A Soul’s Pyre

 Hate, fury and violence burn to eat their own self. Only love, peace and harmony survive and sustain. How long you have seen a storm screeching? The stronger it is, the faster it eats its own self.

There was a gang of robbers in a forest. Its leader was a bloodthirsty soul. He took pleasure in robbing people of their wealth and possessions. It gave him strange, paranormal pleasure. He relished that look of fear in the victims’ eyes for losing the valuables. But he needed more pleasure from the victims’ plight. More than the dread of losing valuables, he was addicted to the terror in their eyes as his people wounded and tortured them before the final kill. This horror of injury, blood and death in the victims’ eyes gave him more pleasure than the costliest diamonds. His delight reached its peak when he saw the ultimate fright in their eyes--the fear of death--as he went for the kill.

One day his band came across an old ascetic. The brigands hadn’t robbed and killed anyone for the past one week. They were thus thirsty for money and blood. A mendicant though won’t give them any valuable, but the terror in his eyes while facing death was no less for the gang leader’s evil soul.

They tied the ascetic and a huge bandit raised his sword to behead him. Death was imminent. The outlaws expected an outpour of panic from the bearded old man. Their ears were ready to receive the very same plight of crying words, pleading to be spared.

The head-bandit was looking at the old man’s face. His bloodthirsty soul was waiting water-mouthed at the spectacle of fear and cries in the face of death. But the old man was as serene as before, totally unaffected. To break his calmness, the leader even brought death an inch closer by ordering to count till ten. The beheader was to strike at the count of ten. The head bandit thought now it was impossible to escape fear as death approached in just ten steps. He had made it visible, just ten steps away.

One of the bandits started the count. With each number, a brighter smile surfaced on the old man’s lips. Before the final count, the bandit leader stopped his striker. The old man kept on smiling.

“You are smiling! You have no fear of death!” the head-robber asked.

“I have experienced death and its pain. It’s not as scary as we make it. To stay alive can be more painful,” the ascetic replied.

“But the experience of death makes it even more fearsome,” the bandit frowned.

His ego had been puffed up over the years; swelling on peoples’ fear for their possessions, injuries and finally the life itself. It had been his driving force: a bloody calculation of his progress in life; a measurement of his devilish desire; the scale of his monstrosity, which he took as excellence and superiority over fellow human beings.

Now the foundations of his treasure were breaking down. There was a challenge to his bloody conviction.

“I was a warrior one time. I was renowned for the power of my sword. I had enemies and unable to defeat me and inflict wounds on my body, they killed my family. I cried in pain over their death. Then I slaughtered them to the farthest known links of even their distant most relatives,” smile had gone from his sagely face.

The bandits listened in rapt attention.

“I bathed in their blood, laughed to the capacity of my lungs over their painful cries. I was trying to bury my pain under the pile of their bodies. Though I increased the number of my revenge killings, the pain inside won’t go. I was thinking that I am removing my pain, I was but making it mountainous. Then I came across the wife of someone who had himself beheaded my wife and children. Killing her would have given me the maximum pleasure. I raised my sword to kill her. She was pregnant. Just a week or so from delivery,” he closed his eyes.

The bandits sat down, laying their weapons by their side. It was an audience now.

“She was imploring me to kill her after she delivered the baby. She said she would consider it the kindest act done to her if I spared her life till the baby was born. She was in a way asking me to spare the baby. I told her that it won’t serve any purpose because in any case I will kill the newborn also after killing her. But not in her womb or before her eyes, she asked this much favour. She was holding my legs. I was trying to shake her off but something stopped me. She was a mother. I remembered my own mother, the way she must have been killed. That left me shaking. I was ready to kill an enemy’s wife for revenge. But my hands were trembling to kill a mother,” tears were rolling down his bearded cheeks. 

The bandits were listening as if to a sermonising seer.

“I decided to postpone my revenge for a week, thinking it will add to the pleasure in killing both the mother and the newborn. She gave birth to a girl after a week. The momentum of killings was still on my head. It still possessed me. I killed the mother. When I stabbed her I was shaken by the look in her eyes. She still carried the look of acknowledging my kindness in postponing my revenge. She had it all through the week. I had thought she was trying to save herself with that look, trying to arouse pity in me to spare her and the child’s life. But I was wrong. She had fulfilled her promise that if I spared her life for a week, she will consider it the kindest act done to her by anybody. That look on her face while dying showed it clearly. It robbed me of my hate. It killed the devil in me. And it condemned me to die each moment till I really die,” the old man looked into the sky.

There was pin-drop silence. One of the bandits even felt like offering some water to the old man. But he checked himself.

“The baby girl was my punishment for the revenge killings. I tried to kill her but my hands gave in. The game of death had possessed me. It had gripped me with such force that I was not living. I was already dead. I was roaming around as a dark agent of death. I was not living, I was already dead. I died long before my body will die. I went mad with repulsion. I hated my bloodied hands. Leaving the girl under the care of a friend and paying him for her upkeep till her marriage, I ran away. I was running after my death. But even death seemed to have discarded me. It laughed sinisterly from a distance. I tried to kill myself. But I was so weak that even self-injury won’t come. So I roamed around, neither accepted by death, nor by life, just a ghost lingering between life and death. Years of roaming around have left me detached both from life and death. As I take a step forward, I don’t know if it is meant for life or death. This melting of difference between life and death has at least removed the scars of blood from my soul. I can sleep for a few hours peacefully. And I can smile. Death thus has lost any meaning to me. So has life. Nobody can restore life in me. That’s impossible with so much blood on my soul. But if you give me death, I will consider it as a favour,” the old man seemed to implore the bandits to come and strike.

What was there for the bandit-head to feast upon? This old man didn’t possess any valuable. More importantly, he did not even have the fear of death. What will he take away from this killing? The food, this game of death, appeared stale, meaningless. He asked his group to throw their weapons. He had tears in eyes. He knew it was easier to continue the life like before and some day die at the hands of some more ferocious robbers or soldiers. That would be the fine end to it. And exciting as well. But to live differently to die another way was almost impossible. In fact that would be the real punishment.

This old man had meted out the punishment to himself by dying every moment, dying while life thrived abundantly in the forest around him, leaving him alone, not touching him in any way. So he decided to change. Not for a better life. Not for lesser punishment either. But for a prolonged death, recalling all his sins. Drawing sips of death instead of life for years before death claimed a body whose soul had escaped long time back.