All that Woman is

 

It’s 819 AD. The classical Indian thought is handsomely ashore. It has been a long and arduous journey starting from the savagely unsystematic outpours driven primarily by fear. We have now reached the airy overbearance of spacious logic and busy realism. Indian mystics have laid firm foundations for the systematization of thought about the unknown.

With open arms, texts and commentaries on the Vedas welcome the infinite manifestations of the universal goodwill. Human thought has beaten the limits of awe, wonder, obedience, surrender and love for the unknown. It is looking beyond now, further into the mind to dive into the luminous whirlpool of the human brain.  

Human mind is fertile with logical imagination. One more step has been taken. Vedanta literature has shown man the next step in Indian philosophical thought. It’s no longer about the ideas shaped by plain conjecture. Now it’s not just bare 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 the 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 plodding and pushing across the vast Indian expanses to take the human mind’s reach further by integrating the diverse thoughts in Hinduism. He has a huge collection of commentaries on Vedic texts. The pioneer sage has thrown further light on the Upanishads. Calmly commanding, he is slaying scores of blindfolding rituals to lay down the concepts of Advaita Vedanta, i.e., unity of the soul and the attributelesss supreme identity.

Ritualism has eaten the vitality of Indian thought and philosophy. He is travelling across India to revive the spirit of Hinduism to establish it as the instrument of self realization; to be a master of one's own destiny, not just a helpless beggar before the deities. Wherever he goes, he challenges those who oppose him, hammers down their shaky superstitions 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. Neatly accustomed to his efficiency by now, he arrives in Mithila state in the northern Gangetic plains, near the frontier between modern day India and Nepal.    

The great scholar has reached Tharhi village. A gently gay autumn welcomes him. 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. The forces of dark which put shadows in minds seem to peer grimly over the wooden fences around the place. The scholars wait with their vigorous jealousies. The Shankaracharya has arrived only a couple of hours ago and is ready to take logical pot-shots at the rival theologians.

His shaven head and calm eyes don’t give any sign of the long, arduous journey. But he has much ground to cover. India is a huge landmass. The differences are numerous in nature and categories. They start immediately. Adi is on a spiritual rollercoaster and easily prevails upon daunting bearded rishis and feckless, incompetent scholars who make much noise like empty vessels.

A young student, a string of holy thread worn diagonally across his torso and wearing white cotton dhoti, is lost in the great philosopher’s persuasive logic. He has big gentle eyes but still can manage a pensive look. He has a question.

“Swamiji, 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, where we infer as per our own convenience and limitations? 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 striking.

“Study hard for each word in the 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 sounds like a blessing.

Time seems lost in some splendorous assumption.

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

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

Adi gives the young student a palm leaf compilation of the Brahma Sutra of Badarayana. The text is a famous systematization of the philosophical ideas piled up layer after layer in the Upanishads. The Brahma Sutras explore the nature of the human existence and absolute reality. They emphasise the importance and need of attaining spiritually liberating knowledge. 

It is a reward and blessing beyond words. Just the ownership of the text containing the apex of the Indian philosophical thought is a matter of pride. The young disciple walks back to his house, holding the cloth bag containing the precious text like it is hiding the most precious jewels on the earth. He has been exceptionally hungry for the knowledge and words of holy Sanskrit texts. In fact this is what hunger means to him. He has mastered Vedas, Upvedas and Upanishads. Now he possesses the cream of all that knowledge, the gist. He wants to go further, see beyond, break the frontier of all human thought reached so 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, his mother, is very anxious.

Her neighbours are standing around her in front of 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.

There is more sympathy for the widow struggling to raise her son, who is all concerned about Vedic knowledge and now this book. There are driblets of resentment against his lack of understanding for his widow mother’s position.

With exaggerated indisposition, they raise a chorus. There is a pandemonium. He is drawn out of his moon-washed 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 the sublime stillness of a mystifying trance.

He can hear his mother’s lamentation outside and the words of sympathy floating around. He opens the grass and reed thatch door of the hut and steps out. The sun is too bright and blinds him with its garish luxury of sunrays. He squints and looks deep into the blue sky. There is musty silence. A cool breeze is blowing carrying malleable sensitivity in its gentle drifts. A flock of sparrows raises a ruckus and the noise goes unruly, whirlpooling over the huts. They hold him with empathy taking him to be sick.

The proximity of the precious manuscript carries the effect of a thunderbolt strike. He is lost in the yeasty aroma of the parchment paper. It is almost being in a delirium. The young man gets 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 its powers.

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

Away from the wrecking turmoil of mundane existence, the world then 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 moulded into better shape by our heightened awareness? There are endless questions. He has long left the path paved with well-tailored simplicities. This path is prickly, gives bloodied feet, but then which real path isn’t?  

There is an all-fired urgency for the cause. The intricate extravagance of his brain has sucked him into a world of its own. He has now cut himself off from the society. A secluded grove is the safe house with the precious book. Here he spends the time from dawn to dusk, pondering thousand times over the meaning of each word, phrase and sentence, and then looks ahead with the torchlight of his boosted reason.

With its sweeping scope, the time sees effortless change of seasons carrying hopes and heartbreaks in their overburdened carriage. The humanity heaves on, ladenly slogging with its load of miseries interjected off and on with flashes of happiness. With expertly manoeuvring conscience, he is engaged in his fight against his perennial foes, the unremitting doubts and questions.

