Chapter 41
"It is always the same fire."
The way back to the world proved longer than the journey out of it. Astika had thought that the return would feel shorter, as return journeys always do, but he and Ugrashravas walked together, sometimes speaking, sometimes carrying silence, for days, weeks, months, and the great mountains showed no sign of softening into hills. He often wondered if they would ever find their way back down to the plains, if they would ever set their eyes on another human being again. Ugrashravas assured him that they would, but each day spent traversing the narrow path that clung to the mountainside above the roaring river—a path that often disappeared for days, forcing them to crawl over scree-fields and pick their way around boulders—lessened Astika’s faith. Often he longed to turn around, to retrace their steps back into the high lonely valleys where the river was little more than a stream rushing over pearl-white and coal-black stones, to find Vyasa’s cave again.
Astika could not recall precisely how long they had spent there, nor what food they had eaten, nor how they had kept the cold out of their bones. Yet he was certain that they had never wanted for sustenance or warmth. In his memory it seemed that they had received all they needed from Vyasa himself: his presence, his voice, his words. Those had been food and fire to them, light and safety. He could have remained there, in that barren windswept land between the soaring mountainsides, in the cave of the poet, and been content.
One day, however, Ugrashravas had announced that it was time for them to depart Vyasa’s cave.
“We must return to the world below,” he’d said. “You came with me because you had questions, Astika. Has Vyasa answered your questions?”
Astika, shaken by the idea of departure, had taken a moment to gather his thoughts before he could reply.
“Yes and no. He has not answered them. Rather, he has opened them. He has taken my questions and returned them to me as gifts, as guides. I see now that dharma isn’t something you can know for certain, once and for all. It must be relearned every moment, every day.”
“Then that is as it should be,” said Ugrashravas.
The bard had paused then, seeming deep in thought.
The two of them were sitting on a large flat-topped boulder beside the cold stream.
“Gurudev has revealed something to me,” Ugrashravas said at last. “He has told me that this could be my last birth. I have fulfilled all that I was born to do, it seems. Or almost all. One thing remains for me. I must meet someone in the city of Kashi and give him something. Then I will be free.”
Ugrashravas stroked his matted beard.
“This person does not live there now,” he went on. “He will not live there for… many years. If I am to meet him I will have to die and be born again many times, and during those many lives I may forget about this last thing. So Gurudev has offered to allow me to go there now, in this body.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Astika.
Ugrashravas sighed.
“What I mean is,” he said, “you and I must part ways now. I am going somewhere you won’t be able to follow.”
“I don’t want that,” said Astika at once. “I want to follow you.”
“But I myself do not know where I am going,” said Ugrashravas. “I mean not to come back. How will you return?”
“I do not know,” said Astika. “But I will go with you, with Vyasa’s leave.”
“Yes,” Ugrashravas whispered. “We must ask Gurudev.”
After long thought, Vyasa had given his blessing.
“If you follow my disciple,” he had told Astika on the eve of their departure, “you will not return to the world you knew. You will not see your guru again.”
Astika had been confident in his response: “Gurudev sent me here to you, and now you will send me to another place. I think he would be pleased.”
Now, however, Astika wished he had remained with Vyasa, or found some way to return to Shaunaka. Ugrashravas, who had been such excellent company on the journey up into the land of snows, became quieter and more withdrawn with each passing day. The once-loquacious suta now spoke rarely and never at length. He did not tell stories, and he answered Astika’s questions with a shrug or a shake of his head. Their long game of conversation seemed to be over, and Astika missed it sorely. He could hardly believe that this reserved, almost sullen man who walked ahead of him through the shadows of the endless river valley was the same one who had sat with him through the long night telling the story of the Pandava brothers so well that Time itself paused to listen.
One day the valley narrowed to a steep-walled cleft between ramparts of living rock. The air was misty and close, as if the vapor that rose from the river in the morning could not get out of that place. A low ceiling of white fog hung just above the heads of the two travelers as they picked their way along the valley’s floor, beside the river which was now a silty torrent. The sound of the water’s voice, caught between the close mountain walls, drowned out every other sound. It was useless to speak. Even to cry out. Astika thought of Yudhisthira walking across a vast barren land under a lightless sky, a mongrel dog his only companion. He thought of golden Mount Meru at the fulcrum of the world, and of the heavens above and the hells below. Did such places really exist? As the cold mists thickened around him he became more and more uncertain. Even this world, the stones beneath his feet and the chill on his skin, seemed utterly unreal. A fleeting dream. A ripple on infinite waters.
