The Saint

The chanting echoed around the hilltop every evening. The devotional baritone soared loud, high and wide, reverberating from the walls of the luscious valley. The entire valley froze for that moment of enigmatic peace resonating from the majestic clanging of the gigantic brass bells. Tiny, lanterns would light up amidst the low hung banana leaves and the woody fragrance of burning sandalwood sticks, flickering in the evening breeze.

Every eye inside that wooden fence would be fixed on his face, enamoring his numinous persona as he sat on the sandstone podium set against the sinking sun. All heads bowed in accord as he stood up to say the final prayer. The sun wrenched its last rays along with it, which kissed his half bare Herculean silhouette and chiseled face, to plunge into another world. He was the God himself, or so would they ardently believe, standing there bewitched and awestruck…

..He quivered ever so slightly at the feel of tender touch on his feet. He opened his eyes and looked down at his feet where he could see a head half-covered with a black sari. He gently put his hand on her head as she looked up. Something shook inside him as he saw a hazel, watery pair of eyes look up to him. She had pain and anticipation written all over her angelic face. The saint stood there soaking what those eyes wanted to cry out to him, without a word. They were the wounds of betrayal which bled through her eyes, which made her travel thousands of miles to the saint, to muster the strength to get through…to start believing again.

He was the healer. His deific words and his celestial touch would cure every pain of mind and heart that was known to man. They would flock to the ashram from farthest corners to momentarily escape from the drudgeries of urban jungle, to get rid of the boulders of sins that lay heavy on their chests, to cry out their hearts and bandage the stabbing wounds the ruthless world inflicted upon them. Yes……he was the God himself.

She sat there in his feet, sobbing and gasping, looking at those flickering lanterns while everyone else slowly left. He sat there, his eyes closed, caressing her head with his fingers, as the tears on his feet started to dry. It occurred to him that it was unusual, him wanting to console anyone…like that… for so long. He had always done it with a sense of aloofness, for he was The Saint. But today, he wanted her to sit there and sob all night and the thought made him nervous.

She stayed back at the ashram in the night, as most people who came from thousands of miles did. She went back to her hut, as milky-way itself seemed to have descended on the valley. Her heart felt a little lighter and she started to revere his balmy touch as she lay there looking out at the starlit sky from the tiny window. She wondered what would have caused a young bewitching man like him to take up sainthood. They were not wrong, she thought. He can not be a mortal.

But he? He was unsettled, for the first time in all those years. He could not think of anything apart from those hazel eyes and the touch of her silky hair on his fingers. His hands grappled with the pages of the Upanishad as he struggled to keep his eyes fixed on the manuscript, but it felt like grappling with sand which itched to squeeze out of his skittish fist. He felt suffocated inside and rushed out in the moonlit night.

“How could this happen to me?”.He was screaming to himself in his mind.
“How could I think about a woman? Hadn’t I swam all the way to the surface, against all the currents, to see this light? Hadn’t I cleansed myself of love, lust and desire? Or, was I ever really above the surface? Had I seen the strongest current yet?”

He caught a glimpse of her as he walked passed her hut. She lay there on the cot, her eyes closed, her angelic face peeking through the black silk, imbued in the fiery hue of the faint kerosene lamp. He felt weak in his knees and stood there frozen, looking at her. He knew right then, that he had been flung off the ground by the strongest tide he could have ever imagined.

He found himself walk up and open the door of her hut. She was woken up by the tiny whimper of the door. It took her a few moments and a look at his face to realize what had happened. She stood up from the cot, petrified, bewildered and blank-faced as he walked up and stood right in front of her.

The conquest was absolute. Everything inside him had given away, every bit of control lost. He stood there as a slave to the almighty mistress. He lifted his hand and reached out for her shoulder hesitantly. Those fingers didn’t have the courage. They quivered and froze an inch away from her, like a servant waiting for the order of his master, too afraid to move. Those few seconds felt like aeons to him as he knew he had entered the fire ring and there was no turning back. For that single moment, every rubric, every epithet just ceased to matter to him.

She slowly lifted her head and looked him straight in his eyes. He could have died any moment just wanting to know what was in those eyes. He browsed her eyes, looking for any signs of submission, to see whether she had stepped into the fire as well. His heart sank as the script on her face began to divest. That expression couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. It was shock, it was sorrow, it was disbelief, it was pity. It was anything but what he had imagined it to be.

He slowly turned away and stepped out of the hut, finding it hard even to breathe, as the kerosene lamp sighed and wilted to the darkness. The valley was engulfed in eerie silence next evening. There was no saint on that hilltop any more. There were only mortals…..