It has been eight years since the book landed in his hands. There has been just one routine. Carried by early morning’s verve, he reaches the grove with a time’s meal and some water. The trees look down at him in astonishment and awe. And further upward, the sky seems lost in the quagmire of this pleasant absurdity. Away from the hoot and holler of the fight for survival on the familiarly well-worn path, here the stakes are etched into the infinite distances of the mysteries of the mind and the unknown.

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 slowly and silently, and goes to sleep. The night closes over him with the same resigned, time-worn expression carried through its bluish dark shadows. Mournful starlight bearing a voluminous testimony to the extent a human mind can go within to seek the greatest mysteries exploding in the farthest corners of the universe.

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, there is a new meaning to it. Each and every word appears to carry layers after layers of hidden meanings. He is peeling off the layers to reach the kernel of truth. It but is endless. There are foggy meanderings and he has to beat the teasing fatality yawning from side to side. 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 the path of learning.

On the surface, it is acerbic and acrimonious. His mother is not keeping well these days. She struggles to catch her breath while toiling 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? A prospective groom should at least appear likely to stay yoked in domesticities. From that angle he appears feckless and incompetent.

Individual destinies are but battered and buffeted in varied ways. The world is full of people bound by conditions which 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 neighbouring village. The father consents to Vachaspati’s mother’s proposal. Her maternal spirit hurriedly shambles off to take some solace for being saved from total disaster.

“It is our good luck to get our daughter married to such an avid scholar!” the girl’s father even smiles.

Vachaspati is so lost in the questions raised by reading and rereading of the Brahma Sutra that he hardly knows what goes on in the world around him. He is so full of the 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. To him the extravagant green of the rainy season is no different from the death throes of the pale autumn windfalls.  

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. With overriding benevolence, slumberous sunrays change her world almost instantly. He is married to Bhamti on Guru Purnima (Vyasa Purnima) in the month of Asadha. It is an auspicious conjugal day when many couples 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. There is chirrupy laughter among the relatives. The nature is lost in effusive dreaminess. Shyly his bride is ushered in with a big tumbler of hot milk, the auspicious memento of libido, 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 is waiting for the first word. His hand is on the feather quill still in the brass inkpot. 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 cotton sheet. The sheet will remain as such. Undisturbed. Clean. Time has stopped. It’s not before the dawn that he slowly opens his eyes. 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 other than being a part in this creative stillness. She has to be present, but like there is nobody around except him. She gets housewifely busy, without been seen or heard.

And the days pass, as easily as the weeks, which roll like months, which in turn swagger with the ease of years. There is no distraction even for some odd, lean and lonely moment.

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

Bhamti knows the classical duties of a wife to her husband. She lives her duties. This is what marriage means to her. She has to keep his cocoon safe for him to continue working. She is the silent nurturer of his world. She is invisible but manages everything. She is like the air which you cannot see but one will die if not for its presence. It’s her duty to help him stay on his chosen path and she abides to it without fail.

Subtle, lithe and statuesque, she moves so slowly as if afraid to shift even the air particles while 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 put fresh one nearby. In between she lovingly looks at his picture, for he is just a picture, unchanging except the quill moving on the parchment 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. Stillness is layered around, its kind and condescending touch hush down any ruffled feather in any corner. 

Initially, during the long drawn out spells of the lonely nights, 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 this much transgression for 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 the womb of her love and care. 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. In the cloaking silence, a divine acceptance is precariously eked out to hold onto the moments frozen to redefine time itself. Her soft self is saturated with a merry and mellow contentment. She carries a smile on her lips, while his face is drawn into a firm, unmoving expression.   

Well that’s what 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 to scale new heights and meet fresh dreams.

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 plummets 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. It’s 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 starts to abate. His face also eases up, springing a surprise by getting a faint 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. Robust trajectories of a new day arrive with exuberant spirits. The storm has spent its fury. Calmness, as it’s supposed to, has spread its resilient 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 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 cloud. A sombre solemnity lingers over her gentle features. There is quintessential look of grandeur in her eyes. 

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 such a long spell of silence.

She smiles, in an unobtrusive way, like a mother listening to the first words of her child. 

“I’m your wife. We were married 12 years back,” she tries to remind him very delicately as if afraid to break his poise.

He has been on some other 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 which bathed him, fed him, kept everything away that might have broken his mystical spell. He has been feeling that the task at hand has been as much of these hands as his own. This pair of hands has melted into his veritable being. His quest has 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 her eyes melt under the faint warmth of an emotion. 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’s 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 of his 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 may think as a husband might prevent you from your mission. Please go guilt-free.” 

He hasn’t yet given a title to his commentary.

“What is your name?” he asks almost bowed before her generosity.

“Bhamti,” she just drops the word softly to be picked by the invisible eddies of air and carried to his ears.

Wiping his tears, he moves towards the collection, picks out a fresh palm leaf and writes Bhamti on it. The title. And puts it on top of the work.

“You are the love and guiding spirit behind all this. You are the soul of this work, I’m just the body. This world may forget me but not you,” he prepares to leave.

Bhamti.

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

A man might take multiple 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 is more suitable in manifesting love than a woman.