When Shiva Smiles Read online

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  Girish’s voice was very close by as he said, ‘Now swing to your right and left. That’s it! Bigger swings…that’s it…’And suddenly she was in Girish’s arms.

  He quickly freed her from the anchor rope, and not a moment too soon, as it went tumbling behind the rocky crag, narrowly missing them.

  Girish said softly, ‘No wonder I’m in love with you. You have the ability to defy the odds and dare the elements.’

  Anjali hugged him tighter. ‘So, be warned. One day I may defy you too.’

  ‘I dare you!’

  Perumal and Aloke joined them. Aloke said, ‘So, What happens now?’

  Girish released Anjali from his embrace and said ‘Angel, now that you have realised that we were right, would you like to call it off and return to base?’

  Anjali shrugged resignedly. ‘Might as well, I guess.’

  Girish winked at Perumal and said, ‘Right! Off you go then. This path that we have come upon is quite gradual and there are no major hurdles en route. You should touch bottom within a couple of hours at the most.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming too?’ She asked.

  ‘No, Angel. We feel so inspired and motivated by your display of guts that we have decided to bash on regardless.’

  Anjali gaped at them, astonished. They looked back at her poker-faced. ‘If you don’t mind,’ she said sarcastically, ‘I would like to come along too!’

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  ‘If you insist,’ said Girish.

  ‘It’s logical.’ Aloke asserted.

  Perumal grinned. ‘After all, we girls must stick together.’

  They roared with laughter with Anjali punching Girish on the chest in mock fury.

  Above them, the eagle screeched again.

  * * *

  Six hours later, they crested the top. By the time they hauled up their gear, the sun had dipped below the horizon. They were so exhausted that they collapsed on the ground and using their packs as pillows, went to sleep.

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  The God of the Abode

  When Surya Deva, the sun-god, graces the world with his radiant presence, it’s an event. Up there in the mountains, it’s an extraordinary event!

  The first rays reach out from behind silhouetted peaks and caress Mother Nature into gradual awakening. Rivers stretch and valleys yawn. Birds twitter and animals prance with joy.

  At the Kailash Temple, this wonder was accompanied by the chiming of bells and resonating chants of Aum Namah Shivay by the priests.

  Anjali opened her eyes to this wondrous scene and, for a moment, forgot the pain in her aching limbs as she exclaimed, ‘I have died and reached Heaven!’

  ‘No such luck!’ Girish spoke from behind her. He came up to her and reached out a hand to help her up.

  Anjali groaned in pain. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

  ‘Where you wanted to be, Angel,’ Girish said. He was

  leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette. ‘What you risked your life and limb for.’

  Perumal was trying to stuff his metallic can into his pack. He said, ‘But it was worth it! What a fabulous place! Green everywhere and this incredibly flat ground.’

  Aloke adjusted his specs and said in a scholarly tone, ‘It’s a Tibet-type plateau, a table-top phenomenon usually seen in this part of the Himalayan ranges. The greenery abounds because this is a high-rain belt and—ow!’

  The metallic can hit him on the shoulder, cutting off further speech. Perumal said menacingly, ‘One more discourse from you Aloke, and I will make a table-top out of you!’

  Aloke picked up the can and hurled it back at Perumal who hopped away easily, and prepared to throw it again but Anjali cut in. ‘Stop it, you two! I think I hear someone coming. Shhh…’

  He emerged from the forest some fifty yards away as if he had opened an invisible green door. He was wearing a crude grey vest and a white dhoti and looked seemingly immune to the biting cold. He could not have been more than twenty years old, but as he walked towards them he exuded an air of mature confidence.

  He stopped in front of them, his piercing black eyes studying them in turn, resting finally on Anjali.

  Anjali was stunned! Never before had she seen such a handsome person, despite the shaggy beard and

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  moustache, and the three sacred parallel lines drawn on his forehead.

  ‘Are you the god of this abode?’ she asked.

  He smiled, his face creasing into dimples and Anjali’s heart missed a beat at this transformation.

  He said, ‘I am the servant of the god of this abode, Lord Shiva!’

  Perumal remarked, ‘Shiva the Destroyer!’

  The youth didn’t take his eyes off Anjali as he said, ‘The destroyer aspect of Shiva is not correctly appreciated by most of us. He destroys, yes, but he destroys the sins of mortals. He burns out the impurities and burnishes the raw ore into gold.’

  ‘We feel blessed,’ Anjali said.

  ‘Indeed you are blessed! It was his blessings that allowed you to successfully come up this steep slope.’

  Girish took a step forward. ‘What brought us up successfully was our combined climbing skills.’ He put a cigarette to his mouth.

  ‘Please don’t smoke!’

  ‘Why? Your Shiva doesn’t approve?’

  ‘My Shiva is compassionate and forgiving. But, as his servant, it is my duty to warn you that smoking may kill you earlier than you are fated to die.’

  ‘I don’t need any warning!’

  ‘Call it brotherly advice, then.’

  ‘I don’t need a brother either!’

  ‘All right, a friend then.’ He began to walk away.

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  ‘And believe me, you will need me as a friend. My father, the head-priest, does not allow intruders.’