With a sudden jolt of fear Astika realized that he could no longer see Ugrashravas. The mist had surrounded him. It was so dense that he could hardly discern his own hand held out before him. The sound of the river, the everpresent roar and rush of water over stones, was gone. Total silence enveloped him. He could not even hear his own breathing. He stopped. In this impenetrable fog there was no telling where his next step might fall.
“Ugrashravas!”
He shouted, but his voice made no sound. Nothing could break the deep, all-pervading silence.
He tried to call out again. Wait! Ugrashravas! No sound. He could not open his mouth. He realized that he had been calling out in his mind. Now even his thoughts were obscured, covered by an inner mist. It was no longer possible to discern where his body ended and the fog began.
With a desperate effort he summoned the image of Vyasa to his mind. The sage’s dark wise ancient face, his eyes burning with lifetimes of insight. He imagined the cave, the warmth of a smouldering fire.
A hand caught hold of his hand. He had a body again, a body with hands that could hold and be held. With his waking eyes he saw Ugrashravas’ wild hair and hawk-beak nose.
“Come, follow me,” said the suta. “We cannot remain here.”
They made camp in a cedar forest. Together they gathered wood and built a small fire. Astika sat close to the flames, eager for their warmth. Above the black bodies of the trees the sky was cloudless and resplendent with stars.
“This feels familiar,” said Astika. “The same as when you told me Vyasa’s story.”
“Vyasa’s story?” Ugrashravas asked.
Astika stared at him, unable to believe his ears.
“Ah yes,” said Ugrashravas. “Forgive me, my boy. My mind was elsewhere. Now I am here, with you.”
Astika looked from the suta’s craggy face to the dancing flames and back again.
“This seems like the same fire,” he said.
“It is the same fire,” said Ugrashravas. “It is always the same fire. There is only one Agni. He appears and disappears, but he is ever the same. The transformer. The all-eater.”
“The fire of time,” said Astika.
“That, as well.”
Ugrashravas smiled, displaying his crooked teeth.
“Would you tell me another story?” asked Astika. “A story about the fire?”
“I could,” said Ugrashravas. “But perhaps you would not like it.”
“Tell,” said Astika. “I miss your storytelling.”
Ugrashravas smiled again, this time more ruefully.
“Do you know how the fire first came into existence?”
Astika admitted that he did not.
“When the Grandfather Shaper was alone, before he set about creating all moving and unmoving things, he felt the desire for a companion. He created Agni from his mouth, from his speech, and because Agni emerged from the Shaper’s mouth his nature was a devouring one. Since nothing yet existed besides the Grandfather, Agni turned upon his creator to devour him. Grandfather Shaper felt fear for the first time and the skin of his brow excreted a milky substance. Taking this in his hands he made it an offering into Agni, and the fire accepted it. Hence, the first act was one of offering. A sacrifice. Since that moment sacrifice has been the support of Creation.”
“Is it true,” said Astika, “that all things depend on sacrifice?”
“It is,” the suta replied. “The manifold objects of the world sacrifice themselves into your five senses, and thus you perceive them. The actions of your body and mind are sacrificed into the fire of time. The Earth sacrifices her soil to the plow and the seed sacrifices itself to become the plant, the plant sacrifices itself to become food. The burnt offerings become smoke, the aroma pleases the gods, and the sky makes a sacrifice of rain back to the Earth. When these bodies of ours die their material will return to the five elements from which they were made. The One Reality sacrifices its perfection to become the many, the many sacrifice their individuality to return to the One. Nothing occurs without sacrifice. Nothing is accomplished without sacrifice. That is one reason why my master has said, ‘Always remember death.’”
The old suta fell quiet and stared into the fire. Astika wondered what it was his companion saw in the flames.
Somewhere in the forest an owl sang out. She hooted once, twice, then returned to silence. To Astika the call sounded like an omen, but of what he could not guess.
