Do I have to explain everything to you?

You came to me uninvited.

I was just traveling on the path and you came. You could come since the space is much yours to use as much as it is mine. You could stay for the same reason but you asked me to stay for a while. I did for I am of that nature. You made a request that I could fulfill and I fulfilled it. A while. That could have been all.

But you asked and you asked me many questions. I answered them because you asked. I answered what I knew, what I thought and what I could. I did not ask you to ask or need to be asked. I am fine being silent, and alone traveling through this transient path. You broke my silence and encroached on my loneliness and yet I did not complain.

When you asked, I answered. You did not like my answer. I did not ask you to like my answer or have a need for you to like it. I answered because you asked. I did not answer to make you like it or to like me. I do not think of you less or more based on how you reacted to my answer. I was only thinking of your question and of my answer. That should have been that. Simple. Questions and answers.

When I answered you, I do not cling on to your question – or to your reaction to my answer. I have no power over whether you like it or not. I do not wish to have that power for I do not need more burden than the burden of passing through this transient life. I get no pleasure from wanting to influence you for that too is transient. I have no interest in transience.

Having asked the question, you clinged on to my answer. You did not like it. You were upset that I had given you the answer that I know. How can I give you any other answer than the answer that I know? How can I lie to myself? I did not intend to appease you or to upset you with my answer. When you asked I intended to only answer your question and continue walking.

What other intention can there be when a question is asked? A question is asked to elicit an answer. If you had any other motives than just to get an answer from me, then that is from you. That must be your nature or you may have made it your nature. I do not fault you for what you are or chose to be. Day does not begrudge night nor vice versa. They simply exist. Should we not?

You were upset with my answer and I recognize that. I want to continue my walking. Idleness will delay my entry onto the next path. But you hold me back even when I recognize that you were upset with my answer. There is nothing more I can give from myself but you still try to hold me back. You think you are holding me back but that is an illusion. You cannot hold back what you do not have.

When I continue the path I was on when you came with the question, you think I am walking away from you. I cannot move away from you for I was never near. Like day and night, we were just there. Neither near nor far but just there when it was meant to be.

But you did not want to let me go until I give you the answer that you want. But how can I give an answer that I do not have? I can only give you from myself, not from without. You want something that I do not have and you fault me for that.

If it pleases you that the entire miseries of the transient world should be placed on my shoulders, so be it. I will neither accept nor reject it but I will let it be.

You seek the illusion. I seek the reality. Transience is an illusion to me but a reality to you. So be it, I say, for I have no control over your perception. Neither do I want to control it for that is impossible.

I have seen this in my mind many times before.

And I see it again and again.

Do I have to explain everything to you? I have no explanations but only answers from within.

My answers, not yours.

END.

Chapter

The Judge

It was a cold winter morning. Darkness at 11 am. Snow forming a thick carpet on the ground. Santim, however was freezing not from the winter but from the injustice he just saw dispensed. His face was all blue and he felt his soul withering. His mind numb. ‘Was that the Council of Elders or a flock of cattle?’ The question kept recurring. Unable to make earthly sense, he slowly let his eye lids close and fell into the deep dark bottomless hole . As he kept falling with closed eyes, he kept seeing.

“This is the day when all justice shall be dispensed. All with grievances with anyone including the King shall assemble”. The officious voice promisingly called out to the crowd that began to swell. The trumpet was blown and soon thereafter the 5 fat, aristocrats with fine clothing took their position on the stage. Each sitting in a red, throne- like chair. The Elders. The Dispensers of Justice

.

The roll call always so promising to the innocent peasants, the sheep, the masses. The rituals dazzles the mind and unsuspectingly hides the Farce.

“Your Wise Elders,” begins the paid, fat prosecutor, “This man, Sikara Jamili, stands before ye charged for stealing a loaf of bread. A heinous crime indeed for this land condones no criminal conduct. I ask for the maximum sentence that ye deem fit to impose. O Wise Elders”. Pleased with his speech, he sits down.

Being charged for stealing a loaf of bread, an advocate is the last person he was able to afford. He was blessed with relatives, equally poor that he was unable to even think of bail money. Sikara therefore had decided to conduct his own defence. He had great faith in the compassion and listening ability of the Wise Ones. But for this crime, he has a clean record. All his friends know him to be a kind and honest man. He will relate all these to the Wise Ones and they will understand. They must have children too. He has heard about the Garden of Justice. He has faith in them.

