How can he even begin to unravel those of the soul?

  The indestructible soul. What happens to it after the destruction of its vessel, the body? The question that has been asked since time immemorial, the answer that still eludes the cleverest of men.

  The body decays, becomes one with the soil, re-enters the food cycle, part of it contributing to the formation of the cells, the egg and the sperm, a new life. And the soul? Does the soul get breathed into the new life too? Is that the answer?

  “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” God, Man, Soul—one form of many or many forms of one?

  The Ninth Night

  As the darkness outside blends with the gloom inside my grave, I rise up like vapour from the depths.

  Fallen leaves have made patterns on the mound. I look up at the anjili tree— I called it my grandfather tree. I often enjoyed resting underneath it. It celebrated with me in my victories. It cried with me in my failures.

  It bears fruit in abundance, but most of it is eaten by the birds and the bats. Achen used to laugh when I complained about all the half-eaten fruits. “Well, they also need to eat and live.”

  Achen loved nature, especially his trees. He used to say that if we love nature, she will give that love back tenfold. All the trees in the yard had been planted by him.

  There are two towering teak trees. With their branches trimmed to facilitate them to grow taller, they are now huge giants kissing the clouds.

  There is an old jackfruit tree. In the fruiting season, its branches hang low and heavy with the jackfruits. It bore so many fruits, enough for us and all the neighbours. Amma was always generous with her produce and shared it with the folks around us. And once it was jackfruit season, we lived on a varied diet of jackfruit—curried, fried, steamed, cooked with fish. Every part of the fruit was utilised in one way or another. I can still remember the taste of those curries and how they used to make my mouth water. And the honey-sweet ripe fruit! It was
always a treat—we never got tired of devouring it.

  Amma also made sweet dishes like halwa and appam from the ripe jackfruit. The halwa was made in huge copper pans, called uruli. It was a day’s work to keep stirring the jackfruit with jaggery and ghee in the uruli till it became the sweet halwa. Achen was in charge of the preparation, out in the courtyard. And once made, he stored the halwa in big, wide-mouthed porcelain vessels called bharani, with ghee on top, to preserve it for months. Before the uruli was washed, Deepu used to have a go at licking every bit of halwa stuck to it. It was a scene worth watching. Greedy one! What a naughty, boisterous boy was my Deepu.

  There is a big guava tree next to this anjili. During the season it becomes heavy with green, tasty guavas but again, most of them are eaten by bats and birds.

  Once, when the teacher complained of the flimsy sticks at school that broke easily on caning the kids, I got two sturdy branches from the guava tree, took them to school and presented them proudly to her. My intention to please her backfired horribly when I was the first one to get caned with them. The teasing I had to endure from my classmates that day! Well-deserved too.

  There are two rambutan trees. Both give abundant fruits, so much so that Achen sold some of them to a fruit trader. It was fun seeing our rambutan being sold in heaps near our school.

  We also made good money selling nutmeg from the eight trees Achen tended with great care. It was my duty to carry the nutmeg to the shop to be sold. It was heavy, but I loved the smell of the nutmeg and actually enjoyed the chore.

  There are so many areca nut trees. Thin and tall, they rise like sticks into the sky. It was fun watching Mammad climb the trees with more dexterity than a circus acrobat. Mammad was the local tree-climber and was called to cut the ripe areca nuts from the tall tree. Tall and gangly like the tree itself, he used to climb up the trees with amazing speed. And once on top of one, he would cut down the fruit and then, instead of climbing down, would start shaking the tree forcefully. When the violently shaken tree swayed close to its neighbour, he would jump to the other. He was fearless, not afraid of the risk, but people who watched him got scared out of their wits each time he performed his crazy acrobatics. It is a miracle he never fell and broke his back.

  Two of the areca nut trees are now dead, with no fronds. They look like the bony fingers of a skeleton, pointing up at the sky.

  Once, one of them had a parrot nest. Deepu loved to watch the parrots and started pestering Amma for a parrot of his own. Finally, she relented and got him a caged parrot from the bird-seller in the market. Deepu was ecstatic. We all loved that talking parrot, except Achen. He wasn’t happy about caged birds. “God has given birds wings so that they can fly about freely. It is their right. We have no right to capture them and imprison them in tiny cages. It is cruelty.” Achen shared his Gandhian thoughts, but Deepu was too happy with his pet to worry about the rights of birds. He fed it fruits and grains and enjoyed teaching it new words.

  But one day, when he opened the cage to feed the parrot, it escaped and flew away. It sat on the branches of the ashoka tree for sometime, cackling happily. Deepu was desperate. He begged the bird to come back and tried to tempt it with fruits and nuts. Though it cocked its head and seemed to understand what Deepu was saying, it didn’t fly down to him but soon flew away, never to be seen again. The poor child was heartbroken and cried all that night.

  Our home was a veritable half-acre paradise—the aesthetic, two-storey, white-washed, red-brick house surrounded by flowers and trees in the yard, with green fields extending all around as far as the eye could see, the river flowing at the edge and the blue mountains bordering it all. The long, winding path leads to the Maakala Devi Temple. The surrounding hillocks are inhabited by tribals.

  When the paddy ripens, birds swoop down in flocks. Parrots and doves are our frequent visitors.

