Krishnaji - A Short Story

“I will make dinner early today and I want you all to finish your dinner by 7:00 PM”, my mother announced tersely.  She was looking forward to attending the reading of the sacred book of Ramayana and storytelling by Krishnaji, a Guru visiting my town.  Krishnaji will be in town for the next several weeks.  I already knew the routine.  Mother would attend the story telling sessions that go late into the evening.  Hurrying home before her five children went to bed, she would be anxious to share the words of wisdom that the eloquent Guru had told the gathering.  The Guru was waft in weaving the stories of Gods, demi Gods, and ways of life into an entertaining rendition that captivates the faithful devotee as well as the casual observer.

I accompanied my mother on a few occasions.  I was impressed with the fluency of Krishnaji in Tamil and English.  He would in one continuous swoop quote the Bible, Bagavad Gita (the holy scripture of a Hindu) and a parable of life and weave that into the story of the life of Rama that formed the context of his rendition. 

His given name was Krishna.  But his followers would call him Krishnaji, adding the “ji” at the end as a sign of respect and reverence and an acknowledgement of his exalted soul.  Krishnaji was in his early thirties, but he looked much older than his age.  May be it was the way he dressed, a draping of a single sheet of white cotton sheet, called dothi, around his waist, a smaller piece of white cloth, more like a towel, across his bare chest made the rest of his clothing.  He had a long beard.  His long hair was rolled into a bulb that was held together with a rubber band.  As what an ascetic should wear, he had the white sacred ash smeared across his forehead and over his chest and hands.  He would close his eyes often, as if in deep trance, or as if he was in communication with God.  His face and body radiated serenity.  He had a retinue of disciples, hanging to his every word and the deference and obsequiousness of his followers could be seen from a distance.

No wonder my mother was taken by Krishnaji.  She is easily taken by anyone who could quote the scriptures or has a word of wisdom and it was no surprise that by the second week she was so enamored by Krishnaji, that it became the only topic of conversation at the dinner table and the evening hours.  In the beginning, I would silently suffer my mother repeating Krishnaji’s lessons on ways of life.  Over time I realized my mother was starting to feel that my ways of life as a 16 year old were not in line with Krishnaji’s various pronouncements.  My silence soon led to mild demurs and then to loud vocal protests and open squabbles with my mother.  I would soon start criticizing Krishnaji on things he would say about his pronouncement that a man has to marry within his caste.  I was a progressive, believing in the oneness of human beings, and with little tolerance for divisions across caste, religion, and the myriad other clans and sub-clans that Indians seem to divide themselves into.

Krishnaji formed a large legion of followers in my town.  He would visit my town several times in an year and the crowds grew bigger with each such visit.  On one of those visits, a young woman, half his age and of a lower cast, approached Krishnaji and asked if she could join his retinue and achieve religious salvation through service to him.  Krishnaji hardly even raised his eye from the scripture he was reading and asked one of his main devotees to handle the matter.  Soon enough, the damsel was part of Krishnaji’s retinue.

One early morning, Krishnaji opened his eyes after a long period of meditation and caught sight of the damsel returning to his ashram after a bath in a nearby river.  The wet sari was clinging to her skin, like an onion skin to a wet surface, and the contours of her shapely body were well amplified.  She almost looked naked.  Krishnaji couldn’t pull away from the allure of the roundness of her supple breasts, her narrow waist and her shapely buttocks, that were clearly visible in the early light of the dawn.  The sight of the attractive woman stirred something deep within Krishnaji, as he had never experienced before.  He felt a pang of shock jolting through his loins.  From that day onwards, Krishnaji would open his eyes from his meditation when the damsel would come back from her bath in the river.  It wasn’t long before Krishnaji married the damsel.

Word reached my town that Krishnaji married someone of lower caste by falling in love with a woman, as opposed to an arranged marriage, the worst way a man can bring shame to his family.  Within a few months of his marriage, Krishnaji made his way back to my town to profess his lessons of life.  The crowd this time was much thinner.  And my mother pretended as if she didn’t know Krishnaji was in town.

God's Own Country

On my way back from my recent visit to Hyderabad, I travelled via my home town Trivandrum, a city nestled at the southern tip of India between the Arabian Sea to the West and the Ponmudi Mountain to the East, the trailing end of the mountain ranges of the Western Ghat.  As the plane made its approach to the airport, I looked out the window and was stuck by the lush greenery, almost like a green carpet, that capped the ground.  The absence of sky scraper office buildings and multi story apartment buildings, that dot the sky lines of the other burgeoning metropolis in India like Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore, are an instant give away that Trivandrum and the State of Kerala is yet to arrive as a participant in the economic boom that is engulfing the rest of India.

It was late May and the monsoon season was just setting in.  I was greeted by a torrent of rain, the early rains of a month long season of non-stop rain,  that is so essential to the myriads of daily essentials, power generation through the many water powered electricity generating stations, the agrarian economy that still forms the backbone of this state.  The rainy season, while annoying due to the attendant traffic hurdles it creates, is one of the most beautiful seasons in Kerala. 

Trivandrum, which is situated eight degrees north of the Equator, is as tropical as it can get.  The temperature hovers in the thirties (degress centigrade) throughout the year, with occasionally crossing into the forties in peak summer.  The sun rises at 6:00 AM and sets at 6:00 PM.  There are only two seasons, hot and hotter.

The rainy season marks the end of the oppressive four month long summer that stretches from early February through late May.  The air was thick from the steam that emanates from the parched ground as the first rains hit the ground and the smell that emanates from the ground as the early droplets cool the ground feels more like an aroma to the familiar nostrils.  The taxi carried me through the winding streets and alleys, which unfortunately still forms the main thoroughfare between the airport and the other population centers of the city.  The roads were full of pot holes and there were puddles of water filling those holes.  As the rains intensity, it is going to wash off more of the asphalt and concrete and the holes will only get bigger.  In spite of the rain, the roads were filled with people unconcerned about the traffic or the dirty water that could drench them when a speeding automobile eventually fails to navigate around a pothole. I was filled with nostalgia of my childhood; of the years when, Raju, my brother, and I would come home from school fully drenched with wet note books and text books in hand and our mother screaming at us for not taking an umbrella with us.

The rain continued non-stop into the evening hours.  As I sat by the window listening to the sound of the rain, I could hear in the distance from someone’s radio, a maudlin movie song, an evergreen melody from yester years, that tells the story of a forlorn love or a broken heart. The sound of rain drops that fall on the tin awnings that decorate every house, or the sprawling plantain leaves of the banana plants and the yam leaves that seem to be everywhere, at first blush sounds like a cacophony of sound.  But you listen closely and you get the feeling that there is a rhythmic beat to the rain falling.  You could almost pick up a five beat cycle, or an eight beat cycle that an Indian is so familiar with in their music.  It is as if nature is erupting in a musical ecstasy to celebrate the arrival of the varied plant and insect life that is going to spring once the rain stops.

The admen for the State have coined the phrase that Kerala is “God’s Own Country” and it greets you everywhere in billboards as you drive around.  When I drove through the city, I felt a sense of sadness that my favorite town has not yet joined the ranks of the modern world, but after reflecting on it in the confines of my parents home, may be this is indeed God’s own country and He wants this place to be bucolic and left pristine.