How Great Masters Teach: A Few Stories

A legendary spiritual master born in Kerala, the land famous for acharyas like Shri Shankara, is Pakkanar, a pariah by birth. Numerous stories are told about how he gave lessons in the highest wisdom to people in his unique ways. In one of these stories, Pakkanar meets on the road a group of brahmanas who were on their way to Kashi, the holiest of holy places in India. He greeted these men as was appropriate for someone born to one of the lowest castes in the caste hierarchy and enquired of them where they were going. When they replied they were going to Kashi, Pakkanar showed them his walking stick and asked them, “Could your lordships do me a favour? Could you take this stick along and give it a dip in the Ganga too?”

They were offended by the request. They did not want even to touch a pariah’s walking stick. Why should they carry it all the way to Kashi and give it a bath in the Ganga and bring it back? But the man who was making that request was known to be not an ordinary pariah but a man of great wisdom. So instead of refusing him, they asked: “Why do you want the stick to be given a dip in the Ganga?” And all Pakkanar would say was that he would tell them when they brought the stick back. 

Reluctantly they took the stick with them.  

When the brahmanas reached Kashi, one of them dipped the stick in the Ganga and the force of the current carried it away. It disappeared before they could snatch it back. The brahmanas were upset about what happened, but there was nothing they could do. They finished their ritual baths in the Ganga and after visiting a few other holy places en route, eventually came back to their native place. When Pakkanar heard they were back, he went to them and after greeting them with due reverence, enquired about his stick. Did they give it a bath in the Ganga? Have they brought it back? And they told him they lost it. 

“Where did your lordships lose it?” asked Pakkanar.

“In the Ganga, in Kashi,” they answered. 

“Oh, that’s no problem then,” said Pakkanar with a smile. With that he went to the muddy pond that was close by and made a request to it, “Please, may I have my stick back?”
Legend says that the stick immediately rose up from the pond to the amazement of the brahmanas and Pakkanar picked it up. 

The brahmanas realized the invaluable lesson Pakkanar was giving them: Ganga is sacred. But every pond in the world is Mother Ganga herself, and all water is as sacred as the water of the Ganga.

Once we are able to see every place as equally sacred, all life becomes a sacred pilgrimage. Then you have no more to make special pilgrimages – be it to the sacred places of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any other religion.  And once you are able to see God in all living beings, then every breath you take becomes a sacred act.

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Sometimes even great masters fall under the spell of illusion in a rare moment of unawareness. That does not mean they are not enlightened; it only speaks of the great power of maya over the human mind. Speaking about this the Adhyatma Upanishad says it is like moss on water. You move it away with your hand, and a moment later it comes back: yathā apakrshtam śaivālam kshanamātram na tishthati, avrnoti tathā māyā prajnām vāpi parāngmukhām. A moment of inattentiveness, of carelessness, and maya takes over your enlightened mind. For that reason the Upanishad asks even great masters to be constantly aware of the power of illusion.

This story is about the great Acharya Shankara himself.  Once he was in Kashi and was walking along a narrow lane that led to the Vishwanatha temple accompanied by his disciples and a small crowd of devotees when he saw a chandala, the lowest of the low in the traditional caste hierarchy of India, coming across him, surrounded by his pack of dogs. The chandala was covered in dirt and had rags wrapped around him and the dogs barked continuously. Any chandala would have moved out of the way to give way to the acharya and his disciples, as was the social practice in those days, but this chandala was moving steadily towards the acharya, his steps showing no sign of slowing down, nor his eyes any sign of hesitation. “Gaccha! Gaccha!” the acharya shouted – “Move away, move away!”

But the chandala still did not slow down his steps or move aside. He advanced steadily towards the great master and standing before him with a smile on his face asked the him who had conquered practically all known scholars in India, “Mahatman, tell me one thing. When you said move away, what did you mean? Did you mean this body should move away from your body?  In that case your demand is ridiculous. Because my body is made of the same five elements that your body is made of and it consists of blood, bone, flesh and marrow as yours does. In case you mean my self, then you know that my self is as pure as yours. The soul cannot be corrupted at all – not by dirt, not by sin, not by pollution, not even by ignorance. What then did you want to move away?”

The acharya was shaken to his very soul by what the chandala had said. He was absolutely right. The body – his body as well as the chandala’s body consisted of blood, flesh, bone, marrow and other substances any of which you would take a bath if you touched. The soul was ever pure, its purity beyond the reach of all impurities. To what was he then shouting, asking it to move away?

The great acharya realized that in spite of all his knowledge, for a moment he had become a victim to habitual ways of thinking – for a moment he had been blinded by social expectations, the customs of the society in which he had lived all along. Instead of the Vedantin he was, he had become an ordinary individual bound by societal conventions.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the great acharya whose feet crowned heads touched in humble obeisance kneeled at the feet of the chandala touching his dirty feet with his forehead. The chandala had opened his eyes, reminded him of his own wisdom, the wisdom that he had taught so many people. The chandala was his guru, as much as Govindapada was.

Tears of joy flowed from the acharya’s eyes and he felt a current of rapture filling his whole being. With intense devotion the great master raised his head from the chandala’s feet and stood up, his eyes still closed in bliss. The ecstasy he felt in his heart found its expression in beautiful words as it had done on so many other occasions when was moved by rapture. What came out of the acharya in those moments of ecstasy and gratitude is what the world today knows as the five verses of Maneesha Panchakam, maneesha meaning wisdom. The acharya rises above social perceptions and declares fearlessly the truth of Vedanta in those verses and says:

chāndālo’stu sa tu dvijo’stu gururityevā maneeshā mama: whether he is a chandala or a brahmana, he is my guru, such is the wisdom of my heart.

At the end of the ecstatic song, the acharya opened his eyes and it was no more a chandala standing before him that he saw, but the great Lord of the Universe, the Master of the Holy City, the teacher of teachers, Shiva himself.

Was it that Shiva appeared as a chandala before Shankara or was it that the acharya saw Shiva in the chandala? Or does it really matter, since the entire universe is Shiva himself and all we need is the eyes to see?

The greatest of all teachers had given yet another lesson in his own unique way not just to Shankara but to all humanity.

Our tragedy is that in spite of all these great lessons, we live our life unconsciously, holding on to our petty beliefs, practices and concerns, thus reducing ourselves to ignorant men and women.

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In this story, Acharya Shankara Bhagavadpada forgets his wisdom for a moment. His eyes are opened and he is given a lesson in humility by Lord Shiva himself.

In another popular story Bhagavadpada himself opens the eyes of his scholarly disciples and gives them a lesson in humility. There are different versions of this story, as in the case of most Indian stories and the version I am narrating here is the one I heard from my guru.

One evening the acharya and all his other disciples except Sanantana were seated, ready for their daily session with the master. But on that day the acharya wouldn’t begin. The seated disciples asked him why he wouldn’t start the lessons and the acharya said he was waiting for Sanantana. This produced mild laughter in the scholarly disciples – the acharya must be joking. Sanantana was illiterate and served the master more like a personal attendant and less as a disciple. He was not expected to benefit from the scholarly expositions of the acharya who perhaps was the greatest intellect our land has ever seen. Why should he wait for Sanantana?

