8
GOODBYE
[As Krishna, I’d a subtle connection with Radha. Radha and I were one soul. We were soul mates. However, just like any other lovers, we weren’t together. We didn’t marry. She thought of me every second and I about her but I as Krishna had duties to fulfill. I never married Radha and wasn’t able to meet her after I left Gokul. Though love isn’t something being married or being with each other, love is being connected from the soul. That’s the connection what Radha and I shared.]
Padhma:
I LOVE HIM, more than I do to anyone else – NO – this will be wrong. I do the same love to my mother and that’s why even though fishing in water channel or entering the wood is prohibited and give the death penalty, I risk it every day.
Love is also prohibited for a Sunya.
They say love is a milestone of misdeeds but I say love is the life that breathes inside our heart.
I think love is God of all emotion.
If there is no love there is nothing.
There is nothing purer than love.
Do you think there is purer emotion than the love of a mother for her son and daughter?
Do you think there is any wrong in feeling irresistible need to be with the one you love from bottom of your heart?
How can I stop myself loving my own brothers, sisters?
Can anyone stop himself loving his father who made him?
Can anyone stop himself loving his mother who carried him in her womb and raised him with her blood and milk?
Shouldn’t I feel love for my friends?
Shouldn’t I love the moment when I'm with Samrat?
Shouldn’t one love his wife for sharing her life with him?
I think love is a god.
Without this god, life isn't worth living.
I love because all these things exist and I exist because I love all these things. Without love, there isn’t my very existence. I love. I do love and I will love until my last breath.
They say never ever love anyone, not even your family. Love makes you weak. You have just one duty - duty towards the creator - the only living God. You should only love the god, no one else. Love has unseen bondages that take you into the abyss of failure that crucial moment when the life of your people depends on your hard work beyond the wall. God has created you to work and make his world alive.
They say beware of love.
I believe work is important and one must take part in making this beautiful world more beautiful
What the use of this world if you can't love anyone.
I see ember of love burning in every eye. They say it makes you reckless. Yes, it makes. When my mother doesn't see me for a long time she is reckless - is it wrong?
I don't think it is.
They say just do the work and never wish for anything. Doing what the creator offers you is your duty
And you have to just act as his wish. They say you should take only the god has allowed you, you should wish only for that God has offered you because it is the life and it flows in its own way. You shouldn't interpret it.
Fuck.
All this is crap.
If I don't aim for things how can I achieve anything in life?
I believe I should keep my feet solidly on the ground. I know the man has no wings only birds can possess them but use of my eyes if they can't dream of having wings and flying over the wall?
When I was young my mother has taken my care and now it’s my turn to take care of her. Death of my father has turned her mad. She is troubled and I can’t leave her alone.
That was the day when the train came back after two months and I was waiting for my father to come back with it.
The weight of waiting was like a stone of dual my weight carried over my head. I felt excited when the messenger ran in the street with news of train’s arrival.
He is coming home. I was unable to think anything else.
With other people, my mother and I went to the wasteland and waited there. We aren’t allowed to go station to receive our family members. It’s against law.
We were in the scorching semi-desert where the huts end. The area is called semi-desert as it is wasteland but tangled with trees, not trees but undergrowth trees and Kush grass. When we see passengers coming back, more than two hundred I didn’t care about anything but just wanted to see my father.
The woman next to us, waiting for her family looked at my mother, “Dixa, what do you think?”
“Your husband will be okay.” My mother said, “He is coming.”
“I don’t think.” She said with tears.
“Don’t think like that,” my mother scolded her, “it’s a bad omen to think bad things.”
That woman nodded.
But my mother was wrong bad thinking brings nothing bad and good thinking brings nothing good.
When my mother asked Uncle Bhadra Where is he the answer was as usual, “accident happens.”
My mother ran to see dead bodies. The train had brought seven dead bodies but my father wasn’t among them.
“Where is his body?” I heard my mother asking. I was crying.
“They took him to the cell.” Bhadra uncle said, “I’ve warned Shankar, he shouldn’t steal books.”
For a moment, my mother looked at me. I saw tears stinging in her eyes. She clenched her jaw so hard her teeth grind together. But she isn’t sobbing.
I couldn’t understand why she isn’t crying. My father was in the cell means officially declared as a dead man. She wrapped her hands to me and took me back at my hut.
