The River Inside

-M.S.Suryanarayana

Someone is burying my tree of bones in a desert.

I howled. “No, Don’t bury me!”

I woke up. I felt as if I was still running. My tongue parched and my heart throbbed fast. Slowly I turned on the switch. And the room filled with light.

Some strange infirmity…

With great difficulty I went to the refrigerator and tried to hold the water bottle but could not. With trembling hands I held the bottle to my mouth and drank the water in one gulp. I was thirsty even after emptying all the bottles in the fridge.

Casually I looked at myself in the mirror. It was horrible, the figure I saw in the life size mirror. My face was cracked like the arid land in famine. Two sunken pits in the place of my eyes…Deserts in my eyes… My hands, fingers and legs were paralyzed. With my emaciated hands I stroked my face…surprisingly I could not feel anything. What was to be done now?

After brooding over it for a long time I went to the phone. With great difficulty I pressed the buttons on the telephone and requested Dr. Rishi to come at once.

He was really a Rishi. That’s why he came here even at mid night.

After examining me carefully he said, “ There is no problem. You have lost the river. Get hold of it again. Only that will cure you.”

“Oh...doctor garu! How can I search for the river with this terrible figure?” I questioned in misery.

Dr. Rishi smiled calmly. Stroking his beard thoughtfully he said, “ I will prepare a balm for you from eighteen herbs. Apply it daily to your face and body. You may get some relief and get control of your limbs.”p Awestruck I listened to him. Pausing for a minute to think he went on, “Wear black glasses to hide the deserts in your eyes… a cap on your head, a long coat, a suit, gloves and shoes. This is what you should wear from tomorrow. Come on…roll up your affairs like a mat and keep it in a corner. Plead with the river you have lost, beg and ask it to come into you again… only that will give you a rebirth. ”

Dr. Rishi sent me four big jars the next day. They were full of the balm he had prepared. Eagerly I scooped out two lumps of balm and applied it all over my body.

How should I put it? The balm was a miracle! Rishi gave me back my life.

Dressing up as he suggested I stood in front of the mirror.

I was not what I had been.

I was altogether new!

Keeping aside all my affairs I set on like a pilgrim. Thanks to Dr.Rishi I was able to recall what had happened to me. The river had suddenly disappeared. Till then it was flowing inside. Talking in the language of murmurs we were one and happy. The river used to gush forth through the trenches of blood vessels spreading to the heart.

My words were like heaps of grain threshed from the golden ears of corn.

A life musical note used to spurt out in streams throwing open the floodgates of my tongue. The life stream flowed dancing to everyone who wanted it. It might sound strange but it was true.

Drying me up from inside, the river had fled.

How terrible the life without a river-Only those who experience it know.

The onlookers would know how horrible the dry sand dunes were.

True life in fact was the waves lapping on the shore of the heart.

When such sound of the water was missing where was my existence?

The secret was that one should identify one’s own river. Love should guide the search for the river. With a yearning for moisture one should search everywhere. Could I alone find out the river? Should I take someone’s help?

Yes…there were so many newspapers…

Hundreds of TV channels…

Great communication media …

Technology…Planets… Satellites …

Wouldn’t these institutions be able to search for a single river for me?

With that aim I sought their help.

I prepared a note.

“

MISSING

The river is missing. Those who give information about it will

be rewarded with my living moments. ”

I also wrote an open letter …

“ ‘Dear’ river,

Why have you left me? Reveal the secret to me and you can

freely go away. Come to me once?

With longing for you,

Yours…”

They thought me crazy. The people of the media advertising section were confused and avoided me in fear.

Hearing this Dr. Rishi laughed.

“Live like an explorer…don’t die like a crazy non-entity,” he said.

I was ashamed.

In addition to my ugliness… this insanity too!

“Finding out the river is my dire need.

Yes it’s a fact…one has to find out one’s own river.”

I was determined.

But –where would be the river? From which secret trenches or layers of the earth was the river flowing?

Questions …even Bageeratha wouldn’t have known the solutions. But as long as the river was in my heart these doubts never cropped up.

By then the stream had left me…now I was in search of it. But would I be able to

recognize the river?

After the flowing remembrances of moisture had dried up, after the face had become a wasteland, after the stones were left in the heart, how could a river appear? I had lost the river deliberately and what remained was an endless search.

Wasn’t it foolish to expect that one would get everything one searched for?

That too a river, a current that carried remembrances of golden ears of corn as it flowed.

