Saturday, January 17, 2004
BETWEEN THE VULTURE AND THE WOLF
December and January are known to be the coldest months in Bangalore. But Max knew there were other places much, much colder than this: places where people talked of having fun at 34 degrees below zero!
The thought itself gave him the chills, like the one that gripped him as he sped down from work on his Honda.
But then Bangalore was known to have been colder in the recent past; prior to the last fifty years or so. He had heard from one gentleman whom he had met at the railway station the other day - an elderly affable person who had migrated to Bangalore back in the early 1950s - that Bangalore had witnessed freezing winters in his youth: winters where one saw ice floating on both stagnant and flowing waters in and around the Garden City! That had been a shock to Max. But then there was global warming, he knew. The price of 'progress'. 'O Yea', Max thought, 'just say that to the Wayfarer. He would tell you what progress was really all about!'
'O Yea', Max thought again, as he slowed his bike ahead of the looming crowd of vehicles. The question propped itself up as was usual when he thought of the Wayfarer:
'Wayfarer, how fare ye this day?'
Silence.
Max brought his bike to a halt, caught now in the vortex of a six-in-the-evening traffic bottleneck just off the famed Commercial Street. Ah! The Commercial Street, indeed, thought Max, as he viewed the queue of impatient vehicles that lined up ahead of his black Honda behind the traffic signal light turned red. It were the places like Commercial Street, Brigade street and the like that poignantly informed Max of the tragedy of an ancient society in transition. Much like the climate of this historic city, described with the pain of that elderly migrant at the railway station - an agony you saw in those aged eyes drunk with nostalgia; with a craving for a world that once was, but is not anymore. The despair of every migrant, like himself, like Max.
Yes, Max saw with sudden clarity: like the climate, so the people of this ancient land - changing with the times, with the cultures; making room for the invasion of their hearts and minds with the poison and the filth that will make them roll over in their graves for what it will do to their children, their grandchildren, their close ones loved by them the most. For what it will do to their own selves beyond the misery of their graves...
The horns blared wildly behind him, shaking him out of his reverie, stunning him momentarily. 'Damn' said Max as he saw the crowd ahead disappear beyond the traffic signal light now turned green. Other vehicles that were behind him now roared madly past and around him, hurling their abuse of exhaust fumes onto his embarassed face. Instinctively, Max brought down the visor on his helmet as he surveyed the mess he found himself right in the thick of this traffic rush. His much-loved Honda refused to budge! The engine just wouldn't start, no matter how much he tried. 'Okay, Don Quixote!' Max told himself, 'You should have refilled the fuel tank when the indicator showed it to be empty, stupid!' So that was it. He had run out of fuel right there in the centre of the road. And the closest petrol bunk was still half a mile away across Shivaji Nagar. Half a mile! 'So, Honda old pal, let's take you for a nice little evening walk with me', murmured Max in disgust as he pushed his bike a-huffing-and-puffing to the side of the road and up on his way to Shivaji Nagar. 'Damn!'
Looking on the brighter side, however, walking was anyway his first love for, Max really cherished those long treks in absolute silence, and with no other companion, ever since he was a teenager. And there was also the Wayfarer who almost always joined up with him in those walks, much like the time when he first met him while he was a walking on those early teen years not so long ago. Then they would go a talking. 'Yes, indeed' Max smiled to himself as he slowly pushed his Honda forward on. 'Walk the Walk and talk the Talk so that you live the Life. The Life that's worth living for; the life that's worth fighting for; the Life that's worth dying for.'
But walking with the heavy Honda was a slightly different proposition, Max assured his now weary-from-pushing self. But, push on he must for at least a quarter of a mile further.
The people he saw around him now, as in every other similar occasion, however, had no time for such walks: Max sadly knew. Speed was of the essence in today's world. Or so the world has been made to believe. Gone are the days when people reflected on great truths in the slow and steady passage of their lives; the days when people cared for others and not just themselves; the days when people valued sacrifice and love..
Just look at those faces, he thought. So engrossed, so lost in thought as to how to shore up their resources, how to build upon it so as 'to outdo the Joneses.' To outperform the other. And to what end, this rivalry for the transient material things of this world? They wouldn't take it beyond their graves: they would have to gift the temple of their achievements, willingly, or otherwise, to somebody else at that point. Possibly an unnamed, faceless, somebody. What then?
'Yes, Max. What then, indeed!' The Wayfarer's interruption shocked Max the second time this evening. 'The world of this sad humanity is, in these times, caught in the grip of one agent of the Demon. Even as it has been caught up in that of another in other times. Between these two, the plight of this suffering mass of humanity has been pathetic. Mankind has been caught unawares between the Vulture and the Wolf.'
'There you have it!' thought Max. 'Now we are talking, man. Walking the Walk and talking the Talk. This was not going to be such a bad evening after all!'
'The Vulture and the Wolf, Wayfarer?' Max questioned eagerly as he rounded the road corner that came just before Shivaji Nagar and the petrol bunk.
'Yes, Max. The Vulture and the Wolf. Let me narrate to you a parable from the improbable wisdom of this ancient land whence proceeded your ancestors.'
'O Yes!' Max interrupted his now attentive senses rather impolitely to remember that 'to be a historicist of India's cultural legacy is to be like standing before a massive and magnificent castle in the darkness of night and brood over its history whose last chapters are not written yet.' His voice hardly masked the enthusiasm in it as he quipped: 'Tell me more, Wayfarer.'