“I will tell you a story now, one you won’t hear from any teacher,” said Ugrashravas. “You won’t hear it spoken in any scripture. Long ago the rulers of the Earth were wise people. Their minds were absorbed in the bliss of the One and so when they acted it was in truth the divine who acted, using their hands and their words. They did not attach importance to themselves or to their actions. Resting in the thought that I am not the doer, they acted without craving for results, and so the Earth and all her children enjoyed thousands of years of harmony and abundance. They were rajarishis. Gradually, however, pride began to creep into their minds. They saw how well they ruled, how happily their people lived, how the animals and trees and rivers thrived, and began to think themselves great. They thought, We are spiritual kings. We always act without attachment. We do the will of God. And so on. Little by little pride found a way to catch hold of them. They began to perform sacrifices not for the good of all but to display their own piety and devotion. With great ostentation they built gilded temples and universities, and they began to name these places after themselves. Greed thrived within them. Their sacrifices grew larger and larger and more and more expensive, degenerating into ways to flaunt their wealth and power.
“At a gathering place where three rivers joined the rulers gathered to speak together. The reason for the gathering was, so they said, to bathe in the holy confluence, but the true reason was for them to show off their sovereignty and assess each other, to find out who was truly greatest among them. They sat together dressed in the costliest fabrics and jewels, fanned by yak-tail fans, enjoying the most delectable foodstuffs.
“‘I have just completed an ashwamedha,’ said one potentate, putting on a casual air.
“‘One ashwamedha?’ said another, incredulous. ‘My friend I have just finished the fifth of five ashwamedhas in as many years. One ashwamedha is… well, does it really bear mentioning?’
“‘Five is equivalent to one,’ boasted another. ‘Which is next to none. Speak when you have ten horse sacrifices to your name. Then we’ll have something to talk about.’
“‘The horse sacrifice is really nothing special,’ said the emperor of the Sunset Lands. ‘Even now, ten thousand brahmanas are reciting hymns at my bequest. They began twelve years ago, and they will continue without cease for a further twelve. And each month they sacrifice, at my command, one elephant, ten horses, and one hundred goats.’
“So they went on, each raja striving to outdo the others in the grandiosity and pomposity of his sacrifices. They boasted of how many hundreds of elephants, camels, goats and other creatures they had offered to the gods. Some claimed to have sacrificed tigers, lions, bears, rhinoceroses, even human beings. One king had sacrificed his own children, another his wives, another had offered his own hands and feet. Then a quiet voice spoke up: ‘My lords, what is the purpose of such sacrifices?’
“The rulers of the Earth laughed. What an idiotic question! Sacrifices, they explained, were pleasing to the gods. The guaranteed enjoyment in this life and rich rewards in the hereafter. Only when they had explained everything thoroughly did they actually wonder who had spoken. He was a stranger to them. An uninvited guest. No one recognized him. He was a slender fellow, with a lean face and bony limbs, dressed in a dusty black cloth and nothing else. His hair was long and his eyes had a burning, hungry look.
“‘I see,’ said the stranger. ‘Thank you for your explanation. Now I understand the necessity of these sacrifices.’
“‘That is good,’ said the monarchs. ‘Now, kindly tell us your name, and your family’s name. What lands do you rule? Where is your kingdom?’
“‘My name is of no importance,’ said the stranger. ‘You will not have heard of it, or of the lands I rule. All the same, great ones, you have inspired me. I too will make a sacrifice. A sacrifice the likes of which no one has yet imagined. It will take a long time, tens of thousands of years, to complete my great work. I will begin by sacrificing the sense of harmony in the hearts of the people. Once that is done the rest of my sacrifice will proceed nicely. I will sacrifice the order of society, the love of the family, the brotherhood and sisterhood that binds people together. That done, it will be an easy thing to sacrifice the Earth herself. I will sacrifice the soil, the rivers, the mountains. I will sacrifice all the elephants, the horses, the cattle, all the animals both wild and tame. I will sacrifice the grain crops and the vegetables, the healing herbs and the fruits of the trees. I will offer up, in great floods and fires, the cities and towns, the tilled land and the forests. You kings and all your descendants, these too I will sacrifice. I will sacrifice the oceans and fill them with ashes. Slowly, very slowly, all the creatures of Earth, all the people, all the plants, all the insects, all of them will burn in the slow fire that I will set in the mind of humanity.’
