THE SEA

(Short story)

 

R. S. SUDARSANAM

(Translated by the author from the original in Telugu)

 

Puri beach. The morning ten O’ clock sun enriched the sea’s blue. The white-crested waves kept running to us as we slowly walked on the sand listening to the dirge. Lakshmiprasad stopped near the water and a wave washed his feet and receded.

 

“The sea has bowed to me” declared Lakshmiprasad.

 

“Oh yes, if you are careless, he would pull your legs too, and sweep you off your feet,” said Sangamesam. Joining his two palms into a cup, he took the sea-water, lifted his hands towards the sky and offered the water in a devotional gesture.

 

“Is that a tarpan to someone dead?” I asked him.

 

“Why someone? It is for myself!” replied Sangamesam.

 

Opposite to the beach, across the road, stood in a row guest-houses and tourist lodges.

 

“We have walked quite a distance from our place. There is some temple across the road. Let us have a look at it and then return. It is already getting warm,” proposed Sangamesam. We voted approval and crossed the road.

 

It was a temple for Lord Gouranga.

 

The priest, a goswami, spoke to us about Krishna Chaitanya known as Lord Gouranga. The legend is that Sri Chaitanya went into the Jagannath temple and disappeared. The priest said it was not so. Sri Chaitanya had walked away into the sea, at the same spot where we had stopped a few minutes ago. And the temple was built just opposite to that spot.

 

As we walked back to our lodge, a discussion ensued.

 

“If he had walked into the sea, his body should have been washed ashore”, I expressed my doubt.

 

“It is quite possible that the sharks made a feast of him! Everything grows into a mystery or a miracle. That’s what our countrymen do. Most unscientific fellows on earth,” remarked Lakshmiprasad. By profession he is a physician, and has been well-favoured by the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi.

 

“What do you mean by science?” Sangamesam joined issue with him: “Science is what you think, is it? Well, what does your Einstein say? If an object approaches the velocity of light, it disappears. And what is a human body? It consists of atoms, or say electrons or even smaller particles, whatever it is. As we see the formation of water drops as a cloud, so the human body is only a formation of these fundamental particles. When these vibrate to attain the velocity of light, the human body will become a flash of light and disappear. There is nothing unscientific about it.”

 

Sangamesam has long been a traveller on the path of knowledge and enlightenment. He has no profession, no job. He has inherited property, and his wife works as a lecturer in a Madras college. He owns a house. He has two children. Sangamesam has dabbled in many things. Poetry, philosophy, the arts and archaeology along with Yoga and spiritualism have engaged his mind off and on; he would spend days without end in the Thanjavur Library or in the Madurai temple of Devi Meenakshi forgetful of everything else. On this occasion, it was he who had come to Visakhapatnam and brought me and Lakshmiprasad on a visit to Puri. We happened to be childhood friends and classmates at school.

 

“Theory is O. K. But is such a thing ever possible? What is the ‘light barrier’? It is impossible for a physical body to attain the velocity of light. That is a barrier set by nature. How can Chaitanya or anybody else cross that barrier? Can you show another case like that of Chaitanya?” said Lakshmiprasad.

 

“My dear Prasad, I speak as a materialist. The human body is a machine. It is like a generator. The mechanical and chemical energies generated by it, we use them all the time. It produces electrical energy; the experiments on the brain establish it. Now is it impossible, if properly worked by the brain and the nervous system, that it should generate light? A rare few have accomplished that. They have attained to bodies of light, and have continued so for a long while, after their physical bodies mingled with dust. There appears to be a time limit even for them. There is nothing impossible about Sri Chaitanya converting his body into light into pure energy and disappearing from the sight of men.” That was Sangamesam’s explanation.

 

“Please don’t try to obscure the dividing line between science and the Puranas, Sangamesam, and throw the people of this country into darkness again; you will be doing a disservice,” said Lakshmiprasad.

 

“Today’s science-fiction will be tomorrow’s science achievement! Our thought and imagination must be bold and adventurous, Prasad! What would you say, brother?” Sangamesam turned to me for support.

 

“That may be as you say. But who is interested in the manner or mode of death? We should rather project our thought towards better ways of living. Whether one dies and returns to dust or becomes pure light, it is not going to help humanity to live, and hence all research into it is useless.” That was my opinion.

 

“You are mistaken,” said Sangamesam. “The mind and the body go together. Death is the conclusion to life. They too go together. In Sri Chaitanya’s life, devotional ecstasy was the most distinguishing trait: by mere touch he was able to impart it, transmit it to others. The culmination of that ecstatic state of mind must have transformed his mundane body into light. And it appeared as death to ordinary people. He walked into the sea, he had to, as the sea alone could receive safely that immense energy. His walking into the sea is not a legend but a fact.”

 

Lakshmiprasad has a large nursing-hospital at Kandukur. He came to Visakhapatnam to attend a medical conference. Sangamesam had arrived from Madras four days earlier. I live in Visakha being employed as Reader in the University. It was a rare meeting of three old friends and we decided to take a holiday visiting Puri. We exchanged notes about our personal and family affairs without reserve during the trip.

 

Lakshmiprasad has two daughters, no sons. That is one disappointment in his life. The first daughter is a doctor and has been married to a doctor. Both of them work in his hospital. The match for the second daughter is settled. She will marry an I. A. S. officer in the coming Sravan. Lakshmiprasad is now looking for grandchildren. He is planning a tour abroad. He is also ambitious, and would even enter politics, when the opportune moment arrives. That is what he gave us to understand about himself.