The acharya understood their silent question and told them they would all go and look for Sanantana. The disciples looked at one another and reluctantly got up and followed their master. Bhagavadpada went straight to the bank of the river near which they were staying at that time. They could see Sanantana on the other side of the river – he had gone there for some work. The acharya raised his voice so that it could be heard above the murmur of the river and called, “Sanantana, come! It’s time for class.” Sanantana raised his head as he heard the acharya’s voice. He looked this side and that – there was no boat available. Without another moment’s hesitation, Sanantana started walking towards his master across the river.

It is said that as Sanantana placed each step on the water, a lotus flower rose up and supported his feet. He crossed the river and fell at the master’s feet. The master raised him up, hugged him and looking at his other disciples who stood wonderstruck, said, “Now you know why I waited for him to begin the class. His strength is not scholarship but shraddha and in shraddha none of you excel him. And it is shraddha that gives the highest knowledge, not scholarship. Scholarship is no value when it comes to enlightenment, as the Upanishads themselves say.”

That day the great master renamed his fond disciple Padmapada, the name by which we know him today. Padmapada means Lotus Feet – the man who was supported by a lotus that rose up from the river as he walked on water like a great yogi at the call of his master.

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Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, my parama guru, is one of the greatest spiritual masters the world has ever seen. There are innumerable stories of miracles happening around him, though he never claimed, or even owned up, any of these miracles. One of my teachers who lived with him in his ashram for forty-five years was certain he was brought back to life from certain death when he was a young man by the Maharshi. But in this article I will not be talking about his miracles, but of his unique way of teaching. Of course, the Maharshi is famous for frequently teaching through silence, for which he is often compared to Dakshinamurti, Lord Shiva incarnated as a teacher. The incident I shall discuss here is much simpler, though – it is of someone asking him what nishkama karma is and the Maharshi teaching him what it is.

The incident is reported by Prof K Swaminathan, who at one time taught English at Presidency College, Madras and was the Chief Editor of the monumental 100-volume Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Let me reproduce here his own words, from the book Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi compiled and edited by Professor Laxmi Narain and published by Sri Ramana Kendram, Hyderabad.

“Once Rangachari, a Telugu teacher in a Vellore college, asked the Maharshi to explain nishkama karma [desireless action]. There was no reply. After a time, the Maharshi went up the [Arunachala] hill followed by a few devotees and Rangachari. There was a thick, strong, thorny branch lying on the way which the Maharshi picked up and began working on. The spikes were cut off, the knots were made smooth and the surface polished with a rough leaf. Hours of hard and careful work resulted in a nice stick that Maharshi presented to a passing shepherd boy who appeared dejected because he had lost his stick. Rangachari confessed that he had learnt a new lesson in the art of teaching, for this silent practical demonstration was the Sage’s perfect answer to his earnest question.”   

Of course Ramana Maharshi’s entire life was the most powerful teaching – in jnana yoga, in bhakti yoga, in dhyana yoga and in karma yoga. To speak of one more lesson in Karma Yoga, for years the Maharshi entered the ashram kitchen at 2.30 in the morning and began chopping vegetables so that breakfast could be served to the hundreds of people who came to see him every day from all over the world. They were coming to see him, to be in his presence and to be blessed by him – to be blessed by a man who had spent months at a stretch in Samadhi as a result of his intense meditation that lasted for years, who had climbed to the greatest heights meditation can take you, just by being near whom people went into powerful states of meditative trance and were healed of life-threatening diseases and perhaps even escaped death. But he would go to the kitchen hours before brahma muhoorta, long before these guests woke up, to help in the preparation of their breakfast! What could be a greater lesson in karma yoga?

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Here is another incident reported by Prof. Swaminathan that happened in the 1940s, a few years before Ramana Maharshi’s death. It was a day like many other days in the ashram. The Maharshi was reclining on a couch in the hall and there was a group of scholars seated in front of him, debating the intricacies of the wisdom of the Upanishads enthusiastically. The debate was absorbing and everybody seemed to be fully lost in it. All on a sudden Bhagavan rose from his couch and started walking towards a man who looked like someone from one of the nearby villages. He was standing with his palms joined towards Bhagavan. Bhagavan went to him and soon the two were engaged in deep conversation, oblivious to everything else. The scholars had stopped their debates and were now watching what was happening. After a while Bhagavan took leave of the man and came back to his couch to continue to sit as though nothing had happened, while the villager went away. The debates among the scholars started once again.

Prof. Swaminathan who was watching the whole incident with great curiosity rushed towards the departing villager. Stopping him, he asked the man what exactly had happened. Why had the villager come to the ashram and what had the Maharshi been asking him, coming to him getting up from the middle of an absorbing discussion on the ultimate reality as discussed by Vedanta?

The villager told Prof. Swaminathan that he was a stranger to the place and had come to the ashram to have Bhagavan’s darshan when the Master saw him and came to him. The Maharshi had made enquiries about him and his family and their welfare. He had asked the Maharshi how he could earn his blessings and the sage had enquired if there was a temple in his village and who the deity was. Then the sage had told him to repeat the name of the deity constantly and assured him he would receive all the blessings he needed through it. 

This is how Prof. Swaminathan concludes the incident: “I came back to Bhagavan’s presence, but lost all interest in the discussions. I felt that the simple humility and devotion of a peasant had evoked a far greater response from our Master than any amount of learning. I then decided that though a scholar by profession, I should always remain a humble, ignorant peasant at heart and pray for Bhagavan’s grace and blessings.”

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Years ago one of my friends, a Bengali gentlemen several years my senior in age, presented to me a beautifully produced copy of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, one of my cherished possessions which I open and read at random every now and then. The book refers to several meetings of Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab Chandra Sen, the great Brahmo Samaj leader. One of their last meetings took place in Sen’s house when the Brahmo leader was extremely sick. Here is how the Gospel describes that meeting:

“At this moment Keshab entered the room. He came through the east door. Those who remembered the man who had preached in the Town Hall or the Brahmo Samaj temple were shocked to see this skeleton covered with skin. He could hardly stand. He walked holding to the wall for support. With great difficulty he sat down in front of the couch. In the mean time Sri Ramakrishna had got down from the couch and was sitting on the floor. Keshab bowed low before the Master and remained in that position a long time, touching the Master's feet with his forehead. Then he sat up. Sri Ramakrishna was still in a state of ecstasy. He muttered to himself. He talked to the Divine Mother.

“Raising his voice, Keshab said: "I am here, sir. I am here." He took Sri Ramakrishna's left hand and stroked it gently. But the Master was in deep samadhi, completely intoxicated with divine love. A stream of words came from his lips as he talked to himself, and the devotees listened to him spellbound.”

What a complete change from the response Sri Ramakrishna produced in Keshab on one of the first occasions – perhaps it was their first meeting – when the master visited Sen. The following words are the master’s own, again from the Gospel:

"I visited him at his house in Colootola Street. Hriday was with me. We were shown into the room where Keshab was working. He was writing something. After a long while he put aside his pen, got off his chair, and sat on the floor with us. But he didn't salute us or show us respect in any other way.”