  Girish said, ‘Just a minute! Does your father own this place?’

  The youth halted and said, ‘No!’ He turned and looked at Girish. ‘My father is the caretaker of this place and he is very particular about its privacy. And its sanctity.’

  ‘Then how can he ask us to leave? By whose authority?’

  ‘By Shiva’s authority!’ The youth stepped forward towards Girish. ‘And I have the shakti to implement that authority!’

  Girish also moved towards the youth with clenched fists, but Anjali quickly intervened, moving between them. ‘We respect your privacy and we’ll leave as soon as we can. Oh, by the way, I am Anjali, he is Girish and those two are Perumal and Aloke.’

  He moved away, saying, ‘I will arrange food and shelter for you.’ At the edge of the forest he stopped and said,

  ‘They call me Om.’

  He melted into the green backdrop.

  Anjali wondered why the beating of her heart seemed to chant Aum Namah Shivay.

  * * *

  Sarupa, the head-priest, was a tall, tough-looking man in his mid-forties, who was known for his short temper and an almost fanatical penchant for preserving the sanctity of the Kailash Temple.

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  He was lying on his bed, taking a brief post-lunch siesta, as Om pressed his legs.

  ‘This place is not a picnic spot!’ he said angrily. ‘It’s a place of pilgrimage. They must be told to leave!’

  ‘They will leave, Baba,’ Om said, pleadingly. ‘They are mountaineers and have done a brave thing by scaling our cliff. Shiva loves such people, and I am sure he has helped them to reach here. How can we ask them to leave?’

  Sarupa rose from his bed, picked up his walking stick and left the hut, shaking his head. Om followed him.

  They walked towards the temple complex. Sarupa again shook his head. ‘I cannot have a combat of words with you, my son; you talk about Shiva so condescendingly, as if he confides in you, talks to you.’

  ‘But he does, Baba, he does!’

  The head-priest stopped at the giant door of the main temple. ‘I am worried about you, Om. You must stop chatting with the statue of Shiva.’

  ‘Why Baba, why? People pray to Shiva, sing bhajans to him, ask him for favours, and seek his blessings.

  Why can’t I chat with him?’

  ‘My priests have begun to hint that you have perhaps gone soft in the head. This is not good. In about a month’s time, you have to take over as head-priest from me.’

  Om veered off towards a forest path. He said, ‘We will cross that bridge when we come to it, Baba.’

  ‘Now, where are you off to?’

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  ‘To check on those brave people. They bring the sounds and smells of the world below. I am intrigued.’

  ‘Don’t get carried away, Om, and tell them they must leave at the earliest.’

  Om nodded unhappily. ‘Then I must hurry. I want to know more about their world.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It might make me more mature and knowledgeable. Then people will stop thinking that I am soft in the head.’

  Before Sarupa could say anything, Om sped out of sight from around a corner.

  The head-priest shook his head disapprovingly and entered the temple.

  * * *

  Om pointed to an empty storehouse nearby, a makeshift construction of wood and brick. ‘You can spend the night there. I have also arranged for food.’

  Anjali said, ‘We may want to stay for more than one night.’

  ‘My father may not agree.’

  Girish stepped forward, a cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘This is a free country. Nobody can ask us to leave!’

  With surprising speed, Om’s hand moved in a blur, plucked the cigarette out of Girish’s mouth and flung it to the ground. ‘You offend Shiva!’

  Girish’s face suff
used with fury and he charged at Om with clenched fists. Anjali managed to come between

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  them as she said, ‘I thought this was a temple. You make it sound like a convent.’

  ‘I don’t know what a convent means, but some things are not allowed here.’

  Perumal and Aloke began to shift the packs to the storehouse.

  ‘Is it alright to move around in this place?’ she asked Om.

  ‘Of course it is!’ Om’s face lit up with a smile. ‘This is a temple, not a convent.’ With his typical swiftness he turned to leave.

  Anjali said, ‘We would like to visit the temple.’

  ‘You can come with me,’ Om offered. ‘I am going there right now.’ He started walking.

  Anjali followed him, but Girish stayed where he was. She looked back at him, gesturing at him to join them.

  He said, ‘One temple is like another temple.’

  Anjali frowned at him as he picked the cigarette up from the ground and lit it. She walked back to him.

  Om stopped and turned. ‘You are right!’ he said.

  ‘It’s just another temple, on just another mountain, though you did climb that mountain. In any case, night is approaching and you have had a tiring day. I will send you food and water while you rest.’

  * * *

  The statue of Shiva, in the courtyard of the temple, looked resplendent in the silvery moonlight. The granite

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  hued face of the Lord exuded awesome power and yet, there was a crease of earthly humility etched on it. The eyes gleamed with compassion. The emerald in the third eye shone with a fiery sparkle.

  Om laughed as he looked up at the face of the statue. ‘My father says that your changing expressions are a play of light and shade, but I know better, Shiva!’

  Om said, ‘I know all the moods that flash across your divine face, sparkling in your smile and fleeting as your frowns.’ Om looked around to see if anyone else was there and then adopted a confidential tone in his voice as he said softly, ‘My beloved Shiva! You probably know what’s in my heart; of course, you know! But I still wish to tell you anyway.’