A river that cleansed. A subterranean river.

Where had it gone? Where?

I entered the railway station.

A long curved platform with sheets of asbestos-cement for roof.

Coloured worlds in the small screens hanging to the iron rods.

Noises arising from the void.

Images spiralling in the air.

I was walking through the jostling crowds on the platform finding a way for myself. I was searching everywhere.

From the deserts of my eyes two parched tongues were forking out in quest.

“Ting…Tong…Ting …Your attention please…”

“yatrikan kripaya dhyan de”

“The river you are searching for would flow on to the platform number three shortly,” it was announced.

I jumped excitedly.

“Will the river really flow onto number three?” stopping a coolie, I asked in anxiety.

He smiled coolly and said, “Go and find out.”

In that bustle some one brought a river in a wheel chair. I ran onto number three.

I did not know then that I had set aside a great river and lost myself!

I reached number three anxiously.

‘Gouthami’ arrived tugging thirty desert compartments. Many drought faces jumped in heaps onto the platform. Some climbed in. Getting into the compartment I slumped in the seat reserved for me.

All around me were dry faces. Not a jot of moisture. Not a fleck of black cloud on any face. An epic of dryness.

Would Dr. Rishi be able to supply balm to all of them! I moved restlessly. To pass time I took out a magazine from my suitcase. In fact my suitcase was full of balm bottles. I didn’t have any clothes for myself. And the long woollen coat and the suit I was wearing needn’t be washed.

Even the magazine was dry.

Everywhere this wilting disease. There were no rivers in the world. They were vanishing. Fleeing away in groups. We had to search for them. Was it easy to find them? I threw away the magazine in anger.

Again there was an announcement.

“ Your attention please…

The river you are travelling in will flow away from the platform number three shortly.”

Could this be true? Would a river really move? I moved restlessly.

All of a sudden a miracle appeared before me. Someone brought and placed a river on the berth opposite.

A huge wave brushed against my desert face.

Some inexpressible thrill in me.

What? Was it the river that flowed in a wheel chair a while ago.

Didn’t I ask it to move aside?

How terrible!

This river had no limbs.

Trunk…only torso…

A severed river!

If someone had chopped off the river’s limbs with a sword, this sort of a crippled river…a truncated river… a dismembered river with only a trunk would remain.

Would there be anyone so strong as to slice water?

It was wonderful!

How did this river take birth in the first instance?

How did it live? And how did it flow?

Yes, this was that.

No, this was no river at all.

This was a river of sorrow. An orphan.

Someone had chopped off its waves. Its flowing life elements.

An attempt of murder might have been made on this river.

I was myself a desert and this crippled river before me!

The words of wasting disease crackled inside.

Then a slap on my face. A whip of water whacked my desert face. I shivered… There was some river secret. I was unable to grasp the principle. Else, how could my desert face be drenched?

As I was groping inside someone carried the river away.

Had I lost the river again?

The mere concern about the river was not enough. One should have the vision to trace the life giving under current. I should recognize myself as a riparian area. What would remain when the river had fled, except stones, bushes and sandy mounds?

Where was the moisture? Where was the river?

I trudged along.

The balm did not hide the signs of dryness.

Anyone who had a bit of moisture in him could easily declare, “He is a fool…He has lost the river.”

I trod ahead involuntarily and aimlessly.

Then- a miracle!

Suddenly a whiplash of water.

The tides of the river touched my ears.

Surprisingly the musical doors were flung open.

The great river roared!

Sparks of life on my face! Movement in my fingers… unbounded strength in my legs.

This was the sound of the river.

I ran and ran. A kalakshetra before me.

Rubbing my eyes I saw the river Krishna!

I rushed into the auditorium.

From the dais a great tide of musical note rose into the air. It was the crippled river.

The river that had been truncated.

Mere torso of the river…

Even then… a great flow of riverine music. Not crippled…unique!

From its tongue amritam flowed out. I shivered and trembled all over.

Was it this river I mocked at as a cripple?

Was it this river’s birth I questioned?

Was it this river that I murdered out of mercy?

Mine was the strength to butcher the water.

Under my very eyes, the river became Thyagaraja. It became gandharva and turned into a flood. I tried to move but couldn’t. My hands and legs were washed away in the river. My trunk was caught in the flood.

My long coat, suit, hat and suitcase with balm were swept away like dry floating sticks and disappeared in the flood.

I immersed myself in the river inside me.

-Translated from Telugu by T.Sreenivasa Reddy