'There was once this Bhisma who thus spoke to his king,' began the Wayfarer with the inescapable reference to the age of the Mahabaratha, the great Indian epic, or so thought Max. 'Listen, O king, to the story of the discourse between a vulture and a wolf as it happened of old. Once upon a time a Brahman had, after great difficulties, obtained a son of large expansive eyes. The child died of infantile convulsions. It was at the crematorium that a vulture, summoned by their cries, came there and said these words: Go ye away and do not tarry, ye that have to cast but one child! Kinsmen always go away leaving on this spot thousands of men and thousands of women brought here in course of Time. Behold! The whole universe is subject to weal and woe! Union and disunion may be seen in turns. They that have come to the crematorium bringing with them the dead bodies of kinsmen and they that sit by those bodies (from affection) themselves disappeared from the world in the consequences of their own acts when the allotted period of their lives ran out. There is no need of you lingering in the crematorium, this horrible place that is full of vultures and wolves.'
Max could now see the petrol bunk right ahead as he trudged on pushing his bike with him. But the Wayfarer was onto something now and he would hear him out even if that was the last thing he would do today. He deliberately slowed down in his tracks.
'At this time a wolf, black as a raven issued out of his hold and addressed those departing kinsmen, saying: Surely, ye that are kinsmen of that deceased child have no affection! There the sun still shineth in the sky, ye fools! Indulge your feelings, without fear! Multifarious are the virtues of the hour. This one may come back to life!
The vulture said: Why do you mourn for that compound of five elements deserted by their presiding deities, no longer tenanted (by the soul), motionless and stiff as a piece of wood? Why do you not grieve for your selves? Ill-luck is born with the body. It is the consequence of ill luck that this body has departed plunging you into infinite grief? Wealth, kin, gold, precious gems, children all have their root in penances. Penances are the result of Yoga. Cast off sorrow and cheerlessness. Leave the child on this exposed ground, and go ye away without delay!
The Wolf said: Alas, terrible is the world of mortals! Ye cruel mights, how can you go away, casting off parental affection upon hearing the words of a sinful vulture of uncleansed soul? Happiness is followed by misery, and misery by happiness. It seems that ye are sure to obtain happiness! Ye that are afflicted with grief on account of the death of this child will surely have good luck today. Anticipating the probability of inconvinience and pain (if you remain here for the night) fixing your hearts on your own comfort, whither would you, like persons of little intelligence, go leaving this darling?
Bhisma continued: 'Even thus, O king, the kinsmen of the deceased child unable to decide upon what they shall do, were, for the accomplishment of his own purpose induced by that sinful wolf who uttered agreeable falsehoods - that denizen of the crematorium who wandered every night in quest of food - to stay in that place.'
The vulture said: Dreadful is this spot, this wilderness, that resounds with the screech of owls and teems with spirits and Yakshas and Rakshasas. Terrible and awful, its aspect is like that of a mass of blue clouds. Casting off the dead body, finish the funeral rites. Indeed, throwing away the body, accomplish these rites before the sun sets.
The Wolf said: Stay where you are! There is no fear even in this desert as long as the sun shines. Till the god of day sets, do ye remain here hopefully, induced by parental affection. Wait as long as the sun shines.
Bhisma continued: The vulture then addressed those men saying that the sun has set. The wolf said that it was not so. Both the vulture and wolf felt the pangs of hunger and thus addressed the kinsmen of the dead child. Both of them girded off their loins for accomplishing their respective purposes. Exhausted with hunger and thirst they thus disputed, having recourse to scriptures. Moved alternately by these words, sweet as nectar of those two creatures, viz, the bird and the beast, both of whom were induced with the wisdom of knowledge, the kinsmen one time wished to go away and at another to stay there. At last, moved by grief and cheerlessness, they waited there, indulging in bitter lamentations. They did not know that the beast and the bird, skilled in accomplishing their own purposes had only stupefied them by their addresses.'
'That was the parable, Max', the Wayfarer said as he ended his narration.
'What?', asked a stunned-again Max, looking incredulously at the man in the petrol bunk with the petrol hose in hand. 'How many litres, sir?', the irritated man repeated his question a second time. 'Oh! That. Oh, Yes. Just make that one litre, please.' A dazed Max searched his pocket before saying: 'Or maybe just half a litre will do! Please.' Max smiled sheepishly at the man who had already started filling his Honda's belly. He had run out of money as well. The man shook his head helplessly. 'Some people!'
Of course, the Wayfarer was gone. Leaving Max alone to judge the implications for himself. The chilling embrace of that cold Bangalore night was all that remained with him of the encounter as he remounted the Honda again. But the walk had not been in vain and the talk had yet again informed him of mankind's predicament between a God-denying Materialism and a World-denying Ascetism. Between the Vulture and the Wolf. Yes, both were essential elements in Man's life but one never to the exclusion of the other. Therein was the fatal danger. The good in Materialism should, indeed, complement the good in Asceticm in the life of Humanity. Left to themselves, they would destroy, surely and steadily, Mankind's aspiration to set the World in the Pattern of God's Law. This, the Demon has known since time immemorial. And he has known it well enough to engender this eternal tug-of-war for the soul of Humanity.
But the battle isn't over yet, thought Max. Not if the Wayfarer can help it. It's just that the battle lines have been drawn. As they were drawn from of old. Or as the Wayfarer would have put it, 'ever since Cain murdered Abel' so very long, long ago.
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