All that woman is

It’s 819 AD. Indian mystics have laid the foundation of systematization of thought about the unknown. With open arms Vedas welcome the infinite manifestations of universal goodwill. These are the outpours of awe, wonder, obedience, surrender and love for the unknown.

Human mind is fertile with imagination. One more step has been taken. Vedanta literature has shown man the next step in Indian philosophical thought. It’s no longer about feelings of awe. Now it’s not just plain surrender to the gaping unknowns. There is an effort to interpret the forces of nature. There is cultivation of thought and logic. There is an effort to understand the process of humans grasping the reality.

Brahma Sutras of Sage Badarayana Vyasa have set up a platform for human thought and logic to take the next stride. Human mind looks within to understand the ways and means of interpreting the messages sent by our sense organs.     

Philosopher and theologian Adi Shankara is taking human mind further by integrating main thoughts in Hinduism. He has a huge collection of commentaries on Vedic texts. He has thrown more light on Upanishads. He is slaying the rituals and founding the concepts of Advaita Vedanta, unity of the soul and attributelesss supreme identity. Ritualism has eaten the vitality of Indian thought and philosophy. He is travelling across India to revive the spirit of Hinduism. For self realization. To be a master of one's own destiny, not be a helpless beggar before deities. Wherever he goes he challenges those who oppose his thinking. Clubs down their logic to overpower them with his logical interpretations of our thought processes and natural phenomena around. It's a blizzard of logic sweeping the length and breadth of India. And here he comes to Mithila state in northern Gangetic plains near the frontier between modern day India and Nepal.     

The great scholar has reached Tharhi village. It’s autumn. There is mystique restfulness spread around. A perfectly pensive evening is building up. The great thatched hall in the hermitage premises is softly abuzz with scholarly excitement. Shankaracharya has arrived only a couple of hours ago and is ready to take logical potshots at rival theologians.

His shaven head and calm eyes don’t give any sign of the long, arduous travel. But he has much ground to cover. They start immediately. Adi is on a spiritual rollercoaster and easily prevails upon daunting bearded rishis. A young student, having holy thread criss-crossing his torso and wearing white cotton dhoti is lost in the great philosopher’s persuasive logic. He has a question.

“The words of your logic fail to take me to the exact picture of reality. Does it mean there is no specific plane of reality? And we just reach a level, given our understanding of the words involved in the sentences, that we infer. Is it like a person with good eyesight can watch distant objects in comparison to somebody with a bad one?”

Adi smiles at the question. His calm eyes bore straight into the young student’s handsome face. The penetrating focus in those eyes is very attractive.

“Study hard for each word in books of theology. Work for the meaning of each and every word. Focus your senses to grasp the maximum a word has to offer. You will see the farthest one can see!” it appears like a blessing.

There is something extraordinary about this boy. Next morning, before setting out again on his mission, Shankaracharya calls the boy. He again looks into the deep, reflective pools of his eyes. The philosopher smiles. There is the stability of an undisturbed ocean in the young student’s eyes.

“He can take very deep dives to take out the gems of reality from the mysterious depths,” the sage softly told himself.

Adi hands him a palm leaf compilation of Brahma Sutra of Badarayana. The text is a famous systematization of the philosophical ideas of Upanishads. Brahma Sutras explore the nature of human existence and absolute reality and the importance and need of attaining spiritually liberating knowledge. 

It is a blessing. Just the ownership of the text containing the apex of Indian philosophical though is a matter of pride. He walks back to his house holding the cloth bag containing the precious text. He has been exceptionally hungry for the knowledge and words of holy Sanskrit texts. He has mastered Vedas, Upvedas and Upanishads. Now he possesses the cream of all that knowledge, the gist. He wants to go further, to see further, break the frontier of all human thought reached thus far. He is holding the text even more dearly than his life.           

“Vachaspati Vachaspati come out. O God what has possessed this boy. That book has a magic spell. I have to call babaji to break it!” Vatsala is anxious.

Her neighbors are standing near her. They face the hut he has locked himself in. She is a widow and he the only son. They have sympathy for her.

“He hasn’t come out for the last two days. These books can turn a young man mad,” she is sobbing.

More sympathy for the widow struggling to raise her son, who is all concerned about Vedic knowledge and now this book.

They raise a chorus. There is a pandemonium. He is drawn out of his eerie. He hasn’t opened the book even once. It is precious. It has priceless meaning to each and every word written in it. He has been looking at it and taken away into a trance. He can hear his mother’s lamentation outside and words of sympathy floating around. He opens the grass and reed thatch door of the hut and steps out. The sun is too bright. He squints and looks deep into the blue sky. They hold him with empathy taking him to be sick.

