Legacy

*In the forest*

He stood at the edge of the forest. He stared deep into the city that he wanted to venture out now. He looked on for a long while and decided against it. He went back into the forest and directly to his hut. He sat there. Meditated for a while. Took out the wool that he had been collecting from the bodies of dead sheep in the last so many years and started stitching it into a hooded t-shirt.

When he felt satisfied with his stitching, he kept it aside and walked out of the hut. Made a hooting sound with his face pointing upwards. A tiger came running and licked him throughout his face.

“It’s time to get things clear and sorted Bamby. I need to be out for a while” he said. The tiger, Bamby, growled angrily first, and then cried hugging him. The man patted his back and went to stand a little further from Bamby. Bamby walked up to him and stood on his hind legs, as if waiting to hug him. The man reciprocated and went on to hug him back. Bamby patted him this time on his head and then on the back, giving him a few scratches. He laughed at it and pushed himself away from him. Bamby walked off, and the man walked into the hut.

*In the city*

She sat up on the bed, sitting up. She checked her phone, it was once again 03:50 am. She drank the water, went to the washroom and tried to pee. The end result, the same, she hadn’t woken up to nature’s call. This had been happening for the last few weeks now, she was frustrated, she ignored and tried to sleep again.

The morning after she woke up for the second time, she tried to google the reason for her waking up, her ended found a dead end in one of the reasons, a: That she was spiritually being awakened, or b: Her lungs were not being repaired properly by her body. Both of which creeped her out, one slightly more than the other. She had her morning fix of coffee and two omelettes and walked off to the bus stop to reach her office on time.

As a habit she glanced at the array of beggars sitting opposite the bus stop. She noticed an addition to the number of beggars in the line. The guy was wearing an oversized hoodie with his face covered completely. He was constantly looking down. And from the other side of road, she could clearly hear him shouting “Hey Amita! Hey Amita! Amita know yourself”. She thought of him as a man gone crazy and calling out to a random person. She wasn’t bothered, she had never bothered to be interested in mendicants, and this guy did not interest him much either.

The next day, she woke up, sharp at 03:50 am, slept again, woke up again, had the coffee and the omelettes and walked to the bus stop.

She saw the same man, sitting at the same place, looking down on the ground and shouting, “Hey Amita! Hey Amita! Amita know yourself.” She heard him again and again ignored him.

The man kept appearing again and again. And kept shouting again and again.

After about a week, she noticed the hoodie wearing mendicant did not have a begging bowl and he was rejecting anyone offering him money. And if someone did offer him coins or notes, he did not think twice before throwing it back at them. All throughout he was only shouting, “Hey Amita! Hey Amita! Amita know yourself.” She ignored him, but observed him a little more, his behaviour had amused her completely.

A week had passed. She noticed, the man was there only till the time she boarded the bus, and in the evening till she entered her apartment gate. And both times he walked off to probably a distant place, that she could not locate his exact place. She kept ignoring his behaviour.

Her mother was visiting her. And on the morning after her mom’s arrival, she spoke of the mendicant, and her mom’s eyes had widened. And gradually it turned to bloodshot red. She plonked herself on a nearby chair and held her daughter’s hand. “Have you seen his face Shubho?” She asked. Shubho nodded in the negative. “Do you have any other information about him?” she asked again, Shubho again replied in the negative. “Shubho, he might be your father. Your father who had been declared dead, all those years back, always

Eliza, [20.06.18 18:09]

, always called you Amita. You were first named Shubhomita. Your father wanted to name you Amita meaning Boundless or infinite and I had wanted to name you Shubho meaning good or pure. And we named you both together. Shubhomita. And you were just a few months old when he was declared dead. He always called you Amita, is he back? How did he identify you? I don’t know if it is him. I want to find out. I will accompany you to find out if it is him.”

Shubho saw her mother’s eyes. It seemed to b hiding something, something that was very important to her life.