Well, of course, it was only by and by that Keshab Chandra Sen came to understand the master and learn to revere him. But there is more to it than that. The master, out of his infinite compassion, made sure that such a great man as Sen did not remain closed to his influence and thus miss what he could have learned from the master. He went out of his way to teach humility to Sen and thus make him more open. Here is how the master did it, in his own words:

"He used to come here now and then. One day in a spiritual mood I said to him: 'One should not sit before a sadhu with one leg over the other. That increases one's rajas.' As soon as he and his friends would arrive, I would salute them before they bowed to me. Thus they gradually learnt to salute a holy man, touching the ground with their foreheads.”

That was Sri Ramakrishna’s way!

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One of the most unforgettable lessons the saint of Dakshineshwar gave in his unique way was to young Narendranath, the future Swami Vivekananda. Narendranath’s family had at that time been living in extreme poverty, even finding two meals a day was difficult. This pained Naren deeply. The sensitive Naren was pained by the suffering of even strangers, what to speak of his own family that had once lived in rather lavish style, since his father was a lawyer who had a solid income. Unable to endure his pain, young Naren asked the master, on whose spiritual powers he had by then developed great faith, to pray to Mother Goddess so that she blessed him with some wealth. Naren was sure that Mother Kali would never refuse anything to the master – he was her child, Kali’s child.

Sri Ramakrishna understood the dire straits in which his young disciple found himself and his need for money, even if it was only so that he can focus more on his sadhana. When your family’s poverty and hunger are constantly pulling you down to misery, how is anyone with a sense of responsibility to concentrate on his sadhanas? The master explained to Naren that the mother was the source of all knowledge, all wisdom and all power and if it was her blessings in the form of money that he wanted, why doesn’t he himself go to her and ask her? She is capable of giving anyone anything – she has created the universe and what can she not do? The master added that it was a Tuesday, a day special for the worship of the Goddess, and he should go to the Mother that very evening and place his need before her. 

Young Naren went to the temple of Bhavatarini at nine that evening. As he stood there, he forgot all about his family and its poverty, all about his suffering and instead was enveloped by a divine feeling of pure bliss. The Mother Goddess’s name came out of his mouth in a never ending torrent and he felt boundless love emanating from the idol before him. The Mother appeared to him the source of all beauty, all bliss and all knowledge. All he could do was to stand transfixed in devotion before her, fervently repeating her name. Eventually when he brought himself to ask the Mother for something, it was not for financial help that he asked, but for the highest knowledge and untainted devotion, for her repeated visions.

When he came out of the temple, Sri Ramakrishna was sitting outside, waiting for him. “Did you ask the Mother to help your family?” he asked. When Narendranath confessed what had happened, the master sent him back to the temple, telling him to make sure this time he asked for wealth from the Mother.

As Naren stood before the deity, once again he was immersed in bliss and it was fervent prayers for deeper devotion, for the visions of the Divine, and the bliss of knowledge that came out of him. He couldn’t bring himself to ask the Mother for money.  Naren came out of the temple in a state of ecstasy to find Sri Ramakrishna still waiting for him outside.

The master was rather rough with the young man this time. He scolded him for failing to ask for money once more and sent him into the presence of the Mother for a third time, strongly admonishing the youth for his repeated failure and instructing that this time he should not fail to ask for monetary help. But in spite of all the instructions given by the master in strict words, Naren failed to ask the Mother for wealth for his family once again.

Which of course delighted the master. That precisely was what Sri Ramakrishna had expected from Naren, knowing who he was, knowing his potentials, knowing what he was born to. The disciple had passed another test by the master. The master hugged Naren and congratulated him. He assured the young man that his family will never want for food and clothing, will always have enough to live by.

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Recently I was teaching a course to the students of 3-Continent Masters in Business Management in one of the top business schools in India. The students come from some twenty-five different countries of the world and do one part of their course in Europe, one part in India and one part in the US [hence the “3-Continent]. I was talking to the students about spiritual leadership when an American student suddenly raised her hand and said, “Professor, please tell me one thing. Why are all the spiritual masters men?”

I explained to her that was not the case – all over the world there have been several great spiritual masters who were women. In India in particular there have always been and there still are any number of great women spiritual masters – and I named a few beginning with Vagambhrini and Lopamudra of the Vedas down to today’s women masters venerated by millions.

The masters we have discussed so far are all men. So let us talk of a great lesson in the highest wisdom given by a woman master – by Rubia, one of my favourite Sufi masters and perhaps the most venerated of women Sufi saints.  

One evening a passerby found Rubia searching for something under a street lamp. The man went to her and asked her what she was looking for and she said she had lost her needle. Of course, the great Rubia was looking for lost needle – you couldn’t let her do it all alone and go away.  The man joined the search. Soon another person came by and he too joined them. And then another, and then another and soon there was a large group of people looking for Rubia’s lost needle under the street lamp.

A long time passed and the night was fast approaching. Suddenly one man stopped, stood up and asked Rubia, “Mother, are you sure you lost the needle here under this lamp? 

There was complete stillness as the group waited for Rubia’s answer.

Rubia laughed and said, “Of course not. I lost it at home.”

“Then why are searching for it here?”

“Because there is no light at home.”

Aren’t we all looking for what we have lost at home under the street lamp because there is light there? Every single one of us has lost a precious treasure and all our life, all that we do, is nothing but a search for that priceless treasure. The only problem is we are not looking for it where we lost it, but where all the razzle and dazzle of the world is, where all the neon lamps glitter.     

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I will conclude this article with a Zen story I love in which another great master teaches very unconventionally. The story is about Hakuin.

One day a soldier named Nobushinge came to the master as he stood chopping wood in his garden. “I have heard about heaven and hell. Is there really a heaven and a hell?” asked Nobushinge.

“Who are you?” asked Hakuin. The soldier said he was a samurai.

There was an expression of great contempt as Hakuin asked, “You a samurai? What kind of master will hire you as his guard? You look more like a beggar.”

Enraged, Nobushinge began to draw his sword. Unimpressed, Hakuin continued, “So you have a sword too! What is it for – slicing bread? It doesn’t look good for anything else!”

Nohushinge’s sword was out in a split second, ready to strike off Hakuin’s head. “Here open the gates of hell!” said Hakuin serenely.

Nohushinge looked at the master’s face. There was great calm there. He sheathed his sword and bowed to the master.

“Here open the gates of paradise,” said Hakuin

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Ancient India used birds as symbols for the highest awakening. For awakening is leaving our small world and soaring into boundless skies. And what masters do is give us wings to do so. And masters would use any method that would help us spread our wings and soar. Their interest is not in the method, but in giving us wings.

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Masters Who Wear Masks: 3. Pakkanar, the Pariah

Stories about Pakkanar, the legendary pariah saint of Kerala, were among the most beautiful stories I grew up listening to. Like Lai-Khur [http://innertraditions.blogspot.com/2009/10/masters-who-wear-masks-2-lai-khur.html] and many other masters, Pakkanar too lived wearing a mask all his life: a mask of ordinariness, and at times a mask of stupidity and ignorance, a mask of being limited by the caste and class that society had ascribed to him. In spite of these, though, at times he allowed the world glimpses of his spiritual wisdom and powers, and the stories are mostly about these moments.