“He paused to look closely at each of the rulers who had once been sages, guardians of wisdom, and were now no more than kings. Their cheeks were drained of blood, their eyes full of fear. They now knew who had entered their circle.
“‘Well, my lords,’ he said. ‘What do you think of my sacrifice? Will it please the gods?’
“‘Take it back!’ they begged him. ‘Do not offer this sacrifice.’
“‘It is a regrettable thing,’ said the stranger, ‘but I can never go back on my word. What I have spoken will come to pass.’”
Astika and Ugrashravas left their camp in the thin darkness before dawn. At sunrise they stopped to share a small meal of nuts and berries.
“The world is changed,” said the bard. “Do you smell it?”
Astika did indeed smell it. He had known something was amiss since he woke up, but he had not spoken of it for fear of making his suspicion a shared reality.
“Yes,” he said. “There is a strange odor on the wind. Something I have never smelled before. It smells like smoke and yet… not like smoke. If stones and minerals could burn, perhaps they would smell like this. What is it?”
“It is the world to come,” said Ugrashravas. “We must tread carefully now. The Earth is not as she was.”
They traveled on until they came to a path unlike any either had seen before. It was a black path. Its surface felt hard and unforgiving under their feet. It had a sickly scent, like condensed smoke.
“Is this the way we must follow?” asked Astika, though he already knew the answer.
“It is,” said Ugrashravas. “From now on, nothing will be familiar.”
They walked onward and downward. The black path did not follow the natural curves of the land. It made its own way, cutting pitilessly into the flanks of the mountains. The farther they walked, the stronger the strange smell became. It stung Astika’s nose. In the distance he could hear a roaring, rushing sound, like and very unlike the sound of the river.
The black path was home to bellowing beasts made out of dusty metal. Their breath was clouds of choking fumes and they ran at an insane speed, faster than any chariot. There were human beings inside them, men and women imprisoned by the metal shells. The prey of the rushing creatures, they sat trapped behind panes of crystal, their faces slack, their eyes vacant, half-digested by these new monsters whose names were not mentioned in any scripture.
The edges of the black path were lined with detritus. Knots and tangles of unnameable substances. The two companions passed like shadows through the torn land, through villages of block-shaped houses, full of people speaking a language Astika did not recognize, though now and then a single word seemed reminiscent of those he knew. The people moved at terrible speed, rushing everywhere even when they had not yet been caught by the metal beasts.
As the mountains came to an end, the black paths multiplied, wider and harder, and the dust-breathing beasts sped by in huge numbers. Here the air was permeated by a heavy dust that clung to the lungs, impossible to exhale. Astika saw starving cows by the roadside, men dressed in rags clutching small bags of garbage, mangy dogs. The trees were stunted and gave no scent. All distances were obscured by the fumes, the exhalations of the beasts.
“How far must we go?” Astika asked.
“Very far,” said Ugrashravas. “Very far. We have many days of travel ahead of us. Keep close to me. These people—you can no longer trust them. See, their eyes are covered with a film of greed.”
Astika felt like one passing through a dream. By night the roads were illuminated by strange, pitiless, static fires held up by limbless steel trees. The rivers smelled of sewage. He saw people staring into tiny pale fires cupped in their hands. Fires, fires and smoke everywhere.
On a wall that smelled of urine he beheld the face of a small blue-skinned baby boy staring at him, a peacock feather in his hair, a gobbet of white butter in his soft little hand. Droves of people ran past him chanting words he vaguely understood. Here and there he spied something that reminded him of the world he had known: a brass pot in a man’s hand, a stone statue of a bull, an old woman wrapped in an ochre shawl. But even these were made unfamiliar by their surroundings. Everything was speed, noise, stench, burning burning burning.
These people, he thought, are running into the fire. They are rushing to incinerate themselves.
As they walked, Ugrashravas, who understood what they saw with his seer’s insight, slowly revealed this new world to Astika. The words of the new tongues became intelligible, the new beasts and beings became named things.