The next day, the mother-daughter duo walked from the apartment gate to the bus stop, the man was still sitting there, and shouting, “Hey Amita! Hey Amita! Amita know yourself!” Shubho’s mother looked on. She looked closer, she narrowed her eyes and tried to see. Two things didn’t tell her who the man was; one her old-age had weakened her vision and the second one, the man was covered from head to toe.

She let Shubho stand at the bus stop while she crossed the road to take a closer look at the man. The man was looking down, or she thought that he was looking down and not noticing her presence near him.

“Hahaha. I am not him Devi Sri. I am not him. Don’t look for him, he won’t come back. I will come back. Again and again and again to tell Amita the truth. You know what the truth is Devi Sri?” the man took a pause, adding to the dramatic effect.

And then his pitch rose, his pitch rose to the level, that it stopped the traffic on road, “The truth is Amita! She is true, she is the truth!”

A deafening pause followed and then he thundered again, “Amita! I know you can listen to every word that we speak. Come alone tomorrow. Not with Devi Sri. Come and I will tell you a part of the truth. I will tell you, who you are! Come” saying, the man stood up, almost knocking off Devi Sri. He brushed her aside and walked off at a speed that matched no man, or woman.

Devi Sri stood startled, Shubho walked up to her from the other side of the road and touched her shoulder, startling her even further. Shubho and Devi Sri half hugged each other. They didn’t know how the man knew both their names, and how did he know what or who were they searching for? Only one thing was clear today, that the man was after Shubho. He had wanted to contact Shubho, he had wanted to tell her something.

Devi Sri spoke on their way back home “Don’t meet him tomorrow, don’t meet him alone”. Shubho nodded, she knew better than to argue with her today. She also knew what she had to do the next day!

The Next Day onwards

Shubho did not leave for her work that day on time. Devi Sri had not let her go. But then she had convinced her. Though a little late, Shubho left her home, and walked to the bus stop, half an eye fixed on the opposite side of the road. She did not see the mystery man sitting there. She trained her eyes to the extent possible, to see if the man had changed places. She didn’t seem to find him.

She crossed the road, to check closely. The place where the man was sitting was replaced by a stone. A stone big enough from keeping other people to occupy the spot and small enough around the edges to expose a small sheet of paper kept under it. She leant over it and strained her eyes to read the letters exposed in the note. It read, “Dear Amita,”.

She had wanted to read more, she had wanted to know the rest of the contents of the note. Shubho tried to push the stone away, but the stone didn’t budge. She thought of pulling the paper away, but was scared of tearing the paper off.

She tried harder to push the stone away. She started sweating, but she had wanted to read the note. She kept trying, she kept sweating. After trying about for half an hour, the stone budged. First slightly, and then completely.

Under it was a piece of paper that didn’t seem like a heavy stone was kept on it. She touched the note to pick it up, it didn’t feel like paper, but a very sturdy leaf starched to the colour of white.

She started reading the letter:

“Dear Amita,

You are curious, I know. I am not your dad. But I know hi

Eliza, [20.06.18 18:09]

