The Warrior

She wasn't much into mythology. But mythology did offer her the vista into a world of infinite probabilities. Now, Hindu mythology, like any other mythologies in any civilisation of the world, is rich in fascinatingly impossible tales of Gods, and their interventions in preserving the lowly form of human life down here on the Earth. A particularly interesting one involves the reincarnation (so called avataar) of the Lord Vishnu. Lord Vishnu is believed to be responsible for preserving human virtues on earth; the kind of virtue that keeps the human kind from destroying one another; the kind in which the evil needs to be punished and the hero needs to be rewarded. So whenever there were times, in human history and beyond, when mankind had been involved in self-annihilation, Vishnu incarnated himself in many forms (e.g. fish, tortoise, boar, man-lion, dwarf, man with a bow, king, shepherd, learned man *) to preserve humanity and restore peace. It is said that there had been nine such occassions. And legend has it that the prevailing madness of the modern world would have to be resolved/ended by the final incarnation of Vishnu in the form of a warrior on a white horse who will end Time. The scriptures called this warrior the tenth and final avataar, 'kalki'.

It is this warrior on a white horse that had always been a curiosity with Mrs B. She knew from her rudimentary understanding of physics that Time might collapse onto itself if the expanding universe collapsed..but gazing at the stars in the night she couldn't fathom how that would be. How can such a huge space simply collapse on to itself ? how would it look like? Like a piece of dough wrapped about itself ? It seemed impossible and absurd. Well, equations might indicate towrads an end like that..but there has to be something called gut feeling. She had a dogged notion that if something wasn't right she could feel it. Whatever that meant..No. she decided that space wouldn't collapse.. couldn't collapse.

But she wanted Time to stop one day.That was interesting.

She rather liked the idea of someone just turning off all the watches around the world and then, Time would simply end. But the concept of a warrior ending time was not what she felt comfortable thinking about. After all it wasn't a war with Time. Although if you asked her when she was running late for...anything..she would nod her head furiously, "Of course its war! what else??" But barring those moments, she didn't like the idea of war against time. Why! Kalki had to be a scientist with a fantastic sense of humour. Quite like a mixture of the looks of Santa Clause, the brains of Einstien and the curiosity of Alice. After all, an inteligent, funny man could do anything he wished in a wonderland! The possibilities were endless.

She didn't know wether she believed in God to save the world or anything like that. It was simply an interesting possibility and she loved to dwell on such impossibilities. After all, whoever had thought that a submarine would actually exist!

This had been all on her mind for a long time. But one afternon, she was sitting in a cafeteria, with her usual cup of coffee. She had just looked at the clock on the wall. It read twenty two minutes to three. She still could idle away for some time. Lazily she stared out and saw an old man walking towards the Cafeteria. Probably homeless. He was shabily dressed and had a huge dirty bag on his back. He was looking through the garbage bins collecting ..whatever roadside garbage bins had to offer. He looked quite busy and curious....

She saw the man approach the cafeteria, open the door, smile at everyone, pull up an empty chair, climb up to the clock and then ...he just stopped it!! People in the nearby tables started asking questions and the manager came out of his office to find out what the commotion was all about. To all of which he kept smiling and said ," Well, Time has stopped and the world has changed. Its no longer the Earth". Irritated the manager started calling the police, but he didn't know what to dial! Confused he asked the old man what was going on. To this he said, in that same funny voice," Well, as I said Time has stopped and whatever was true on earth is no longer true and all the rules have changed". He skipped from one spot to another, holding up one object after the other saying, that it wasn't what it was,"That is not a clock and this is not a coffee cup and that is not a chair and this is not a computer.." Pointing to a girl in the corner he said, " that's not a girl and that's not her hand and holding hands is not even a gesture of love..the Rules have changed".

Mrs B stood stiff in all this commotion. Very carefully, so as not to attract any attention she looked outside to see if there was any sign of the kind of madness she was in, being reflected ouside. All she saw was the usual stream of cars passing by. Nothing seemed out of place. "They haven't noticed that Time has stopped" said the old man standing real close to her. "They will notice soon though", he winked. Someone asked, " what about the Sun, the Moon, laws of physics and biology and society and...".. He smiled,"What are you talking of ? They are not there any more. Everything is wrong now. Whatever you know and whatever you have been taught and whatever you have said till this point in Time is invalid now !!" A young man started laughing. "Good he said..so all my grades are going to be A's now!" and some others joined him in the mirth. The old man laughed "Yes its all A's. But then A's are not A's anymore. Letters have changed". The student was not to be disheartened. He quipped "Then its all D's. D's would mean very good!". The old man laughed out loud and shrill. Merriment rang in every tone of his voice,"But there is no order now. No alphabet. No language. No defined laws. No defined behaviour. No definitions hold anymore!! Everything has been flung into space and we can neither do anything about it nor can we predict the future!". There was a confused silence in the cafeteria. The man seemed to enjoy this confusion. Mrs B wanted to slwoly get out of this madness.As if sensing what was on her mind , the old man smiled and spoke up, "But, we can do two things. One, we can wait till everything falls back in some order and then we will have to redifine things and start off once again. Or, we could calculate the future!". He winked and waited for a response.When there was none coming, he started off again, this time a little less sure about himself, but more curious, " there is a probability of each thing falling back and in a particular order. There are billions of such combinations and trillions of permutations. If we do the math..multiply the probabilities..no, wait we have to first assign probabilities..but how do we do it..." and he started scruffling around for some paper in a busy curious way in a roadside dustbin and on the pavement!!

