He lives in his own island, but he carried portable bridges to contact whom he wanted. He folded them back with him to reinforce the secludedness of his island.
Earlier he used to protect his aloneness by flight. It was an amusing sight, his bulky mass in a quick run. But now his age has caught up with his body. So he uses the stratagem of fight, or rather, mock-fight. He rattles his iron-tipped sticks at the approach of newcomers or people he wants to keep off from.
They probably won't give him a private room, so, he picked up his own place, a tiny cubicle at the dead-end of a stair-case. That is his primeval cave when the elements trouble him; otherwise, the open terrace of the sky is his roof. His only mortal fear is that people who matter might put him up in a smaller place. So he takes his bridge with him and keeps contact with whom it is necessary. He works for his freedom, both physical and mental, by doing his bit of work every morning and evening at the kitchen store.
Generally he is happy hopping around with his sticks, rattling, singing under the sky, sitting quiet when he feels like it, and talking in short stretches with the select few.
But once wanderlust seized him. He collected holy waters from Ganga from Benares in the north and went in a most circuitous route, to pour it on the head of Rameshwar Shiva in deep south. Then he was quenched and returned to his far pavilion.
The big child is again happy in his vast mother's womb.
Swami Sampurnananda, 19 November 2003, Genre 273, No. 27.
No comments:
Post a Comment