The proximity of the precious manuscript carries the effect of thunderbolt. He is in a delirium. The young man has fever. He mumbles strange meaningless words about the ultimate reality. His mother gets scared and even thinks of throwing the book away. But then stops from doing this, herself being scared of the powers in the book.

Vachaspati regains his footing from the jolt after a week. He carefully starts touching the book, afraid like touching fire, familiarizes himself with the smell and feel of the palm leaves and the Sanskrit words. He is as cautious as if he is walking on a rope and fire is burning below. And he has miles to go along the rope to reach the destination. And Brahma Sutras are the bamboo, supporting him, balancing him, preventing his fall into the fire.

The world than ceases to exist for him. It is just the Brahma Sutras, the beginning. And the end? He wants his awakened self to be that end. Aham Brahmasmi. I am the all potent supreme entity. But he has to prove it to himself. He has to break that delusional veil that filters the supreme knowledge from barging fully into the compartment of our being leaving us angry, ignorant and frustrated. He has to understand why and how we see the perceived reality. Can the reality be changed for the better? Is it fixed? Is it pliable, to be molded into better shape by our heightened awareness? Endless questions.

He has now cut himself off from the society. A secluded grove is the safe house with the precious book. It has been eight years since the book landed in his hands. And there has been just one routine, reaching the grove in the morning with a time’s meal and water. He goes back to his hut late at night. Slowly opens his hut’s door, finds the rice and cooked lentils on his bed. Eats and goes to sleep. His mother’s tears have dried up. She has accepted her fate.

He has forgotten the number of times he has read the book. Each time he reads, it has a new meaning. He rises higher with each jump into the air to see beyond the fence. He just cannot overcome this feeling that there is limitless joy to be harnessed through learning.

His mother is not keeping well these days. She struggles to catch her breath while she struggles hard to earn two meals a day for herself and her son. She is worried what would happen to him after she is gone. Marriage as an institution is supposed to guarantee hope and care in future. She has been thinking of getting him married. But who would give his daughter to somebody who doesn’t seem to act and behave like a common householder? The world is but full of people bound by conditions that would force them to settle for the minimum. Like while most of the parents try to ensure a life-long security for their daughter, looking at the groom’s prospects from multiple angles, there are still some who are placed so tightly that just getting their daughter married somehow to anybody gives them the satisfaction of fulfilling a duty. There is one such family in a neighboring village. The father consents to Vachaspati’s mother’s proposal.

“It is our good luck to get our daughter married to such an avid scholar!” he even smiles.

Vachaspati is so lost in the questions raised by reads and rereading of the Brahma Sutra that he hardly knows what goes on in the world around him. He is so full of ever-persistent questions about the finality, the ultimate reality that there is hardly any scope for the sense organs to do their work and break his spell.

He is in a reverie, like he is most of the time, when his mother informs him about his marriage. He doesn’t seem to react in any way. His nonchalance is taken as his consent and the marriage is fixed. He is married to Bhamati on Guru Prnima (Vyasa Purnima) in the month of Asadha. It is an auspicious conjugal day when many others start their marital innings. For him but it is the night to start on his real quest.         

His hut is decorated for the bridal night. A full moon has lit up the stage outside. Shyly his bride is ushered in with a big tumbler of hot milk in her hand. She raises her eyes to sneak a look at him. In the light of the oil lamp a new world opens.

Vachaspati is sitting erect on a reed mattress on the floor. A sheaf of clean palm leaves by his side. On the small wooden writing desk a palm leaf waiting for the first word. His hand is on the feather quill still in the brass ink pot. Time seems to have been suspended. The lamp is burning almost steadily. It’s a frozen moment, like it will remain for the next 12 years.

She moves slowly and sits on the edge of the bridal bed. There are flowers on the clean white sheet. The sheet will remain as such. Time has stopped. It’s not before the dawn that he opens his eyes slowly. His hand frozen on the writing quill moves and the first Sanskrit word of his historical commentary on Brahma Sutra is written. There is a force. She can feel it. She knows she has no choice apart from being a part in this creative stillness.

And the days pass, as easily as the weeks, which pass like months, who in turn pass with the ease of years.

He is in a cocoon. He is breaking the walls of disillusions to see the light of logic to take Indian metaphysical thought to a new level after the Brahma Sutras. Brahma Sutras have given him the tools to dig the mammoth mountain of mysteries. He is busy with his spadework.

Bhamati knows the duties of a wife to her husband. She lives her duties. She has to keep his cocoon safe for him to continue working. She is the silent nurturer of his cocoon. She is invisible. But manages everything. It’s her duty.

She moves so slowly as if afraid to shift even the air particles as she cleans the floor, puts food plate in front of him, takes it away, fills the ink pot, gets fresh pair of writing quills, safely stashes the worked upon sheaves of palm leaves, arranges new palm leaves, lights the lamp as it starts getting dark, pours oil in the lamp through the night, takes his dhoti to wash and puts afresh one nearby. In between she lovingly looks at his picture, for he is just a picture, unchanging except the quill moving on the paper.

