1.THROUGH THE NIGHT

1.THROUGH THE NIGHT       

I will tell you a story that started during the auspicious month of Kartika one thousand years ago in the South of India. But in reality this story is anadi. It has no beginning. It has no end. As to me, the narrator, I am only a keeper of this story. And as its keeper – from time to time i become the story itself. I, a tiny reflection of the infinite existence.

At early dawn servants were woken up by a fierce and menacing roar of an animal. Dense green forest started not far from the temple walls and though lots of wild animals found their abode in the forest, they never bothered the inhabitants of the ashram. After a short moment of dead silence a sharp cry was heard – a cry of a man. The priestess went out of her cell and told one of the servants who was standing in the yard to go out immediately and see what had happened. Maybe somebody was in trouble and needed help.

The middle aged servant sighed deeply, rolled his eyes up and then down and without any enthusiasm walked to the ashram gate, crossing the temple yard as slowly as he could. Apprehensively opening the gate he looked to the left and then to the right.

Outside the temple gate, a narrow earthen road first ran straight, thеn it turned to the right and after that it was lost out of sight. To his relief  the road looked empty. With a subdued sigh of both relief and fear the servant closed the gate behind him and started walking to the right. After a while the road made a sharp turn. Cautiously he passed this turn and then suddenly stopped as he almost bumped into a man. 

The young man was lying on the brownish-red road and probably he even did not realize that somebody had approached him. The servant again looked around and again saw nobody, so his attention returned to the man who was lying on the road .

First he noted that the man was barefoot; then he saw his broad and strong shoulders, then the smooth skin on his broad cheekbones. Somehow the servant managed to avoid looking at the man’s chest. The man was young – or better to say he was not a child any more but probably this transition from childhood to manhood happened not a long time ago. His dark body was covered by a yellow robe or to be more exact – covered by what remained of that robe. Its upper part that used to cover the man’s chest was torn into pieces. And it was no longer yellow – now it was crimson with fresh dripping blood.

Not taking his eyes from the lying man the bewildered servant muttered to himself:

  - A monk… a buddhist monk….

Once he  saw a man wearing such a robe. It was years ago, when he himself was just a young boy. That monk spent three nights in the temple of Kali. The servant – a little boy at that time - slept on the straw mat in the yard, not far from the temple and through his sleep he heard melodious sounds of a brass bell that were coming from the temple. That was the reason why he still remembered that monk – it was because of that bell. The bell produced sounds that  were gentle but full of power. He still remembered how its sounds floated through the motionless air and how they made him feel: light and happy and endlessly free.

Later when cleaning the temple the servant saw two new objects that were lying on the altar. One was a brass bell. Another looked unusual and really strange – it was also made of brass but the boy did not know what it was. 

The servant never learned that the object was called Vajra, a thunderbolt. That it was a force and power that nobody could resist. And that together, a Vajra and a bell sealed the union of two energies, male and female.

- This monk is, of course, a different monk – the servant thought. - Even though his robe looks the same... so many years hav passed.

The monk’s only possession - not counting his shredded  robe that was smeared with fresh blood - was a wooden black bowl for offerings. It was lying upside down in the grass, not far from the road. 

The monk was lying on his back as if looking at the sky, a narrow trail of blood was coming out of his mouth, his chest was all covered in blood. Then he slightly opened his eyes.

Not scared any more, the servant came closer, put down his stick – if indeed that was his weapon – and squatted. The monk slightly turned his head to the right and saw big brown worried eyes staring at him. The servant wanted to ask the monk what had happened but he saw how pallid the face of the monk was, even despite his dark skin – and instead he grabbed his stick, turned round and started running back to the monastery.

The   sun was rising fast and it already filled the air with the hot smell of herbs when several men returned with the gurney. The monk was lying in the same place, only the trail of blood on his chin had dried out and his eyes were closed. But he was breathing. He was still alive.

Priestess and both girls - Zaira and Savitri - were waiting in the temple yard when the men came back carrying the narrow gurney with the monk. As much as the priestess wanted this monk to never appear in her temple, still she could not abandon the wounded men and let him die in the forest. And then she knew that this choice – to let him stay in her ashram or not – this time was not hers.

The priestess stood in the temple yard looking dispassionately at the monk, noting how he had changed. As if she were looking back in time. Yes, he was the same and still he was very different. Sometimes you have such a feeling when you look at your son and instead you see in him your husband as he was many-many years ago. You realize that your son looks so much like his father - and still so different from him. You notice a different gesture of a hand, a different turn of the head, a different shade of a smile.

But the priestess did not have a husband: all her life and all her love were devoted to Kali. Looking at th monk she thought: 

- Time and space made a loop again... Can it be that he is the same man who had left the vajra and the bell on the temple altar? And later at some road fork he took a different turn and now he is leading a different life… as a different man. But still a monk and still here… again.

She also thought:

- Who can say who he really is today... but what havoc in our lives he may create again.

So she decided to keep a watchful eye on him – and allow him to stay in her ashram until he regained his strength. Or... or until he died.

At the far end of ashram there was a small building with just three rooms, they were still empty. The priestess ordered the servants to put the monk there. There he would be protected form the melting heat of the day and from buzzing flies. From the curious temple visitors, too.

Still somebody had to stay with the monk and look after him during the first few hours or maybe even during the first few days – how long he would be able to survive with such deep and numerous wounds was not clear.

- Zaira and Savitri – you will take care of him, – priestess frowned as she said that  and narrow lines wrinkled her forehead.

The temple was expecting the arrival of the raja and his court. She knew that everybody else was busy cleaning the ashram and cooking but the girls as devadasis were not actively involved in these activities. And then, who can take better care of him then Zaira and Savitri? –  she thought with a sad smile.

Men carefully moved the monk from the gurney onto the low bed that stood in the dark and hot cell. Then they left. Only girls stayed with the monk. His breath was slow and shallow; each breath seemed to give him lots of pain. The wounds on his chest were deep, as if sharp hooks were dragged with merciless force through his flesh. The day was hot and his forehead was dotted with sweat; his lips were parched; his breath was shallow and hardly audible. 

 

The girls prepared herbal infusion to clean his wounds. Boiled some herbal tea for him - after that they just sat on the floor by his side, wiping his forehead with a clean white cloth and carefully fanning him. That was all they could do.

When the sun was setting he opened his eyes and whispered: pani… pani… water… Zaira helped him to slightly raise his head and he slowly took several sips of tea from a small clay bowl that she put to his lips.

Soon he fell asleep and this time he looked calm. The girls left but they returned later several times to see if he needed anything. Then the darkness fell, and invisible crickets filled the cooling night air with thin and shrill sounds. Huge and round creamy colored moon rose above the ashram temple and hung there motionless as if glued to the deep blue sky.

The moon painted the yard with eerie bright light that made everything – the grass, trees, temple walls and temple spirals - look unreal, like an illusion from somebody’s dream. Through this night the monk had to make it on his own.

If he could.