Chapter 36
Janaka got up in the morning feeling listless and sad. It was yet some time before sunrise. All was quiet. He went to the stable alone, and mounting his favorite horse, rode away alone into the forest that had just begun to stir in response to the light on the hills.
The lure of the forest was irresistible. Here, everything was reduced to its elemental purity and simplicity. No tormenting questions about existence, no impelling curiosity about the mystery of life! A simple, benign gratitude seemed to flow like an invisible stream through that silence. Yet at the heart of that silence was the stillness of eternal loneliness: the ultimate end of all our wanderings!
Janaka remembered what it meant to lose one's way in a dense forest as the evening shades into night. He was a young prince then. He had wandered far from the hunting party in search of a panther. Before he could realize, the shadows had disappeared into dark. He had run frantically in all directions, driven by the urgency to escape before it grew dark. But every path that seemed right at first, ended at the end of a precipice overlooking a valley. Finally he had to stop and just wait at the foot of a tree, with his horse, until dawn. The forest seemed to close in on him from all sides. At last, engulfed by its immensity, he allowed himself to be still. He had to be still, but wakeful and vigilant. He remained there till morning when everything began to stir as mysteriously as it had fallen silent.
Janaka had been a warrior all his life. But at the break of dawn in the forest on that day, he had understood why the first poetry was born out of gratitude for the gift of light.
…...........................
When Janaka approached the bend in the path, he realized that he had arrived at Yajnyawalkya's hermitage. Yajnywalkya had just finished his worship of the morning sun. The atmosphere was still reverberating with the sonorous chanting of the Gayatri mantra.
Janaka stared at Yajnyawalkya's half-clad body. His eyes rested on Yajnyawalkya's face. Beads of perspiration shone on Yajnyawalkya's brow. There was a certain undefined virility in his movement. He seemed surrounded by a bright aura of a lustrous splendor.
Yajnyawalkya feigned no surprise when he saw Janaka. He received him with a courteous smile.
Janaka looked around the cottage and then at the man who owned it with an effortless renunciation that enabled him to dwell in it with the freedom to walk out on it at will.
Voices of young celibate hermits chanting hymns to the sun drifted in from the courtyard. Everything had the breath of celibate virility. The words of the hymns sank deep into Janaka's mind. He was amazed by the fierce concentration with which the the young celibate brahmins were creatively absorbing the luster of the rising sun to whom they were offering obeisance.
The voices went on rising in a steady crescendo until the entire choric sound acquired the sharpness of a shining sword. Man, of flesh and blood, man, made of this earth, was donning a superhuman luster before Janaka's eyes.
Janaka looked at Yajnyawalkya. He could not relate the images. An impasse seemed to separate him from Yajnyawalkya. He felt entrenched in unspeakable agony. He kept looking at Yajnyawalkya as if at a stranger.
He felt engulfed by energy of unnamed origin. Was it divine or superhuman? He did not know. He looked deeply at Yajnyawalkya, hoping to find an answer, but found himself staring into the eyes of a being that was neither divine nor superhuman.
Yajnyawalkya stirred uneasily under Janaka's gaze. For a moment or two both men endured the fencing silence that distanced them from each other, straining to hear the unspoken words. Then Janaka looked away. With an averted face, he articulated every word, as if speaking the language of someone else.
“You have been here too long, away from your people. I mustn't detain you. I came to tell you that you are free to go back if you so desire.”
Yajnyawalkya reacted in surprise. He felt, he saw a wicked maneuver behind Janaka's sudden reversal, though he could not see what inspired it.
The thought of his dependency on patronage anguished him beyond measure. He stared ahead with a ferocious concentration as if he gauged the extent of the sudden inexplicable estrangement between them.
A prince and an ascetic locked in a strange bond! Borrowing from and lending to each other their inherited strength and enriching each other while the bond lasted, not realizing perhaps, that something of the ascetic had made way for the prince's ardour, and something in the prince had begun to respond in awe to the uncompromising, fervent quest for the meaning of life, which he saw in the ascetic!
This unpredicted moment of sudden hostility surprised both. They retreated into themselves. Overtaken by a perverse impulse to hurt, Janaka blurted out, “But there is one thing, I have wanted to ask you....”
He paused, and both of them looked at each other uncertainly. Janaka began with a seeming nonchalance: “What was it that led you to denounce a young man in the assembly held here some time ago? He was a young man called Shakalya, if I remember him right, a rather perverted, rebellious kind of youth who had challenged you in the course of the debate!”
Yajnyawalkya could not see the link behind Janaka's perturbed reaction. He had known Janaka long enough now to interpret his words and gestures with a fair degree of insight. But this time he remained stupefied for a moment. All he could see was that there was no premeditation behind the question. And yet the question seemed to have existed between them all along,
without his ever being able to recognize it.
His mind ranged over the past in a rapid, wounded flight. Where did it start? Or did it all start of its own accord? Why was he here at all? What was he doing here?
'Shakalya!' He had forgotten Shakalya, but Janaka had not. In fact Janaka could not see Yajnyawalkya without being aware of Shakalya. This thought was revolting, but at the same time it was too disconcerting to be brushed aside.
Surely, that which impelled Janaka to ask this question was no perverse cynicism or a willful hostility of the moment!
Yajnyawalkya remembered the incident. He looked quizzically at Janaka. For a moment their eyes met and both confessed a sense of sad failure. .
Janaka got up listlessly and turned brusquely to face Yajnyawalkya. It was a hard defiant attempt to extricate himself from this unbearable moment.
“It was not what I really came here for! I mean...it wasn't my purpose to ask you to go back...But...
How can I make you understand? I came here in a state of agitation. I thought, probably you would help me set it right. But when I come to you with a hope, I find myself at a loss for words. I just cannot unravel myself to you. We are cast in different molds, you and me!”
Janaka wrung his hands in despair as he paused. Then he continued with an effort, “But my question still remains. Because now, as I think about it, I realize that I understand why you denounced the man. Nevertheless, I hate you for having denounced him. I want to get rid of that hatred. Because strangely, I hate myself so long as I hate you. I want to extricate myself from this tangle once and for all. But it is not easy. It was as if I was in sight of a profound truth of life, but there is something within me, some deficiency, inadequacy you may call it, which holds me back from reaching it. I thought, perhaps you could provide the answer. But it all seems so hopeless!”
He stopped and looked at Yajnyawalkya imploringly. There was nothing he could think of saying further. The silence that ensued was pregnant with many possibilities of choice for Yajnyawalkya. Janaka stood there like a man who had played a game rather badly.
Yajnyawalkya had been listening quietly but intently. The sudden and unexpected crisis in their relationship had left him speechless. It was far easier to score a victory in a battle of wits than to act in a situation that demanded a total commitment and a tremendous effort of will.
He spoke:
“Listen O king, your question embraces more than what you and can perceive at the moment. Why did I denounce Shakalya? Perhaps I have yet to find the answer. Perhaps that is the reason why I have been brought here without my realizing it. Words being what they are, I shall not try to say anything more than what I can now understand. Some day I may find the meaning of it all.
But I fear, by then I may have no use for the language of words. I beseech you; bear with me till I reach there.”
There was a tragic finality behind Yajnyawalkya's words. It was more than what Janaka could bear, ill-prepared as he was, for whatever Yajnyawalkya was wont to say or do at that moment. He moved forward impulsively and clasped Yajnyawalkya's hands:
“I shall not force my will upon you any more. I release you from the bond of servitude. But let me be assured that I exist for you, not as the king, but as a friend. Stay here as long as you wish to. In fact, I do wish that you stay with me as long as you can.”
The words echoed in Yajnyawalkya's ears with a familiar ring. It was Maitreyi who had spoken almost the same words with a little difference at their parting.

