ADVENTURES OF LIFE
When I Slipped to My Death
I could not stop falling
He looked at me and my hands again. The hands of the sixteen-year-old me were in his big hands. He was scrutinising each line on my palm, with the greatest attention. I sat bewildered. My father sat a little away from me, expectantly waiting for the verdict.
Mishraji’s head was bent low. My mother shuffled in and out between the room and the kitchen. The fries would burn if not watched over.
There was something unique about the man. I could not pinpoint exactly what it was. I thought he was there and not there at the same time. He was there physically but not all of him was there. That which was absent at that moment, had probably gone roaming into faraway galaxies.
Whatever he would tell me would be gibberish. That I knew for sure. How could astrologers tap into the future? He was a fourth-generation astrologer who kept it under wraps for he was a high-ranking official. Those days, everyone either disbelieved them or worse, made fun of them. So, he kept his ‘science’ hidden.
As if astrology was a science, I had scoffed secretly, when my father said that an official would come to see me, to revisit my future. Yes, it was true. My future had already been visited by a classmate and it was wrapped in darkness. She read numerology books and had become a self-proclaimed expert. All my friends had deep faith in her. I had accepted her prediction of my doomed future wholeheartedly as I believed in modern numerology.
“You will walk to your grave instead of getting a seat in medical school. Stop working so hard,” she had declared.
My parents were mortified to see their studious daughter suddenly sleeping all the time. They were flabbergasted when they came to know the reason behind it.
“Intense study for years together under the guidance of an adept is needed to become a good astrologer. Teenagers cannot become so by reading a few books,” my mother said with a wave of her hand.
But I did not believe her. Those were the days when I had great confidence in my beliefs and decisions. Besides, what did my parents know about numerology? My friend was a numerologist and not an astrologer. Their realms were not inclusive of each other — or so I believed.
I was sure my parents were hand in glove with this man and were trying to encourage me with a staged opposite prediction.
“You nearly died as a ten-year-old, didn’t you?”
I almost jumped out of my skin. This was my deepest secret. How did he come to know?
My mother had just walked in, and she refuted it strongly.
“Never has such a thing happened.”
My father added to the denial vehemently. They then went back to their respective work.
He looked at me, his eyes piercing mine. I nodded, my head bent low while my heart danced as the memories came flooding back.
The road was long, and the bus made the tortuous route up the hill. Filled with boisterous fifth graders, their songs could be heard miles away. They had looked forward eagerly to this once-a-year school picnic and could not stop smiling and laughing. A few lady teachers and a young and athletic guy from the school church, whom we all called ‘Brother’, accompanied us.
My parents would seldom let children travel far distances for picnics and never allowed my siblings this luxury. It was understandable. Those were neither the days of the phone nor the black-tarred roads of today.
But they could not refuse the headmistress who visited us at home, seeking permission to take their ‘eldest daughter’ to the picnic, evidently to my great delight. She thought that any excursion would be incomplete without me.
We travelled the hills and the plains and had our lunch by the lake and pottered around the whole day. We spread so far and wide, despite strict instructions to the contrary, that we could no longer see our teachers. Then suddenly I found myself alone.
We were atop a flat-topped hill. The valley fell sharply down below. There was a room built on the edge of the slope. A few of our things were kept there. I was thirsty and wanted some water.
The front door was accessible through the flat tarred road. I had missed it and saw another door at the back. I slowly descended the hill which was not that steep in its upper part. As I climbed down, I could see the depths of the valley.
It was enchanting and held me spellbound. Trucks and dumpers plied about, speeding. They looked even smaller than my toy cars. Colourfully dressed men and women moved about like insects in a canopy of deep green. Wisps of cottony clouds floated above them slowly moving away. The sky was a brilliant orange-red, and it sent its golden glow down into the valley. Everything deep down was in motion, and I watched transfixed, holding the sill of an open window.
We had been told not to use this door, but it was open and closer and there was flat mud around it, which I treaded, one step after another. I was lucky that there was no one around, otherwise I would have been scolded severely.
As I put one foot inside the room and was trying to balance on the other, I had to let go of the window sill, and I slipped. But I did not fall. I got up and tried to turn back up but somehow I turned towards the valley instead and then catapulted downhill. I could not stop as the valley was steep. It then sharply fell with straight edges thousands of feet below into the toy trucks and insects…
I reached that edge at great speed and just when my eyes closed in darkness and I hurtled straight down below, I was stopped in midair.
“Sapna…”
My left hand was yanked by Brother’s right hand while his left hand held a lone electric pole.
Slowly he started pulling me up but the pole was thick, and he could wrap only half his hand around it. At times he started slipping himself and I hurtled down further but ultimately, he managed to pull me up to his level and then held my hands tightly so we could climb up the hill and reach the flat-topped road.
So agitated was I that I could hardly gulp the water he gave me. He then led me to the bus waiting for us. We were the last ones to file in.
“Where were you? We could not find you anywhere,” one of the teachers cried.
“How can you be so irresponsible?” Another said angrily.
“She was with me,” Brother said in a way that they fell silent.
I could not join the celebrations on the return journey. I sat quietly in the first seat, frightened and shaken. All the others talked and laughed while Brother held one of the stanchions near the seats and stood there, singing, leading all the others.
Despite it all, I felt his constant eye on me, watching.
When I started to get down from the bus after we reached, he stretched to his full length, still unfurled from holding that stanchion with one hand, and placed his other hand on my head, in a blessing.
I was in my fifth grade then and met him a few more times in the next two years that I was in that school.
He never said a word but smiled and looked into my eyes, silently enquiring, “Are you well?”
He came to visit all of us on the last day of school. His church duties kept him busy throughout the year and he was not a teacher. He smiled, held my hands, and wished me luck but it is his eyes that I remember still. Those eyes, full of care and concern.
What is this relationship between the saviour and the saved? The saved, who gets to live again. The saviour, who almost loses his own life while saving another. Both are born again at the same time. The relationship formed thus, needs no words and has no name and you need to do nothing to nurture or maintain it. It just exists.
The memories remain hidden forever in some unknown corner and you can seek respite in them just like that Pole star in the sky which remains ever present.
So what if you cannot see it all the time?
Please subscribe to my newsletter.