m. He was a good man, and he was a yogi. Yogi meaning, someone who was an enlightened individual. You have been told that he had run away from home or declared dead, away from you and your mother. But he didn’t. He was a faith healer. He used to heal people through his chanting. While it has become a joke in today’s world and people make fun of it. But in all of the world, there were only two people who are or were the actual faith healers. One was your father and the other was me. Back in the days, we did it in the background, away from the public eye. But then the word spread, slowly and steadily. The crowd around us increased. The number of people going to the doctor reduced dramatically in the twenty years that him and I actively performed faith healing. And then someone found out our place of work. And then he hunted the place down, your father sacrificed his life, while people thought he had run away, he was not alive at all. Your mother knew it, but she hadn’t wanted the world to know. You know, you are a faith healer too. You instinctively were, and you showed glimpses of it soon after you were born, and your mother was scared that after your father, they might be after your life too. So she passed on the message that he was missing and that he hadn’t died. People who killed him, didn’t know how to react. They thought your father used the faith healing technique on himself to ensure he lives on and then disappeared from public eye. For the last twenty-five there have been frantic searches for him, but never for you. If your father would have been alive then, you would have taken forward the legacy. But it’s not too late. If you want to ensure the legacy of faith healing lives on, then come to me, I will train you. I don’t have much time to live on either. Contrary to beliefs, faith healing cannot give a person extra life than what they are already destined for. So I am going to die, a few more months or even days, Amita, I want to ensure this faith healing lives on. If you are interested, you will meet me. If not, I will take it as a will of the supreme and let it be. But if you want to meet me, you will find the clues. Even if you do not decide to meet me, the clues would be there, but you won’t be able to reach me. Take a call. Take a wise call!”

The letter ended without any details of the sender, but she was sure, that this was the old man, the man who was sitting there. She was sceptical, but she wanted to explore the option, she wanted to know what the exact story of her father was. She had to do it silently, she had to do it, without her mom coming to know of it. She decided to start looking for the clues in a couple of days, after her mother left for her hometown.

Her first clue was right in front of her on the day she had decided to look for clues. It was right outside her compound gate. A tiny piece of cloth which would have been white in its heydays, she thought. It was the same cloth that she had been looking at for the two years that she had stayed here, almost concealed under a tree pot, she never bothered to lift the pot to throw it away. Not today, the name that was stitched on the cloth was hers, she knew it now. The name that was on the cloth was that of Amita.

She asked the neighbourhood guy to help in putting the tree pot aside, under the pretext of organizing the garden. Even with the blowing of the wind, the cloth hadn’t flown away. Maybe stuck in the ground a little too much due to the constant pressure of the tree pot, she thought and went in closer. She picked it up with a mild pull and dusted the mud off it.

On it was written, in extremely tiny font, “Amita, so you have started looking for clues. Sometimes I feel everything in life is pre-ordained. This piece of cloth, you have been seeing for years, but never thought of picking it up or even re-doing the garden. If you would have, then this piece of cloth would have found the dustbin long back. But, like I said, it is all pre-ordained. And you have this paper now. I know your father, like I have already told you. But what I haven’t

Eliza, [20.06.18 18:09]

informed you is the fact that once your father passed away, I fused my body to his embalmed one. I made it into one, you ask how it is possible, but it is quite simple an art to fuse bodies and then let the individual systems take care of itself. So, if you come to see me, which I am certain will happen, now that you have started looking for signs and signals and clues, I would half look like your father and the other half is my ageing self. Don’t be scared, because all you are seeing is your father and his best friend back in the days together. Your father’s part hasn’t aged a single day past twenty-eight years and five months, i.e. from the day he died, and my part of the body shows an old man in his late seventies, clearly now you know, I was much older to your dad. How the bodies have been fused, I will tell you when we happen to meet. And you will find me in a forest. The way to the forest, you will find in the coming clues, don’t worry about that. And just like this one, don’t try looking for clues, they would come to you. And as far as addressing me concerns, you can call me Maharshi! Oh, and by the way, you have had very disturbed sleep in the past few months, haven’t you?”

The letter had ended abruptly. The whole of the letter was fine, she was ready to believe even the fusing concepts. But the last line had creeped her out. How would he know? She thought to herself, as she wound up on the bed. She didn’t like the after taste of the letter, but she knew she would have to wait, she clutched the cloth letter and slipped to sleep.

It was a couple of days later, when she found the second clue. In a crowded bus to her office, hanging from the hand bag of a girl standing right in front of her. The cloth chit peeped out of the bag and in it was written, “Dear Amita,”

She pulled the chit without the girl’s notice, held it in her right hand and closed it into a fist. She had wanted to read it immediately, but did not want others peeping into the chit, she had wanted to read it in private.