Chapter 35
Janaka retired to his antechamber after a hectic day. His stable-yard was right behind the room. He could see his horses being attended to by the keeper. Next to them was the yard where the elephants and camels were tied to their posts. A camel stared into the distance ahead of him, his head held level to the ground, as if perpetually.
“Strange,” thought Janaka, “this creature will never be able to scrutinize what lies right under its nose, while the horizon remains perpetually in its sight. Perhaps this creature observes from afar the ground on which it is going to traverse,” Janaka thought to himself as he snuffed out the oil-lamp.
He lay down; occupied by the thoughts of the discussion he had with his army-commander. A war and carnage were inevitable if the threatening overtures of the neighboring king had to be stopped. He had not yet made up his mind about the future course of action. As he lay down on bed, staring at the high ceiling, his indecision weighed him down. High ceilings can be frightening at such times because they hang above you like a fateful moment suspended in time and space. They lift the coziness and assurance given by the four walls to an incredible mocking height.
Something produced a commotion in the stable-yard and the horses began to neigh in unison. Janaka got up. He saw the keeper trying to calm them down. The horses continued to stamp their hooves restlessly. They became quiet after some time. But their quiet sounded like a battle close at hand, and the silence that followed was like the silence of a deserted battle field at night.
The sudden transit from indecision to a commotion, whose cause was unknown, left him unsettled.
Visions of carnage and battlefields had never unsettled him before. He wondered whether it was weariness that made him so uncertain of himself. He had known the tense moments before the sounding of the battle-horn, but he had never felt so weary.
He lay down again, trying to get back the familiar rhythm of his mind. Gradually, the thought of statecraft faded out of his mind and he remembered Yajnyawalkya's wistfulness and embarrassment at the mention of Gargi.
Janaka wondered how the conversation had veered round to the subject of Gargi, because he had wanted to seek Yajnyawalkya's opinion on some matter related to the subject of war, in fact. He wondered at the capacity this man had of imposing his own moods on the tenor of the conversation, while all the time he believed it was he, Janaka , who was controlling it.
Yajnyawalkya's withdrawal into himself and his refusal to relate with Janaka, gnawed at Janaka's heart. The thought that they lived in different worlds dawned upon Janaka. Was it Gargi who caused it?
Janaka was never given to rationalize his feelings for women. He regarded them with awe. It was
the simplicity of a man who picks up a dagger and says, “It is sharp; you will bleed if you run your finger along its edge.” With the same simplicity, he recognized his feelings for Gargi and declared to himself that he hated her! He could not understand, nor could he justify the intensity with which he hated Gargi
He tried to force his mind away from Gargi, but with each renewed effort, he realized all the more vividly how preponderantly she must have been reigning over Yajnyawalkya's mind. His imagination raced back to the time when he had witnessed Yajnyawalkya's first encounter with Gargi and Shakalya at that fateful debate. He remembered the oracular finality with which Yajnyawalkya had forecast Shakalya's doom. And then suddenly he realized the significance of the presence of Gargi in the midst of that event: the significance of what had transpired so mysteriously between the two men to ignite a catastrophic duel of emotions.
Janaka shuddered to think: did Yajnyawalkya denounce in that moment a part of his own self that he shared with Shakalya?
Janaka stirred restlessly in bed to recover his lost moorings. He felt thirsty, and called for an attendant. When she came in with a jar of water, he stared her and the jar in her hand, in disbelief. He told her to make the light brighter. She poured some oil in the platter that held the wicks and the lamp shone brightly. Its light shone upon her placid face as she stooped over it. The light lit up the contours of her breasts and arms. The woman revealed no emotion. She was trained to perceive the meaning of being called in the king's chamber at night. With slow, measured steps, she came and stood by his bed-side and waited for the word of command. There was neither eagerness nor apprehension. She knew that a king needs a woman to alleviate the pain of being a king, and just as a jar contains water, she possessed a body, and she was nothing more than a body.
Janaka pulled her with the rage of a hungry tiger. He knew the meaning of the act he was committing and the need for it. But at that moment he needed it to confront and annihilate his hatred for Gargi. He hated Gargi and he hated this woman too! He hated 'Woman' for what she can make of 'Man'.
He poured all his contempt and violence into the act, and after he had spent up the carnal lust he discarded the woman like a used garment. Then he turned to look at the woman carefully. She was young. Her supple body which had remained tense during the act was now relaxed. He was surprised by the trace of a sad pleasure on her countenance. She had temporarily robbed him of his strength, of all that he prided in himself and all that he guarded as his precious, secret strength: the strength that made him excel in the world of wars, battles and statecraft. But it gave her happiness! And what did she possess apart from this body made of flesh and blood?
The woman opened her eyes unseeingly and began to arrange the folds of her garment. Janaka stopped her and asked, “Did it hurt?”
He did not know what made him ask the question. He did not know what answer would have satisfied him. He did not really insist on an answer. He merely wanted to make sure that it did hurt.

“No, Sir,” the woman replied demurely. Janaka continued to stare fiercely at her. He wondered whether her bashfulness was real or feigned. He shook her violently and said, “It must hurt! Confess that it hurt!
The woman looked at him in amazement. Bewildered by this unexpected probing into her secret self, she stared at him in silence. Her serfdom and womanhood had so merged with each other that she never realized that a woman is not a serf when she yields to a man. She just looked at him in dumb silence.
Janaka turned away from her in revulsion. He was surprised not so much by his violent carnal desire,not even by the woman's dumbness, as by his impulsive wasting away of an intense emotional energy. The bitterest cynicism can often generate a fire between two minds. But he had wasted it on a pitiful object.
The woman had, by now, recovered her placid calm. She was pouring water from the jar into a vessel. He glanced at her. There was no trace of any emotion. There was neither reproach nor pride. But a slight reverential gratefulness made her eyelids heavy. What he had wasted, she cherished as a gift. She snuffed out the light quietly. Every act of hers was like a step rehearsed a countless number of times before.
Janaka lay in bed alone. He was left defeated by the humble surrender of a woman who in no way could relate with him except as a dumb recipient of a power that she could neither understand nor resist.

Chapter 34
The growing dusk had enveloped Videha all over. Lights began to flicker at random in different parts of the town. Cottages, mansions. Courtyards, and hermitages, all decided to accept the night at different moments.
The night was everywhere but Janaka became aware of it rather abruptly when he realized that he had loitered too far away from the hermitage with Yajnyawalkya. The human habitats seemed far-flung and inconsequential from this far end of the meadows which were adjacent to the abode of Yajnyawalkya. Janaka realized that Yajnyawalkya had remained silent most of the time. He seemed to be listening. But it was difficult to know what he was listening to. “He is certainly not listening to me,” thought Janaka.
The brief pause in the conversation did not stir Yajnyawalkya to any response. He walked by Janaka's side, taking his presence for granted. Yajnyawalkya was using the conversation as a convenient screen behind which he could hide his preoccupation. But in a few moments the curious gaze with which Janaka was observing him stirred him to uneasiness. He assumed his usual decorum and made a few courteous gestures to indicate that he was not indifferent. The falsity of it did not go unnoticed by Janaka. However, he did not feel offended.
“I think, we must go back now,” he said, using his prerogative to determine the length and intimacy of the conversation.
“As you wish,” replied Yajnyawalkya in a tone that was neither acquiescent nor compliant.
“Or we might just sit for a while and relax,” Janaka said, partly out of an impulse to contradict Yajnyawalkya in order to rouse him to some display of feeling and partly out of a genuine desire to share a few more moments with him. Janaka was pleased to see some sign of a little more involvement on the part of Yajnyawalkya as they sat down on the grass.
There prevailed uneasiness between them as they both realized that their conversation so far had been an unsuccessful attempt to hide their real self.
“Who was this woman who had stayed behind to talk to you? Wasn't she the one who had challenged you in the debate?” Janaka asked abruptly breaking the silence between them.
Yajnyawalkya started. He had not expected such unabashed aggression. He stared back at Janaka, encountering his curiosity with a silent avowal of an unspoken passion.
For a moment they both gazed at each other silently. Yajnyawalkya, in that surprisingly intimate moment, realized that there was a wide dissimilarity between Janaka's left eye and the right eye. Janaka's left eye seemed to delve deep into Yajnyawalkya with an uncompromising, almost ruthless penetration, while his right eye regarded him with infinite compassion and solicitude. The diversity in the expressions of the two eyes disconcerted Yajnyawalkya for a moment. In his perplexity he did not know if he should rebel against the scrutiny of the left eye or whether he
should respond to the compassion in the right eye.
When he spoke, he uttered every word with great deliberation:
“Yes, she was Gargi.”
It was the first time he had uttered her name in the presence of someone. To make it sound less personal, he added, “Gargi Vachaknavi.”
The name of the woman forced a recollection in Janaka's mind, of several images and faces. He remembered the mystifying confrontation that had erupted between Yajnyawalkya and a sage called Shakalya. He had not forgotten it ever since. He had not quite understood the nature of the subterranean passions which had caused that violent eruption on that day.
Somehow Janaka respected the discreet silence which restrained him from further scrutiny. He sighed heavily as though he laboured to imbibe the whole essence of Yajnyawalkya's utterance of that day of the conference in its incomplete manifestation.
He looked at the sky. There was a prematurely early sign of rains with dark clouds overhead. He placed his hand on Yajnyawalkya's shoulder and said, “Come on, we must hurry. It's going to rain. It seems the monsoon has arrived.”
A few drops spluttered out of the sky. Yajnyawalkya smiled.
“A few drops of rain do not make the monsoon,” he said.
“But they do presage the monsoon,” said Janaka.
And Janaka was more than right, for the thin sheet of stray clouds soon massed into elephantine shapes and the wind propelled them forward. A storm broke out with a thunder and the two men beat a hasty retreat to the cottage.

Chapter 33
Gargi knew little about the personal side of Yajnyawalkya's life. But she liked to believe, he was disillusioned, or at least weary of his nagging wives! Often, unknowingly, she fell in love with that fantasy. How could this man enter such arid, hopeless marriages? Perhaps it was an expedient choice. And besides, those stupid women perhaps never had the courage to ask:'Why'. Perhaps that was the reason why they got on so well with each other, for all that Gargi knew of them. “Making virtue out of necessity”, indeed!Gargi laughed with a contemptuous mistrust because in no other way could she understand two women living under the same roof, married to the same man . Gargi was so passionately involved in the fantasy that she forgot why she hated Yajnyawalkya. For that moment, he appeared to her an arrogant, willful husband, spoilt by his indulgent wives!
Gargi tried to visualize them, slogging day in and day out, hardly able to exchange a single intelligent word with him, and irritable too! She remembered her own mother who never missed a single opportunity to deride her learned husband. How often she drove him mad with her disparaging remarks on his lack of refinement and lack of money! Her father attributed all that to his lack of opportunity, but he could never convince his wife to accept it. Gargi could not understand her mother but she loved her father. Gargi had made a resolve not to marry, at least not till she found someone who was as good as her father, if not better!
Gargi was filled with a wistful longing as her mind dwelt on the past, especially on the days of childhood. How far away she had drifted in time and thought from all that! She wanted to banish Yajnyawalkya and his two wives from her thoughts. What were they to her and what was she to them?
She was back again to her days of childhood, back again to those beautiful highlands and the days of clear sky singing hymns to the deities who were as simple and familiar as the phenomenon of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. She was a robust, healthy child with beautiful long hair. A young boy, almost her own age, fascinated by her flowing tresses, had tried to feel its silky softness. But no sooner did his fingers touch her hair than had Gargi turned around and slapped him hard in the face.
She did not know why she did it but she felt justified in what she did; and then as time went by, she learnt the art of inventing a justification for all that she did.
Goaded on by his wife's malice and contempt, Gargi's father courted success fanatically, and then came a time when he was courted by success. By then, Gargi's precocious childhood was over and she had become a woman already. But by that time Gargi's father had no relish in the pursuit of success. That was also the time when Gargi had started to identify herself with him and begun to dissociate herself from her mother. But it was then, when she needed her father most, she found that he had grown weary of success. And in his old age, as if by a miracle, he was reconciled to his wife. Gargi could not understand this change. At first she wilfully believed, he had submitted to his domineering wife in his old age. But then she saw that he really loved her. At that time it was really beyond her comprehension for she thought that her mother had not
changed a bit to deserve his affection. Her mother was still the same, but with the passage of time she had mellowed a little. She was still coarse and vociferous. But her words did not sting her husband now.
Gargi realized that there is a space between a man and his wife which is inviolable. That realizatoin marked the end of adolescence and the beginning of womanhood for her.
Gargi did not know why these thoughts and images from the past welled up in her mind as she was brooding over Yajnyawalkya. In the solitude of her cottage, as she watched the sky warming up to the evening sun, she thought of this man with a tender empathy. Involuntarily, her heart vibrated in unison with the world around her. The constant battle to appropriate to herself all that she craved for, had caused a dent in her heart. In the process, she had bruised herself, denied herself, and had refused to heal herself.
She hid her face in her hands and sobbed silently. None was there to see her, to hear her. She was scalded by her own silent tears. Her proud soul was in torment. Unbending, and relentlessly proud, she fought back her tears. Gargi was two selves: one watched the deluge in astonishment and the other salvaged the relics of a wounded pride. The violence of the tears brought forth all the pain and grief that had slumbered in her memory long since.
Gargi wept uncontrollably for herself, for her very own self; for in a moment of truth, who else does one weep for, if not for one's own, very own dear self?
'Come, o Gargi, come back to thy abode. Thy feet are sore; thy throat is parched. Return O Gargi to thy abode. Thou art tired, not defeated. Thou art hungry, not mortified. Return, O Gargi, return!'