The birth of Pakkanar is a legend in itself, part of one of the most popular legends of Kerala which every one born in Kerala hears as a child. In my case, it was from my father that I first heard the story as a child and then subsequently I read it as a teenager in Kottarattil Sankunni’s Aitihyamala [Garland of Legends], the collection of myths and legends about Kerala.

Pakkanar, the legend tells us, was the pariah son of the pariah woman who married the brahmana Vararuchi, one of the nine jewels in the court of Vikramaditya. The couple had twelve children, all abandoned at birth, each growing up belonging to a different caste, each becoming great in his or her own way, each giving birth to numerous legends. [For more details on this, please see my blog posting [http://innertraditions.blogspot.com/2009/10/pariah-woman-and-her-twelve-children.html]

Eleven of the twelve children met once a year to observe the shraddha of their parents. They met at the home of the eldest of the twelve sons, Melattol Agnihotri [frequently spelt Melathol Agnihothri], a brahmana, each bringing an item of his or her own for the feast that was part of the shraddha rites. At the end of the rites, all sat together and had the feast in remembrance of their parents.

There are certain things that are acceptable in a shraddha feast, and certain things that are not. And in any case, many things have always been taboo for brahmanas as food, purity of diet being part of being a brahmana. Meat certainly was not an item of food for a brahmana – no kind of meat was.

However, Pakkanar made it a point to bring meat for the feast every year, which deeply disturbed Agnihotri’s brahmani wife and other high caste participants of the sacred Vedic rituals. The family knew of the great spiritual heights Pakkanar had climbed to and of his awesome powers. For this reason, Agnihotri’s wife did not say anything about Pakkanar’s sacrilege, nor did the others. She cooked whatever he brought and served it at the ritual feast, and the participants ate it.

While all meat was traditionally taboo to brahmanas, beef was something that no Hindu ate. To the Hindu mind, no greater sin existed than killing a cow or eating beef. However one year what Pakkanar brought was the severed teats of a cow, packed in a leaf. His intentions were clear, for the udder and the nipples are considered the most sacred parts of the cow.

What Pakkanar had done was the limit. Nothing could be more sacrileges than that! The antarjanam [brahmani] opened the packet and saw what was inside. Her whole face reddened with shock. The packet fell from her hands and a scream escaped her lips. Violent retching shook her whole body and she rushed outside the house. She needed to bring out everything in her stomach, such was her horror.

Eventually she managed to master herself. Coming back, she tied the cow’s teats back in the leaf and took the packet outside and digging a hole in the yard, buried it in it. Then she took a bath to ritually purify her and after that, proceeded with her cooking.

The ritual feast began and the ten brothers and one sister sat down together to eat. Under the antarjanam’s care, the dishes cooked with the items brought by each were served to all.

Pakkanar noticed that what he had brought was missing in what was being served. “Where is what I brought?” asked Pakkanar, turning to the antarjanam. She remained silent, her head bent, her eyes on the ground at her feet. She couldn’t tell a lie, nor could she tell the truth. And in any case, she couldn’t insult a man like Pakkanar, that too during the shraddha, however shocking what he had done was.

Seeing his wife remaining silent, Agnihotri repeated Pakkanar’s question. She continued to remain silent, and he grew insistent on knowing the truth. It was then that she told what had happened, beginning to shake all over remembering what she had seen when she opened the leaf packet.

Agnihotri became silent when he heard his wife’s words. He was confused, and did not know what to say. He knew it was wrong on the part of his wife to throw away what Pakkanar had brought for the feast – but a cow’s teats! He had never said a word about the meat that Pakkanar had been bringing year after year, but this was unimaginable.

In the middle of the complete silence that had fallen over the place, Pakkanar suggested, “Since you planted it in the yard, maybe it has sprouted by now. Why don’t you go and see?”

Cow’s teats do not sprout, of course. But such was Pakkanar’s presence that the antarjanam went to the place where she had buried the horrid packet. What she saw there was a new creeper she had never seen before – never seen there, and never seen anywhere else.

The vines grew thick everywhere, climbing one over the other, climbing over all nearby shrubs. And there was a green vegetable growing on the vines, hundreds and hundreds of it, a vegetable she had never seen before, a vegetable shaped like the teats of a cow.

Unable to believe her eyes, perspiring, confused, the antarjanam rushed back and told Pakkanar what had happened. Pakkanar was cool, as though nothing more than the most ordinary had happened. “Why don’t you pluck the vegetables and make a curry of it? I am sure you can cook and serve that to all?”

And that is what the antarjanam did.

The vegetable thus born of the teats of a cow, says the legend, is koval, or kovakka [kundru in Hindi]. Shaped like the teats of a cow, kovakka is a vegetable widely used all over India. The vegetable is a part of shraddha feasts offered in Kerala till today.

Pakkanar was not encouraging or even condoning the killing of animals, for food or for other reasons. His lesson was about what we consider sacred and profane, shubha and ashubha, about what we consider good and bad. Everything in the universe is permeated by God, and there is nothing but God in the universe, say the Upanishads: ishavasyam idam sarvam. Everything is equally sacred for the wise man who has eyes to see.

To the Indian culture, the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane is an important fact–at one level things are either sacred or profane. But at the same time, from the beginning of Indian culture, at a still higher level, everything is sacred since there really exists nothing in which the Divine is not present, there is nothing that is not the Divine.

I once had an interesting experience. Many years ago, an American professor of mine asked me for a prayer from Sanskrit to be used at the beginning of a training programme he was shortly to conduct. I selected a few mantras from the Shatarudriya [Rudra Ahhyaya or simply Rudra] and on his request translated them for him. When he heard my translation, he was shocked to learn that the Shatarudriya addresses God using such terms as the chief of thieves [stenanam pataye namo namah], the deceiving and the elusive one [vanchate parivanchate] and so on, along with other appellations for God of the kind he was used to.

It is central to Indian culture and philosophy that everything is sacred and good and bad are good and bad only at a lower level. From the standpoint of true wisdom, nothing is impure.

This is true not only philosophically and spiritually, but also at a social level. As the Gita puts it: “vidyavinaya-sampanne brahmane gavi hastini shuni chaiva svapake cha, panditah samadarshinah.” “The wise look upon the educated brahmana endowed with humility, the cow, the elephant, the dog and the dog-eater, all with the same attitude.”

God is in everything, God is everything. “Prostrations to Thee who art in the form of the artisans who make arrows and bows; prostrations to Thee who art the hunters and the huntsmen; prostrations to Thee who art the hounds and the keepers of hounds,” says the Shatarudriya. To the Shatarudriya, the carpenters and chariot-makers; potters and blacksmiths; fowlers and fishermen and everyone and everything else in the universe is God.”

The creation and the created are not different since the creator created the universe from himself.

