The Apple-Cherry Tree

In an orchard of only apple trees there stood a lone cherry tree that gave 200 apples every year. As spring turned to fall with life still rejoicing, the boughs of the tree would be weighed down by this enormous quantity of the ripe red fruit.

The man who owned the orchard was an apple lover and he loved the cherry tree. He was happy with his life and he was happy with the apples.

Of all the apple trees in the orchard it was the cherry tree that gave the most delicious apples.

But one day he bit down on an apple and found it to be bitter. The sweetness had disappeared. His apples were the sweetest in all the world yet he could only taste bitterness. He became sad and depressed. His appetite was destroyed and the apples in his orchard which had never been allowed to go bad before started to rot with neglect.

And thus it was that one spring day he wandered over to the cherry tree in the time of its yield and found beneath it a maiden of beauty past compare. She had a hand kerchief spread out on her lap and was eating some small red fruit from it.

‘Who are you and what are you eating?’ the man asked.

She gazed upon him with eyes of blue and lips of red with a single strand of juice slipping down her chin and said.

‘My name is Yuki and these are cherries. Want to have one?’

The man accepted the cherry from the maiden and ate it after some apprehension. The apprehension though turned into delight as the sweetness that filled his mouth was different and more beautiful than the monotonous taste of the apples. He immediately came to the conclusion that cherries were better than apples.

‘I have never had cherries before. I can’t believe what I’ve been missing out on. There are unfortunately only apples in my orchard.’ He mumbled with his mouth full of cherries as the women had offered some to him again.

The woman smiled at him and said ‘I never liked apples’

They fell in love beneath that apple-cherry tree and the man took her as his wife. And from that day forth the cherry tree, as though suddenly aware of its name, started to yield cherries and not apples to the man. The apple trees followed suit as well and the orchard was resplendent with cherries.

The man now had an abundance of cherries and he and his wife ate them with joy.

But the question remains, like the apples will the cherries grow bitter to the man one day as well?

-Rohith

It was Dark

It was dark, they were sitting in a circle, on the floor. Someone took out a stack of paper cups and kept a cup in front of each of them, they held the cups with their hands so that the cool night breeze won’t lift the cups away. Some looked above to see the stars in all their clarity and grace before they started drinking. A bottle was opened, the glasses became laden with whiskey. They drank, one sip at a time, in silence.

It was dark, he couldn’t count, neither the number of people around him, the number of drinks he had, the number of smokes he took.

He ran his fingers over his cheeks, he felt only numbness.

He looked at the stars and they were stars no more. 

He heard someone vomit off the edge of the terrace

someone singing, drunk, in the distance,

and there was silence and there was sound;

of wind dragging empty paper cups along the cemented floor  

He tried to get up, but he couldn't keep himself straight, but he walked on in stumbles into the dark.

It was dark, he heard sobbing. He moved one fall at a time towards the sobs. It was a face he had seen in the dark, one of the circle, a face that he had seen in passing during times of light, a face he knew but did not know.

‘Hey’ he sat down beside the face, putting his hand over his shoulder   ‘What’s wrong? Drank too much?’               

                                                

‘No, no’ the face said, wiping his tears and trying in vain to control the sobs.

‘What’s the problem then?’ he asked again, softer now, in a whisper barely audible above the slow whistle of the wind.

‘It’s the loneliness. I’m alone and it is maddening’ said the face.

‘It is the worst, loneliness’ he said.

‘Nobody likes me. They talk to me, but it is just hollow words.  Every day I look at the walls of my room and they reverberate my solitude, I see it bouncing off the walls. Then the room gets hotter and hotter and all I want to do is… is to end it. To melt away in that furnace” said the face and he let out a wail, he got up and stumbled towards the edge and puked, and he cried.

He walked with the face to the edge, and when the face cried he said ‘No. Don’t end it brother. It is too precious to end’

‘What is left? What is left?   

 Other than the solitude                                                                     

this oneness in a multitude

What?                                                                                                                 

What makes it worthwhile?’ the face asked

‘Don’t you like a good laugh? A good song?                                              

The bright laziness of Saturday mornings?                                

The blackish green of woods in the dark?’ he asked                                  

‘Don’t you like the stars?’

They looked up, the stars were there, millions of glowworms drowning in a bluish black sea. They sighed in tandem.

‘You can live for that’ he said.

‘I guess you can’ said the face.

