ONE THOUSAND EYES AND TWENTY HANDS

ONE THOUSAND EYES AND TWENTY HANDS

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A SHORT STORY WRITTEN IN TAMIL AND TRANSLATED

BY VAIYAVAN

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‘One can have recompense for a curse. Lord, is there any atonement for sin?’

Lord Brahma’s deep meditation was disturbed by that voice. It sounded repenting yet majestic.

‘Who has this guts and power to enter in my private world?’He opened his eyes with a compassionate smile. The regretting voice with self-pity gave him an inner vision. It’s Indhra.

‘Where had gone the luster and pride in his deportment? And a dark shadow covered his face.

Then he opened His eyes.

Indhra prostrated before him

“You usually come here with some problem? Now what is new?”

“Your creation!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean myself”

“You have acquired your freedom. Rama killed my grandson Ravana and redeemed your kingdom from him. You should enjoy it”

Lord Brahma smiled.“It’s a fact. The kingdom came to my hands. The usurper was destroyed. But me..me..”

Lord Brahma glanced at him calmly.

Indhra continued.“Ahalya regained her life from stone-hood after Lord Rama’s sole dust. She became a living woman as her husband Saint Gautama assured. But I am.. I am not relieved from these marks”He rolled his eyes, stretching his forearms signaling Lord Brahma to have a look out on his whole body. One thousand marks of Yoni. The remorseful voice had a pleading tone. Lord Brahma tapped on his own forehead.“You sowed. You reaped. It’s Karma. It’s the Karmic come back. None can escape.”

Indhra bent down and touched Lord Brahma’s feet.

“You have created me. You made me. Then you forced me to undergo with the karmic result. Is it justifiable?”

Lord Brahma found it an argument. And he had to respond.“The resultant mental waves cause the criterion of creation. Your karmic accumulation you got from your many births influence me when I created you.”

Indhra politely replied.

“But you created Ahalya out of your fancy, to be the peerless beauty coveted by all men in the heaven and earth.”

“Yes. It’s true”

“That beauty instigated me as a fishing rod to become a prey. It’s not my fault. Her beauty’s power.. Your creative fault..”

“Where had gone your self-control and the awareness of being yourself the Lord of heaven?”

“You have not created me as an ascetic above the lust”

“Every birth is a stay on a choultry in the pilgrimage of the Soul. Now you are the Lord of heaven. The experiences you collected in this birth will help you in the next birth.”

“Lord, I came to ask for atonement. You give me spiritual discourse.”

“I am only a creator; not responsible for their actions.”

“Then my refuge?”

“Had you apologize with Indirani, your wife?”

“Yes, I asked for her pardon.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me to meet you and for deliverance” Lord Brahma smiled sadly.

Then said “Go to her who induced you to make sin and who cursed you. Beg their pardon.”

“Is this your final say”

“No. It’s the control of canon.”

Indhra once again touched Brahma’s feet and got leave.

After he left the flame of curse of the billions born tried to spread on Lord Brahma. But instantly the cool circle resulted by a longer penance prevented it.

He pondered.

‘Did I create Ahalya’s matchless beauty?’

A fact illumined within him.

‘It’s her own saving of collection in her mind about the beauty. It inclined me to create her.’

A sense of pity occupied him for Indhra.

‘ With two eyes he suffered for looking at the beauty of a woman. The thousand eyes he is having now will suffer for, many more feminine beauty.’

And Indhra’s elephant Iravatha left him at the shore of river Sarayu.

He heard that Ahalya and Gauthama had built an ashram there to continue their penance.

‘Well. I will have a human form relinquishing the deva form’He decided.

Indhra had a human form, stood at the River Sarayu’s shore.His body was covered with a long piece of cloth hiding the thousand eye-marks.

He saw a boat man was waiting with a boat for the passengers.

“Want to have a ride?” The boatman asked.

“Yes”

“Up to where?”

“Ayodhi”

“Be specific. Ayodhi has many ghats.” The boatman grumbled.

“Rishi Gautham’s Ashram”

“Got money?”

Indhra forgot the custom of the earth where money is a main need.

“I don’t have money. Please get this as a substitute”

Indhra tried to remove a small gold ring from his left hand finger.

The boatman looked at Indhra curiously. A sense of respect grew within him.

“Come. I don’t need the ring. Let me do it freely for a gentleman like you”

Indhra laughed within for his comment.

‘A gentle man’

“You missed our king Rama’s coronation yesterday, I think”

“Yesterday?”

“Yes. What a splendor! What grandeur! Two eyes are not sufficed to enjoy the magnificence.”

Indhra noticed his happy face mixed with piety.

When Indhra got down from the boat and stepped in on the foot path leading to Gauthama Rishi’s ashram premises he saw Ahalya from a closer distance. Another shock was Sita conversing with her.

Sita came there to relax from the coronation jubilations and shouts. She needed a peace of mind after the tremulous fourteen years.

On seeing Indhra her mind oscillated.

‘Should I return? Why Indhra came here? Does it to settle and old account or to venture for something new?’