One of the strangest mysteries about Indian culture is that the very same people who chanted the Shatarudriya ritually every day insisted that if even the shadow an outcast fell on them, they became impure and had to regain their purity through purificatory rites – at least a ritual bath.

Such was the spiritual heights to which Pakkanar had climbed that for him everything we ate was the same. In fact, for him, the eater, the eaten and eating, were all the same. And he wanted at least those who were closest to him, who he felt had the potential to realize this, learn this – if not the common masses who might not be ready for such knowledge, to whom such knowledge could be dangerous.

O0O

Another beautiful legend about Pakkanar speaks about his encounter with a group of brahmanas who were on their way to Kashi, the holiest of holy places. Pakkanar met them on the way and after greeting them as was appropriate for a pariah to greet brahmanas, asked them politely where they were going. When they said they were going to Kashi, Pakkanar said, “Could your lordships do me a favour? Could you take this stick along and give it a dip in the Ganga too?”

“Why do want the stick to be given a dip in the Ganga?” asked the brahmanas. It was indeed a strange request.

Pakkanar said he would tell them when they brought the stick back.

They took the stick with them, perhaps prompted more by the strangeness of the request and the audacity of the man who had made that request.

When one of the brahmanas dipped the stick in the Ganga in Kashi, somehow he lost hold of it and the stick disappeared into the river. The brahmanas were all upset about what happened, but they finished their ritual baths in the Ganga and after visiting a few other holy places en route, eventually came back. Pakkanar went to them and after greeting them in due reverence, enquired about his stick. Did they give it a bath in the Ganga? Have they brought it back?

They told him they were sorry but they lost the stick.

“Where did your lordships lose it?” asked Pakkanar.

“In the Ganga, in Kashi,” they answered.

“Oh, that’s no problem, then,” said Pakkanar with a smile. With that he went to the dirty pond that was close by and made a request to it, “Please, may I have my stick back?”

Legend says that the stick immediately rose up from the pond to the amazement of the brahmanas and Pakkanar picked it up.

The brahmanas then realized that Pakkanar was giving them a valuable lesson: every pond in the world is Mother Ganga herself, and all water is as sacred as the water of the Ganga.

Speaking of visits to teerthas, holy places, which is what the brahmanas were doing in Pakkanar’s story, the Maitreyi Upanishad says: “teerthabhranti adhamadhama” – endlessly roaming from one pilgrimage centre to another is worse than the worst kind of sadhana. Pakkanar, like the Upanishad , rejects all paths to the Supreme that are less than the straightest one.

Here are a couple of other quotations related to ritualistic sadhana from Maitreyi Upanishad:

‘Deho devalayah proktah, sa jeevah kevalah shivah.
tyajed ajnananirmalyam, sohambhavena poojayet.”

“This body is spoken of as the temple, and the inhabitant of the body is none other than Shiva himself. Cast away yesterday’s garlands [nirmalya] of ignorance and worship him – with the bhava [attitude] that ‘I am He.’”

“Mrta mohamayi mata jato bodhamayah sutah
sutakadvayasampraptau katham sandhyam upasmahe
hridakashe cidadityah sada bhasati bhasati
nastameti na codeti katham sandhyam upasmahe.”

“Dead is my mother called delusion and a son has been born to me, called knowledge. How can I perform the sandhyas when I am in sootaka twice over? In the sky of my heart the sun of consciousness keeps shining and shining. It neither rises in the morning nor sets in the evening. How can I then perform the sandhyas?”

Sootaka is a period of ritual impurity following a birth or death in the family, when Vedic rituals are should not be performed. Sandhyas are performed in the morning and the evening.

Pakkanar would wholeheartedly agree with what the Upanishad says. And it is the experiences and sayings of such sages as Pakkanar that validate the sayings of the scriptures. So long as we do not have our own experience of the truth, which alone is the ultimate proof of their teachings.

O0O

Here is another legend about Pakkanar my father told me when I was a child.

Like other pariahs, Pakkanar too lived by making winnowing baskets and other household utensils from bamboo and selling these door to door. Every time he and his wife finished making ten winnowing baskets, Pakkanar took them to the village. He would give the bunch of winnows for them to see in the first house and then ask a high price for the winnows. They would naturally refuse to pay his absurd price, and he would refuse to lower it and say angrily, “Well, in that case, return all my nine winnows.”

People would laugh within themselves at his mistake – he had given them ten, and he was now asking for all the nine of them back. They would quietly keep one winnow back and return nine.

Pakkanar repeated his performance in the next house. He had nine winnows now. At the end of the bargain, he would angrily ask for all his eight winnowing baskets back, which is what they would give him back. This went on until there was just one winnow left.

In the last house he will sell it for the normal price. Pakkanar and his wife were content to live on what they earned from that one winnowing basket.

Stupid, some of us would be tempted to say, especially the profit-conscious ones. But that is how Pakkanar was, and that is how many saints are, particularly the ‘eccentric’ ones. Pakkanar’s ways would not make sense to the normal, rational ones among us. But the fact of the matter is that he produced more than he needed, and lived on the minimum that he needed.

Pakkanar was practicing what Islam calls zakat. Only he was far more generous than Islam’s minimum requirement of one-sixth of your produce. And it was definitely not to those who were poorer than himself that he was giving away the products of his work. Or maybe the people who were cheating the man they thought was a stupid pariah, were really poorer than him.

That stupidity was Pakkanar’s mask. That and the limitations imposed on him by his caste that he decided to submit to. He did come out from behind his mask occasionally, as we saw, like other masters who hid themselves behind masks.

If he hadn’t, most of us would have never heard of his existence.

O0O



To be continued...

The Pariah Woman and Her Twelve Children 2

Continued from part 1

Vararuchi’s world stood still. A thousand memories rushed chaotically through his mind. A whirlwind of memories. Memories of that long ago night under the tree when he had overheard the dark spirits. Memories of the court. A day that was at once bright because he was a winner celebrated by the king and everyone else and at the same was the darkest in his life. He had lied on that day for the first time in his life and lied to destroy. Destroy the life of an innocent baby. How cruel and heartless he had been. Years of wandering across many lands. Was it the first time he became a wanderer? No, the first time was when he had wandered in search of an answer the king sought. That was only forty days. And then there was the second round of wanderings. What was the answer he had sought during those wanderings? To questions about sin? About destiny? About acceptance and surrender? About purushartha? He knew it was not one question, but several questions. He had himself become nothing but questions. Endless questions. And then he had heard a voice. A voice sweeter than the sweetest notes of the veena. What was it saying? Please ask the guest to have his bath and come back, and by then everything will be ready – was it that? No, it was not that. It was something else. The voice was asking him what was wrong. Who was shaking him? Two hands were holding him and shaking him, trying to wake him up? There were questions in those eyes too – in the eyes that were staring at him. The sweetest of voices he had known – that was asking him questions. What was she asking? Why was the world going round? Why was everything whirling about? He clutched her tightly, clung to her, to the girl that was dearer to him than his life, to the girl he had married and was now his wife. And a baby screamed. Screamed in agony – a scream that he had heard a million times in his life. There was no sweetness in that voice. Pain, nothing but pure agony. Two men were holding a baby – a newborn baby – and one man had just stuck a burning torch into her tiny little head.