The land was torn open, ripped apart, covered with black pavement. The sacred rivers were hemmed and constricted by walls of concrete, choked by dams. Hidden fire flowed secretly through black cords above their heads. The very air pulsated with invisible messages. Magic mirrors were everywhere, glowing with their innate fire, spewing noises and images. The cities were towers of stone and steel, reaching like futile ladders toward heaven.
At last the wanderers reached the holy city of Kashi. They found it a snarl of roads and vehicles, crusted with pollution and waste, stinking to high heaven of greed and lust. Yet when they found the bank of Mother Ganga and sat on the worn stone steps that led down into her milky waters, Astika felt at peace for the first time since they had set foot on the black path. He looked about and saw the people seated, like him, for meditation or prayer, the women beating their laundry, the children playing in the river. He watched the narrow boats going this way and that, some propelled by oars and others by roaring sputtering engines that coughed smoke. He smelled that smoke, the new smoke that had infested the world, and felt its sting in his nostrils and its heaviness in his chest, and at the same time he smelled the smoke of cremation pyres, the scent of fresh flowers and incense, the cool smell of Ganga’s water, still redolent of high Himalaya’s herbs despite all the filth that poured into her from factories and sewers, the scent of stone and dust, the dust of millennia. He heard the motors, the shouts of the children, the temple bells and the rapid chanting of the priests. The conversations he now somewhat understood. Above, the sky stretched vast and empty, smudged brown by the burning of the world.
“What will we do now?” he asked his companion.
Ugrashravas did not move. He remained fixed, like a stone idol, gazing out across the river into the hazy distance where tiny trees and pylons rose out of layers of suspended dust.
“What is left to do?” asked the suta, never moving his eyes. “We have reached this place. We have reached Kali Yuga. Now I know nothing more. I fear that I have led you far astray, Astika.”
“If you did,” said the boy, “then it was the will of the divine.”
Ugrashravas looked at him then, smiling.
“Yes,” he said. “So it is.”
The old suta unpacked his chillum and began to fill it for a smoke.
Nearby an elderly woman dressed in a bright pink saree began her ritual worship, pouring milk and water over a stone, murmuring mantras under her breath. She cleaned the stone, daubed it with sandal paste and ash, and adorned it with flowers and bilva leaves.
“People still pray,” said Astika. “Only they do it a little differently.”
“All changes,” said Ugrashravas. “All decays. Only one thing remains.”
Astika touched his fingertips to his chest. He could feel his own heart beating in there, under skin and ribs and muscle.
“Gurudev said that I must meet a man here in Kashi,” Ugrashravas mused. “I must give him something. But what can I give? I have nothing but the clothes on my back and this smoke.”
The old woman, her worship complete, limped slowly over to them and placed a piece of fruit in Astika’s hand, then gave a small fried sweet to Ugrashravas.
“Shiva, Shiva, Shiva,” she whispered.
Astika popped the fruit into his mouth at once, without thinking.
Ugrashravas stared at the glistening sweet in his hand.
“Thank you Gurudev,” he said.
Slowly, without any sense of hurry, he stood up.
Astika shot him a questioning glance.
“Now,” said the old suta, “we have something to do.”
Astika got to his feet.
“What must we do?”
“We will go to the train station. There we will find a young woman. She is pregnant. I must give her this sweet, this sacred food. That is my last duty.”
Ugrashravas looked down at Astika then, and to his great wonder and dismay Astika saw tears in his companion’s eyes.
“Then you will be alone,” said Ugrashravas. “What will you do in this strange world, my boy? I let you follow me, and now I will abandon you.”
Astika had known all along that this moment would come, and pondered it as they walked the miles of the transformed Earth. Now, to his own surprise, he felt no fear. No sadness.
“Uncle,” he said, “I will be alright. Do not worry for me.”
“But what will you do?”
“I will try to live in this world,” said Astika. “If I find a way, then that will be well. And if I do not, or I tire of the way that I find, then I will walk facing North, keeping sunrise on my right and sunset on my left, and return to the mountains. There are still quiet places and clean water, even now. Perhaps I will find Vyasa again, if he wants to be found.”
