Mahesh Paudyal
It was Buddha Purnima. Like every year in the past, Parakram freed himself from all the clumsy chores of the day, and went towards the Buddha Temple nearby, to enjoy the panorama of the dusk. More than religious faith, he was enchanted by the tranquil beauty that nonchalantly spilled over the temple premises. The golden temple, tantalizing odor of the flowers around it, the push and pull of the visitors, and the paradisiacal pond in front of the temple! Ah, the pond had marble slabs to flank its sides, and the marble, struck by the beams of the full moon, reflected the rider of the night in thousand fragments, and the fragments resonated in multiple waves in the pond tickled by the lazy evening wind. In fact, that night was the moon’s night.
Underwater moon: Mona Lisa! When the intermittent gusty wind attempted to rob her off the attires Dhushashanwise, she would break into thousand Draupadis and get dissolved into the waves. The cruel wind, fed up of trying the Laxman Rekha of marble, struck its sides and wailed out strains of derision. In that floating throne embellished by lotuses in their full blossoms, the moon looked like a perfect queen, around whom the mistrals sang tireless eulogies. The liminal imaginary surface that divided day from night had disappeared there, as though all visions had blurred; as though the sky had become the earth; as though the earth had become the sky!
Those who came to worship cleaned themselves in the pond before entering the temple. The tranquility it displayed often shook the mentalities of the onlookers: how could this nation, with so much of peace everywhere, endure though a decade-long bloody insurgency? They often thought, ‘Was this the same nation where innocent people were drilled to death with an auger, or a father was beheaded with an axe, and the head was rolled down a hill for a son to come, pick the skull, and let out heart-rending cries! They hardly believed that this was the nation where, those in the funeral procession were killed on the river bank, and thrown into the burning pyre! This was the same nation, where one was first asked to make a ditch, and once he was done, he was forced into it, and buried from above. They could hardly explain how such an adobe of peace had become a battleground that staged the most heinous carmagnole of blood.
A lazy wind hummed its own melody. Dissolving into it was Ani Chhoing Dolma’s number, and from the sides, one could hear the classical melody: Om Mana Peme Hoom! It seemed as though this place was Lumbini, and inside, Maya Devi was in labor pain to beget yet another Buddha. In fact, whoever took birth in such a tranquil hour would but be an incarnation of the Buddha!
And these were the reasons why crazy Parakram never missed this night. Every year, he would be there, and this time was his fifth. Like every year, he went round the temple once, and imagined, ‘Wish, Buddha would incarnate again.’ He thought on: ‘And if that happens, may the Little Buddha be content with Nepal, and never get exiled to foreign nations to the north, and in the Far East.’
For a while, he sat on the marble fringe, deeply contemplating. ‘How much do we know about our own Lumbini? To teach us about our domestic philosophy of Buddhism, foreign monks come to us from China, Tibet, Cambodia, Japan, Thailand and many other nations. With heads shaved bald, bodies clad in saffron and beads on their neck, they teach us lessons of peace. We have no time for them, for, we have thousands of chores to attend to: attend offices, haunt courts, plan for demonstrations, manage tyres, and start a new ‘revolution’ all the time. We are content with our song, ‘Buddhale shanti lyayeko desha’ — a nation of peace blessed by the Buddha! In fact, we have exported one Buddha, and if ever a new one takes birth, let him stay at home!’
Parakram stood on the fringe of the pond, and observed. The underwater moon was stable as ever: merry, and austere. Parakram thought, ‘Beauty is not a patent of Switzerland! It too is not the private property of the snow-covered mountains. It doesn’t exclusively belong to the brides; nor is it the half-naked body of Miss Beauties, upon which, millions of dollars are staked in a night. Beauty is the silent language of the joyous minds; it’s an exchange of love between man and nature.’
At one end of the pond, steps had been built for devotees to descend to the water surface. They went down the steps, touched the cool water, and cleaned themselves. A few of them took drops in their cupped palms, drank them in ritualistic fashion, and considered themselves cleaned. Some wetted their chests with the water, and felt cool.
But Parakram was struck by the same spectacle he had been witnessing for the past five years, near those steps. A middle-aged woman, with all her unkempt tresses flowing madly in the wind sat there, and looked ceaselessly into the pond. She was clad in tattered antiques, reduced to a thin network of threads. The limbs were shrunken as ever, and the heels cracked at innumerable places into deep, black gashes. The skin along the ankles was tanned to coal blackness.
She was there, still, still, unconcerned with what the world around said or thought. She had fixed her eyes onto the moon underneath the pond. Children, playing around, threw scalps of groundnut upon her, and a few others hit her with dry cakes of cow-dung. But she sat still, as though she had no time to ache!
At times, her dry lips opened and displayed a faint smile that appears on her dejected face with a brief life, as brief as that of a water bubble, or like the life of a remote dream making a flash in the present memory. When chilly gush of wind battered, she made movements drawing in her scattered clothes and covered her naked palms and toes, and returned to her meditation, upon the serene moon, under the pond.
Parakram has been watching this spectacle for the past five years. He knows not how long the locals of the area have watched the show. She is always seen sitting on the same spot—equally pathetic in the same tattered clothes, indifferent to the world around.
