On the banks of the Ganges, west of the Sundarbans and east of Banaras, a little village called Kal echoed with an ear-splitting boom. It came from inside a tiny mud-hut of a boat-maker called Gangadharan. In fact, it was the fourteenth accident of the day, but the walls of the fragile-looking hut remained miraculously intact.
Gangadharan’s practice wasn’t going well. He needed to manifest a ship, purely using his magical powers, but they weren’t strong enough. The ships he conjured kept crashing on top of him. He knew it wasn’t wise to stand under a two-ton block of wood while trying out new mantras, but if it was already aloft, he could fashion it into the right shapes while ensuring airworthiness. Besides, he’d been ‘strictly forbidden’ to use any non-magical boat-making skills, by the school principal. She patronized him, as if he were one of her students, not Dharma, his twelve year old son.
Dharma pounded on the door of his room.
“Appa, Appa! What did you do now?”
“Nothing, Dharma. You get back to studying.”
“No, pa. Are you hurt? Open the door. Or else I will force my way in.”
“Wait! Wait… I’ll open the door. I order you to not open it yourself!” he said, hoping he sounded authoritative. With a flick of his wrist, he dispelled the shattered remains of the ship and slapped on cloaking spells wherever the skin had cuts. The copper smell of blood was still so strong he could taste it on his tongue. He burned some camphor to mask it before letting Dharma in.
“What happened?” Dharma rushed in as the door opened and took a quick look around. He could smell the blood and the camphor, but he didn’t call out his father’s weak attempts at deception. Dharma, his precious child of only twelve. Already too kind to hurt his father’s pride. Gangadharan’s eyes glimmered with tears he struggled to hold back.
“Nothing, kanna. I’ve been practicing. I missed.”
“For the ceremony?”
“How are your studies coming along?”, Gangadharan deflected.
“About that. I’ve finished up to standard nine now, Appa. I was hoping you’d speak to the principal to let me take the tenth standard classes from tomorrow.”
“Don’t you think you’re advancing too fast? Jumping two years in four months!”
“I know pa, but you know I can’t go to the forest until I’ve completed higher secondary. If I start tomorrow, I can finish it in a few weeks and then I can build the ship before the trip.”
“Build the ship? You plan to do it yourself? It’s tradition for the father to lead and the child to assist.”
“Yes, but I want to… to do it myself, that’s all”, he said, squaring his shoulders. He looked straight at Gangadharan with his mother’s night-black eyes. They made him look beautiful, like the Thanjavur paintings of Lord Krishna.
Dharma continued, eager to fill in the quiet between them, “Appa, come on. Don’t feel bad. I’m not… I… I’m only trying to help. I just want to meet her…”
That was it. Dharma didn’t think that his father could lead the build. That his father’s weak magic would jeopardize his chances of meeting his mother.
“Do I need my son to help me build a ship for him? It is my duty to build you your first one! Will you take away my duty as a father, prove how unworthy I am?!”
“No. I… I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Then how else did you mean it?” Gangadharan said, voice trembling as he salted his son’s guilt despite knowing better.
“I… I’m sorry, Appa.”
#
The crashes weren’t entirely Gangadharan’s fault. Kalians had begun whispering to each other about growing restlessness in the Forest of Longing. Animal cries could be heard through the night. Chitals in the forest bellowed almost every night. The usually pleasant gurgles of the mangrove whistlers sounded urgent, worried. People needed an extra shawl to protect themselves against the cold weather.
Gangadharan broke fast every morning at the village tea-shop. A cup of cardamom chai and jhal-muri, a light and spicy snack made of crispy puffed rice, mustard oil and raw green chillies. Not his favorite breakfast, of course, being from the south of India where he could have crispy dosas and filter coffee, but he’d developed a taste for it. One morning, as he shoveled handfuls of it into his mouth before leaving for the forest, the chai-wallah jerked his head directionally and said, “The forest is angry, dada. Shabdhaane jeyo.” Be careful.
As if she was listening, a cold gale rose from the forest. Trees shed leaves, the sky looked overcast. The delicate balance between Kal and the Forest of Longing was shifting.
The village and the forest were inextricably linked, a self-sustaining microcosm, an ebb and flow of magic. The choreography of balance between the village and the forest was, in fact, a push and pull between the souls within bodies, and the souls without. The spirits in the forest powered the magic of Kal, and fed on the reverence of its people. Kalians worshipped the Forest of Longing, half in awe and half in fear. Tales were told of its wrath of longing, a pull stronger than the tides of the moon, a storm that could destroy Kal.
Every member of Kal’s tiny population was magicked. The rest of the land was considered unmagicked, though people with magical abilities were turning up outside the bubble as well. Gangadharan was one of the outsiders, a refugee who had run to Kal because he was banished for his magic back home, targeted for abilities he didn’t know he had until they became Apparent. Kalians believed that the influx of new people, like Gangadharan, threatened their delicate balance, making the forest angry.