She reminded on how as a thief he came to Rishi Gauthama’s ashram, cawing like a cock to send the Rishi to the river, giving a false alarm that it was dawn. She recollected the golden deer. All men are of the same mould ready to err when a chance come

Her glance turned to Gouthama’s coming with an unperturbed look.

Hearing the foot-steps Ahalya turned her face.

Both of their eyes met.

Next Indhra’s eyes went down to meet her lips recollecting the soul killing feel which he experienced on a night; lifted up to meet again the magnetic pull. Her beauty didn’t lack its luster. But there was a threatening blaze usually found in the yaaga fire.

She noticed the travel of his eyes.

“You? Why do you come now?”

Sita noted the authority in her voice.

He could not answer immediately.

“For what do you come now?”

Ahalya’s question went echoing among the jungle trees. The pitch was so high.

Indhra bent down

A harsh sound of wooden footsteps treading over the fallen leaves was heard.

Indhra lifted his head. And saw Rishi Gauthama standing beside his side.

Without bothering about Gauthama she looked at his hands,the fingers which ran all over her body and the thousand marks of eyes over him.

She pitied him

‘Is not the Lord of the devas? How that humanly weakness came to him? ’

She remembered her reflection over the river she usually went to take bath.

That incomparable beauty made him to err. It’s magnetic pull which caused everyone to fell for her might be the reason.

She got relieved of the pity for him.

Sita looked at her without taking her eyes.Indeed what a great beauty it is! She noticed the majestic looks pardoning Indhra. She preferred moving far to prevent an embarrassment.

“Please don’t go”

Sita stopped moving.

“Ask him why he had come now?” Ahalya asked.

Sita’s raised brows asked instead .

Indhra suddenly bent down to touch Sita’s feet. She went back avoiding his touch.

“I am human. You are the lord of devas.

“No, your majesty, you are the spouse of the divine lord whose foot could turn a stone-hood to a human-wood.

“Why do you come here now?”

“To beg for recovery”

“For what? From whom?”

“From Devi Ahalya and Rishi Gautama to get rid of the thousand eye marks over me. ”

“The curse came from my weakness” Gautama spoke solemnly.

Sita looked at him perplexed by wonder.

Suddenly a rustle was heard. A deer jumped over the Ashram’s fence ran in through the open door of the hut being hunted.

Sita expressed her concern “Alas!”

“Wait ! I need to check whether it had tumbled anything.”

Sita turned and looked at Gautama.

He understood her thought.

”Ahalya takes care of my tapas; without her it won’t be full.” He stroked his beard

Indhra felt debased standing before the two.

“Sita! Guga, the boat-men’s leader is waiting on the other shore of Sarayu,to get leave from you.Shall we go?”

“Let’s wait until Ahalya comes.”

“No. Indhra came here to obtain redemption from her. The beggar and the giver would both feel embarrassed when somebody is present. Let’s go” Gautama said.

Sita sensed the changed Rishi, leaving the cursed two alone, to get their own privacy to deal with.

She followed Gautama.

For quite a long distance they went quiet. The silence was disturbed at a screech and a sight.

A squirrel jumped down from a tree, to catch a fallen fruit.

But two mongooses running one after another to get that fruit, won the race after picking up it.

The squirrel screeched perhaps complaining.

Gautama began to talk

“Then I have not understood Ahalya as now. The power of tapas was at the lower stage then; the tolerance level lower. I was so narrow to curse. A Rishi’s wife is above curses, more above than doubts. My ignorance expected her to be above temptations. It’s my ego. The result condemned her to bear the hardness of a rock. My cursed caused Indhra to bear with the thousand eye mark whoever saw him intuited to think of Ahalya, her beauty, her fall and my meanness”

They came across a big rock.

“Shall we sit on it and talk?”He asked.

“Surely, Maharishi.”

They sat on it facing each other.

“I want out get out of mind’s burrow today, my daughter Sita!”

She smiled benignfully in approval.

“What a boon for me to hear this from you Maharishi,Please!”

He continued”Ahalya is Lord Brahma’s daughter. He created her with full determination not any one should excel her beauty. He made devas to run a race to wed her. Finally he chose me, an ascetic. Can anyone even nature; compel a rishi-pathni to restrict her mind just to be a mere wife of a Rishi? That too the ego resulted from ‘I am desired by the Lord of the devas?”

Sita looked at him reaching a newer height.

“Your zeal to stand firm even when Ravana begged you is an to be worshipped. Ahalya was not taught to be firm. And she had to be pardoned”

Sita felt that Gautama suddenly become a sexless saint.

“Indhra had to be pardoned. He didn’t know what he was doing, without feeling the weight of

the sin he succumbed, the fault is not his”

“Then whose?”

“ Her formation. The person who caused it”

He closed his eyes for a while, then said

“No.It is not the fault of Lord Brahma even. It is Ahalya’s desire which caused her gorgeous beauty. Now she is got rid of the maze of beauty.”

Sita thought of Ravana! How powerful! What a great victor! The one who shook the mighty Himalayas with his hands!. He fell for my beauty. Was my beauty the reason for his downfall?

She regretted for him the mighty with twenty hands and pardoned all his sins. A great sense of tranquility entered in her. She wished the same to Ahalya also.

“Let’s go”

Gautama said.

They began to stroll towards the shore.

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