They didn't take their eyes off the sky, they looked at the stars with reverence and awe and they lost track of time. At some point they were carried away to sleep by the cool breeze.

The face woke him in the morning. They sat up and watched the sun rise and felt its warmth on their dew kissed skins.

‘Thank you’ the face whispered, and walked away.

He said nothing as he sat there watching the sun go up.

Then he went down to his room. He sat on his bed and looked at the walls. He saw himself reflected as a silhouette of his solitude in them. He felt the room getting hotter and hotter.

He got up, and tied a noose,                                                          

pulled a chair under it                                                      

He stood up on the chair                                                         

noose around his neck,

and he shook hands with death,

and it was dark.

AJ

The Silks of Juanjo

The tale was a staple of the inn. For the innkeepers it was a quotidian thing. They even take you out back to show the path that leads off into the woods from the inn- purportedly to the mythical village of Juanjo. I have never followed that path to its end. At that time I was on a different path and I had merely stopped at the inn for some rest and recuperation. The story of the village- told in all detail over some sushi and miso soup -fascinated me though. I have kept it in my mind all these years and now I am finally putting it down to paper. People who have already travelled through the inn may already know the story but for those who through the fickle nature of chance had to take the road to the left than to the right and have never arrived at the inn I relate this story.

There was a village called Juanjo that lay at the end of a path through the woods. The path was the sole road in and out of the village and the villagers never craved for another path. The village like most villages was filled with houses, roads, shops, wells, bedrooms, lamps, lanterns, dresses, food, water, air windows, wood, tables, chairs, glasses in fact everything that was necessary for civilized human life to inhabit that village. There were people too ofcourse. They inhabited and used all these appliance according to their desires. The village was quiet and well to do and more over famous but they had a secret buried deep in their hearts.

The grief that they had over their secret was muddled with their joy. The village of Juanjo was famous for just one commodity, the silk it exported. The merchants of Juanjo trudged through the narrow path through the woods to the outside world to sell the finest silk in all the lands. This silk was beautiful beyond comparison. It shone in the sunlight; its silver colour led many to believe that it was indeed thinly pressed silver sheets rather than actual silk. It was strong and weathered time. And its softness, once any one felt it even ever so slightly one was enraptured by its feel and would be loathe to let go of it. And for this reason the silk was very popular among the women of the provinces especially among the geishas. They draped it over them and men would be enraptured by the sight of these angels in robes who felt like heaven itself. Rich men brought this silk in abundance for their concubines and geishas were lavished with the silk by their patrons.

But what no one except those from Juanjo knew was that the silks came at a huge price.

Most of the men of the village of Juanjo were silk farmers. Every day they would trudge out to the borders and climb the forest mountain on the north of the village. They would climb up until they saw hanging above them and laced on all the tree trunks and the very path they walked on strands of silk that was their livelihood. The source of this silk had been discovered long ago to be silkworm of gigantic proportions that travelled through the forest lacing it slowly with the silk that it produced unendingly. It’s exact size and features were not known but if asked about it any man, woman or child of Juanjo would make vague gestures in the air stretching their arms apart as far as they could go in all directions to get one to understand the sense of this goliath. The reason why the silkworm’s appearance was vague was because the worm was a man eater. Most of the time it stayed within its cave on the very summit of the mountain,but at times it would be out wandering the forest. Large as it was no one ever saw it until it was right on top of them as both the silkworm and the forest appeared to be the one and the same. And when it found you your chances of getting down the mountain alive to eat a well cooked pork and onion soup for dinner was never very good.

The silkworm had been around for as long as they could remember. The old women of Juanjo told tales of how they lost their husbands to the beast when they were out collecting silk. For in the end every one of the farmers ended up being fodder for the silkworm. The silkworm though never came down from the mountain into the village. It only got so far before it encountered a farmer and having had its fill would march straight on back up to its cave. Thereby due to the diligent sacrifice of a few farmers, most of the people of Juanjo were saved from engorging the beast with the earthly havens of their immortal souls.

All this went on for a long time. Then they noticed an anomaly, for a month or so all the farmer had been coming home to dinner. Naturally this meant that the farmers were not getting eaten by the silkworm. They started to get nervous. The silkworm obviously needed food to survive and since it wasn’t eating any of the farmers how it was getting its daily nutrition was the subject of discussion. None of the farmers had seen the silkworm and they had been going further into the mountain throughout the month to collect silk as those at the periphery had been disappeared with the harvest. The idea that maybe the silkworm had died was put in the open by someone and everyone in the village grew afraid. Even though the silkworm had brought misfortune, it had been the source of their prosperity as well.