The picture is broken only twice or thrice a day when he gets up for bathing and toilet. But this also is merely an extension of the picture.

Initially during the long drawn out spells of night she would feel cravings for his touch as she watched him from the corner of the hut where she sleeps on the ground on a simple grass mattress. Then she felt guilty even in that lest she should be polluting the air with desire. Now just looking at his pensive, absorbed face gives her all the gratification she needs as a woman from her man.

She is a mother now. There is a child in her womb. She has to nurture it at the cost of the major portion of her own life, her own share in this world. Her pregnancy has lasted years and she is the same smiling, uncomplaining mother, keeping her hands safely around her bulging tummy as the world moves on.  

Well that’s basically a woman is, a mother. A man is just the instrument of her reaching her status of being a mother. To be a mother she has to cut a major portion of her own self to help life thrive in a new unit, in a new human being.

It has been twelve years since their marriage and twelve years of his working on his commentary on Brahma Sutras. It is a stormy night. Squalls of rain beat on the thatched hut. Wind beats down hard. There is no risk to this hut at least. She has been working on making it sturdier and stronger over the years during her spare time. This is exactly this type of weather she has had in mind while working on it.

His face bears a strange expression. Like you have been running for a long time, and then you see the destination, you want to run harder but the body is keeping you within limits. During the latter half of the night the storm started to abate. His face also eased up. Even a smile at the corner of his lips. It makes her world, that smile. He seems to be walking slowly now, with destination just nearby. And then he stops.

It’s a bright dawn. The storm has spent its fury. Calmness, as it’s supposed to, has spread its aura. He has written the concluding word. A journey has been accomplished. He stands up and stretches his arms. It’s like a stone statue coming to life. He looks around and sees the world as it is after so many years. There is a woman in the hut. Her uncared and untended beauty shines like moon’s corner over the edge of a dark speck of cloud. 

The mother, the donator, the giver. Her pregnancy has lasted all storms. The delivery has been painful. She is shy again. She melts under his gaze. He is curious.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my hut?” he asks politely, words coming with huge effort after so long a spell of silence.

“I’m your wife. We were married 12 years back,” she tries to remind him very softly.

He was on another plane of reality so doesn’t remember anything. He looks at her hands and realization strikes him. He remembers these. Even in that astral plane these hands have been the root of his support. These hands that bathed him, fed him, kept everything away that would break his mystical spell. He has been feeling that the task at hand has been as much of these hands as he himself. This pair of hands had melted into his veritable being. His quest had been with four hands. He always had this feeling, but had taken it as some divine support.

But can there be a bigger divinity than a mother’s efforts?

“You have been serving me for 12 years and never told me!” he has tears in his eyes.

She just smiles and has tears. Unable to speak she just looks at him.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I had taken a vow that I will renounce this world after completing this work!” tears are streaming down his bearded face.

“I always knew the importance of your cause. So just served you. It is my wifely duty,” she speaks very sweetly, as if it was never about her, like her life did not and doesn’t matter.

“But this is injustice to you. All this service and pain. With my vow I have to leave for the Himalayas for penance. What becomes of your efforts? Where is the fruit of all that you did,” he is agonized.

There is a flood of tears. A sage who has busted the secrets of reality to make human thought further capable of deciphering more about the ultimate is crying.

She comes closer and again assuages his pain, frees him from guilt.

Wiping his tears she says with a calm smile, “Your tears, your acceptance, your realization, this work, all these are my rewards. Like I didn’t stop you earlier, even in your vow of penance I will not be a hindrance. It will give me happiness if I still help you in seeking further truth as a recluse by allowing you to go. By freeing you of any duty that you might think as a husband may prevent you. Please go guilt-free.”  

He hasn’t yet given a title to his commentary. Wiping his tears he moves towards the collection, picks out a fresh palm leaf and writes Bhamati on it. The title. And puts it on top of the work.

“You are the love and guiding spirit behind all this. This world may forget me but not you,” he prepares to leave.

Bhamati.

She watches him go to the hills. Bhamati, the masterwork, is there for the world to dive into to fetch out more gems of metaphysical thoughts.

A man might take rounds of earth to search his destiny, a woman realizes hers just by being there with her love and care.

A man might break mountains with the raw power of hammer, a woman is the air that fills his lungs to fuel his determination.

A man might aim to crack the ultimate secret, a woman normally does it just by being a mother, by allowing a life to thrive parasitically inside her, at her cost, gobbling her share of food, blood and flesh.

And no thought can be beyond love. And nobody more suitable than manifesting love than a woman.