A very happy new year full of peace, love and hope to all.

Chapter 32
It was evening when Yajnyawalkya finished the expository discourse on the ritual of sacrifice embodied in the Vedas. It was his practice to condense the substance of the discourse in aphorisms after elucidating the main idea.
The intellectual effort exhausted him. As usual, he felt that he had spoken too much. When he looked around before taking leave of the congregation, he found two among them not ready to let him go. Gargi had been there from the beginning, but he found Janaka sitting in the rear corner, evading notice. None had noticed him because Janaka had covered himself with a shawl and was not attended by his retinue.
All got up except these two. The departing members looked at them with a casual curiosity. Everyone left and Yajnyawalkya found himself facing a rather incongruous company.
While the discussion was in progress, Gargi watched from a peripheral position, Yajnyawalkya smiling to his disciples, answering their questions with a playful affection. She could not hear the substance of their conversation; the words did not matter to her. Her innate vanity and pride were giving way to envy, and envy was giving way to a wistful sadness. Yajnyawalkya seemed to have a world of his own around him. It made her peaceful, but she still felt alienated. It was a world she wanted to inhabit with Yajnyawalkya to the exclusion of all others.
Why was she staying in Videha? To tease Yajnyawalkya's philosophy out of him? A world of mystic beauty was concealed behind Yajnyawalkya’s philosophy. Gargi felt an outpouring of music from an unknown origin when she heard him speak, but the notes vanished before she could learn to play them on her own flute.
In her mind's eye she would often visualize the conquest she was aiming at. She would often rehearse her questions with great solemnity, imagining once again a congregation, an assembly of learned scholars, and herself confronting Yajnyawalkya: “Hear O Yajnyawalkya, you have refrained all along, from defining or describing Brahma, the ultimate. Why don't you finally confess to your defeat and concede your seat to those who are more learned than you in these matters?”
Now, as she sat there, brooding by herself, she laughed to see how hollow every bearing of logic sounded! Somewhere from the silence within, a voice began to speak to her!
“The highest truth, O Gargi, is manifest in all that you see, but you are able to see only as much as you can perceive! It is never exhausted. How can you define that which is there to be seen and yet, is not just what is seen?”
Gargi came out of her reverie and realized, she was still there where she was. The discourse was over. There were only three of them: Yajnyawalkya, Gargi and Janaka. There was a moment of silence experienced by three minds simultaneously, without being able to share what they felt and saw.
From the outskirts of the city, where the Shudras lived, a sound of the beating on a drum came
floating on the air. It was slow and deliberate at first. Then the pace quickened, until it pulsated with the ecstasy which only the oppressed and the anguished souls pour so exquisitely in their art.
When Gargi came to herself, she saw that Yajnyawalkya had walked away, accompanied by a tall and sturdy man who had placed a hand around Yajnyawalkya and was walking away with him. They seemed to share a world Gargi did not know of. She felt like an intruder even as she watched them from behind.
The sound of the drum beaten by the Shudras had acquired a deep, distressful rhythm, almost like a tormented cry! Who ever could say that music liberates? Or perhaps it does! This particular music was a part of a sacrificial ritual offered daily, at the altar of life as it were, a robust offering made by a robust people: robust, not lusty! It transmuted pain into a rhythm that absorbed pain and gave something that was far more sublime than the pain.
The two men were gone, leaving Gargi alone, unable to solve the tangle of all that she needed to know and all that she refused to know.

Chapter 31
Far away from Videha an infant announced its arrival in the world. It was, for Maitreyi, as if music suddenly transposed to a different key. For Katyayani, it was dissolution of every element in her body. She lay spent up and unaware of all else except the knowledge that the greatest mission was fulfilled. She swooned into unconsciousness.
After bathing the infant with the greatest gentleness, Maitreyi wrapped it in clean clothing and laid it beside Katyayani. She stroked Katyayani's head and wiped the beads of perspiration off her brow. Katyayani responded weakly and opened her eyes with effort.
“It's a boy,” said Maitreyi, holding the baby slightly up. The child was wide awake and stared at the world around it as if it knew what it was all about.
…..................
Winter was over and there broke out a dust-storm which was unusual. The sand was everywhere- between one's teeth, under one's garments, stinging and scorching the skin. The sapling in the courtyard was swaying in the sultry wind. The storm abated soon and with the abatement of the wind and the storm there appeared a delicate shade of verdure here and there.
The hermitage greeted the changed season and the new rhythm that life took on with the arrival of Yajnyawalkya and Katyayani's son. Life was made up of little moments of pristine joy and beauty that seemed never to end. God smiled and showered happiness on all.
Katyayani and Maitreyi were breathless with joy. Disciples rallied around Katyayani and her baby. There was not a moment of idleness. Everything revolved round the child. His two mothers doted upon him.
The disciples were eager to set out for Videha, but were forbidden by Katyayani and Maitreyi, rigid in their resolve to rear the child without his retrograde father!

Chapter 30
Artabhaga had never wished to be back in Videha. He had seen to it that his mendicant, vagrant life followed uncharted paths. But Videha acted like a vortex to his impulsion. He was getting drawn to it in spite of himself. At the centre of that vortex was a death which intrigued him: the death of Shakalya. He felt the loss all the more poignantly because he felt he owed something to Shakalya's old father, although he did not know why. The old man had fled from Artabhaga, refusing to share his grief.
Artabhaga had never wasted time in finding a rationale for his feelings. They had an impelling power of some divine music which persuades, but does not compel you to act. A mendicant perhaps comes easily under its power as he wanders from place to place, responding to its call. Some such music had brought Artabhaga back.
It was evening when he came back to Videha. He wandered through its busy market-place, trying to catch the rhythm of its mundane life. He had long since ceased to relate with such life. Yet he loved to take a dip in it. He loved its smells, its colours. He loved to feel its dust in his nostrils and its noise in the innermost pores of his heart.
Soon the streets got deserted, the noises ceased one by one. The bargains stopped. The buyers and sellers collected their belongings and started for home. The market-place was emptied of its contents like a vessel from which water has leaked out. A silence, like that which follows after a vibrating chord is stilled, pervaded everywhere. When an intensely animated and vibrant instrument is silenced, the listener is plunged into a gloom which penetrates deep.
It was in such moments of silence that Artabhaga would often re-enact the mysteries that would not open up.
Artabhaga wandered through the streets of the deserted market-place, its intricate mazes, the narrow lanes and alleys, where none knew him. He sat under a tree, pulled a shawl around his shoulders, and a hood to cover his head. Hardly recognizable now, he sat there, watching the flux of life.
The houses all around, were quietly huddled up like solid masses of rocks carved from inside, revealing their interiors filled with quivering light.
A rudiment of some vague emotion formed in Artabhaga's heart as he absently watched the figure of a man emerging from the shadows of the tree. It was not very long ago that on an evening like this a man had crossed his path, livid with anger and fury, hurtling towards his own destruction like a boulder loosened from its origin.
There was something in the demeanor of this man before him that reminded Artabhaga of Shakalya. He wondered whether he could have altered the course of events on that fateful
evening if he had divined the fatality of the passions raging inside that doomed soul.
Artabhaga leaned against the trunk of the tree and watched the man. He seemed to exude the exaggerated confidence of a gambler. He quickened his pace as he came in the vicinity of a small cottage dimly lit from the inside. The place seemed to be a gambler’s den. The sound of the lusty laughter of its inmates, raucous and rapacious, gave the place an atmosphere of unsavory intimacy. The man looked excited as he came within an easy range of its seductive charm. As his face came to light, Artabhaga saw a trace of wounded vanity in it. He was struck by the resemblance between him and Shakalya as he had seen him in the twilight of that fateful evening, and he wondered what kind of destiny this man was working out for himself at that moment. Artabhaga felt, perhaps with a little effort of the mind he would be able to lift the veil and look beyond, into the man's destiny. But he did not want to. Why should he? But why then, did Yajnyawalkya tear the veil? Was it a prediction, or a warning?
Artabhaga felt a nerve throbbing in his temple. He could not make up his mind about Yajnyawalkya, who seemed determined to remain an enigma to those who wanted to know his mind.
Artabhaga found himself drawn to Yajnyawalkya with an irrational kind of compassion. He felt aghast at this discovery of a bond between them, because he could see now Yajnyawalkya's destiny unveiled before his mind's eye. He could see with certainty the mode of choices Yajnyawalkya was destined to make.
Was this, after all, the supreme illusion which the seers saw as Maya: the one who allured the primordial man with her dazzling beauty? There she stood, the enchantress who casts a magic! She was inside one; and before one could realize, she was out there! At that moment for Artabhaga, she was out there, embodied in Yajnyawalkya who could not see her as Artabhaga could. Perhaps at that fateful moment in the past, Yajnyawalkya saw her taking possession of Shakalya. She was out there for Yajnyawalkya, clearly delineated in the shape of the things to come: Artabhaga shuddered as he saw in a vision the same enchantress incarnating herself in Yajnyawalkya. Artabhaga could see her; maybe, Yajnyawalkya could not. And would Artabhaga be able to see her if her eye caught him?
Sounds seemed to be drifting away from him into a distance. Suddenly he was awakened by the cry of a weeping infant. How disconsolate a child's cry can be, coming from afar and harmonizing with one's mute anguish!
Artabhaga could not forgo the memory of Shakalya, emerging out of the shadows, tragically out of tune with himself and the world, a perversely willing prey to the fires of damnation. Artabhaga recalled with bewilderment and amazement that moment in Janaka's assembly when Yajnyawalkya suddenly lifted the veil which hides from the mortal eye the hidden side of life. Artabhaga was aghast at the knowledge of that unseen world which is always so near us. Each act and the word spoken by us has its consequences in that world. These unseen results bring that world suddenly within our perception. Shakalya carried that unseen world within him already. Perhaps his wise father had perceived it long ago. It only needed Yajnyawalkya's barbed arrow to pierce the veil.
53