So a groupof farmers decided one day to set out in search of the silkworm. They wandered through the silk laden forest until they reached the cave in which the beast was said to reside. The whole mouth of the cave and everything around it was covered by silk of such exquisiteness that the farmers stopped there to admire it for a while. Then they lit their torches and went into the cave to seek the silkworm.

They found no trace of the silkworm but instead what they found was a treasure trove of silk. There was silk stuck to every face of the cave. And there was also a huge mound that was almost as long as the cave and almost as wide and high.

The farmers examined the silken mound and estimated that it would be enough to last them till the sun burned out. Rejoiced they walked out the cave and down the mountain.

Meanwhile people in the village where hoping that the farmers wouldn’t return as that would mean that the silkworm was still alive and seeing how it had abstained from food for over a month it would gladly seize upon the buffet that had wandered into its home. But when they saw that all the farmers were coming down the mountain unharmed they grew delirious with grief. Some even started to cry leaning on others.

But the news that they brought cheered up the villagers. They needn’t have worried. The silkworm was gone but the village would be safe. There would be no more fatalities and moreover there would be more than enough of the silk. Everyone rejoiced, well of course everyone except for one farmers wife who was waiting for her husband’s demise at the hands of the silkworm so that she could marry her secret lover. She cursed as others danced around the campfire that night, drinking and singing raucous songs.

Business went on as usual except for the fatalities. The silk in the forest itself was plenty and the merchants still carried their wares outside to be sold. And so a prosperous year passed with deaths only from cold, old age, jealousy, anger and the rest.

Until that is one fine day. The farmers were out collecting silk from the forest when they heard a commotion further above them. They ran up to the cave to see a giant beast come trudging out of it. For a second they thought the silkworm had returned but after a second or so they realized that whatever the thing was, it wasn’t the silkworm. This beast had large eyes, long protrusions on its head and a large mass on its back.

Screaming in terror they ran from the spot down to the village shouting out the arrival of the new beast.

Just as they reached the village, they heard a large flapping sound and a gust of strong wind whipped past them. Something had taken to the air from the summit of the mountain. A beast with enormous wings in proportion to its body was rising from the mountain. The wings were so large that they blotted out the sun and the village was plunged into an unwelcome night.

The people of the village gazed dumbfounded at the creature. Its wings glowed and sparkled as if there was a fire inside it. The patterns that adorned the wings bombarded the feeble minds of people below and paralyzed them in their intricate and delicate beauty. The people of the village were mesmerized.

The beast suddenly swooped down flapping its huge wings. Huge gusts of wind were created that ripped through Juanjo and raised everything off from the ground. Houses, beds, lanterns, books, towels, clothes, dogs, chickens, fences, chairs, tables, windows, doors, roofs, pillars, trees were all blown up. Many people also succumbed to this reversal of nature’s laws. They literally flew up in the air and landed down with such force that their souls were knocked out from their earthly abode. A larger number perished underneath the ruins of their own homes. The silks that had draped the forest flew up and traipsed its way through the village entangling people who were trying to run away and creating shrouds for those already dead. Huge mounds of sand rose from here and there entombing the village and making it a crypt.

The moth after wreaking all this destruction flew up and to the south, never to be seen again.

There weren’t many survivors from that tragedy. Those that survived ran away from the village swearing never to set foot on that accursed land.

And thus the silks of Juanjo came to an end and so did the village.

-Rohith

The Absolute

I have managed to escape the guards yet again in the labyrinthine passages and rooms that litter the palaces of the inner court. They have been looking for me since morning under the order of the great Kangxi Emperor. And when I am found I will have to appear before the Emperor and tell of the futilities of my work and the fact that I am no closer now than I was on the day I was brought into his audience and tasked with that monumental impossibility.

‘You could lie.’ Zhing Zhing told me when she came to warn me that the Emperor has asked the guards to bring me to him.

‘No. I can’t, for my order prohibits it. I have never lied in my life and I shall not start now for such a trivial thing as my life.’ I replied.