When Vararuchi came to, he was lying in his wife’s lap. He sat up. And then he told her everything that had happened. Beginning with the king’s question. He did not know how long he talked. Maybe hours and hours. Maybe it was only minutes. But he told her everything. Everything that led him to her. Everything that he had done to escape her.

When he finished, she was a dead woman. There was no colour on her face, no life in her eyes. All her brilliance had left her – a dead body is not brilliant. She breathed, but otherwise she was dead. She shrank back from him in horror. In horror of him, in horror of herself, in horror of life itself.

It was his decision to spend the rest of their life in pilgrimage. She and him – life wanted them to be together, destiny wanted them to be together, and they shall be together. But not in their home. On the roads, eating what life brought them, what destiny brought them, sleeping where life, destiny, took them by each evening. He wanted her with him – that is what life had taught him, she was inseparable from him.

He realized she had never been separate from him. Not from the moment he heard the dark spirits speak about her. Speak about her destiny and his destiny. He had wandered across the land for years, in summer and winter, in spring and in rainy season, under the scorching sun and pouring rain, in screaming winds. And in all those wanderings she had never been separate from him. There hadn’t been a moment when she was not with him.

And so shall it be. He shall again become a wanderer. Going where life took him, where destiny took him. And she shall be his companion in all those wanderings.

O0O

They were passing through a jungle when the pains started. She was going to give birth to their first child. “Go behind that bush and deliver the baby,” he told her. And that is what she did. She had become weak from her wanderings. Her agonies tore her to shreds – the first birth-giving. And she was no more than a little girl yet. In her teens, and almost too young to be a mother. But not a sound came out of her. She had cried only once in her life – when the torch was struck into her head. After that she had never cried. She hadn’t cried on that day either, the day Vararuchi told her about them. There was no way she could cry on that day, her shock was too great for that. And after that she had never cried either.

She did not cry as she delivered her first baby behind a bush, all alone, with no one to help her, no one to hold her hands, no one to give her strength. Not a cry escaped her. Not a whimper.

When Vararuchi heard the cries of the newborn baby, he asked her, “Does the baby have a mouth?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then leave it there. God who gave it a mouth will also feed it.”

She left her firstborn baby there and got up. Should she clean the baby and herself?

He had started walking. She walked behind him.

O0O

When the second baby came a year later, he asked her again, “Does the baby have a mouth?’

“Yes,” she said.

“Then leave it there. God who gave it a mouth will also feed it.”

She left her second baby there and got up. He had started walking. She walked behind him.

And that is how it was with the third baby and the fourth baby and the fifth baby ... down to the eleventh baby.

Eleven years. Eleven babies. All left where they were born.

Vararuchi had admitted defeat before destiny. If destiny was all powerful, let it take care of its own, he had told himself with a vengeance. The birth of those babies were destiny’s decisions, and what will happen to them shall be destiny’s decisions too.

Vararuchi’s was not a happy surrender, but an angry surrender, a furious surrender.

The twelfth baby was born in the twelfth year. When Vararuchi heard the baby’s cries, he asked once again, “Does the baby have a mouth?’

“No,” she said. She was not going to abandon any more of her babies. She was a mother.

Vararuchi was silent.

The baby too had stopped crying.

She looked at the baby.

It had no mouth.

O0O

Vararuchi took the baby to the nearby hilltop. There he established him as a deity. Vayillakkunnil Appan, he is called today. There is a temple built for him and ritual poojas are performed for him, as for any other deity. Devotees visit the temple every day, where their wishes are granted by the all-powerful Vayillakkunnil Appan – God with no mouth, who resides on the hill.

All twelve of the pariah woman’s babies were born in Kerala, says the legend. The temple of Vayillakkunnilappan is in Kerala.

The other eleven babies were all found and brought up by different people as their children. Each of the founders belonged to a different caste, and for that reason, each grew up belonging to a different caste.

A Malayalam a verse combines the names of all twelve children.

“Melattol Agnihotree Rajakan Uliyannoor Tacchanum pinne Vallon
Vayillakkunnilappan Vatutala Maruvum Nayar Karakkal Mata
Chemme kel Uppukoottan periya Tiruvarankattezhum Pananarum
Nere Narayana Bhrantanum utan Akavoor Chattanum Pakkanarum.”

Melattol Agnihotri, Rajakan, Peruntachan, Vallon, Vayillakkunnilappan, Vatutala Nair, Karakkal Amma, Uppukoottan, Tiruvarankattu Pananar, Naranath Bhrantan, Akavoor Chattan and Pakkanar – these were the twelve children of the nameless parayi and Vararuchi mentioned in the verse.

My father had taught me this verse when I was a child and over the years, I had forgotten part of it. Last year when I was home in Kerala, I asked Father to sing that and I discovered he hadn’t forgotten a word of it. I recorded the verse in his powerful voice.

The twelfth child had already become a deity. Each of the other eleven grew up to become a legend in his or her own unique way. Stories about some of them are known to every child born in Kerala. Stories about others have been lost in the passage of time. They are lost, but they are there somewhere in the deep psyche of Kerala, in its deep collective unconscious.

Legend also tells us that in later years all the eleven children met. After their parent’s death, they came together to perform their shraddha every year – all except the twelfth child, who was a deity. Several stories are told about these get-togethers, some of which have survived till today.

Three of the children grew up to be great siddhas, saints with immense spiritual powers. Two of them belonged to the lowest of castes – Chattan and Pakkanar, both enlightened masters of the highest kind, both highly unconventional and authentic, their words and deeds reminding us of the words of the Upanishads. I remembered them when I recently wrote about Maitreyi Upanishad, the ancient Upanishad that rejects ritualism and idol worship, rejects all but the straightest path for the inner journey.

There will not be a single Kerala child who does not know the story of Naranath Bhrantan, the mad saint, one of whose stories parallels the myth of Sisyphus from ancient Greece. But with Sisyphus his eternal rolling the boulder up the hill only for it to come down when it reached near the top was a curse he had received from the gods; for Naranath, it was a teaching device, chosen by himself. Great masters have their unique ways of teaching, and this was his way of teaching. And that is only one of the many stories of Naranath that have survived. Each of them as thrilling as the others, and as enlightening.

And so does every Malayali know the story of Peruntachan, the super carpenter whose skill at his craft was mindboggling.

I mentioned at the beginning that I first heard the legend of the twelve children of the pariah woman from my father when I was a child. In subsequent years I would get the opportunity to read widely from all kinds of mythology, including ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology, Native American and Japanese mythology, and mythology from all over India. I love mythology. I love mythology from all over the world. But to me the legend of the twelve children of the pariah woman – parayi pettu pantirukulam – has remained unsurpassed in its charm.

True, the legend raises a lot of questions, some of them philosophical and existential. But we will have to wait for another opportunity to go into these questions.