  The surrounding trees give so much shade to our home, that it is always cool, even during peak summer time. The rustling of leaves in the breeze is soothing. The dark, dancing shadows of the branches invited me to rest beneath them in the hot afternoons. The shade under the anjili tree was my favourite study nook. The wide expanse of green fields beyond the yard, with the river and mountains in the distance, gave the ideal view to soothe the mind and sharpen the brain.

  The glistening river is bordered by golden-white sand and prickly cactuses. Those cactuses were once used by the tribals as weapons. But now, they are of no use to anybody.

  The law of nature—today’s goods, tomorrow’s garbage.

  The rain comes down lashing, and the darkness around me thickens.

  All alone. A dead presence. Not loved anymore. No one to love anymore. I exist in a limbo.

  The water creeps into my grave and surrounds my body. It is changing every moment. The skin has slid off. The joints are separated. The hair is fallen. The eyeballs are smashed. My body fluids leak out of my eyes and ears and nose and mouth to be one with the fluids of nature.

  One decaying mass of flesh.

  A frightening sight for the living.

  A familiar sight for nature.

  A recurring phenomenon for the soil.

  When the silence intimidates like a stranger, even the sound of the rain and the whisper of the wind soothes like a friend.

  A stray dog comes running and howls at the darkness. A sharp stab into the silence. Echoed by others in the distance.

  The crickets lament the dead.

  The lights in the nearby houses flicker off one by one. In that inky darkness, all alone among the branches, I go back to the memory of being a baby in the cozy darkness of my mother’s womb. A vague feeling of being surrounded by soft love, safe, no cares in the world. Being born into light. The first face that imprints itself on my memory—my mother, Amma.

  Amma had married early and soon had her first child, my elder sister, Oppol. I came a few years later. Then, after more than a decade, Sumathy was born and then Deepu, the youngest. Amma was the epitome of love and care. Her life revolved around her family; her world had shrunk into the everyday life and happiness of her husband, children and home. Always with a smile. Kind and considerate to all, humans and animals alike, she moulded our way of life and thinking and taught us empathy. My favourite memories of childhood are lying in her lap listening to her never-ending stories and the tantalising taste of her cooking on my tongue. Childhood always spelled ‘Amma’.

  Achen was the exact opposite of Amma—serious, with rarely a smile or a pat for us. As children, we always maintained our distance with him. But he never raised his voice or hands against any of us. We were also careful not to provoke him. Only after we grew up, we realised how much love and care he had for us. His short temper and reticence hid an extremely kind and principled mind. He was an ardent follower of Gandhi, treated all men as equal and imparted and expected the same high standards from his family. His father was a martial arts guru, and Achen took great pride in his physical fitness and well-exercised body.

  Achen decided to send me to the local Malayalam medium school when the time came for my education to begin. He was very proud of his heritage and wanted his son to grow up loving his mother tongue. That decision of Achen has influenced my whole life, for the better.

  Achen had insisted that my Vidyarambham should be done at Shri Narayana Guru’s home in Chempazhanthy, near Thiruvananthapuram. He was an ardent follower of the Guru. So, Amma took me and Oppol to Achen’s workplace in Thiruvananthapuram. We stayed there for a few months, and I attended school. I had two friends there—Babu and Bindu. Where are they now? I don’t know. Babu was a child actor in a movie called Adhyapika.

  Achen had always worked in Thiruvananthapuram. Initially, Amma and Oppol too lived there with him. But Amma came back to the family home to deliver me, and then we continued living here. Achen became a monthly visitor till he retired from his job. Not too dissimilar from the way I was a visitor to Vishnu, except my visits were much more infrequent. Now, I realise how much Achen must have suff
ered, staying away from his family, for the job and the security it offered his family. The sacrifices of stoic, caring fathers often go unappreciated by children, who see and interact with them only rarely. But even as a child, Achen fascinated me—I modelled my habits after him. I loved to imitate him in dress, speech and principles. He was a contented man with frugal demands. I was always so proud to be known as my father’s son.

  The rain and the wind lash against the trees. The cold night shivers in ecstasy. The wet birds long for the warmth of their mates. After a while, the rain abates.

  Time gallops through the night as my unbridled thoughts roam free.

  Very soon, it will be morning. The day of my Sanchayanam.

  If I was cremated, this would be the day when the burnt ashes and the remains of my bones would have been collected to be immersed in the holy rivers of my land. But since I was buried, there will only be prayers and puja at my graveside, all to facilitate my smooth onward journey. Till that time, I remain the friend of darkness, in the depths of my grave, waiting for each night to welcome me back.

  The Tenth Night

  The smell of pala flowers is associated with the presence of spirits. Am I the harbinger of this sweet smell now? The darkness has drawn a curtain over my sense of sight but has sharpened my sense of the surroundings.

  The night has been drenched by the torrential rain that had fallen earlier. The sesame seeds and wilted flowers lie scattered all around my grave.

  This night is special, as was this morning. Souls are allowed the strength to endure daylight on special days of rituals. So I had been a mute witness of my own Sanchayanam. The first important rite. It was observed with all the purity and solemnity that it deserved.

  Sreedharan priest had arrived early in the morning . I was glad that my family was leaving nothing to chance and had secured the services of the best pujari in the area. He lives close by, next to the Devi Temple. He is a well-off landowner, with lots of properties and cars, living in a splendid two-storey mansion. He even has a small temple, adjoining the house. He is a follower of Lord Shiva and never steps out of the house without offering prayers at the temple. He is also well learned in astrology.