‘Your life is not trivial!’ Zhing Zhing spoke vehemently suddenly grabbing my arm. ‘Not to me. I need you. I implore you, please hide. I have taught you the recesses in the palaces. Go and stay in one of them. Not everyone knows of them, I have hidden there for years avoiding notice. Go and stay there. If not for you then for me. We could live together there. We can grow old together. Please…’

It was more her implorations than my instinct for survival that led me to this place and I shall wait here for her. In fact, I remember the very moment I realized the futility of my work I was prepared to go and confess to the Emperor with full knowledge that on hearing of my failure he would condemn me to death. There again Zhing Zhing dissuaded me. She told me that unless and until the Emperor summoned me I didn’t have to report anything to Emperor and she held on to me refusing to let me go for fear that I would leave her and commit some folly. Now when the Emperor has summoned me she again comes in front of me and begs me to save myself for her. I am straying from the path but even the monks spoke that the path shall divert for love if for nothing else.

I remember the first time a monk of the order visited my home town. His name was Balasa. I was merely 7 years old then, a son of a yak farmer in the mountains. My father gave him shelter for the night and after dinner he spoke to my father at great lengths of the monastery that lay hidden in the clouds and the monks of the order of which he was a humble member. I eavesdropped from behind the door catching occasional glimpses of the monk sitting on the floor and my father sitting on the chair with his side facing the roaring fire.

That night I dreamt of the monastery in the clouds. I dreamt of walking in there and somehow the world outside it disappeared for me. The place was serene and calm and everywhere I looked I saw the smiling face of the monk that had taken up abode in my house for the night. A light shone inside the monastery and I looked at my hands and saw that the light in fact was shining right through them. I had become incorporeal. I felt removed from all earthly concerns. This was something miraculous.

The next day as the monk was trudging along the path that led him away from our village I caught up to him and held his hand.

‘What is it boy?’ he asked me softly.

‘I want to come with you. Take me to the monastery.’ I said.

He smiled at me and stroked my hair.

’Six years from now if you still feel the same then you shall find the path to the monastery yourself. Now it is time for you to go and play with your friends. But if one day if you do get there remember that I will be waiting.’

He took a berry from inside his cassock and put it in my hand and closed it smiling.

Six years later when I told my father and mother that I wanted to be monk, they didn’t understand it. My father yelled at me and started lashing out at me with the leather belt he made from yak skin. My mother started crying and implored me to the best of her abilities not to leave her behind, that as their only son she wanted to see me here, married and with children looking after the yaks when my father became too old to do it. But that night I crept away taking with me nothing except the clothes on my back and a belief in the words of the monk who had told me that I would find the path to the monastery on my own.

The road was treacherous and the journey tiring. Many a day I had to go without food. The nights were merciless. I would take shelter behind some rocks and yet the cold winds would slice through it freezing me down to my very core and depriving me of sleep. But I wandered and wandered. I asked people I met in villages along the way of the monks and their monastery in the clouds. Some were able to help me and point me in the general direction. The mountains of the Himalayas are hard to climb. Beneath one of them, I was finally able to find a man who evidently procured necessities for the monastery. He took me up there in his yak drawn cart filled with cured meat, wood, vegetables, salt and other essentials. Finally rounding a bend in the road I was able to see for myself the monastery that had for so long haunted my dreams.

Cloaked in white and nestled inside a recess on the mountain the monastery radiated a sense of humbleness and calm. It was huge and was the abode to nearly 200 monks who all lived there fraternally and in blissful peace. There were very few women there. Not many women could undertake the hardships of the journey to the monastery. But those that made it were never turned down. I thanked the man who had taken me so far and went inside the monastery. It was dark and only sparsely lighted by the fires that burned on the torches along the walls. A number of cloaked monks were walking around, some were sitting on the floor deep in meditation and yet others were simply conversing.

‘So you made it.’

The voice made me turn around. It was Balasa. He had grown old, his hair had turned grey and there were wrinkles on his face but I recognized that smile. I went and knelt at his feet. He gently touched my shoulders and lifted me up and I looked again into that smiling face.

My education in the monastery began that day and I remember with a serene joy the time I spent there. Meditating, reading by the light of the fire, talking to the monks, repairing the monastery; life had become a peaceful river, the current undisturbed and constant. Then nearly 9 years later,came the day when I had to leave the monastery. All the monks where required to make a journey to where ever their souls urged them to go, to understand the world and to find their place in it. If in the end one found that one’s soul was still restless, then that meant that they belonged back at the monastery. Then they would return to spend the rest of their lives there in the embrace of a higher power.

When I was getting ready to leave, Balasa, who had by then aged a great deal called me over.

‘My son, I wish you a safe and smooth journey.May your soul find what it is looking for.’ He said to me hugging me close.