Chapter 29
For a long time after she had left Yajnyawalkya's congregation, Gargi did not know what had driven her to take the discipleship of a man whom she had secretly wished to conquer. What had happened to her resolve? Her clear intellect had never accepted anything on trust. Her quest for empirical knowledge had sharpened her intellect into a weapon with which she could demolish any argument that she believed to have no foundation in reason.
But she had just returned with a glimpse of a realm that she could not conquer; not with the weapons she had!
She had seen how insensitive Yajnyawalkya was to polemical aggression. She had spent the greater part of her time and energy in devising strategies for conquest, defence or demolition. A feeling of profound gloom and depletion set upon her. She had no thought of the future. She wanted to live! That was all that mattered at the moment. It did not matter if she had to wrench life from its source. She sat up and looked at the night sky that was visible from the window.
She got up and threw the door of the hut wide open. The cold winter wind rushed in through the door like a raving lunatic, sifting through her garments, stinging her all over. Gargi shuddered and closed the door as swiftly as she had opened it. She returned to the familiar warmth of the hearth. She felt disarmed and bereft of all certainty. Her masks fell off one by one. She remembered a dream that had unsettled her for quite some time. Rows and rows of glittering idols were being demolished one by one, one row leading to another falling flat, and yet there was no end to the process.
Gargi looked out again at the patch of the midnight sky, alluring because it seemed to arrest the infinity in that well-defined square. She breathed deeply, as if to absorb it within herself. After that breath she did not know what was happening to her. It was as if some unseen presence had whispered the seed-syllable into her ear and held her transfixed.

Chapter 28
The mellowness of autumn had enveloped the abode of Katyayani and Maitreyi. The days were warm, but the nights were cool. It was that peculiar time when the day imparts its warmth to the tremulous nights, and the nights leave behind in gratitude a gift of dew on the bed of grass.
The universe looked like an eternal cycle of fertility after an infernally hot interval of a deceptive summer that sets in after the monsoon is over.
Autumn was a time of awakening for the hermitage that otherwise was in danger of turning into an orphanage. How lustily the earth had greeted rains that year! It rained wonderfully well and their small farms yielded plentifully, making their garners full.
Katyayani began to feel the stirring of life within her. She used to sit transfixed for hours, listening to the delicate nuances of life within her. The mystery of that new universe taking shape within her was almost an obsession. But the one who had caused it to be born had extricated himself from its enchantment.
Katyayani and Maitreyi had detected a small sapling growing behind the cottage at a spot where none could have detected its presence. How joyously it seemed to spring into life! It looked neither thwarted nor orphaned. It seemed to know its purpose. It seemed to know without being taught. Katyayani had suddenly stopped in the track when they saw it. She wanted to caress it, so delicate and tender it looked!
“O dear, what would happen to it if someone stepped on it!” she whispered, half to herself and half to Maitreyi, who was also looking at it with concern. There was a touch of sadness in her. Katyayani wondered why sadness and wisdom were always inseparable in Maitreyi. The beautiful autumn noon had transformed all the pain of sadness into mellow warmth.
Katyayani wondered if her misgivings and apprehensions ever appeared real to Maitreyi; so abstracted and faraway she seemed at times! She clasped Maitreyi's hand to make her own presence felt to her. A wan smile broke out on Maitreyi's lips as she understood Katyayani's anxiety. Maitreyi spoke as if she saw something with a bewildering certainty, “We have difficult times ahead of us, Katya. I am thinking of your child, our child rather!”
Katyayani at once understood the beguiled destiny of her child. She did not know what divine error had caused this beguilement. She wept silently. She was furious with Maitreyi for uttering such a foreboding.
But she knew, that was the truth, devastating and unbearable. At such times, truth has the power to break or resurrect. It was their natural instinct for survival rather than any heroic courage that gave these two women a resilience they had never known before. It was something beyond human volition. It was something that unites woman with everything that is feminine in nature's complex organization. It is the knowledge of her biological function as she arrives at the fateful impasse of motherhood. It is the knowledge which every female possesses mysteriously. It is a
power that obliterates everything out of her consciousness except the knowledge that she must not die before she has delivered into the world the new life that is entrusted to her.
And so Katyayani forgot her fury and resentment. The languor of pregnancy began to spread over her mind and body. Soon, instead of quarreling with the world, she began to be happy!

Chapter 27.

Chapter 26
Yajnyawalkya's hermitage was at the other end of the capital. Gargi,s camp was near the residential quarters of Janaka's royal priests. Gargi had chosen to camp there because she believed, that was where Yajnyawalkya’s aspirations would lead him.
But Yajnyawalkya was not to be found anywhere among those who were near the seat of power. Power still belonged to Ashwala. 'Yajnyawalkya' was a name to be shunned with disdain and contempt in that coterie. But it was also the name they secretly feared.
Gargi's arrival in that coterie created a stir. Placed as she was in the category of misunderstood and mistrusted women, she had no difficulty in guarding her solitary eminence. Men either adored her or feared her. Gargi had grown accustomed to an uncritical adulation or an intimidated compliance. But everything had to revolve around her to acquire a meaning. None could come into Gargi's orbit without losing his self-hood. Man must sacrifice his self-hood at her altar. Each new sacrifice added to her luster.
The news of Gargi's arrival reached Yajnyawalkya in no time. He was mystified because he could not see what it portended. It was certain that it was not a mere chance that she was there again. He visualized her presence in his mind, and for a moment, unknowingly surrendered himself to the mystic charm. He felt her name being sounded like an incantation. But the voice which sounded it was not his, nor was it unknown. Then he realized; the familiar voice which sounded the name of Gargi was that of Gargi herself. It was Gargi uttering her own name as if to pervade the whole universe.
….....................
Gargi was in deep meditation at that very moment, concentrating fiercely on the thought of conquest. Even a deity must have her share of food. Mortals hungered for ordinary food; deities demand sacrifice. Deities are hungry too. But deities never pray like mortals. They claim their dues.
…...........................
Gargi saw with an unimpaired clarity the image she must conjure to allure the man. The image was of woman: clad in the rays of the setting sun, with a vermilion mark on her forehead! Gargi had multiple forms, infinite like the desires in her heart and mercurial like the shapes of those desires! And what were those desires if not Gargi herself?
When she opened her eyes, she realized, it was evening. The excited calls the birds made to their mates and the young ones filled the empty sky and the tree-tops were alive and stirring with life. The homing cows responded ardently to the calls of their calves. All creatures were home-bound. It was a phenomenon that occurred everyday. But Gargi saw it as if she had never seen it before!
Yesterday, a little later than this hour, she was at the gates of Videha, angry and frustrated for being detained at the gate/way when she had nearly made it to her destination. Why was she
angry? No one was waiting for her in the city. Then why, like a home-bound bird did she knock her wings against the bars that separated her from Videha?
O Gargi, the one who believes in shaping her own destiny, whither are you bound? To a city that has no body and no location?
Gargi suddenly felt alone, drained of all her substance! Her garments of divinity fell apart one by one. Gargi watched the process of her disrobing with a tremulous heart, afraid to see what would be revealed beneath, after the last garment was torn off. She closed her eyes to drive away the agonizing fantasy and realized that she was human, all too human; agonizingly and piteously human! For the first time she lacked the will to hold herself together. She felt, she had dissipated her energy in projecting multiple but insubstantial images of herself.
Everything is time-bound, and so every creature is home-bound. It is evening, O Gargi! Soon the gates will close. Where is your home?

Chapter 25
It was the end of the day and the gateposts of the city were closed. The sentry had sealed the gates and retired to his lonely post. As he mounted the watch-tower he heard the rumbling of bullock-carts at a distance. Soon carriages pulled to a halt at the closed gates. The yellowish torch-light of the inmates of the carriage illuminated the scene. The cart driver was half-asleep. It was obvious that it was almost a day-long drive without a break. The sentry hailed in a loud voice to wake him up. The sudden jolt and the loud shout created a stir among the inmates in the front. A young hermit jumped out of the cart and approached the other cart trailing behind in a row.
“I had told you, we ought to have stopped at the earlier juncture instead of advancing in the dark. At the speed we were traveling it was impossible to make it before the gates closed.” the young hermit spoke in dismay.
“Ask the sentry to open the gates and let us pass,” a female voice, youthful but firm, spoke in a commanding tone. The voice was loud enough for the sentry to hear. The young hermit turned to the sentry, but found, there was no need to repeat the command of the lady, for the sentry said, “Tell the lady, the gates cannot be opened to outsiders after sunset. That is the express order of the king of Videha.” The sentry shouted back, loud enough for the lady to hear.
“Tell that buffoon that he does not know the meaning of rules and orders. Order or no order, we cannot be detained here at the gate at this hour,” sounded the voice, loud and clear, piercing the darkness like an arrow.
The sentry stepped down. If it was coming to ribaldry, he could do it better than the lady. The young hermit sensed the threat and realized, it was unwise to protract the argument. He peeped into the carriage and had a few words with the lady inside as he made a pacifying gesture, raising his hand to the sentry. The sentry paused, but he was taken aback the next moment. Tossing aside the curtain that concealed the inside of the carriage, there emerged in full view a woman who seemed to radiate fire. The sentry was struck dumb. Without taking her eyes off him, the woman spoke in a measured tone, “Gargi Vachaknavi will not wait till sunrise for the gates to open.”The sentry moved like a man under a spell and opened the gates. The woman had disappeared behind the curtain. The indolent cart- driver in the front of the row understood the signal to go. The bullocks responded to the tug at the reins and pressed forward. The entire procession marched ahead, rumbling on the cantankerous wheels.
Gargi entered Videha.