 

Well, the month of Sravan arrived and the marriage of Lakshmlprasad’s daughter was duly celebrated, attended by Sangamesam and myself. Within a week of our return from the celebrations, we received the thunderbolt of a message that Lakshmiprasad was dead.

 

How did it happen? The newly-married couple returned to Lakshmiprasad’s house after the customary sojourn at the bridegroom’s place. Lakshmiprasad planned a picnic to a nearby sea-side resort called Ramayapatnam. He asked two of his doctor colleagues to accompany him; his wife, daughters and sons-in-law and a few servants constituted the picnic party. In the early hours of the morning, the male members of the party left in a vehicle, and the female members with two servants were to follow in another vehicle at 9 a. m. with lunch-baskets. After bathing in the sea, Lakshmiprasad was standing on the beach very close to the water. His two sons-in-law and a doctor colleague were still in waist-deep waters. Suddenly a mountain-like wave came up and swallowed the three bathers, whom Lakshmiprasad had been watching. Lakshmiprased fell down unable to bear the shock, as he believed that both the sons-in-law were gone and his colleague. When the wave touched the shore, it swept Lakshmiprasad’s body into the sea. The sons-in-law and their companion, however, ducked and reached the shore, though the senior son-in-law had to be brought unconscious to the shore by the other two. The second doctor colleague, standing at a distance, had observed the fall of Lakshmi­prasad. When he ran to the spot, the body had already gone into the sea. When the unconscious son-in-law revived, all of them started looking for Lakshmiprasad. Then his body was washed ashore and restored to them. But Lakshmiprasad was dead. It wasn’t death by drowning; he had died of shock.

 

We, Sangamesam and myself, were present for the obsequies. We condoled his death in the appropriate manner. We too were in a state of shock. As we waited in mournful silence for our respective trains at the Singarayakonda railway-station, Sangamesam said: “You remember our Puri trip, and what you spoke about life being more important than death. The manner of death is a commentary on the individual’s manner of living. Mahatma Gandhi, a great votary of non-violence, died a violent death! Lakshmiprasad’s death demonstrates how much he was attached to money, ambition and his family. His absolute identity with them is seen in the manner of his death. In a way he was lucky. If his sons-in-law had died, as he imagined, and he had lived to mourn the loss, what would have been his life hereafter?

 

“Then, is death the opposite of our attachments in life?”

 

“Yeah, death is the other side of the coin.”

 

“What about the man who develops non-attachment to the things of life?”

 

“He becomes triumphant over life and death.”

 

“Do you mean to say he won’t die!”

 

“He will die in the body. That is not important. He will not experience death. As he has attained to a state beyond duality, he sees death as continuous with life. Spiritually ambitious men by sadhana may even succeed in building a body of light, which may last after the earthly one is gone, but even that will not save them from death, unless they have attained to non-attachment and non-duality to experience life and death as one. So there can be ambition and attachment even in spiritual sadhana. An ordinary man too survives with his subtle body for a period of about 15 days, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead. That is why ceremonies are performed and the dead are fed ritually. Some, no doubt, develop the subtle body and continue to survive to help others. But helping others is also a manifestation of life’s desire.”

 

As Sangamesam continued to speculate, my train arrived on the platform and I had to take leave of him.

 

An year passed by. I fell ill with dengue fever. I was recovering, but felt a terrible weakness both in the body and in the mind. It was the fullmoon night of Sravan. I had a dream. Sangamesam was there. Standing a little away from my bed, he was asking me to get up and join him. He was in a joyous mood and was urging me to get up. I tried but my extreme weakness prevented me. “If you want to get up, you can do it, come on, my dear fellow,” said Sangamesam and put out his hand towards me. I tried to reach it, but failed. But I touched something and my dream was gone. I was groping against the wall:

 

When I had got up from my bed three days later, I received a letter.

 

“Dear Brother,

 

I have been going round and round for a long while. Forget what I told you about Einstein’s theory, or about developing a body of light. All that is meaningless. Except joy, ananda, serene joy, everything else is meaningless. The sea of joy in me and the joyous sea outside me are one and the same. Separated from that joyous sea of consciousness, we gather sea-shells on the beach like idiots. There is neither meaning nor meaninglessness to life. Mind-body, mundane-body ethereal-body these are not separate. Tradition, religion, knowledge, science, everything is void. They are the curtains of illusion to be brushed aside to meet the sea, my sea of joy. If there is joy in life, in the small things like getting up, drinking coffee, contemplating nature, soaking in rain and so on, it is measuring out in small tea-spoonfuls the joyous sea of consciousness. Day after day. Life after life. No, the sea is my beloved. The sea is my all. The sea is my con­sciousness, my joy. I am the sea. No maya can separate me hereafter. I am the sea. The sea is I and I am joy ...

 

Sagara Sangameswara Sastri

 

I could’t make anything out of that letter. In his quest, Sanga­mesam had become mystic, his mysticism bordering on loss of reason and madness. A few days later I received the news. The sea had washed ashore Sangamesam’s body on the Edward Elliot’s Beach, which he used to frequent. Whether it was natural death, or suicide, I could get no information. No one could know. After all this, after I lost my two friends to the sea, the secret of life and death still remains a mystery to me. Whatever little understanding I had about it was washed away. I sit silent and dumb, dumb even in my mind, staring at the sea from the sands of Visakha beach.

 

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