‘I think I will return here, for I feel this where I belong.’ I replied.

‘Do not walk the world with a clouded mind my son. Whether you belong here or in the outside world is not a decision for your head to make but rather one for your soul. The world is large and many things await there. All our decisions are but fleeting glares of the ice.’

‘But I am loathe to leave this place master.’

‘I too had to walk the path you are embarking on now. And it was during that time that I had the good fortune of meeting you my son. What would have happened if I had refused to take the journey or had gone out with a clouded mind? You will find the answer. Do not be prejudiced against anything my son. There are things in the world that are more powerful than even Nirvana. You have not yet known a woman’s love, it has dominion over this world and all other concerns bow to it.’

Master Balasa knew more than I did. Now, sitting here in this dark room, I realize that.

The moment I set forth from the monastery I knew where I was heading. Taking the advice of Master Balasa, with an unclouded mind, my soul showed me my destination. In the monastery I had come upon certain works by 12^th century Chinese philosopher Shin Jin Hi which deliberated upon definitions of the objects that surrounds us. Shin Jin Hi’s works were collected under the Qing Dynasty’s rule and stored in the libraries of the Forbidden City. I knew that I had to visit the Forbidden City and earn the trust of the Emperor. For only with his permission would I be able to foray into the inner court and to the library in order to examine the philosopher’s works.

Luckily the fame of the order was far reaching and even opened the doors of the palace for me. I had no trouble in obtaining permission to the inner court and to the intricate libraries where the works of countless masters are stored.

‘What do you search for in my library?’ the Emperor asked me on the day I met him.

‘I search for the truth your highness. For the true definition of uniqueness.’I replied

‘Is not everything here unique?’

‘Though you, my liege, have collected treasures from far and wide there is nothing unique here. For everything your majesty has at his disposal are merely relative and not the absolute. It has been said that the only absolute or unique thing in the universe is God. But the great philosopher Shin Jin Hi proposed otherwise.’

‘Do you believe in him monk?’

‘I do your majesty.’

‘Then in return for my permission to access my archives I ask of you monk to produce before me after the rising of 50 full moons something truly absolute.’

I berate myself here for having accepted the Emperor’s order but what could I have done. Blinded as I was by the writings of Shin Jin Hi who, I realized much too late, was just as blind as me. But the threads of fate are inconceivable and it is my path that has brought me here. At least I have Zhing Zhing.

My encounter with Zhing Zhing took place quite by chance. In my exploration of the library I often found a women between the shelves rooting through either one book or the other. I found this strange as not many women were allowed into the library especially into the sections where I was foraging. I tried to talk to her but whenever she caught sight of me she would start to walk away in to the labyrinthine shelves of books and I would lose her in that maze which evidently she knew better than I.

The librarian denied ever having let any women enter the library. He said that it was impossible. But upon my insistence that I had seen such a specter he instituted a search among the shelves for the presence of a woman but without result. I saw her many times afterwards, but the librarian after that failed search refused to believe me and told me I was probably hallucinating from all the dust and the stifling heat that sometimes built up inside the library by midday.

My curiosity was aroused nonetheless and I did not believe I was hallucinating. And even if I was I was sure that the image of a woman would have some meaning that would be necessary in my understanding of life. Thus it was that I asked around and I heard rumors of the hidden children.

The Emperor only had carnal relationships with the empress under the strict dictum of the astrologers who deemed the right time for procreation and the conception of progeny from the movement of the stars. But the Emperor being a man sometimes could not slake his lust with just the concubines in his harem. So it was often natural for the Emperor to disregard the dire predictions of the astronomers and visit the empress to spill his seed. The children born thus, not under the gaze of the right stars as it were, were said to bring forth great unrest and even the death of the Emperor himself.

The Emperor therefore often ordered such children to be killed as soon as they were born. But the empress with the help of some loyal guards would sometimes manage to sneak away her children to other parts of the palace grounds where secret rooms and passageways existed where the children would often be cared for though never allowed to leave their confines and attract the attention of the Emperor. Usually a newborn babe of the myriad of beggars that existed outside the city where procured and killed and presented as evidence to the Emperor so that his ill timed carnal excesses did not spell his doom.