She reached her office, thirty minutes later and soon enough headed to the restroom of the office, closed the door of one of the zones and opened the tiny chit again.

“You did not expect to find the chit, there right? I know. That’s why I told you, do not look for clues by yourself. So, is the sleep still a little disturbed, could be. Because you haven’t activated your healing prowess, once that is activated, your sleep cycles would be all fine.” Amita paused a little to think of what was written, how had he known that she was still having difficulties in sleeping? Nonetheless, she continued reading.

“Don’t bother much, I will tell you all. Your next task is to come to the Forest to meet me. You will find the third clue precisely just outside the forest. And to the forest, you can come easily. You will receive your flight tickets on Friday evening, and from that place you will come to Bastar in Chhattisgarh, and from there to the Dandakaranya Forests. Outside the forest, there would a big hoarding of the same white cloth material that you are holding in your hand. So, wait till you reach Dandakaranya. Yes, it is a Naxal Hit Area, but if you tell any of the Naxals that you want to meet me, then they would let you go. Just take my name. Take Care and remember, Lucky depends on what you define as Luck!” The letter ended, but there was no name that she would tell the Naxals.

She thought for a while. She couldn’t think of a name that either mom or the man himself had associated himself with. She decided to check the other cloth chit at home. What if that one had a name? She thought.

She waited till the evening to reach home, to check if the other chit had a name, it did not. She felt unsure of the entire pursuit, she had wanted to give up completely. But a part of her also wanted to wait till flight tickets arrived.

After four days that week, it was the Friday, the day she would expect the flight tickets to arrive. She was anxious the whole day, she waited the whole time at the office for a call from the neighbour to inform she ha

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d a courier or something to the effect, but she received none. She reached home late that day around eight, completing all the pending work at office. She was home by around nine at night, but there was no information on the tickets yet. Amita was losing hope by the minute.

At 11:30 at night finally, she had finally given up hope and decided to sleep. At 11:58 at night there was a knock on the door, instead of ringing the bell. A chill ran through her spine, because there was never anyone visiting her at this hour of the day. She peeped through the eye hole, to see a man standing, with a cap on. He was smiling, as if guessing that she was looking at him through the eye hole. The smile was a genuine one, she thought. She opened the door, a knife hidden in one hand behind her back and the clock striking 11:59 pm. The guy simply gave a cloth cover to her and walked off. She looked a little perplexed, but then it was the same cloth that she identified from the small chits she had been receiving from the mystery man. With a little assurance, she cut open the cover. In it were two flight tickets, one that was booked from Kolkata to Raipur in Chhattisgarh for the next day, and the other one from Chhattisgarh to Kolkata for the Sunday. The tickets had her name on it. In it was another chit of the same cloth material, and it had only two lines.

“Dear Amita,

I am sure the tickets were delivered on Friday itself. The name that the Naxals would recognise is Jhondu Babu, but it is not my real name.”

She smiled to herself, she had found the name very, very funny. But, she could smile later, she had a flight to catch in seven hours. She packed only a little, because it was only a two day trip. She kept the cloths that she thought would be best fit for Naxal hit and a forest. She thought of catching up some sleep at around 12:30, she knew she had to wake up by four and leave almost immediately. She pre-booked a cab for the morning and slept.

In the morning, when she reached the airport, she was being treated in a special manner. It was only at the ticketing counter that she realized that she had a ticket for business class.

In the flight, she sat comfortably on her seat, ate the food that tasted better than the food she had ever eaten on any flight ever, and slept again for an hour.

On landing, and walking out of the Raipur Airport, there was a driver waiting with a placard that read Amita, she wasn’t sure if it was she that it referred to. She waited, for half an hour, the guy didn’t move, and no one approached him, and then tapped him on his shoulder. He turned around and asked straight, “Bastar?” she nodded, and the driver took her bags and walked towards the car. The vehicle was a Jeep Compass, and she was impressed.