His laugh rang in Mrs B's ears..She could only think ' Time has stopped. Time has stopped. The warrior is here.Time hasssss stopppeddd.Yeaaaaaaaaahhh!!!

She looked at the watch.It was ten minutes past three. Damm it! she was late again.

* The nine avataars (incarnations) of the Lord Vishnu on Earth are as follows : Matsya (fish), Kurma (tortoise), Varaha (boar), Narasimha (man-lion), Vamana (dwarf), Parasurama (man with the bow), Ram chandra (king), Krishna (the shepherd ), Sankyamuni (learned man)

Photograph by Atreyee Bhattacharya

The Gardener

She knew him for almost twenty years now. Through most of her childhood, all of her adolesence and youth he had been there. Silent, un-ubiquitous but, always present with that quiet and shy smile. There was never a time that anybody in the household would notice his presence. But his absences, which were few and far apart, never went unnoticed. Be it watering the plants in the huge garden that was the pride and joy of that grey house or the sudden errand to the local market for the extra grocery that needed to be bought for the unannounced guest that Father was bringing home to lunch, or for accompanying her and Sister back from school-he was the Man of the household. It seemed incredible to her now that an entire household would function smoothly, simply based on the faith that he was around whenever there arose any need. Yet.....she never seemed to have noticed him.Why! most of the time when she had looked for him, she didn't know where to look. But whenever she did look for him, somehow, from some place he would appear with that shy smile on his slightly tilted head and ask ' Khuj chile? (looking for me?)

Yes she had looked for him for reasons she had never looked for anyone else: To tie up her shoelaces when Mother had been busy with something else, pluck the best Dahlia in the garden to impress her school teacher...for getting her bicycle to the repair shop on his way home. Every morning he would be there at the house; in his brown (khaki? black?) pants and a light shirt..sometimes there would be brownish coloured sweater on him in the few, cold days of December.. totting his rusted, old cycle.On one handle hung the almost colourless jute bag and on other, the straw hat that he would wear the whole day as he....as he went about whatever he did all day. Sometimes when she looked out from her study towards the sprawling garden beneath, she would find him bent over a flowering bed holding a water sprinkler; however from where she looked, she could only see the straw-hat-covered-head and the veined hand holding a water hose. At times he would look up, smile and go back to watering the flower beds.

Once she had heard Grandmother talk about her own childood days during the last days of the British rule in India; Mother often complained to him about the banal day to day problems; Father would sometimes discuss with him about work-place politics; Grandfather spoke to him about the best time of the year to sow the new flowering seeds and about the state of affairs in villages under the present government (infact it appeared to her that Grandfather was relying on him to reveal the true state of affairs as opposed to the papers and his peers!). Later she had a vague feeling that without being told much he knew a lot about her house and her family.. much more than she, or any other members of the family, did.

But there was a time when this man's life had fallen apart. Irrevocably.

He had two daughters, the smaller one being his favourite. She died at five..because of negligence on part of the doctor in diagnosing a critical case of Meningitis. His wife went into shock and till date hasn't recovered. She still remembered that day when he came back after the funeral. It was a bright, sunny, June morning.That was only time she had seen him cry. Never before and never after. And that was the day she realized what his presence and his quiet composure had mean't to the sanity of the household. Later he married off the elder daughter at an young age. It was probably his guilt stricken conscience... She remembered attending that wedding. She wished she hadn't.

Many years later, when the magic wand of forgetfulness had erased all painfull memories away, when things had settled in just like there was never a day like that.. One warm september evening she had biked fast from her hostel along that red dusty road towards that grey house ... famished and in a hurry to get home, only to find it all dark; Mother was probably out taking an evening stroll as was Grandfather, Father wasn't back yet and Grandmother was out for her evening rounds of bridge. She was upset and tears welled up in her eyes thinking that there was no one to open the door only because she had come home unannounced. She debated on wether to go back and risk the stale canteen food, for it might still be a good part of an hour before anyone showed up. But she decided to wait. Irritatedly, as she started to sit down on the porch to wait for some one to come back..she heard a familiar and shy voice asking " khuj chile?"

It was Nepal kaka, the man employed to manage just the garden.