After days I understood she doesn’t believe what Bhadra uncle had said. She believed my father is alive.
“He’s coming.” She would always say.
“Ma, he is dead.” I tried to explain to her but I failed.
“He’s not just a man who breaks a promise.” She said, digging her nails into her palms so hard that it brought blood.
People around my hut told me what had happened to her. She had lost her sense with the news. I understood she thinks my father is alive. I tried to explain to her that my father is dead. Everyone tried to explain to her that my father is dead but she agreed with none, “he will come with so many books that our people need.” Her answer panicked me.
My father could read and write and he was a good thief who dares to steal the book on the parchment. He believed in truth and justice. He would often say – this is Kaliyuga and survival isn’t certain in this age.
And the same happened to him. Once he went beyond the wall but never came back. The creator for whom my father was laboring in construction has given us nothing.
My mother was a sensible and woman till he heard the words – ACCIDENT HAPPENS when we asked people about my father.
Perhaps they were the last words my mother could hear in her all sense. She was a hardworking woman but after the incident, she couldn’t do anything but sit silently in corner of the hut. I haven’t seen happiness in her eyes since a long passage.
In starting I was terrified. People around my hut started to call her MAD. But I knew she wasn’t mad. She was in the dark world of sadness and one day she will come back – I still believe this.
Though I know I can’t be with Samrat, he is the person with whom I can be myself. I can feel comfortable and I feel I’m again with my father. My father was like him or maybe he is like my father. Both have many similarities.
I inherit the courage of my father. The last memory of his courage and his will to do something for the people in the wall always stay in my mind.
That day my father had come after a long passage of time I rushed and opened the hut door as I heard knocks on the door. As usual, my father scooped me in hand and came inside, shutting the door behind.
He sat on the cot; I was still in his lap.
“I’m home,” he said to no one in particular but I knew it was for my mother.
She answered him with a wave and my father nodded. I understood why my mother didn’t speak to him. My father had come after the theft.
“What did you steal this time?” she asked after a long minute.
“I think I’ve got enough,” he said, “Teachers need these books.” My father took out three books from his bag.
My mother eyed the books, frown and mouthed to him, “one day they are going to find you and that day they raid our hut,” she scolded my father, “they will take everything we have.”
“You know Dixa,” he said, “we have discussed this many times and my answer is the same – I can’t do anything for my people but I can steal and they need books.”
My father was brave and I was too. I didn’t lose courage – I’m the daughter of my father. In many ways, I am like him. I first time jumped in the channel when I was ten – we had no food – I and my mother were starving for the last two days and I had no other way. My father would say – courage has no limit and the same thing I believe when I jumped in the channel.
Starvation isn’t something strange in the wall - The people who can’t work - The old people with no children or the people with too many to feed. I’d seen people starving and felt pain for them but seeing my mother starving in front of my eyes wasn’t something I’d expected. I wasn’t ready for it.
Survival isn’t certain in Kaliyuga – this phrase caught me when I was eleven and repairing the roof of my hut. I accidentally fell and got a serious injury on my right hand. The pain in my hand wasn’t something that bothered me but the consequence of it was something that I worried for.
The starvation.
Two days of starvation.
Hunger.
Hunger is the same like the Creator – we can’t fight back with any of them.
If I can’t get fish or something to eat the hunger will eat me along with my mother. I thought and went to the channel
That was the day of my encounter with Samrat. I jumped inside the water but my hand didn’t support me. I couldn’t push water with both hands and soon was drowning in the water. I was trying hard to get the channel wall but all was in vain.
I didn’t fear death but my mother was waiting for me. If I wouldn’t make out the channel what she will do without me?
She would starve to death.
Suddenly I heard a loud voice of someone jumping in the water. I don’t expect anyone to help me. I had no one who can jump in the water for me – I’d my mother she would jump in water a hundred times for me but if she is in her sense.
I looked back at the sound and I saw him, a boy with coal black hair and a beautiful face. I knew him. I’d seen him before. I’d seen him on my father’s funeral. He was with his father; he was peering at the fire from behind his father’s back. I knew him but I didn’t know his name.
I was seeing his face the second time – both time his face had the fear.
He was swimming to me.
I was drowning.
“help,” I scream. “Please help.”
He yelled back but I couldn’t hear it clearly. Water had filled my ears, it was blocking the sound.
Come, swim fast. I said in my mind. I’m dying.