“Jhondu Babu asked to take a good comfortable car, till you reach Bastar and then onwards to the Forest. It will take six hours, the big car is for you to sleep comfortably, to as much time as you want but only till we reach there. Jhondu Babu has said that he has planned a long day for you that lasts till tomorrow morning when I will drop you back to the airport.” The driver said.

Amita was all the more impressed, she settled at the back of the vehicle and tried to stay awake for a while. The last she saw before she closed her eyes to sleep, the clock read 09:45, forty-five minutes after they had started from the airport.

She woke up with a jolt and realized the car was brought to a sudden halt by the brakes, because the Naxals were guarding the entry to the forest, behind them, she saw a big white cloth, and the first two words, she read out aloud, “Dear Amita.”

The driver asked her to speak to the Naxals, to whom she said, that she was here to meet Jhondu Babu, a smile spread over all their faces and immediately made way for her, the car had to stay back, they told her, because the path is very narrow. The driver nodded understandably and handed over the bag to Amita. She took it, put it around her neck and walked towards the hoarding that read her name. Below her name was a huge map.

The driver spok

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e from behind her, “Jhondu Babu has asked you take a photo of this map. This is the map of the forest. And the place that is marked in red is where you will find him.”

She took her phone out and took a photo of the map. She looked at the map. The distance between “You are here” and the Red Dot where she had to go seemed hardly a walk of ten minutes.

She started walking, slowly following the map. To her surprise, the path that she had to take was marked by a red tape. She cross verified the path marked with red tape to the map and was assured that she was going in the right direction.

At the end of the red tape, she saw a hut, sitting by the door of the hut was a Tiger, licking his paw and looking towards the door, as if ready to attack. Amita was scared, she was sweating, and she went back a couple of steps, when she heard a man speak, “Bamby, move away from the gate, you are scaring our guest!”

As if on cue, the tiger walked away, it went behind the hut, away from Amita’s eyes. Still trembling, she moved forward and knocked on the door of hut, hoping for Jhondu Babu to come an open the door.

Instead, she heard him chant something, for almost thirty minutes the chants didn’t stop, and she felt a sense of calm overcome her tired brain and body.

As she quietly sat down outside the door, the door opened. His face was still covered, in the same hoodie as she saw him in the city, opposite to that bus stop.

“Come In!” his voice boomed across the forest, and the tiger she saw earlier growled from behind the hut. “Stay There Bamby! Stay There! Don’t scare people here.” She thought the tiger grumbled and then settled down back to the ground.

Inside the hut, she saw a very modern set up. A television set, a radio, a very modern sofa cum bed that seemed like the relaxing chair that she had seen at different malls all around the country. And adjacent to the sofa, on the wall was a photo of her father. The same photo that her mom had handed over when she was first shifting to Kolkata. The photo she thought was smiling at her, she had never felt that way with the photo at home, but here the photo was smiling at her.

“What is all this?” she asked the man. “I live a modern life” he replied and as if reading her mind, he continued, “and that smiling photo is an illusion of your eyes.”

He took out the hoodie, and the gloves and the socks that were covering his ankles. What Amita saw, petrified her, she stumbled a few steps back, and then remembered one of his clue cloths. He had fused his body to that of her dad’s. She was seeing the similarities now.

The right side of the man’s body had similar feature like hers. Tiny fish like eye, full pink lips, one half of the nose, aquiline like hers. The right-hand fingers short and stout, and the space from ankle to the toe, almost pink in colour, a slight contrast to the rest of body, which was milky white. She looked up again, the lips parted into a smile.

The older side of the man was smiling too. “Amita, the mantra you heard before you entered the hut, is the necessary mantra for any faith healing, no medicine, not anything would cure you, if you have an unstable mind. And that is what you heard.”