Zhing Zhing was one among those numerous ill timed children. She had grown up not ever seeing her real father or mother. One night, a long time after I had come to know her and love her, she while clinging to me in bed and her hot tears spilling on to my chest told me how she was often abused and treated worse than a slave. Her mother had saved her from death but not given her life. She had hid in one of the many secret rooms that populated the inner palaces and had been left to defend for herself. She had to hide from everyone. And those who found her never led her in front of the Emperor in the fear of the empress and the chief of guard’s wrath, but would often debase her. She had been raped numerous times by the soldiers that patrolled the palaces at night. She had been beaten senseless and I found on her naked body scars of her unjust punishments. I wept for her as well as I held her close that night.

She had learned to write and read thanks to the kindly old librarian that had been in charge of the library, but with his eventual demise and the appointment of the new librarian she was denied her only pleasure in the world: reading. But she found ways to get into the library by other routes, in her 17 years of hiding she had become an adept at all the hidden roads that crisscrossed the palace. That was how she disappeared every time I came to talk to her inside the library.

My perseverance payed off though as one day I finally managed to catch her and talk to her. At first she was frightened; scared that I would hurt her. But slowly she came to trust me. She laughed and her laugh was something new to me. I never realized that a woman’s laugh could ever make me so happy, so full of an unidentifiable feeling. I wanted to make her laugh more and more. I wanted to be the reason for her smiles. She showed me around inner court through her secret passageways that littered it. One day she held my hand as we walked through the garden under the full moon. And that night I kissed a woman for the very first time. I was falling in love.

And I could tell she was as well. She always came to find me. She always brought me something or the other, sometimes soup from the kitchen she had managed to steal or roses or poems she had written. I being a monk of very limited means could give nothing to her except my company. And she seemed to be fine with that. I suppose I was the first person after the old librarian whom she had met that had treated her with respect and like a fellow human being.

One night on dark moonless night, I felt her creeping into bed with me and we celebrated our love for each other. I experienced something that was missing all my life. When she is with me I desire nothing else. I now understand what Master Balasa told me on the day I left the monastery. I had found a new path but I had to lose another to so and I was fine with it.

It was during this time that I realized that my work was an exercise in futility. It was a doomed venture. I was never going to be able to complete the task the Emperor had given me. I had failed.

I was drawn in by Shin Jin Hi who in his books said that the absence of a unique thing in the universe stemmed from our nature of relating one thing to another. For example when we think of a tree we think of bark, trunk, leaves, roots, fruits. They are all related to the tree and the converse also is true. Also when we hear leaves we think of not just trees but small plants, tea, taste, smell, it is a chain. Neither the tree nor its parts are absolute either as it forms part of a different chain all connected. All things in the world are connected and they go around and around in an infinite circle. Explaining one thing entails the use of another and explaining that will make use of something else and so on and so forth until the circle is completed and the first thing whose definition was sought is reached. This is the inherent problem of language and our observation. We find meaning in things where there is no meaning. We try to explain things with other things that have no explanation.

I meant to be rid of this thing and create a language through which each and everything can be uniquely identified. For me the concept not only involved phonetic and symbolic independence but independence of thought as well. I thought of creating a language in which no single sound is ever used twice. A language of written symbols where there is no fixed alphabet. What I envisioned is a language where if I say apple then the words ‘a’, 'p', 'l' and 'e’ will be used never again in the entire language. Thus the word apple should only evoke a singular image of something and I shall not try to explain it by saying it is red or sweet or anything. An image must be invoked with no connection that was the objective of my language. And by thus describing things I shall make them truly absolute and unique. I will be able to make a myriad of gods.

I knew what I was getting into as I stepped up to this great endeavor but what I didn’t realize is the mistakes or flaws in my reasoning. Only now am I able to see them all.

The flaws in my theory eroded it from the foundation up. Yes it was, in theory, possible to create a language where no single sound was ever repeated and each object had a unique identity which could not be explained by any other words or concepts within the language but what I forgot to take into consideration is the loss of uniqueness with the spread of the language. As I tell one person or as I teach one person about my language it loses its uniqueness. That person by repeating the same words I have uttered has not interpreted a unique thing but rather something that I have envisioned, thus making it obsolete. The only way to get over this problem is that the language should have no definite form, in the sense that no two persons can ever use the same word to describe one single thing. This would preserve the uniqueness of the object but the use of language as a medium of communication gets erased forever. And without that what use is a language. I have destroyed the very core of the concept of language.

And furthermore how can I present to the Emperor anything unique. For as soon as I teach him my language and he uses it then it’s over. He is repeating what I have brought into existence and it is no longer unique anymore. And I cannot lie to him or cheat him. My conscience forbids it. I would rather be dead.