The Wise Elders look down at the accused man in tattered clothes standing in the specially made dock. ‘What have ye to plea?. The Elder in the middle asks him. Sikara mumbles something which inspires the Elder to present a lecture to the crowd. He lectures on the virtue of speaking up in the Garden of Justice” The man attempt to speak again and immediately gets stopped by the Elder, now visibly angry.

“You did not address me as O Wise One! You did not address me as O Wise One! Don’t you know decorum?. And he proceeds to give another one hour of lecture on decorum in the Garden of Justice.

How very often do we sacrifice justice at the altar of decorum and man made rituals?

A sharp arrow darts through Santim’s heart. It does not matter that Sikara is uneducated and unprepared from birth to appear before the Wise Ones. It does not matter he thinks it is important to explain why he stole the bread. It is does not matter. For justice to be dispensed at all, one must begin with the rituals. Decorum. Santim keeps falling and seeing.

There was a loud thunder in the sky. ‘Hear one, Hear all. The clouds are dark and rain is soon to come. The Wise Elders shall now adjourn. All accused to be kept in the dungeon until the Wise Elders sit again in four months from now’,

Sikara’s trial, therefore, gets postponed. The dungeon, Santim knows, is the prison where the accused are kept until they are tried before the Wise Ones. In one cell which is about 12 feet by 12 feet, there can be as many as 10 prisoners. All supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. They may sleep on the cold floor but are given one blanket each. He will be fed with what they call ‘food’. Occasionally, the dungeon wardens will come to kick them around for sport. Since he carries the sin of poverty, he has to atone for it by being punished before being found guilty. For Sikara, the 4 months pass slowly like 40 years.

In the dungeon, Sikara sees the face of Zirasha, his 4 year old sickly daughter, his angel. He loves his wife and his other 4 children too, but Zirasha is special to him. She was born sickly and had a kind of disease which required her to be fed more often than normal children. The Medicine Man had predicted her death one month after birth but Nature intended otherwise. Lack of feeding can be fatal for her as her abnormal stomach walls will be gradually destroyed through lack of food. Whenever she does not eat, her eyes roll until only the white is seen due to the pain. He begins to cry. He does not care that he is punished but why his child too?

‘I have been a useless father’, his mind tells him as he cries. He feels the pain Zirasha must have felt from not eating for the 2 days he was in hiding with the loaf of bread. As a provider, he has failed. Who can he complain to when fate had decided this?

Santim’s eyes gets blurred by the pool of tears. Life is a chain reaction. One event affects the other. We all know it. It is in Nature. When you put your hand in the fire, you know what ensues. When you place you hand in the ice, you know what results. Nothing stands in isolation. Nothing. But Santim’s heart cannot accept why Sikara’s daughter ought to be punished for the deeds of her father. Justice on earth is indeed blind and dented.

Exchanging jokes, smiling a lot and laughing loudly are the domain of the rich, powerful, famous and the successful lot. If you cannot, you will never be one.

Never mind that others are dying from lack of everything.

Its their fate!

Tears fall from Santim’s closed eyes. Man made laws by the exalted few supported by the foolish mob called the people. The People. Where are they now to stand in defence of Sikara? Do they not see that what befalls Sikara crime was poverty and wanting his sick daughter to eat, to live? Not a mortal cares when it touches not their own skin.

Santim did not know whether to be angry or to be sad though his tears had a life of its own. In this confusion, he experiences numbness and surrender to the laws of nature. Then his mind looked at the image of the 5 Wise ones whom the people are applauding and bowing down to.

Five Old Shameless Man, knocking on grave’s door – yet unrepenting!

Make an exit when you willingly can for unwillingly you will be exited from life when the Angel of Death punctually knocks on your heart.

Then, you may no time for redemption.

Santim awoke from his drowsiness and realized the Supreme One still wants him alive on this earth. Why? I am a spectator and a traveler on this earth. There are too many scorpions on earth and I cannot ask why a scorpion stings. It is its nature. The rule of nature and the rule of human base desires are at total variance. Clarity in one, confusion in the other. Of all the scorpions, the most vile one is the unbridled “Me” which is the ultimate cause of injustices on earth.

.

What is the rule?

Me. My family, my children,

ME!!!!!

Me! Me! Me!

NO,

These are exceptions to the rule, so says the Balancer.

END.