‘I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant. Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing: That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray of wistful regret...’
T.S. Eliot, ‘Dry Salvages’
Facing me, on my desk, is
an artist’s vision, chiselled in sandalwood.
Is it because fragrance heightens perception?
Lord Krishna’s left index finger is admonishing
Arjuna, while his right hand reins in
five fire-breathing horses,
each a sense incensed to break into
wanton license. In my mind’s ear,
I hear Arjuna saying:
‘I see arrayed in front of me, O Lord,
my relatives, teachers and friends—
limbs of my own body—my chest, head,
eyes, arms and shoulders. Wouldn’t killing
them be self-destruction?’
Your prime problems, Arjuna, are
despondency and self-delusion. When I am
immanent in both the axe and the tree’s
bare trunk, then who is the wood-
cutter? Shedding tears over the dead-
body is like adding their
brine to the sea’s—
a mad man’s cry in the market-place
over the sun’s demise.
The body is like a fort, with many exits.
When it crumbles under its own weight,
the commander within flies away
from the rear gate to set up another fort
elsewhere. He is never killed.
Flame cannot turn him to ashes,
nor water dampen his resilience.
He was there to see the first sunrise
and he will survive to see this planet lapse
into nothingness.’
‘Still, O Lord, those faces in front of me,
all reflections of my own self—
the sun’s splinters on agitated waters.’
There you go again, Arjuna, deep into
your ignorance. Each face arouses
emotions—of revulsion or joy. A slimy
reaction to a bat hanging by its claws
under the ceiling, a lizard flicking its tongue
at an insect on the wall, or a cobra dragging
its length across a faded lawn. Or, an upsurge
of joy at seeing a sunflower, a rose or
a water-lily. All these objects have faces too,
like those of humans. They all trap the mind
into emotions, high or low:
Let me now show you some faces from the landscape
of your past, as I open my heart to you—
literally, not figuratively.
Look here at those faces of your ancestors,
blurred in the primordial mist. You cannot
recognise any of them, nor do they know
who you are. Because time is a granite wall
through which you cannot see. Yet you
have already started to grieve over those
pitted against you. As if you are yourself their doom,
when you too will descend into the dark cellar
when the moment arrives. Here I am telling
you all this under the canopy of the present moment,
with the horses neighing, elephants trumpeting
and chariots wheeling around.’
‘But there’s still the future, O Lord.
Can an act be divorced from the thought
of recompense?’
‘That’s man’s ultimate frailty, O Warrior,
to know what lies beyond the horizon,
to know the end even before the beginning,
to know if a seed would sprout
into a leaf, and a leaf into a bud—
if a traveller would reach his destination
before sunset. No, you’d never know
what lies ahead because I hold this card
close to my chest. Or, to put it differently,
the future lies in a sealed capsule, under the ocean’s
bed, inaccessible to man. But I know it all,
for I do the choosing—the epicentre
of the next quake, the point of shipwreck
on the ocean’s surface, or the arrow that
would transfix the fish’s eye in a water bowl.
I choose the sex in the womb,
the hurricane’s direction and velocity.
If man were to know his future,
wouldn’t he play god?
Look at the game he plays—
‘what the stars foretell!’
As if even the stars know when there’ll
be a collision in the sky
and a meteor go off course.
And yet the fortune-teller in the market-
place beguiles his customers
with his play of cards. His tutored parrot
always picks the right one — for success.
So why should your brow be wrinkled
to know the battle’s end?
Why let nightmares vex your sleep?
Act in the present, banishing all thoughts
of the morrow. Like the sparrow that picks
up a grain from the ground, without any
thought of granary. And in a season of drought,
it would peck into a cactus blade for milk.’
‘Now I seejai^tpor opening within me, O Lord.
Still, I feel a lingering turbulence in my mind,
like lava simmering under the earth’s surface.
Is there a permanent haven of peace?’
‘Indeed Arjuna, if you’d transcend all contraries.
Imagine yourself both the chess and the chess-
player—watch each move from both sides,
simultaneously. Don’t forget that a scorpion
needs the same caress as a lapdog—
that a python’s skin is as plushy as a velvet
bedspread, that it is possible for a stag
to drink with a lion from the same pool,
in a deep forest. If you could spend a night
with a whore, and return home
unblemished, your eye would sparkle
like a diamond. And diamonds are forever,
you know. Such an enlightened mind is like
an eagle, poised on its wings in the sky,
surveying the earth like a god. It is an axis
that moves the wheel but itself moves not.
A constant among variables.’
‘No more questioning, O Lord.
I can now read your message between the folds
of a rose-bud, unravel the mystery of the mole
on the moon’s face, walk through a dense
forest at night, without the pole star’s taper.’
‘Then pick up your bow and arrow, O Warrior,
and fight to set the crooked straight.
Your destiny was etched on your palm
at birth. Just as it was preordained
that I’d be with you, like the musk
in a deer’s navel—a whisper in the air
that leads a lone traveller through a wilderness.
Maybe, I took the human form solely to commune
with you, as we both find ourselves here
between the two forces, good and evil.
A mentor too realizes himself
through his disciple, like the Creator
seeing his image in his creation.’