In the first year, Parakram thought, the woman was mad. The second year, many a question tickled his mind. Yet, he could conjure no energy to ask. The third year passed away bequeathing more questions. In the fourth year too, the woman sat in the chosen spot in the same way. This time, Parakram drew himself nearer and decided to watch the woman with better closeness. However, he held back and maintained a decent distance lest the woman should find his approach annoying. He swallowed all the questions that thronged his throat, and returned.
His sympathies were, however, badly drawn by the woman this time. ‘Perhaps, she sat all through the sluggish winter night. How biting was the freezing temperature to her?’ he thought, as he slipped into his warm bed. He could not manage even a nap! He was sure, the woman harbored some deep pain, and there was no way he could know unless he asked. He cursed his manliness that could not conjure the minimum guts to ask her. Poor woman, a daughter to Mother Nepal, a Nepali, after all! He decided not to miss the chance next time.
He tossed left and right all the night and woke up without an hour’s sleep. He woke up at wee hours, and moved towards the temple. But the woman was not there.
“Brother, where did the woman sitting there, go?” he asked a monk.
“Who? Mamata?” said the monk, and laughed away nonchalantly. “Who can account for the mad one?”
“I have seen her many a time, here.”
“Yes. She comes here very Buddha Purnima day. It has been eight years.”
Parakram wanted to fish more details from the monk, but the latter rushed away. He too went homeward; he would have to go to school soon. He was happy that he knew the woman’s name ‘Mamata’—mother’s love!
The time of the year in between came and touched Parakram with all its paradoxes, and his memory got fully anchored to the most immediate realties. Mamata was out of his memory lane for all those months, only to return with the return of the same fateful day: Buddha Poornima, again!
And the day was there. With it came Aani Chhoing’s songs. Lectures were organized at schools, and once again Lumbini came into the news. The speakers said, “A superhuman was King Suddhodhan, and his wife Maya Devi was an ideal woman.” Aarohan Gurukul staged the play Maya Devika Sapana by Abhi Subedi again, wherein the author had cried seeing the deformed image of the Buddha in the fragments of a shattered glass.
The sun set, and the dusk rushed in. The moon appeared gay in the eastern horizon. Parakram set out towards the temple, all alone. That evening, he was not interested in the display of any other beauty. He went straight to the spot where Mamata sat, and stood. Mamata was there—equally ghastly, deformed to the limits, clothes tattered as ever, tresses as messy as a maze, lips trembling on their own accord, and eyes fixed on the serene moon, under water. Those eyes displayed an unflinching trust, an unprecedented perseverance.
Parakram sat on a marble slab, a little further. From somewhere in the distance—far away—a sweet ditty of the flute came floating in the air. And near around, the classical matra ‘Om Mana Pame Hoom’ was flowing as elegantly as ever.
As the night thickened, the pond grew desolate. The main entrance of the temple was closed with a gritting sound. The few people who languished, had a darshan of their god from the back door and went away. Within a matter of a few minutes, the place grew still like a churchyard, as all the lamps went out and stillness ruled the landscape.
Parakram looked left and right; there was none to spy his advances. Best of all, there was no one from the school he worked for, and that was the guarantee that whispers and rumors would not infect the school. He was at peace.
Mamata was there, still meditating, like a monk. Parakram took courage and came nearer. She was absorbed in her own work, communicating to the moon under the pond. She didn’t care who came near, and who was inspecting her.
“Didi!” said Parakram, perplexed by fear. A gush of wind picked up his voice and swept it away into the woods. Mamata didn’t hear.
“Didi!” he repeated, this time coming nearer than before. Mamata raised her chin and paid him a blank look. Her eyes displayed annoyance. She was cross, as her concentration had been tried.
Prarakram was repelled. Guilt besieged his mind. Mamata returned to her meditation.
For a while, Parakram was engaged in dilemma: should he ask or leave her at peace! If he returned home without asking, his conscience would revolt and try him again, and all his idealism and doctrines of humanitarianism and empathy would fall flat.
He emboldened himself and reiterated with his heart in his hand, “Didi. Why do you….”
“Shut up!” shouted the woman in an enraged voice. She turned towards Parakram, displaying fire in her eyes. A finger was held vertically across her two lips, and she was admonishing Parakram not to talk. In this fashion, he looked like an insane, out and out!
“Do not speak a word. He will be deterred. Look, look! There he is, picking up the moon. He will come with it now. Lo, there he comes. See!”
There was nothing for Parakram to understand. The annoyance in her face was presently glimmering as happiness that spilled all over her countenance, bedecked by a mirthful smile. She was laughing, as a joyous screaming escaped her lips.
“Who’se coming, Didi? I see nobody around.”
“Don’t talk a word, please. He will be terrified. He had come during the day too, but seeing too many people around, he darted back. Who else? My child; my own child. My son!”
And with that, needs for more questions and answers receded. Parakram went home. A monk told him on the way that eight years ago, when Mamata had gone into the pond leaving her one year old son on the fringe, the boy had dived into the pond to ‘pick up Uncle Moon’ and had not returned since. The monk further informed that Mamata came to the pond every Buddha Purnima day, and waited for her son to return to her with his prize: the underwater moon.
Mamata was still there, waiting. Parakram went homeward. On the way, the only question that poked his mind was this: “Who was the astrologer that named the woman ‘Mamata’?