Chapter 24
Janaka finished the conference with his ministers. The atmosphere was charged. It was not the tension that comes of panic and uncertainty. It was the tension of the stretched bow before the arrow is discharged.
Almost everyone who came in contact with Janaka, invariably felt the impact of his lightening presence. It was an amazing experience for Yajnyawalkya in the beginning. How unlike he and Janaka were! And yet there was something deeply harmonious about their dissimilar temperaments.
While the conference was in progress Janaka had forgotten Yajnyawalkya who was occupying a low seat beside Janaka's throne. He had listened alertly, absorbing every word with its subtle nuances and vibrations, never obtrusive, but vigilant like a sentry. Yet at some point, he did not know when, Yajnyawalkya had drifted away from all that surrounded him. Huge armies being raised, fed, trained and maintained, all the talk about enemies and allies, potential and real, the shifting loyalties, strategies meticulously worked out in utmost secrecy, everything contributed to a scheme of life that held no place for him.
When they stepped out of the conference room into the open courtyard, the sun had reached the peak in the sky. The hot and sultry noon played viciously on Yajnyawalkya's overwrought nerves. Stepping out suddenly in the blazing sun, he was overcome by a dreadful feeling of waste and debility. He looked at the form of Janaka , striding a little ahead of him: quick, purposeful and brisk. He was the one who propelled this mindless scheme. He was the one who assigned a seemingly dignified function in that scheme to persons like Yajnyawalkya.
Yajnyawalkya tried to persuade himself that the revulsion he felt at that moment was unreasonable: a product of his disgruntled feelings of the moment. But his body revolted. It is easier to control the deviousness of the mind so long as the body functions like a chariot under command, unaffected by the erratic turns. But Yajnyawalkya had reached a state where he could not identify himself either with the body or with the mind. He envied Janaka. He envied the perfect integration of the body and the mind, with which this warrior conducted himself.
Janaka who had walked rapidly ahead, suddenly felt something amiss. He reduced his pace, but finding that Yajnyawalkya made no efforts to catch up with him, he turned around.
Still absorbed by the discussion he had with ministers, he asked Yajnyawalkya, 'Friend, what do you foresee for our plans of conquest? Do you think we are moving in the right direction?'
The question was asked with candor, soliciting a frank opinion supported by a native intuition. But Yajnyawalkya saw in it a vanity condescending to accommodate another's pride. His brow contracted. He looked in defiance at the king.
‘A monster! You are creating a monster! Boundaries of your kingdom will move up, but the

monster will grow and men will shrink. You will conquer land, but I do not see a difference between conquerors and marauders. This is not the kingdom you aspire for!'
Janaka stopped instantly.
'Let us go to your cottage. You are not well,' said Janaka.
On reaching there Janaka asked, 'What has come over you?'
'Nothing that I can understand!'
Then suddenly with apparent irrelevance, he said, 'It is hunger.'
Janaka looked puzzled.
Yajnyawalkya spoke, as if addressing none. 'I was brought up on the simple faith that one must grow food to satisfy hunger. Now I realize it is not as simple as that. One must also fight, conquer and perform sacrifices. This absurd sacrifice will devour you and me and everyone. We will create deities, gods, goddesses and depend upon them to satisfy our hunger. The more we propitiate them, the more demanding they will be. They will not let you escape, once you seek their help. Because you are worshiping gods who are hungry. Soon they will be intoxicated. They will demand their share, and there will be no escape”.
Janaka laughed in disenchantment..
“Yes, there is no escape. But why do you want to escape? One cannot fight gods.”
“If there is anything we need to fight, it is our gods, our gods who enslave us! We repeat the same structure, build the same edifice, on the same foundation: the same relationship everywhere: a dependency where the weak must look up to mighty, and we call it worship; we call it a sacrifice'
Janaka brooded silently. Then he spoke slowly, uttering every word as though it was a revelation:
'Now I understand what it is between you and me; you think it is enslavement, not a relationship. It is impossible for you to forget that I happen to be king and you happen to be Brahmin? The difference between our stations in life makes a natural relationship impossible! This is something I cannot comprehend and cannot accept. I make no demands on you. I am not a god to wrench a sacrificial offering from you, nor are you a worshiper asking for a favor from a superimposed god. But we are all caught up in a knot that cannot be untied.'
Yajnyawalkya stared at Janaka, stupefied at the result his words had produced! Something stirred deeply in his heart. It was the memory of Maitreyi as she stood in the doorway, speaking with a compelling clarity:
'I want to release you: let no enslavement come in the way of what you are seeking!'
What was he seeking? A gloom had descended between him and Janaka. Janaka got up silently. On reaching the doorstep, he turned back. He wanted to say something.
Yajnyawalkya looked at him eagerly. Unable to make use of words Janaka turned and walked away in silence.

Chapter 23
Days wore on. Yajnyawalkya's home and hermitage survived. Janaka's men replenished them with the necessities of life. The wheel moved.
Katyayani's worst premonitions had to be countered by Maitreyi's resilient acceptance of her new responsibility. Without that resilience the two women would have succumbed to the fear that had taken possession of their hearts at the time of Yajnyawalkya's departure: the fear which told them that they were going to lose their man to the world which claimed him. That world demanded to extract his essence: his knowledge, his skill, everything except the soil in which he grew.
The loss of physical contact has its own compensations and rewards sometimes.The absence of a person leaves a vacuum that gets animated. The absence begins to speak more eloquently than the living presence. It is as though the absent person has left behind a burden he could not carry, the burden of unnamed, unrecognized, indecipherable thoughts! The pain, whose origin had ever been an enigma, vibrates in the place that had been filled with his presence. That pain seeps under your skin and you begin to hear a music created by the absent man. That music lifts you gently and the secret places of your heart are opened to the mysteries no intellect had ever penetrated. Such was the legacy Yajnyawalkya had left behind for Maitreyi.
Perhaps she did not know that on many a night he had kept awake, thinking and tormenting himself, while she slumbered by his side peacefully. He used to look at her face which bore no trace of anguish or anxiety. 'How truly this woman belongs to earth,' he would think. She was like earth anointed by the first showers of the season, fragrant and happy. She slept as if her guardian angel had just sung her a song of elemental simplicity; as if she had heard them say, 'Of the elements thou art and to the elements wilt thou return.' She seemed to sleep in the lap of earth, trustful like a child, while he struggled to break away like a tree seized by a desire to fly. Maitreyi did not hear his sighs, tempestuous like trees swaying in the dark. She was not aware of the reproachful glance directed at his hermitage and at her. She was not aware of the remorse either; implicit in the words he spoke in silence:
'O woman, the daughter of earth, will you ever be able to grow wings and fly with me? Why does it surprise me to see myself flying away from you? Perhaps my roots never penetrated the soil in which you grew.'
Maitreyi never heard those words because they had not been uttered. Yet they had left behind the silence that follows the notes of music. The silence now formed for Maitreyi a link between Yajnyawalkya whom she remembered and Yajnyawalkya as he experienced himself. She saw with a greater clarity a vision that she could not translate into words. She knew that Yajnyawalkya's journey had begun and he was too far gone on his way to return to his former abode.
…...............
39
And then one day Katyayani woke her up suddenly as the night receded to make way for the morning sun. Katyayani was shivering like a leaf. She sought support as she spoke:
“Maitreyi, I saw a woman, exceedingly beautiful, but radiating a strange light. She seemed to eclipse everything that was in sight. Soon I lost sight of you, of Yajnyawalkya, of myself too! I could not breathe for want of air. She seemed to be made of the element of fire. She was indeed the very breath of fire. A din of words seemed to emanate from her. After a frantic search I found you. You were unaffected by the din and the fire. You remained where you had been, beyond the farthest limit of silence.”
Katyayani regained steadiness as the vision melted before her eyes. Maitreyi touched her gently on the brow and was startled to find that a raging fever racked Katyayani's body.
From that day Katyayani was seized by the fear of the basic emptiness of everything she held as real. She had stepped out of a dark ante-chamber to face the open space all of a sudden. The effect had dawned upon her before she could locate the cause. She was carried blindfolded to face the truth. When she looked back, she could not recollect the path that had brought her hither, nor could she remember the journey.