Gangadharan pulled his shawl closer as he hastened to the forest. He needed to manifest the ship. It was his duty as father. He couldn’t deny Dharma his chance for the ceremony, the Passage to the Forest of Longing.
Once a year Kalians made a journey to the forest, to pay their respects by sailing on ships created and sailed entirely by magic. For young magicians, it was a rite of passage, marking them as true citizens of Kal, entitled to the lifelong protection and patronage of its people. The journey was perilous, but it would empower Dharma to come into his own. And give him what he longed for most of all, a chance to meet the mother he lost a decade ago.
#
“She is a peacock in human form,” he’d say to anyone who asked about Maira’s dancing. She also sang with the “voice of the koel”. When he first met her, Maira worked and traveled with a circus troupe as their master illusionist. She was gifted in magic in a way that no one else was. With her, magic was more than a form of power, it was a talent that she wielded like an artist. Her performances were always dramatic.
His mouth fell open the first time he watched her weave her magic as she danced the kathak. She tapped her feet almost soundlessly, sending ripples into the air, gentle vibrations that lulled the crowd, softening their faces in preparation for the show. Then, one by one, she walked across the stage conjuring different seasons, all within one tent; hailstones fell in one corner; right next to it, a desert summer; where Gangadharan sat was basant rtu–spring. Sunflowers and peonies fell all around him as he watched her glide up into the air.
They fell in love soon after. She said it was his eyes, but he knew it was because he had no designs on her magic. She felt no threat.
When her troupe readied itself to go to the next village, Maira stayed back. Their love was not understood by the village folks, or her troupe for that matter. Here was Maira, so talented, so beautiful that she took one’s breath away, and there was Gangadharan, so plain. They gossiped that he used a maayajaal on her, a web of magic, conveniently ignoring the fact that she was far too powerful for any of his tricks to work on her. Others said that he practiced the dark arts on the sly. A reason as simple as love did not seem possible to them.
They married each other on the banks of the Ganges and built a mud hut. They conceived Dharma on the night of the purnima, the full moon, at 4 in the morning, just as the pandit had advised them. By the time Dharma was six months old, he could recite all the slokas he had heard in the womb. All of them with perfect intonation. Whenever Gangadharan slipped up during the sandhya vandanam, the evening prayer, Dharma’s eyes would look up, never correcting his father, betraying a wisdom far greater than his age.
When Dharma turned two, Maira died of a fatal accident during a rare solo performance.
Gangadharan had received warnings from the Forest of Longing all day but he hadn’t understood them. The first sign was a deep ache in the bones, a clear indicator of rain. Next, a surprise storm only over the thicket where he was chopping wood. When he had sat down to build the boat, his chants hadn’t worked. That day, no matter how hard he had tried, the slats of wood kept falling apart. He had missed the most telling sign of all, how once Maira had come into his life, his magic had always worked. So happy and blissful was he that he hadn’t seen the signs for the omens they were, until then she was gone.
#
Gangadharan decided to meet the school principal, to speak to her about his son’s desire to complete his education early. The same woman who thought he wasn’t up to the task of leading the build on a magic ship.
She knew why he was there and denied him even before he could ask.
“B… but, principal madam, why stop him? Is he not performing well?”
“He is, Gangadharan ji, but you see, he is still young. He needs time to live with the knowledge. It will not be assimilated well into his being if we rush it. Surely, you know this.”
“I do. But I also know that he assimilates faster than the others do. We’ll find out during the ceremony anyway. If he fails, he will understand. Why stop a child from trying?”
The principal replied, measured and even, as if she was discussing an administrative matter. “It is all well for him to study at home and take tests. It is a different thing for him to perform advanced magic.”
Gangadharan paused.
“I don’t want to break his heart, madam principal. He… he really wants to meet… Maira. He hasn’t seen her since he was two.”
She changed tack. “Will you be leading the build of the ship? Or will he?”
This hit home. Gangadharan pursed his lips and straightened his shoulders.
“The ship will pass the test, madam principal. And Dharma will excel in sailing it. Thank you. I shall take your leave.”
#
Once, long before Gangadharan and Maira became two halves of a whole, he had been summoned to repair a wooden cage Maira had broken during practice. It was a ruse to meet him since she was fully capable of fixing it herself.
Being in the same room as her made his mouth so dry that he wasn’t able to speak. He managed a terse nod, making her think he was arrogant.
“Ki dada, mukhey kotha photey naa??” He knew enough of the language to understand what she meant. Can’t you speak? He did speak, of course, but in front of her…
Instead, he shook his head so vigorously that she burst out laughing, her bangles clinking, her teeth glinting like a string of pearls in the sunlight. Then, she folded her arms and crouched onto the ground to watch him work.