Ugrashravas placed his hand on Astika’s head.
“Tathastu,” he said. “You have become clear now. Clear as the wind that blows over Himavant.”
“If I have,” said Astika, “it is because of what you have shown me.”
Astika wondered how they would ever find one young woman in the Varanasi train station. The station yard was a sea of humanity. People of every age and description hurried here and there. The loudspeaker blared announcements in a cracked voice, impossible to comprehend. The long trains waited like enormous centipedes ready to eat another throng of people and then trundle on.
Ugrashravas seemed unperturbed. He walked straight ahead, cutting through the crowd like a fish through water, and Astika followed him. They reached the first platform. The train was about to depart. Ugrashravas turned and walked down the platform, looking left and right. Searching.
The train shouted a long loud blaring syllable.
“She is on the train,” said Ugrashravas, his eyes suddenly bright and very alert. “Quickly!”
He leapt through the nearest door into the metal innards of the train and Astika followed him. Inside it was cramped, packed with people. Astika smelled stale sweat, perfume, paan, tobacco smoke, unwashed mouths, fennel. He stuck close to Ugrashravas as they pushed their way past their fellow human beings, their unknown brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. Again the train howled.
They burst into the next car. Here it was more spacious and a little quieter. Fans whirred. In each compartment were two low benches and two high ones, upholstered with pale blue plastic, and in one compartment they found a young woman dressed in a dark blue kameez and black trousers sitting at the far end of the bench, near the window. She wore a black cotton shawl over her head and her belly was large and round, full of expectant life.
“Mother,” said Ugrashravas, “please accept this.”
He held out the sweet.
The woman looked at him with cold, considering eyes. They were the eyes of someone to whom the world had not been kind.
The train shouted again and began to move.
She held out her hand and accepted the sweet, but did not eat it.
Ugrashravas sighed. His shoulders relaxed. It seemed that an enormous weight had been removed, all at once, from his body, mind, and heart. Without another word he turned and left the compartment.
Astika hesitated. He was not sure whether he should follow. The train sped up. Outside the faces of the people on the platform began to rush past. Astika looked out into the passage, but Ugrashravas had disappeared. He knew that he would not find him again. He felt very light, as if somehow a weight had been removed from him as well. But the lightness was uncomfortable, too sudden and too complete. Overwhelmed, he sat down on the bench opposite the young woman, who by now had begun to eat the sweet. She held it in her left hand and removed small pinches with her right, carrying them to her mouth very slowly and chewing them with care.
Astika saw that she was in fact a girl, not very much older than he. The skin of her face was smooth and earthy brown, but around her eyes she had the darkened patches of the chronically sleepless. The black shawl she wore over her hair was flecked with tiny pieces of silver thread, like stars in a dark sky. Her hands were thin and had a hard, tight look to them. Those hands had known difficult work. The pregnancy, the child growing inside her, seemed like an afterthought, something attached to her body suddenly by a careless gesture of destiny.
He wondered if he should say something to her, but there was a palpable barrier of silence surrounding her. He could feel that she had made this wall, built it carefully brick by brick. She was shut inside it, utterly self-contained. So he sat back and watched the city and then the countryside trundle past outside the window, or watched the other people in the compartment. The train stopped now and then to disgorge people and swallow other people. Old, skinny, straight backed men in rumpled suits, students carrying briefcases, families with children, gangs of young men talking loudly and playing music off their phones at high volume, ladies in sarees and ladies in tight jeans—all kinds of people got on and off the train.
When the conductor came along he had to say that he had no ticket.
“No ticket? Well, where are you going?”
He said that he did not know.
“What? No destination?”
“Yes sir. I mean, no sir.”
The girl looked at him and then quickly looked away again.
“Well, take this ticket,” said the conductor.
He handed him a slip of stiff paper.
“Any money?”
He shook his head.
“No money? This is very irregular. I should—”
The girl handed the conductor a few bills. He counted them, looked at her, then put them in his pocket.
“Have a good journey,” he said, then continued on his way.
Now the girl was staring at him fixedly, her arms crossed, resting on her belly.
He looked at the ticket in his hand, then back up to her.
“I can’t read it,” he said.