Chapter 22
Gargi Vachaknavi, the learned daughter of the erudite sage Vachaknu, was defeated in argument by Yajnyawalkya. She, who had ensnared and conquered great men of wit and learning, was dismissed with not so much as a glance by Yajnyawalkya. Gargi was not one to writhe under the ignominy of the defeat. She who was the paragon of female power could not be defeated in this way. She who was the soul of perfection, she who was sought by man to gain awareness of himself, cannot be defeated thus without a combat. There is no defeat where there is no combat.
Yajnyawalkya had simply walked out on her. How was the world to know what Gargi felt in the innermost centre of her heart, that Yajnyawalkya had dismissed her not out of contempt, but out of fear? Gargi felt secretly elated by what her primal female instinct, made sharper and superior by a heightened self-awareness, whispered to her about Yajnyawalkya: “This man belongs to you as the sacrificer belongs to the sacrifice, as the rain belongs to the cloud, as the thunder belongs to lightening and the lightening belongs to the thunder, and as both in turn belong to the primordial forces of nature.”
And so Gargi must wait; must wait with the knowledge the falconer has of the movements of the falcon. But the falconer cannot rest with the knowledge he possesses. The world must know the object in possession of the falconer. The world must know, Yajnyawalkya’s victory heralds the beginning of Gargi's triumph.
Gargi waited restlessly and vigilantly for Yajnyawalkya to come to her. She waited as an enchantress waits silently, with bated breath for one under her spell. There was no anguish in her waiting. There was a greater awareness of what the fire within her demanded, and the more she waited, the more intense was the demand of that fire.
And then one day Gargi learnt about Yajnyawalkya's presence in Videha. There was an uncanny certainty about the gestation of their interlocked fate.
But the man did not come to her, although she saw him with her mind's eye, tormented, distraught, but keeping at bay.
So Gargi made the momentous decision to confront Yajnyawalkya once again with a determination possessed only by a woman who aspires to be more than a mortal woman!

Chapter 21
.
After spending the night with Shakala in his austere cottage, Artabhaga woke up to the light of the sun. He found the abode empty and deserted. There was no trace of the old man. Artabhaga, stood stunned, alone and destitute, surrounded by the four walls of the cottage.
The night of vigil was over and there was no need for him to stay. He looked around sadly and then realized, he had not had any food for a long time. He suddenly felt his strength leaving him.
He sat down wearily and reclined against the mud wall. Those walls spoke to him of absence: the absence of the old man who had erected them single-handed! How much pain had got transformed in the act of building them! Artabhaga sat silently taking in the message which the absence of the old man delivered to him. The silence of the deserted cottage proclaimed deliverance.
Artabhaga wondered where the old man would be now. He thought of what his mother had told him once about God.
“God is one and alone, without another,”she had told him. He had looked at her in wonder why it had to be so. She saw the question in his eyes and stroked his head in an answer. Artabhaga had silently wept at his inability to accept it.
Artabhaga resisted tears as he got up and tried to regain awareness of the fact. As he stood up, he realized that a subtle aroma had remained in the atmosphere all along but he had failed to notice it. Now he realized it was the smell of burnt firewood, now emitting a crisp, pungent-smelling smoke. He looked in the direction of the smell and found a cooking fire in the corner. Near the fire was a covered vessel. Artabhaga's intuition told him to open it. There was freshly cooked rice in it. Artabhaga knew it was for him.

Chapter 20
The little hermitage at Videha attracted learners from different quarters. Pupils used to feel breathless and washed out as they listened to Yajnyawalkya's relentless scrutiny of the mind. There were many who retracted on finding a sultry landscape of rigour and asceticism where they had hoped to find assurance and certainty. Yajnyawalkya's exhortations to wean them away from rituals and sacrifices produced an alarmingly greater adherence to dogma among the followers. They needed something tangible to hold to, something to which they could attribute their hopes and fears, aspirations and failures. They looked upon him as someone who understood the malady and possessed the remedy, but by some eccentric whim chose to hold it back from them.
It was at this stage of unwary moment of lag between Yajnyawalkya and his followers that Ashwala saw his opportunity. So one day he tried to extract from this elusive heretic a commitment to and endorsement of the institution of sacrifice. He surged from the midst of the congregation and cast a challenging but pitying look at Yajnyawalkya. With a contemptuous smile of condescension he said,
“Yajnyawalkya, let us not forget that we are all householders struggling for our livelihood in a world where we are certain to be overtaken by death. What salvation is there for us and how do we, ordinary mortals that we are, transcend materiality and gain immortality?”
Yajnyawalkya suddenly fell silent. He looked in astonishment at Ashwala for a moment. He wondered whether Ashwala's placid countenance did not veil a deep awareness of the tragic dimensions of our existence. He looked meditatively at the ground beneath his feet. In that moment he felt a void within him where there was no awareness of the question being asked to him, nor a search for an answer. He saw in that void, one by one, the faces of all those near and dear to him. He saw those faces being replaced by those who at that moment, stared anxiously at him for an answer. His lips trembled as he tried to hide his agitation.
“By what sacrifice do we attain salvation?” That was the question of Ashwala.
He repeated the question: “By what means do we transcend death and attain salvation?” He forced himself to rise above the turbulence in his mind and spoke, as if invoking a power beyond himself, in a calm, impersonal voice,
“Let your speech be the fire that annihilates the dross. Your speech indeed is the fire of the sacrifice. Your life is the unceasing sacrifice. Tend that fire well with the offering of Speech. That is the sacrificial ritual leading you beyond Death.Your speech indeed is the never-ceasing fire. He, who dwelling in that fire, is yet other than the fire, and controls that fire from within, is your Self, your Atman. Dwell within that Self and not within the speech. Be the power behind the fire and dwell in that power, not in the fire.”
Ashwala and others looked at Yajnyawalkya's brooding introverted visage and wondered at the restraint they had never experienced before in his voice and expression.
Yajnyawalkya relapsed into silence. Everybody knew, there was no way the discussion could be prolonged. Accepting their silence as consent to take leave, Yajnyawalkya rose from his seat.
On that evening, if someone had cared to peep into Yajnyawalkya's cottage, he would have seen a lonely householder tending the fire away from his home, silently sacrificing speech in the fire.
36
Chapter 21
.
After spending the night with Shakalya in his austere cottage, Artabhaga woke up to the light of the sun. He found the abode empty and deserted. There was no trace of the old man. Artabhaga,

Chapter 19
There was a message from Janaka for Yajnyawalkya to come and see him. Yajnyawalkya was getting ready to go, but before he had stepped out of the cottage he was surprised to find Janaka at the entrance of the cottage.
Monsoon had just set in. Janaka's attendants had followed him with an umbrella because he had chosen to walk down to this place. He sent them back and greeted Yajnyawalkya.
Janaka paused to look around. The cottage and its surroundings were a little paradise in themselves. The abundance of flowers, plants, and foliage, proclaimed that no more luxury was needed for life except rich soil, water and the hand of the tiller.
Yajnyawalkya led him in. They sat comfortably leaning against the wall. Janaka began a little uncertainly,
“I do not know if it will please you to know that some of your admirers have approached me for a permission to set up a hermitage here to be able to absorb your ideas.”
Yajnyawalkya remained silent. He saw what was going to materialize out of such a venture: rituals, more rituals, endless injunctions which would be adhered to with a devotional fervor, new scriptures coming into being and then perpetuated in his name by word of mouth: dead, unvibrating words, twisted out of their living context, remote from their intended meaning. Those words would carry his corpse across centuries and epochs, denying to him the possibility of transcending the fixity of words.
He listened to Janaka's words as though to a herald of death. He seemed to hear multitudes of people who had surrendered their minds, repeating only sounds, not words, imitating the sounds and missing the essence.
What he said aloud at that moment was just this: “What we need is not more rituals, but an inquiring mind.”
Janaka paused expectantly in the silence that followed. Then he said,” These are your fellow-beings, Yajnyawalkya. You may find them stupid, ignorant, dense, But they honestly believe that you can enlighten them. Does it not signify awakening?”
With a heavy breath, Yajnyawalkya spoke: “Do not tempt me O king, with this new image of myself.”
Janaka resisted the impulse to argue. Yajnyawalkya let go of himself:
“You had once asked me if it is possible for the mortal to know 'Brahma', the ultimate reality. At each step we confront it and it eludes us. It is there in our eyes, tongue and breath. It is in our breath and in our speech. Our speech indeed is 'That'. Our speech is the bridge between that Primordial Silence and the Primordial Light. But we fossilize speech into words and arrest their life. That is why I fear, people may trust the words and rest at them. They are scared to go beyond words. It is easy to believe in the reality of the word when it is given to you. Because then you can readily appropriate it. How easy it is to use up all your power of thinking, seeing, hearing and speaking in this game of appropriation! You make experience 'a thing ', a finished,
finite object which can be appropriated. Once you do that, you set limit to your Self, limit your growth. And that ends all your freedom, because you become the thing you have appropriated.”
Janaka felt as if he was climbing uphill after Yajnyawalkya. Yajnyawalkya's words echoed in the silence. Janaka knew, they would echo in his mind too, long after.
Yajnyawalkya paused. He was getting ensnared by the sound of his own words. They sounded to him like incantations. What he uttered, there and then, had been carried across and into the heart of another, and had found its home there. He wondered whether words, without the living presence of the speaker, would accomplish the same effect, like a bird winging the sky to alight and rest in its home.
Janaka felt he had delved into the heart of loneliness. He could not bear to see this man succumb to the overwhelming feeling of futility that threatened to swallow him. He knew, his own words were going to sound superficial after this, but still, he must make an effort. Placing a hand on Yajnyawalkya's shoulder, he said,
“I know, you don't want to be a law-giver, even though that is what probably the world is going to make out of you. But in some hearts you may find a home as a friend who attempted to find the path. That's a promise enough and a reward enough, although I know, you don't care for a reward. I know you don't want your words to arrest the flow of knowledge. You want them to set the minds free. But I beseech you, speak, whether you are heard aright or not, speak! Perhaps someone may quarrel with you, some may agree with you, though the majority will be content to make laws out of quarrels and concords”
Yajnyawalkya grasped Janaka's hand in gratitude. Janaka left without ceremony.
Yajnyawalkya looked up at the sky because he heard a distant rumble. The sky was overcast by a dense shadow that was soon going to descend on earth. As he looked at Janaka walking briskly towards the palace, the cloud melted into a shower and drenched Janaka. But Janaka walked ahead without looking back and without bothering for a shelter. Yajnyawalkya watched him until he disappeared around the corner.