Then I felt weightless – my head was in the water and I was going down – no I was going with water and down both at the same time.
I moved my hand, kicked my leg to go up but I couldn’t.
I tried to scream but water filled my mouth.
I pushed my epiglottis and blocked the water to enter inside my throat. I was unable to breathe – the airway is blocked. I had some air in my lungs but I was about to run out of it. The water is in my mouth. It was in my head. It was burning my eyes.
Then two hands clutched me and push me upward. I kicked my legs and tried to go up. I kept swinging my legs till I was on the water surface.
“Get a hold on the wall.” He pushed me towards the wall and supported me to climb it.
Once I was on the wall I leaned and offer him my hand. He came out of the water.
“Are you idiot?” he asked, we were still on the channel wall.
“What?” I replied, coughing.
“Do you want to die?” his wet hair was clung to his forehead.
“No.”
“Then why did you jump in the water?” he demanded.
We got down the wall and I told him about me – everything about me. He remembered the funeral of my father.
To this day, I can never forget him. Not because I owe him something. This is something different- something that I haven’t felt before.
Perhaps I was in love with him before I know what love is. I was eleven and sometimes at night, I thought one day we will fly like birds and leave the wall. In the dream, sometimes I found the way to fly like the rare birds come flying over the wall. In the dream I saw myself flying over the wall with Samrat, our wings weren’t white or feathered like birds, and they were green – as green as the Mimic bird’s wings. Wings were shining like the silk of traders, which shuddered in the wind and bent when we moved – in a circle, in line, and then the shape of my imagination.
In the dream I saw what is beyond the wall – there were only greenery and children of my age were playing in the soft grass with their parents. My father was among them. He looked at the sky, saw me, his face shone and he stretched his hand towards me.
But as I grew younger, I got they were just dreams.-Just my imagination. People can’t fly. No one can fly except the birds and there is nothing good beyond the wall. The children playing there and my father waiting for me were just my imagination. There is nothing but desert and ruined cities there.
After that, we used to go channel. I jump in the wall and throw fish out – he collects them.
Once we went fishing and as we climb on the channel wall we saw a boy – he was drowning in the water. We jumped in the water and rescued him.
In conversation after the rescue, we knew his name is Atul and his father is a drunkard who often forgets to go home at night – he spends nights with his friend, sleeping at wherever he loses his consciousness.
The boy was starving, so he had risked jumping into the water.
In a week he became our best friend and as I got a partner who was capable to rescue me if I’m drowning Samrat told me a secret.
“I’m learning how to read?” he said on morning and I couldn’t stop myself joining with him.
Atul too joined his teacher. We started to learn how to read and how to write, secretly.
Though Atul and I spend much time fishing, he spends much time at the teacher’s house.
Today, after months he has come to the channel, not for fishing but to say our goodbye.
I’m worried about him. He is going beyond the wall – the place which used to take whom I love.
I LOVE HIM – like I was loving my father and what if he won’t come back – like my father – what if he won’t make it back?
He has never told me to run off – he has never told me he loves me - but what difference does it make? He has never told he is my friend and still he is my friend and the same way I know he loves but he can’t say me and I don’t need him to say me.
I love him and he loves me - that is enough for me.
I’m not worried about his love. Contrary I’m worried about his hatred – his hatred towards people beyond the wall – what if he will show that hatred there?
He left for beyond the wall, leaving me alone and worried. He didn’t look back even when a sob escaped from my mouth, I know why – he didn’t look back as he’d no courage to see me crying. He can’t see not only me but anyone crying. Her heart is soft as the heroes have in books.
The more I think about him, the ache I feel in my throat and gets so bad it feels like I'm gagging, and I let the tears come but it's not huge relief as it should be. Tears should relive me but today they didn’t. They would always relieve me like dropping something heavy after you've been carrying it for a long time.
I start crying but I can't stop, it happens with me every time when I remember my father alone on my side of the cot or I hear my mother chanting my father’s name in her sleep.
But today tears are more intense. They are not going and I don’t want Atul to see me crying. He feels sorry everytime he sees me crying.
I start to walk to the channel and all the way channel I keep mashing my palm into my eyes every few seconds, smearing away the tears just so I can see where I'm going. I climb the wall and jump into the water.
I’m safe now. Atul can’t see my tears separate from the water.
***
To be continue.....
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