She held out her hand and he gave her the ticket. She scrutinized it closely for a moment.
“Pralay,” she said. “Same to me.”
That was all. He could feel the small window she had opened in her wall of silence slam shut again as she gave him his ticket. She turned to stare out the window, and he did the same.
The train ran on and on, through farmlands and past villages. Outside the sky became golden-brown and the land sank into shadows. When night fell the benches turned into bunkbeds. People slept fitfully, dreaming of the places they had left behind or the destinations ahead. He did not sleep. He waited all the long night, watching the darkness outside the train. Now and then, when they passed a village or a station, that darkness opened, punctured by bright lights. He caught brief glimpses of people still awake, moving about, and he wondered why they were not asleep. What was so important to them that it had to be done in the dead of night? But the train never stopped long enough for him to know what exactly they were doing or who they were. Faceless, purposeless, they slipped into the past.
At dawn the train stopped at a large station in a populous city. Many people got on, many more got off. The girl stayed in her seat, and so he did the same. Men walked down the isles of the train hawking hot tea, roast peanuts, candies, bottled water, and readymade breakfasts. He was not at all hungry. The girl bought a bottle of water and some peanuts. She did not look at him as she munched and sipped, but after some time, just as the train was getting ready to move on, she passed him the water. He took a few sips, not because he was thirsty, but because he thought he should drink something to keep his body together.
The train rolled on. Outside the window the city passed into farmland again. He saw bullock carts, people carrying hoes and sickles. Cows standing in the morning light, peacefully munching their cud. The landscape went on and on, unchanging. Night fell again, then another dawn and another day. He did not know if he had slept or not. Time seemed to lose its hold on him. Around noon he dozed off. When he woke it was dark outside the train. The girl was lying down across from him, her head pillowed on her arm. He stood up and looked out into the passage. The train car was full of the soft breath of dreamers and the low, insistent sound of the train itself as it shunted along. He returned to his seat and drifted off again.
He could not keep track of hours or days. He did not know how long he had been inside the train, how long he had gone without eating, or where he was going. He realized, at some stage along the journey, that he did not remember his own name, nor where he had boarded this eternal train. This was only vaguely disturbing to him, like a slightly itchy mosquito bite. His name, his memories—they seemed of small importance. He could recall mountains, clear air, cedar trees. Cold running water. He remembered the words of long hymns, but he could no longer recall their meaning.
In the mornings the Sun looked pale and small, as if removed from Earth by an ever-increasing distance. At each stop more and more people got off and fewer got on. There seemed to be fewer people in general. Even when the train stopped in cities there would be only a handful of people standing on the platform. The buildings looked dilapidated, most of them crumbling and unmaintained. These were skeleton cities. Bones without life.
The land the train traversed had become dry, dessicated. No crops grew. The cows and the people were shrunken, starved looking things. It was impossible to see very far because of the thick clouds of dust: dead soil floating on the dead air.
The train stopped in a little, empty village. Looking out the window, he recognized the conductor stepping down onto the platform. No one else got off, no one got on. The train gave a hoot and crawled on again. He saw the conductor turn away and walk in amongst the empty houses and disappear. He knew that they were alone now, he and the pregnant girl. The last passengers.
Outside the land was ablaze. Fires lit up the night. In the distance great bursts of light rose and he could hear explosive detonations. The sound of bombs echoed between Earth and sky like incessant thunder. He could see shapes moving out there, backlit by the flames. Some seemed human, and others looked human until he saw that their arms were too long or their heads were the wrong shape.
The night of fire passed into a dawn of ash. He saw crowds of people outside, all of them covered with gray dust. They were starving. Men, women, children and the elderly, all of them emaciated, clamoring for a scrap of bread. The pitiless train moved on, but there seemed no end to the crowds of the hungry. Suddenly high whistling sounds broke the air, alarms sounded. The bombs came streaking down, blazing falcons dropping to the kill. The Earth shook, the people fled. The train did not stop.
His companion had tears in her eyes, but she still said nothing.