Chapter 18
People came to Videha from far and wide to seek Yajnyawalkya's advice on problems of ethics, on their personal dilemmas, but mostly on the questions of the relevance and the efficacy of the ritual of sacrifice. He answered them. Born and brought up as he was in the tradition of pedantry, he answered them by rote.
It did not take him long to realize that he was thus posing a threat to the power of Ashwala, the royal priest and officiator of the ritual of sacrifice for Janaka.
Yajnyawalkya had almost assumed the image of the High Priest of the ritual of sacrifice as mentioned and prescribed in the Vedas. But there was also a heretic in him whose presence, though unnoticed by the masses, did not escape the attention of the learned. He had caused a rupture in the placid, complacent priestly empire with his erratic utterances which were conveniently interpreted as irresponsible outbursts of a half-baked intellect. Yajnyawalkya's words drove them to a fury. It was difficult to judge whether their irascibility was genuine or whether it served to conceal the vacuity of their own minds. They made sly, fugitive attacks but evaded the responsibility of confrontation.
Yajnyawalkya sometimes felt stupefied by the immensity of the fraud perpetrated by the sanction of tradition and patronage by kings. Unwillingly, he found himself participating in it.
Throngs of people waited to consult him on the right kind of sacrifice and the procedure stipulated for it in the scriptures. Sacrificial rituals were there to fulfill all their desires if the sacrifice was initiated by the right priest in the right way. That was what they were given to believe.
The rich came because they wanted to perpetuate their wealth. They took their wealth for granted because the scriptures told them it was their reward for the merit accumulated by them in their past incarnations. The poor came, guilty and ashamed of their poverty. It was a blind procession in the direction of something that Yajnyawalkya feared to see.
He could see Time imperceptibly moving behind them all.

Chapter 17
Yajnyawalkya stepped into the inner chamber of Janaka’s palace after the attendant had announced his arrival. Janaka got up to receive him and led him to the seat specially arranged for him. Janaka looked at Yajnyawalkya. There was no sign of humility in Yajnyawalkya. He walked with a steady step and sat down.
Janaka viewed Yajnyawalkya with an intrigued curiosity. He was eagerly waiting for a sign of psychological debility in Yajnyawalkya's demeanor which might possibly give him the right moment to start the process of unveiling the man.
Janaka cast a glance in Yajnyawalkya's direction. Both looked at each other at the same time like adversaries ready for a duel. Janaka, obviously, was the more relaxed of the two, since the privilege of the initiative was with him.
They exchanged no pleasantries, not even a smile. Janaka got up and paced up and down the room to relieve the tension of the grim silence. He eyed Yajnyawalkya once again before speaking. He found him sitting unmoved but alert.
“The last symposium had ended rather on an inconclusive note; don't you think so?' he asked.
“What kind of a conclusion did you expect?”
Yajnyawalkya asked in return.
Janaka realized once again that this man could be elusive without being evasive.
“Is it possible to know 'Brahma,’ the Ultimate?”
“Have you come across anyone who professes to know?”
“Yes, there have been several! In fact, all those who argued with you at the symposium, have been interviewed by me individually and have been asked the same question.”
“What did they say?”
“Well, they all tried to explain to me what they knew.”
“Does that not entitle you to say that you know 'Brahma?”
Janaka laughed; it was not a mocking, derisive laughter. It was the laughter of a man who finds himself at ease because he no longer has to put up a face. It was the laughter which a man enjoys only in the company of a kindred soul! Yajnyawalkya realized it. But he also knew that camaraderie struck in such desultory moments becomes a mockery of itself unless an attempt is made to give it a purpose.
After a brief moment of introspection Janaka said, 'It is always possible to imagine what one cannot see directly.'
'Well, that entitles me to opinions, not knowledge; does it not?' Yajnyawalkya said.
Janaka reflected upon this and said, 'There must be a region of consciousness where I should be able to affirm what I know to be true. Tell me Yajnyawalkya, have you reached that region?'
“We do not have to reach it. It is there in all of us. In fact, you are speaking to me just now from that very core of being. You may doubt everything else, but you do not doubt the “I” in you.”
Janaka’s eyes travelled along the edge of the mattress where Yajnyawalkya was seated. Then he eyed him probingly. How different he seemed from the Yajnyawalkya of the symposium! He was himself, inimitable in his awareness of himself!
The royal impulse to subdue the opponent drove Janaka to think of a suitable stance to dislodge him. But restoring to a stance would have been confessing to his own defeat. A stance can be defeated by a stance, a self cannot be.
Janaka felt amused when he realized that one cannot unmask others unless one removes the mask from one's self, and one is not prepared to remove it unless one is sure that the other is not wearing one either.
Janaka smiled and said, “Yes, I do sometimes! Sometimes I do doubt the “I” in me. I go on removing one mask after another only to find a fresh one growing underneath. At this rate, I fear, I may end up in a void instead of reaching the 'I'.
Yajnyawalkya looked up. He found Janaka gazing steadily at some invisible point. There was no anguish, no spiritual uncertainty in his eyes. Yajnyawalkya held his breath and continued to watch. There was no forlornness in Janaka's voice. There was an amused nonchalance as though he had played a game long enough and mastered it, but secretly yearned to give it up. There was no conscious attempt at communication, not even an awareness of another's presence; it was as though he had absorbed it into his own. For a moment, Yajnyawalkya felt something loosening in his own heart. Janaka suddenly collected himself and turned to look at Yajnyawalkya. He expected a silent mockery from Yajnyawalkya, but was a little surprised to find an alert listener. In an unguarded moment the marks fell and it was difficult for both to don them again. It was like entering into the solitude of an inner chamber and suddenly finding oneself face to face with another entrant there.
Janaka tried to pick up the thread of the conversation anew, but he could not do it without getting up and going a little nearer to Yajnyawalkya. He extended his hand to him. Yajnyawalkya got up and took it in his own. They stared, trying to read deeper into each other.
Janaka said simply,”I want to learn from you. Will you teach me what you do know; not what you have to accept as true because it is thought to be true. I want you to speak to me about what you know of the Self.”
Yajnyawalkya disentangled himself before making any answer. This was not the bland dialectics of the symposium, to be resolved by logic. He folded his hands across his chest and mused.
“I cannot solve your problems for you, and I am sure you don't need my help in solving them. I can merely give you the equipment for knowledge. I will not give you knowledge, because it cannot be given. I will teach you, if this can be called teaching, but not if you expect me to go down on my knees before you. Do not expect me to be your protege or serf. You don't have to elevate me to the pedestal either. Stay beside me as a friend.”
“Agreed,” said Janaka.
After Yajnyawalkya was gone, Janaka realized that it was Yajnyawalkya who had scored a victory once again.

Yajnyawalkya agreed to stay with Janaka as his preceptor on condition that he be allowed to go back to his hermitage when he felt that he had fulfilled the purpose of his stay at Videha and was no longer needed by Janaka.
His meetings with Janaka were unscheduled and infrequent. They both learnt to respect each other's separate identity and ego, but an imperceptible barrier still separated them.
Yajnyawalkya had to spend most of his time in answering the questions of the priests regarding the protocol of the various types of rituals of the sacrifice. He grew tired of bartering and trading in knowledge. He felt he was being used by various types of people. Janaka used him as a tool for analysis. He asked Yajnyawalkya to sit with him through long sessions of negotiations with the envoys of other kingdoms. After the sessions he would consult Yajnyawalkya about the advisability of trusting them.
Janaka's capacity for observing and storing what he saw was amazing. But more amazing was his ability to recall and synthesize what he had stored in memory.
Mostly his own evaluation of a person would not be at variance with that of Yajnyawalkya. But Janaka was more interested in watching Yajnyawalkya's mind engaged in observing, analyzing and reflecting upon experience.
Yajnyawalkya never reasoned with his emotions, nor did he allow them to cloud reason. His imagination had the accuracy of an expert marksman taking a shot in the dark. But he did not relish the power that came with this ability. Janaka would have sacrificed his whole kingdom to acquire such intellectual prowess.
Janaka's engrossment with the statecraft kept him away from Yajnyawalkya for long intervals in spite of his will. Yajnyawalkya had made a commitment to an emperor. So he had to stay on to honor it, no matter whether its purpose was fulfilled or not.
It was a strange captivity, without the captive being dependent on the captor. There was freedom; yet he could not use it. He was neither fettered nor confined; yet he had to submit to a power, however friendly.
Sometimes, when alone, he used to doubt if he existed to himself. He found no difference between himself and a professional ambassador who used the gift of speech to obtain benefits, not for himself, but for his master.
Disgust, exasperation, weariness: all mingled to produce a profound distrust of what he was doing with life. He struggled in vain against the necessity to submit.

Chapter 16
By a quirk of fate Yajnyawalkya had landed again in Videha. He arrived in the town a little before the fall of night. His cottage was near the very ground where the pavilion had been erected before for the conference. Yajnyawalkya stepped out of the cottage to look at the place.
There was no trace of the chaotic arguments and counter -arguments, no trace of the clash of dissonant minds. The simple, unsought, unperceived soul of the night was rejoicing in its own harmony like a woman singing to herself. For a few moments Yajnyawalkya yielded to the soothing, bewitching music of the night. He envied the simple faith of the Vedic hymns, the faith unsullied by the reprimanding voice of reason. That spirit invaded his being and brought to rest the vibrant chords of the thinking mind. There was no one to be seen, none to be heard. All sounds had merged into the haunting drone of the cricket. The sky seemed to invade the earth and make it a part of itself. What did it matter if there was none to hear and none to see! What did it matter if someone were to disprove the reality of it all in the harsh light of the day? The spirit of the night will continue to sing alone, without another!
The cryptic message of the sages echoed in his mind silently, “All this verily is Brahma; this is what truth is!”
The infinity pervaded his being and absorbed him. It seemed to lift him above himself. He was everywhere, and he was nowhere. Something there was which seemed to nullify everything about his identity. It spoke to him in a voice that was not distinct from himself: “You are! You are real! Nothing else is more real than you! You are “That”, the lotus in the midst of water, untouched by water. How can you die, unless this infinity, this eternity permits you to? You will not die, because Brahman, which holds you like a lotus, does not die! This is no symposium where truth is bandied about like a ware in the marketplace. Yajnyawalkya, arise, and be witness to the miracle of eternity that surrounds you. Do not argue; surrender to its all-encompassing reality! Who, if not I, is the knower of it all?”
The tranquil night surrounded him like an ocean of consciousness. He felt a deep groan, a mournful whisper, in that tranquility. It was the sound of eternity, mourning for the soul of its child, separated from it.
The silence of the night brought back the memory of the tempestuous arguments and debates that had preceded in the vicinity of this very courtyard a few days ago. The tranquil music of this night erased all those mythical arguments and the entities behind those arguments, like a screen of smoke. The night seemed to reveal the soul of it all. The real seemed to be unreal, and that which was not perceived during those debates, could be seen as reflections cast in water: Gargi, Shakalya, Artabhaga: all of them were there in the ethereal time and space. They were all there in search of Reality, the Brahma! What did they realize? Each one remained an isolated mind, unable to catch a glimpse of what they were seeking.