“And the fusing of the body, it is something that I did with the help of our guru, in the sense, my guru and your father’s. He is the only one who had learnt to fuse bodies. I know, you feel like asking why fuse, and my answer to that is you!”

Amita was looking at him wide eyed. He continued, “The only way to make you believe in faith healing was through this fused body, your father had thought, and that is why we fused it. And you were only ready now to learn the methods of faith healing. For faith healing to be successful, all the chakras in your body needs to be activated, and your last one got activated only a year back, which is the reason you have been having sleepless nights ever since.”

Amita still didn’t find words to speak, and he continued, “You are going to learn the art of faith healing, along with that mantra that you heard in the beginning. And you are going to learn by th

Eliza, [20.06.18 18:09]

e sense of touch. It would take at least twelve hours and it is approximately three in the afternoon now, so if you are hungry, eat something now. Because you won’t be able to move, all your senses except hunger will disappear. Hunger doesn’t disappear, because without food, there can be no learning.”

She just nodded, and he gave her sumptuous food. Once she finished eating, she washed her hand, at the backyard of the hut, where the tiger was still licking his paw, it saw her, and she thought it smiled, and she smiled back.

Once she was back into the hut, she saw the man was already sitting cross legged on the floor and asked her to do the same. She sat at some distance, but he asked her to come closer. The mystery man placed his right hand on her head, and the left hand holding the toe end of her right leg.

And with it began, twelve hours of rigorous knowledge transfer. At the end of it, the two physical bodies had tired down, and slumped to the floor. It was only ten in the morning that Amita woke up, and she saw the old man sitting up straight with a cup of something in his hand, which he offered her. She took it from him, drank it completely in one go, she didn’t know if she was thirsty or the thing she was drinking was that tasty. But she felt refreshed instantly.

It is time for you to leave, you will miss your flight otherwise. “But what about my learnings?” she said. “It is complete. Once you leave the forest, everything that you have learnt will come to you, like you are an expert” he said.

“And, what about you?” she asked. “My time is up. I will leave my body by the time you are in your flight. I know for sure you will carry forward the art of faith healing.” He replied.

“And the Tiger, your friend?” she questioned, she didn’t want him to go, she hadn’t felt this calm ever, she wanted him to stay for longer, with him in the forest. She was looking for a reason.

“Oh Bamby” he said and laughed, “He will come with me to the abode after life.” He laughed a little and then his face became calm and quiet again. After a long pause, he spoke again, “If you want you take bath and go, or you can change your cloths and move ahead. Otherwise you will miss your flight. I do not want you to miss the flight under any condition.”

He said and walked out of the hut. She took bath in a bathroom like set up, relieved herself, and put on her fresh cloths before stepping out of the hut. Once out she saw the mystery man, sitting on the tiger and looking majestic. “My life on earth is over” he said and closed his eyes. The driver who had earlier brought her to the forest walked in and tugged at her arm, she saw him, let him take her luggage and followed him, all the while looking at the mystery man. His older side of the face was not familiar, but it had an aura that she had never seen.

She slept again, on her way to the airport. At the airport, she smiled at the driver, tried to give him some money, which he flatly refused. She walked in and the special treatment resumed, when she suddenly realised, she hadn’t asked the old man’s real name.

In the flight, she sat while the flight took off. Fifty-five minutes into the flight, the man next to her on his seat, clutched his chest, his symptoms were that of a heart attack, she panicked, and then the same sense of calm that she experienced outside the hut took over her. She held the man’s hand and recited a mantra, she didn’t know she was aware of till then. She recited it for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, the man seemed to relax, she recited for ten more minutes and then after a while he was smiling at her.

From his closed fists, rolled out a white chit of cloth. She picked it up and opened to read it, by the time the flight had landed, and the man walked off.

She looked for him once again, “You thought I will let you go without telling you my name? Perhaps I will or might not. Spread the legacy of your father and I. And so it is best you don’t know my name! Shubhomita, may the Bhagwan be with you!”