  Outside, a snake slithered forward across the mossy carpet of the forest, a zigzag streak of blackness on a silverbathed path. It stopped near the entrance to the temple and raised its hood. Its red, glowing eyes studied the boy and the statue. It lowered its hood and crawled forward towards them, forked tongue flicking in anticipation.

  Om said, ‘This is your temple, Shiva. My family has served you for so many generations. The eldest son takes over as head-priest when he is twenty-one, which is just a month away for me.’

  The snake, a foot away from Om, raised its hood again, and emitted a hiss. Om turned towards the snake, ‘Pranam, Nagraj.’ He picked up an earthenware pot and poured milk from it into a metal plate.

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  The snake began to drink the milk.

  ‘It’s a great honour for me, Shiva,’ Om said, ‘To become your head-priest, but my heart is like a distant sand dune thirsting for rain. I thirst for the world below this mountain. I hear about it, I want to see it, I want to be part of it, to experience it. With such yearnings assailing me, how will I be able to function as head-priest?’

  The snake nudged Om and he poured the rest of the milk into the plate.

  ‘Let me go down there for some time, my Lord. My father is still young and capable. I don’t have to take over from him yet. But he insists it is tradition and if this tradition is not followed, you will get angry. I don’t agree with him. You can never get angry with me. And I know you don’t care for such rituals. In your sea of compassion, tradition and rituals are like flotsam and jetsam.’

  A night bird screeched in a tree nearby and fireflies danced around the statue. Shiva’s face appeared to smile.

  ‘O, Shiva! You know how strong this urge is within me and now it has become even stronger. You have done this by allowing them to come up here!’

  Om stood up awkwardly. He touched the statue’s feet and ran out of the temple.

  The snake looked at the departing Om. Then it swivelled around and looked up at Shiva. Moonlight danced on the seemingly frozen tableau of snake and statue.

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  Turbulence

  Anjali woke up. One moment, she’d been buried deep in the cloying blackness of sleep and the next, she was awake, wide-eyed and alert.

  What had caused her to wake up at this unearthly hour? She looked at her watch and the tritium-coated dial told her it was 4:30 a.m.

  She unzipped her arctic sleeping bag and slipped out of it. It was cold outside. She shivered and thought of crawling back into bed, but her ever-alive instinct reminded her that she had woken for a specific purpose.

  What purpose?

  She wondered if she was overdoing this instinct business as she slipped into a massive white polo-necked sweater and stepped outside.

  The moon looked like the broken half of a silver bangle, painting the landscape with light dabs of white gleam and glow.

  She walked up to a nearby rocky ledge and sat on

  it, gazing spellbound across the valley at the indistinct silhouettes of mountain peaks.

  The stillness of the moment enveloped her and she controlled her breathing so that it would not shatter the fragile cloak of silence around her. Even her ever-chattering mind was muted as she seemed to float on the hushed wings of eternity.

  She shut her eyes, submitting to this awesome experience, her heightened awareness trying to register the sound of silence.

  Sound of silence! Her mind uncoiled and thoughts flooded her head.

  Sound of silence. Her father used to say, ‘When all sounds die out, one sound remains—the voice of God, the deep reverberating chant of the AUM, the primal sound of the cosmos, the echo of existence.’

  Then, her heart skipped a beat as the actual chanting of AUM wafted across to her from somewhere in the temple complex.

  She moved towards the sound. By the time she reached the outer wall of the temple, the chant had dissolved into a melodious bhajan. She knew it was Om even before she saw him.

  She paused in the doorway in a mixed emotion of excitement and confusion.

  Om was singing and swaying as if in a trance near Shiva’s statue.

  She turned to leave the place, afraid that she might disturb him.

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  Om stopped and said, ‘An incomplete painting is worse than an empty canvas!’

  She paused and came towards him. ‘You sing divinely,’

  she sat next to him. ‘You’d be a sensation at the Kalyug!’

  ‘Kalyug?’

  ‘A place where people sing and dance; Girish and I run it.’

  ‘And you want me to sing there?’

  Anjali’s eyes lit up as she thought about it. ‘If only you could! But for that you will have to come to our city.’

  Om pointed towards the statue and said, ‘If my Shiva wills it.’

  Anjali looked up at Shiva’s face and could not help exclaiming, ‘Oh, wow!’

  ‘Oh, wow?’ Om sounded surprised. ‘This is the first time that I’ve heard such a reaction to seeing Shiva.’

  ‘It’s our city lingo; our way of expressing joy. I said it for the second time today,’ said Anjali.

  ‘When was the first time?’

  ‘When I heard you sing just now.’

  Om smiled. ‘And if I came to your city and sang at your Kalyug,’ he asked teasingly, ‘how many “ohs” would you wow?’

  Anjali gaped at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. He joined in the laughter, and she reached out involuntarily to hold his hand.

  Their laughter ceased abruptly as they gazed at each other, as if caught in a spell.

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  Sarupa’s entry broke the spell. He glared at them, his eyes blazing.

  Anjali hurriedly released Om’s hand and ran out of the courtyard.