Chapter 15
An air of uncertainty and insecurity, the kind of feeling which comes when you have to do things on your own, with no one to endorse or condemn what you are doing : prevailed in the hermitage for some time after Yajnyawalkya had left. The disciples, some of them intoxicated with their new-found freedom, and some afraid to use it, soon got accustomed to the situation.
Katyayani had increased the volume of her voice in the naive belief that by doing so she would be able to reinforce and augment her power and authority to fill up the vacuum created by Yajnyawalkya's absence. Where a stern look was enough to bring a situation under control, she resorted to a barrage of words. The result was that she soon grew tired of her own voice. But such intervals of ennui did not last long. She used to resume power with a greater gusto. She enjoyed giving sermons on the need for discipline and austerity to the harassed boys. She especially enjoyed catching them on the wrong foot in their attempts to prove their innocence to her. It filled her with a triumphant exhilaration when her sudden and clever attacks sent them dithering for an adequate defence.
The pupils felt bewildered under their new master. They could not confide their troubles and problems to her, and so they found that the most convenient way was to avoid her.
One day she admonished a pupil for neglecting the tasks given to him. The pupil murmured something under his breath, which was a feeble attempt to both hide and reveal his remonstrance. Katyayani flinched in a fury and demanded, “Would you have dared to give such an answer to Yajnyawalkya?”
The boy looked at her in bewilderment; in fact he would have liked to run away, because he was inept at arguing with furious women. But it was difficult to escape under her demanding glance. So he stated, what to him was plain truth. “No,” he said, “but you are not Yajnyawalkya!”
There was no bitterness in his voice. Katyayani's fury subsided. It was as if someone had held a mirror up to her, and she was astonished to see how ludicrous she looked in the garb that did not fit her. Finding her suddenly quiet, the boy stood there for a moment, and then realizing that she did not care about his presence, slipped away, looking back a couple of times at her, wondering what it was that caused her to relent.
That day Katyayani decided to shed all her burdens and be herself. It was not a false cheer, but an easy abandonment. So the next morning she was up early. She pulled Maitreyi out of her bed and they both sauntered to the riverside. Maitreyi was shivering in the cold of the winter morning. But Katyayani was exuding warmth, laughing and talking incessantly. Maitreyi gradually felt lighter as she caught her mood. She was reminded once again of what she felt about the simple magic of Katyayani.
'It is not what this woman means by the words she uses. It is what she is able to do with them! It is that which works the wonder!'
Katyayani was unaware of what Maitreyi was thinking. Katyayani had that enviable quality of self-sufficiency by which the rest of the world got shut off from her vision when she did not want it to intrude upon her joy. Maitreyi knew that if she remained aloof a little longer, Katyayani was sure to resent it. She moved closer to Katyayani and clasped her hand warmly. Katyayani shook it merrily as she made Maitreyi almost run in order to keep pace with her.
Maitreyi was panting when they reached the bank of the river and sat down on a rock on
2the bank. They were both laughing with a childish gaiety, and laughed still more with the discovery that they could still laugh like that. They stopped in between to look at each other and to feel the breeze swaying the trees and playing with their hair, and then new waves and ripples of laughter tickled them. Then Katyayani untied the knot of her hair and let it fall upon her shoulders. Maitreyi saw a wild streak of rebellion in that abrupt gesture. She caught her flowing tresses and ran her fingers through them. Katyayani closed her eyes and lay down in the soft sand. Slowly, the infinity of the sky overwhelmed her. She seemed to drink at the source of life, beyond pleasure and pain. Maitreyi leaned on her elbow and bent over to look at her.
Then Katyayani spoke, almost to herself, “Why does a woman need a man? To remind her that she cannot escape the body?”
Maitreyi did not answer. She felt Katyayani's words seep through her body and reach the innermost silence of the mind. Something whispered to her in those solitary recesses, but she could not trace the words back to meaning. The silence within her began to resound with the echoes of women who had been and who have yet to be.
Katyayani grasped Maitreyi's hand without looking at her, and placing it slightly below the navel pressed it softly. Then she whispered, “Can you feel it? Can you feel it coming to life? I know, I know as sure as I know myself, he's come! A child fair and naked! Maitreyi, I saw that child in my dream last night; I have seen it so often before in my dreams. I saw it again—in my arms, beautiful, fair, and naked as the sky. I took it to a garden and sang hymns to it. It was so beautiful; I did not want to cover it with clothes, so I covered it with my body to give it warmth.”
Maitreyi's heart began to swing with delight. She remembered how as a child , she used feel an upsurge of joy and fear when she swung high, as high as the sky, and then felt the wonder of being suspended at a height in the air, for a fraction of a moment really, but it felt as if like eternity.
She gathered Katyayani's palms in both of hers and looked into her eyes with a girlish adoration. Katyayani looked up at Maitreyi and said, “It ought to have come to you. That was what we had been expecting! But it chose to come to me after eluding me for so long!”
And then she gave way to tears

Chapter 14
The sage* Shakala had begun to think of late that he had lived in this place, in this cottage long enough. He must move before he got attached to it. A cat and a dog had already begun to stay with him and regard him as one of their own.         (Refer to the note at the bottom of the page for Shakala.)
There was a chill and a fog in the air. The fire Shakala had lit in the courtyard burnt brightly and was the only welcome sign of a dwelling place for strangers in that part of the forest. A path went winding down from the cottage to the foot of the hill. From the point where it merged in the undergrowth, could be heard the sound of footsteps treading on the overgrown grass. A few stones tumbled down the slope before a man appeared in sight. Shakala stared at him as he came closer. Something within him said, 'This was what you were waiting for. This was the moment you have spent your life waiting for, in dread, in anticipation. It has come now.'
The man came up, paused awhile, and looked around. His eyes rested on Shakala and he advanced forward. But his voice lost all substance under Shakala’s steadfast gaze. He was stunned to see a dark look of recognition in the old man's eyes. For a moment he thought that the old man was all eyes, without a tongue. The frozen look in the old man's eyes made Artabhaga break into a cold sweat. The wood was crackling in the fire and its crisp smell filled the air. There was no other sound except the rustle of the leaves and the screeching of a crow somewhere near in the branches of a tree.
Artabhaga wanted to say something but forgot what it was. The old man was sitting crouched near the fire, still looking at him with unspeakable dread. When Artabhaga's speechless avowal confirmed the old man's misgivings, he got up, his frail body trembling with the knowledge he received through all the pores of his body.
Long he stood, looking at the fire as if he saw in its evanescent light the whole of a lifetime coming to an end. Artabhaga knew it was useless to recount the 'what, and when and how’ of the event. That would have been a vulgar travesty of this suffering which needed no alleviation. The dark reign of corrosive suffering was being consumed slowly by the blazing fire in front of the old man. Artabhaga remained a silent witness to this final sacrifice that life demanded out of this old man. The man had lived with the knowledge of the shape things to come, and lived only to pay his final debt to life.
Artabhaga moved and clasped the old sage by his shoulders and led him inside the cottage. A few utensils washed and dried, a mat-seat, and a kamandalu attracted Artabhaga's attention. They proclaimed the old man's weariness of the world. True, he had severed all ties with the world. And the last one was severed with Artabhaga's arrival today.
Artabhaga poured some water into a vessel and held it to Shakala. Shakala looked at him as he took it from his hand. That was the first sign of acknowledgment and communication from him. .
A few moments elapsed in this silent communion.Shakala gained composure and leaned against the wall.
“You may be wondering why I did not ask you any questions, and yet you seem to understand what I have understood,” he said. “Life had decided to teach me the hard way. No amount of rituals, sacrifice and penance can banish pain and suffering. I had realized it long ago and at the hands of the most perverse and retrograde teacher one can ever have! It was my son. He taught me long back that he could not be taught. Perhaps one can
25
hope to learn, but one cannot teach what one has learnt. This was the lesson life taught me.I persistently refused to learn it. Given another life, perhaps I will still refuse to learn it. Perhaps in that refusal is my salvation”.
Shakala was exhausted by the effort to talk. But he went on like one who had suddenly seen a ray of light penetrating the dark caverns of mind. He went on, even though the effort seemed to wring him dry. He had kept his tryst with destiny and hereafter he was free.
Artabhaga listened to him with rapt attention although it did not matter to the old man whether he listened or not. The words did not matter either to the speaker or to the listener. What mattered was the miracle of transformation: the transformation of pain and suffering into knowledge, and knowledge into strength!
Artabhaga spent the night in the cottage. The quality of the silence at night in the cottage told him that the crisis was over. He got up in the middle of the night and bent over to look at Shakala. He found him enveloped in a profound, and perhaps a dreamless sleep. The wrinkles of old age were hardly visible; so profound was the peace that had descended on him in sleep! Artabhaga was amazed to see a striking resemblance between the old man and his dead son. 'This is how Shakalya would have looked like, had he lived to be as old as this man', thought Artabhaga.
Artabhaga lay down and tried to go back to sleep. It was a troubled, tormented stupor with faces in disarray, continually flowing, one into the other, one taking on something of the other, the other adding to another; and he was in all of them.
.
Note: Shakala is the father of Shakalya who was Yajnyawalkya's adversary in the debate at Janaka's court and who died subsequently in a drunken brawl.