O0O

The Pariah Woman and Her Twelve Children

Among the most beautiful stories I grew up listening to was that of the pariah woman who gave birth to twelve children, who grew up belonging to twelve different castes. Legends were told of each of the twelve children – so great did each of them become. Malayalis know her story as the legend of parayi pettu pantirukulam – ‘the parayi-begotten twelve castes.’ Translated that way, it could be slightly misleading because the legend does not say that the twelve castes or kulas were begotten by the parayi [pariah woman], but that her twelve children belonged to twelve different castes.

Hers is one of the most popular legends of Kerala and every child born in Kerala hears it as a child. In my case, it was from my father that I first heard the story as a child. Subsequently I read it as a teenager in Kottarattil Shankunni’s Aitihyamala [Garland of Legends], the collection of Kerala legends that was at that time available as an eight-volume set and has since been combined into a large, single volume. I have been obsessed with the beauty of the story ever since I first heard it.

The brahmana scholar, Vararuchi, says the legend, was one of the nine jewels in the court of King Vikramaditya. Vararuchi was a master of every known science and the unsurpassed scholar of pauranic scholar of the age.

One day it so happened that an idle question came to King Vikram’s mind: what is the most important verse in the Ramayana?

What an absurd question – how do you pick one out of the twenty-four thousand magnificent verses in Valmiki Ramayana as the undisputed best?

Vararuchi had no answer, which displeased the king very much. He asked Vararuchi to go, find out the answer and then come back – and if he couldn’t, said the king, he need not bother to come back to the court. He was given forty-one’s time to find the answer.

Vararuchi wandered wide and far, asking every scholar he met the answer to his question, but not one of them knew the answer. Some laughed at him for asking such a ridiculous question, others commented about the vagaries of kings and the foolishness of people who depended on them for their livelihood, and yet others named one verse or another, but Vararuchi was not satisfied.

Forty days passed, and yet he had no answer to his question. It was not only his position in the court that was at risk, but his fame itself. He knew even if the question was ridiculous he had to find a satisfactory answer for it – for, all that people would remember was that he could not find an answer Vikramaditya’s question, and not that the question was ridiculous.

That night, deep in despair and gloom, Vararuchi repaired to the bottom of a tree. He had failed. Now there was nothing left to be done. Forty days were past and when the night ended, it would be the forty-first day. And he would the laughing stock of the whole world.

He could hardly think as he lay down there. His body seemed to be already dead, so completely drained of all energy was he. Before falling asleep, he prayed: “May the goddesses of the forest guard me through the night!”

As he lay there, some dark spirits happened to pass by through the skies above him. They landed on the tree for a minute’s rest and as they were leaving, asked the forest goddesses who were on the tree if they were not coming along, they were going to a house where a birth was about to take place. The goddesses said they couldn’t leave the tree since the man sleeping under the tree had prayed to them before he fell asleep that they guard him through the night. They asked the spirits to let them know what happened on their way back.

Vararuchi was up before the night was over, as was his habit. But he did not open his eyes or get up. The deep gloom that had enveloped him before he fell asleep hadn’t left him. He had no answer to the king’s question and there was no point in getting up without the answer.

As he was lying there, the spirits who had gone to the house of birth came back and again rested on the tree. The forest goddesses asked them about their trip. “In whose house was the birth? Was the child male or female?”

The spirits told them it was to a lowly pariah’s house they had gone and the child born was a baby girl. “What is her future like?” asked the goddesses again. “What is she destined to become? Who will she marry?”

And the spirits answered, “Well, she is supposed to marry the idiot of a brahmana sleeping under this tree who does not even know that the most important verse in the Ramayana is “ramam dasharatham viddhi, mam viddhi janakatmajam; ayodhyam ataveem viddhi, yathecchasi tatha kuru!”

For those who are not familiar with this verse, it is taken from the Ayodhya Kanda of the Ramayana. As Lakshmana takes leave of his mother Sumitra to go to the forest with Rama and Sita, she tells him this verse as part of her advice to him. In the verse she asks him to look upon Rama as his father Dasharatha; upon Sita as herself, that is, as his mother; and upon the forest as Ayodhya; and for the rest, she tells him, he can do as he wishes. [In a different version of the Ramayana text, the verse ends in gaccha tata yathasukham; meaning, “Now son, go happily.”]

With those words the spirits took off again and Vararuchi got up and sat bolt upright. The first thing he realized is that he now had the answer he had been looking for. As for what the spirits had said he was destined to do, he told himself, it was disturbing but he would deal with it later. What he needed to do now was to go to his king and give him the answer.

Later that day Vararuchi reached Vikramaditya’s court. The king was delighted to see his scholar friend back again – he had been missing him and had even regretted the rash order he had given him.

Vararuchi, says the legend, not only gave the king the answer to his question, but also pointed out to him the most significant part of the verse: where Sumitra asks Lakshmana to look upon Sita as his mother. He then proceeded to interpret the verse in ten different ways, giving the verse ten different meanings.

O0O

As Vikramaditya, Vararuchi and the rest of the court sat talking, the scholar told the king: “Maharaj, a child has been born to a pariah couple last night. According to the time and place of her birth and the position of the stars, she is a great danger to the kingdom. If she continues to live, by the time she is three years old, the kingdom itself will be come to doom.”

The king was shocked to hear this. Vararuchi was the greatest scholar of jyotisha, the science of predictions, and author of a number of books. He has never been wrong in the past. Nor did anyone in the court have any doubt that everything Vararuchi predicted would come true.

They wondered what to do. It is a matter of a newborn pariah baby on one side and the whole kingdom on the other. True, a newborn baby cannot be killed, whoever she is. And in this case, it was a baby girl – all the more not to be harmed in any way. While all children were precious, girl children were infinitely more so. [How things have changed over time!]

But at the same time, ancient books of wisdom said that to save a family, an individual could be sacrificed; to save a village, a family could be sacrificed; and for the sake of the kingdom, a village could be sacrificed. Here it was the question of sacrificing an individual for the sake of a whole kingdom.

And yet they knew there was no way they were going to kill a girl child.

Eventually a compromise was arrived at, suggested by Vararuchi himself. They would float the baby down the river, on a raft made of banana stems, with a live torch stuck to her head. After that, let her fate be decided by destiny.

Vararuchi knew what he had suggested was the death of the new born baby. Though technically they would not be killing her straight away, she had no chances of surviving.

They say no blessing ever comes to man from dark powers. And if any apparently comes, the price you will have to pay for it will be shocking too heavy. Vararuchi had received the answer to his question from the dark spirits the previous night, and darkness has already entered the highly educated, pious brahmana’s heart, perhaps unknown even to himself. What was at stake was Vararuchi’s honour. It was not considered an honourable thing for a brahmana to wed a pariah girl. Great would be the social ignominy heaped upon a man who did so. But it was not an unheard of thing. While the society did look down upon it, the scriptures did allow it. It was what was called anuloma marriage, in which a man married a woman from a caste beneath his own caste. A brahmana was thus allowed to marry another brahmana woman, or a woman from a varna or caste beneath his. What the scriptures and tradition were against was pratiloma marriages, in which the woman was from an upper caste or varna, and the man from a lower one.