And thus it is that I am hiding here, but not only because of Zhing Zhing’s appeals but also because of my desire. Yes, that is the truth. I can lie to myself no longer. I desire to spend the rest of my life with Zhing Zhing and I pray to God right now, the really absolute unnamable God, please let me live my life in anonymity with Zhing Zhing.

I hear footsteps approaching. I hope it is Zhing Zhing and I blow out the candles.

-Rohith

If we had a washing machine...

The family of Chakkathotil, according to them, was called so because of the numerous varieties of jackfruit tress that populated their grounds. The aroma of jackfruit, chakka as it was called in the lingua franca, hung constant in the air even when it was not jackfruit season. Another story about the origin of the family name talks about an unlucky patriarch who found himself at the exact point where the trajectory taken by a ripe chakka detaching itself from one of the higher branches of a tree met the ground. The second story was more popular among the peasants of the area.

The family grounds also had a lot of other kind of trees: papaya, mango, lemon, pomegranate, and slender coconut trees that seemed to touch the sky. The house, built at the very center of the grounds, was like a pulsating organ, teeming with life inside its ancient limestone walls and red roof tiles green with moss. No one, not even the oldest members of the family, knew when it was built. It grew slow and unrelenting like a creeper, room by room, after every marriage or kitchen quarrel walls taken for granted were torn down and new rooms were built. The big labyrinthine corridors that branched to new hall ways and rooms back to kitchens and corridors and back to hall ways, bannisters and dark niches, were too complex to be memorized by anyone. It was common for them to get lost in the house and then end up meeting relatives they had not met in years.

In a house so ancient it is only natural that the most trivial things took on relic like importance. Because everything, bronze ladles, necklaces in sharapoli design, even small hooks on the wall used to hang clothes were handed down from oblivion to great grandmothers, to grandmothers, to mothers. But the most precious things were the ones with a story to tell. Like the teak divan with an exquisitely caved lions head at one end which was always used by the oldest patriarch of the family  or the golden spittoon which was used by the kings and princes, who visited the family often before democracy, to have spitting competitions. These stories every child, spirit and mite that lived in the house knew, for they were repeated so many times, told and retold by old women that these lore like the smell of jackfruits were always present in the air. If a stranger were to step into the house and take a breath then he would at once know about the majestic past of the family, he would not doubt it, he would know it like the air he breathed.

 For the children there, the house and the grounds around it was heaven. They played games climbed trees, shouted and quarreled all day till dusk when their mothers came to drag them into the house by their ears. But that day they came back very early, this surprised their mothers, who were astounded by what their children told them next ‘There is a big house being built on the other side of our east wall. It is big’. They didn’t believe it at first, but then the men who went to supervise the peasants near the east wall told them the same thing when they came home for tea in the evening

.

They tried hard not to be bothered by it, but they were, realizing which they tried even harder to hide their uneasiness. Even then, all over the house questions were asked in hushed tones accompanied by a clandestine stoop of the neck.

 ‘Is it really bigger than our house?’

 ‘I heard they were building five separate kitchens’

 ‘Who are the people building it?’ The new house was being built twice, one across the east wall and other in the collective consciousness of the Chakkathotil family and this second house, built in their minds and whispers, was already more magnificent than what the architects of the first house had in their blueprints.

One day there was talk of another house being built on top of the first one, a second floor. This was unheard of, a disturbing novelty to the family who till now had never felt the need to extend their home in the vertical direction. For them there was always enough land around to extend to, to build on.  The masons of the family were summoned immediately and were asked about the possibility of extending the ancient house skyward. The masons shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, the old house would never be able to hold that much weight, they explained.

‘Ah, no need, we have enough space’

‘Our house has been like this for centuries, the newly rich with no history can build whatever hideous things they want ’

 ‘We respect our culture’

‘Two stories? I don’t see the need really’ said the family.