Night came again. No stars were visible, no Moon. The fires disappeared. The land outside was utterly empty. He could feel that emptiness in his heart, as if the world within him contained the world without. He remembered war, fire, the cries of battle. But hadn’t it been a battle between heroes? Between warriors? Long ago, at the joint between eons, all this had been decided. What would emerge from the dust? What would be born out of emptiness?
The rain began to fall. First tiny droplets like little pearls clinging to the window, then snakes of water running over the glass, then a deluge. Thunder rolled, louder than bombs, and the rain hammered the roof of the train like the feet of a million dancers in trance. Water inundated the Earth, filled the night.
The Sun did not rise. The night went on and on. Sometimes a livid flash lit up the rain-needled darkness, but he could not tell if it was lightning or some other more uncanny thing that sparked and glowed and snuffed itself out again. Were bombs still falling? Was it the light of souls leaving the world? The train crawled on, inexorable, a black worm of metal burrowing through the flood.
Time truly ceased to exist. Without the Sun, without the passing of days, there was no way to know how long the storm had lasted. It might have been a thousand years or a matter of hours. Finally the train could not go on. It slowed and came to a halt quietly, with a little sigh of tired machinery. Outside it was still dark, but the rain had stopped. The girl got up and he followed her.
There was no platform. They climbed down, out of the train, onto soft damp sand. The air was still and heavy. The train stood silent behind them, its work complete. He knew that no one else would emerge. No driver, no other passengers. They were the last.
Before them a barren sandy slope ran down into darkness. Above the sky was blank. They could see a little way ahead and a little way behind, though by what light neither knew. There was nothing to do but walk onward. They could not turn back.
As they walked he realized that the sand was not sand at all. It was ash. Heavy layers of ash packed solid by the rain. They passed objects half-submerged in the ash. Some were burnt and contorted beyond recognition, but others were recognizable. Bombshells, guns, bullet casings. Combs, dolls, books, plastic containers, bottles, rubber bands, satellite dishes, phones, computers, pencils. Cups. Plastic bags. The ash desert sloped gently ever downward. As they walked the detritus changed. They passed rusted swords, axe-heads, chariot wheels, chunks of carved stone. Shards of earthenware, tarnished silver ornaments. Eventually even the metal disappeared and all they saw were lumps of stone, some shaped by human design, others naked of purpose, just as the Earth had birthed them. Then there was only ash.
Ash and the sound.
The sound had been slowly growing as they walked and now that there was nothing left but the sound, it filled their perception. It was a slow murmuring, hushed, rising and falling. A voice of water. Immense, fathomless water.
They stood on the ashen shore of an ocean that went on past the boundaries of the world. The water was utterly black. They could see no horizon. Far away, beyond the reach of sight or thought, dark sky met dark water and became one. A small breeze moved over the water and gentle waves, little more than ripples, lapped the shoreline. No smell of salt, no call of seabirds—only the vast water ahead and nothing behind.
He thought of the infinity of the waters. His inner eyes beheld a great city of a forgotten world: mansions of marble and temples of black granite, golden domes and tiled roofs, orchards and flower gardens, jeweled archways and shrines, dairies and granaries. He could hear the calling of the birds, the bells, the singing. Then the great ocean spoke with a voice vaster than empires. The blue sun-scattering body bulged, rose, surged over the dykes. Frothing waves like trampling white horses broke the houses and towers, scattered the tiles and stones, pulled the gold and riches into their mother’s whirlpool belly, retrieved their stolen pearls.
The water covered everything. The water was everything.
He remembered—or foresaw—a sacred fig tree rising from the waters. It grew from an island made of its own roots, fed by a light with no source outside itself. A smiling child—skin the color of night, teeth like stars—played in the branches of the tree.
Far far away, out across the bottomless ocean, a light appeared. A still, steady light that seemed to rest on the surface of the water. Neither Sun nor Moon, nor star nor fire, but the light by which those lights are themselves illumined.
“We must cross over,” he said. “We cannot cross over. We must cross over.”
She held her hands over her belly and watched the light. She could feel the life inside her shifting, quickening.
“We have already crossed over,” she said.
The light began to move toward them over the dark water.
•
Shanti Shanti Shantih
Hari Om Tat Sat
The End
What is the significance of giving fruit to pregnant woman
Did not understand the ending Satya. Please e plain