What Vararuchi was doing to save his honour was taking another life – an innocent newborn life. And that too the life of a girl child. All ancient scriptures are unanimous in this: there is no greater sin than taking the life of a girl child.

Such was the nature of the darkness that had entered Vararuchi that he condemned the little baby to death to save his honour.

Vararuchi’s suggestion was accepted. King’s men went to the hut of the pariah and snatched the baby from the hands of its screaming mother. They stuck a burning torch in her head and floated the baby screaming in agony down a river.

O0O

Years passed. Vararuchi was no more with King Vikramaditya. He was now a brahmana wandering restlessly from place to place. Perhaps his guilt tormented him constantly – what he had done to the little pariah girl was in all likelihood the first evil act of his otherwise pure life. At one time, one of the brightest jewels in the court, he had now become a yayavara, spending his nights where he reached. Yatra sayam grhah, that was his rule now: Home for the night is where you find yourself at the sunset. He lived on the charity of men – hospitality was always a part of India, particularly to wandering brahmanas, and their visits were always considered a blessing. After all, a guest was to be treated as God himself – atithidevo bhava, as the Taittiriya Upanishad puts it. Hospitality was also a form of tapas in the ancient tradition. Hosts went out of the way to make visitors comfortable. A situation that was, no doubt, at times exploited by ruthless guests. But that was accepted as part of life and no one ever complained, nor did they stop being hospitable.

Years of wandering. Vararuchi was fairly old by now. Once Vararuchi was a guest in the house of a brahmana. As they sat and talked, the brahmana was delighted to find his guest a great scholar. There was something lovable in the host brahmana too, something that endeared him to Vararuchi. And he really loved his home – he felt at ease in years. The great wandering scholar relaxed – and laughed. It has been years since he had laughed last. Laughter had left him the day he suggested to the king that the pariah baby be floated down the river with a burning torch stuck in her head. He laughed again for the first time in years.

He was still in a light mood when the brahmana invited his guest for lunch. So Vararuchi told his host he had certain conditions for accepting the invitation and unless these were met, he wouldn’t be able to accept the honour. Taken aback, the host asked him what he meant. And Vararuchi told him: “I need to feed a hundred people before I myself eat. For the lunch I need a hundred and eight curries. And after lunch, I need to eat three people and then I need four people to carry me.”

His host was now struck dumb. He couldn’t think of anything to say, he became so confused. And then he heard the voice of his daughter answering from inside the house, “Father, please tell the guest everything will be done as per his wishes.”

The girl’s voice sent a thrill through the aging scholar’s heart, a strange thrill that he had not known so far. He had never heard a voice as sweet as that. He had heard female voices of all kinds – cultured and refined voices in his days as a courtier, and every imaginable kind of voice in his wandering years. But never a voice like this. The exquisite notes the veena produced in the hands of the most talented musician were no match for the young female voice he had heard. A strange rapture rose up from the depths of the scholar’s being and spread through his body. Goosebumps appeared all over. Vararuchi was suddenly carried away to a different world, a world he had never been to before.

He had lived the first part of his life worshipping Sarasvati, the goddess of learning. And then his life had changed, and he had become a tormented wanderer. Thoughts of women had occured to him occasionally. After all, he was a healthy male and to which healthy male do they not occur; but he had known they were born of the urges of his body and had not allowed them to master him. But for the first time he wanted to hear that young female voice again and again. He wanted to hold the woman whose voice it was in his arms. He wanted to surrender himself to her, to make her his own and give himself to her. He wanted to travel with her into those worlds to which he was stranger, but had read about so much. He suddenly understood what his friend and fellow courtier of his court days, the royal poet Kalidasa meant when sang of the glory of women.

“Please ask the guest to have his bath and come back, and by then everything will be ready.”

That voice again.

She had asked him to have his bath and come back.

Vararuchi shook himself out of his thoughts and went to the nearby river for his bath.

After he left, the girl explained it all to her father. When the brahmana had said he had to feed a hundred people before he had his lunch, what he meant was that he had to perform vaishvadeva, the ritual that the scriptures said would please a hundred gods. When he said he wanted a hundred and eight curries, what he meant was he needed the ginger-curry, which is considered equal to a hundred curries. The three people he wanted to eat after lunch - that was a paan, made of betel leaves, aricanut and lime paste. And as for four people carrying him, all he meant was he needed a cot to lie on – the four legs of the cot are the four people.

When Vararuchi came back after his bath, his delight knew no bounds as he saw that everything was done as he wanted it. During the vaishvadeva, Vararuchi’s thoughts were less with the rituals and more with the girl.

And then when he was seated for the meal, the girl came and served the honoured guest. Vararuchi had the first glimpse of the girl whose voice had sent him into raptures. One look at her and Vararuchi knew that that voice had to belong her. He had never seen a girl like this before. Scholar that he was, his mind immediately associated her with his friend Kalidasa’s heroines – Yaksha’s beloved in Meghadoota, Shakuntala, Indumati...he knew none of them surpassed this girl in beauty. And how she moved!

While having his meal, his thoughts were contantly with her. And as he lay on his cot to rest after the paan and closed his eyes, he was unable to sleep. Instead, he saw himself with her. In a home of his own, with her as his beloved.

What a voice! And what beauty! And what brilliance!

He realized now that had never before thought of setting up a home.

Later, he talked to the girl’s father. He was more than pleased to give the girl to the scholar brahmana who was at one time a courtier of Vikramaditya. He talked to the girl, and told her of his age, but she had been listening to him from inside the house as he talked to her father and she had seen him when she came to serve him the lunch. She was already in love with him.

O0O

After their marriage, they settle in a home of their own. Vararuchi’s love for his wife was the love of an older man for a young woman. It is also the love of a man who had denied life to himself suddenly falling in love with life. He had much to teach her, scholar that he was, and she, with her brilliant mind, loved to learn from him, which endeared her all the more to him. And suddenly he learnt that he had more to learn from her than she had from him – this beautiful young girl whom she adored had the wisdom of a million of years of life on earth, and her wisdom surpassed his knowledge gathered from books. Hers was the wisdom of life.

Yes, he told himself one day, I am infatuated with this girl. And not ashamed of it. Woman was an altar, and he, a humble priest. Before her he felt the humility a devotee feels before the goddess he worshipped. There was nothing more worthwhile than spending the rest of his life worshipping at the altar she was.

One day she was lying on his lap and he was combing her hair. As he parted her hair, he noticed some strange mark right in the middle of her head. Something like a wound, healed a long time ago, leaving just the scar there.

A shiver ran through Vararuchi. His hands began to shake. He could hardly move. He could hardly speak. Was he imagining it? Or...? No, he did not want to name it. That was impossible!

Vararuchi’s words came out of him with great difficulty. “What is this mark...on your head?” he asked.

“Oh,” said the girl in her sweet voice that put the veena to shame,
“Father once told me that it was the mark of a wound. He said I wasn’t born to him, though he loved me more than if I had been born to him. I am a foundling, a baby who came floating down the river years ago on a raft of banana stems, with a torch stuck in my head.”

Continued ...part 2