In the following days, old furniture was treated with more care, grandmothers told the kids previously unheard of stories about the family grandeur and all around extra caution was taken to do things in the old and right ways and not to succumb to petty novelties. But curiosity is an uncontrollable feeling, it knows no master nor does it submit to any restriction. The curiosity caged inside the mind of the family found ways to manifest itself in seemingly random choices of the family members. Everything they did pulled them closer to the eastern wall. Children now played there more often, women inadvertently developed a liking for the flowers that grew near the eastern wall, and old men who usually suffered from the lethargy of old age became enthusiastic about overlooking peasants but only those who worked near the east side

This went on for many months, two more stories were added to the house which now could be seen from anywhere in the Chakkathotil property from where it was often observed with indifferent intent. ‘They are moving furniture into the house, TVs and lots of other things’. When a boy came running from the east, shouting this repeatedly, they couldn’t hold it in any longer, something inside their hearts bust like a dam in an earthquake. Every one ran out from the house towards the eastern wall to watch the spectacle and, perhaps for the first time since it was built, the Chakkathotil house was completely empty.

Men were carrying big brown boxed in to the house in an antlike fashion, with synchronized and measured steps.

 ‘What is in that box?’

‘It is a TV grandpa’

‘What are they going to do with three washing machines?!’

‘Pah! Who needs bath tubs? Don’t buckets and shower heads work fine?’

‘Radio? What for? Don’t they subscribe to a newspapers?’

Time passed. It became evening. The family was still peering over the wall like children who didn’t get tickets for a football game. Sunlight became sparse and the crowd soon dwindled with it, making their way back to the house at a slow pace, still mumbling rhetoric under their breath.

The Chakkathotil family were proud of their traditions but they were no obscurantists. Even in their invariable existence they were aware of the technological advances happening in the world outside. But they never felt the need to resort to these advances, to overcome their cultural inertia. There were always enough women around to wash clothes, more than enough children to keep other kids engaged, and a constant supply of fresh groceries, so the idea of buying a washing machine, a TV or a refrigerator didn’t cross anyone’s mind, not until now

Things once seen cannot be unseen and when they bury seeds of wanting deep within simple minds then it is only a matter of time before these seeds sprout, grow and eventually bloom with sentences that start with dangerous phrases like:

‘It would be nice if we had…’

‘This would be much easier if we had…’

And the simple ‘I want….’

The kids soon wanted to see cartoons as they became bored of their games. Old men thought it would be nice if they could listen to the news four times a day rather than reading it just once in the morning. The adolescents announced that they couldn’t live anymore without internet. Slowly things trickled in. Televisions, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, radios, they felt lighter now, they felt brave, they saw that buying these things weren’t as cataclysmic as they initially thought, the sun still rose in the east and the universe around them pulsated with the same familiar tones, so they went and bought more, bath tubs, water heaters, air conditioners, microwave ovens, computers, mobile phones, now they felt invincible, they bought even more, plastic water bottles, self-cleaning toilets, tread mills, books that read out loud, robot parrots, artificial milk powder, digital clocks, digital clocks that looked like antique pendulum clocks, and more, and more.

Sometime was spend in using the new luxuries with care, plastic covers weren’t removed and dials were turned with care. There was awe all around at the ease with which things were now being done and soon the plastic coverings gave way and the buttons were pressed with carelessness stemming from habit. With time the TVs, the radios and the automata became integral parts of the great family, inseparable but sticking out in contrast like zombie limb grafts. The family did feel that something was lost, yes they did in fleeting moments, nanoseconds after their whims were pounded into switches and before the complex electronics hummed into life, they felt emptiness, they felt lost, but then the lights would blink and come on, the machines would beep and they would forget all about it. Even then the past, with its incorruptible memory chased them. They bumped into old furniture in the dark and pulled out timeworn jewelry while they rummaged for their earphones in their drawers.

The kids, who now spend their time alternating between recliners, couches and lounge chairs carefully arranged in front of their television, found something shiny lodged between the cushions they were sprawled on them. It was the golden spittoon. They looked at it with alien curiosity and then ran to find their grandmother.  The old lady took it in her shivering hands and told her grandchildren the story that she had heard and breathed so many times when she was their age. But the story also had changed, its tone was no longer the eloquence of past grandeur but was the melancholy of an unknown loss. When she was finished with the story, she said ‘In those days things were different, there were no machines. Everything we did back then we did with care. Your generation will not understand’. The children went back to the television, perhaps a bit disillusioned. Their grandmother watched them go and thought about the shallowness of the new generation. But in her single minded devotion to such  faux nostalgia she had forgotten some things that happened many years ago, the day she peered over the wall to see the new house, the joy she felt when she saw a TV for the first time, how relaxed she felt when she immersed herself for the first time in a bath tub and a cold night when she snuggled close to her husband and whispered into his ear the word ‘Dear, It would make our life much easier if we had a washing machine’. She had forgotten all of that.

 AJ