His magic didn’t work that day. He was too nervous. The wood wouldn’t bend, the ends wouldn’t fuse when he asked them to. Whatever he tried caused the opposite effect. When he asked the shafts of wood to meet the base of the cage, they turned away, resembling petals. Soon, they were the bones of a flower basket, rather than a cage. Embarrassed, he was about to stand up and leave, when he heard Maira’s skirt swishing softly behind him. She knelt down and placed her hand on his. He gasped when their eyes met, hers as black as night. Then, enjoying his nervousness, she raised one eyebrow and said, “abar chestha koro.” Try again. It worked. She had stilled his scattered magic, made it cohere, so he could bend it to his will.
Since then, Maira had been the one to compose his energies into a unified whole.
But that was no more.
#
In the weeks after their argument, father and son lived under the same roof but didn’t speak. The air was tense between them. They had much to do.
Gangadharan’s creations kept shattering. Either the mast was too long or the deck boards were too heavy. Sometimes, the air pressure around the ship was so high that it would bear down on the wood and break it. Creating matter out of air was not easy. Much like his grief, his energies were scattered, imbalanced, jerky. His creations were too weighed down by heavy energy.
He would leave each shattered ship lying there, not even bothering to clean it up, and run to the village wrestling arena to practise kushti with the other pahalwans. To get out of his head and into his body for a while. He’d return from each fight with skin covered in sand, burning from where it had scraped him, prickling around patches of sweat.
After one such session, his guru spoke to him.
“Gangadharan ji, you should do the centering and balancing exercises,” he said, “That is when your mind and body will be one.”
“Tomorrow. Namaste, guru ji,” Gangadharan bowed to him with hands folded.
His imbalance was visible to everyone. Annoyed and wanting to avoid the silence of home, he walked to the local tavern for some tharra, a local fermented moonshine. Before long he was five drinks down, more than he had had since before Dharma was born. Five drinks of tharra were close to lethal, in fact. The brewer didn’t stop him because his presence attracted more customers.
“Gangadharan, having a bad day?” One of them sneered at him.
Without thinking, he balled his fists and socked the man in the face. The others pounced on him as if on cue, five pahalwans against one. Each kick, each punch weakened the tether between his mind and body, until only the faintest of glimmers remained.
#
While his father was getting beaten up, Dharma was practicing in his room–a room that looked more like a carnival than a boy’s room. Ships drawn in liquid light floated about, decked in brilliant hues of red white and gold. They looked like brides on their wedding day. He had strung a translucent cloth across their masts to spell ‘Dharma’s Room’. It waved about to an imagined wind, diaphanous and sparkling. Swimming around it were sea creatures; Gangetic dolphins that sang with deep sonority; starfish doing cartwheels in a sea of air; jellyfish billowing softly, their tentacles floating about in currents that were not really there; crystal butterflies and birds twinkling as they flitted about.
The ships Dharma made were intricate, but fragile. They felt like holograms of the real thing. He tried very hard, but he couldn’t materialize something solid enough for a person to stand on and sail. They would vanish in a puff whenever he tried touching them.
He pulled his eyes away from the world he had created and focussed on a point right in front of him. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He saw an impression of the point from behind the eyelids. It looked like the afterglow of a fading white dot. He imagined a faint thread of light extending from the dot into the center of his mind, right between his eyebrows. He would hold on to it, centering himself.
He breathed into that dot, making it grow with each inhalation. He’d watched his mother do this, watched light travel across the walls of the womb while he was still nestled inside it. The memory made him smile. He hummed a deep, sonorous ‘Om’, the sound of the universe, making ripples of energy radiate from him and ricochet off the walls. Waves of energy built upon themselves, making the entire room hum, brightening his creations of liquid-light.
All of a sudden, a sharp whiff of green mangoes filled his nostrils, so tart that his mouth watered.
Beta… he heard Maria’s voice whisper. Beta. The answer to a thousand questions and a million wails, to a lifetime of longing.
He knew he shouldn’t open his eyes but he opened them anyway. The connection snapped, ripples stilled and the scent vanished.
Dharma burst into sobs and ran to his father’s room. It was empty.
Just then, there were loud knocks at the door. He jerked in fear.
“Dharmaaaa… uth ja!” Wake up!
A familiar voice. One of the villagers. He decided to take his chances.
When he opened the door, five men walked in carrying the limp body of his father, left him on the floor and walked out. No words, no information, but Dharma didn’t need to be told. He had sensed the breakdown coming. He just hadn’t known what it would look like.
Dharma went to his father, bent down to pick him up, but was hit by the foul smell of tharra on his father’s breath. Angered and repulsed, he left his father where he was and went back to his room.
#
When Gangadharan regained consciousness the next day, he found himself in his own bed. At some point, his son had used magic to move him. He was running a high fever, meaning the healing spells wouldn’t have worked. They wouldn’t take if the mind wasn’t prepared to receive.
He lay in bed, stewing in shame, mind spiraling into all the ways in which he had failed his son. He was incapable of being a functioning adult. He couldn’t get one thing right for his son, who on the other hand, refused all help from the neighbors and chose to tend to him all by himself. Dharma cleaned the house, cooked, washed his father every day, helped him perform his ablutions, studied and worked on his ship.
In his waking hours, when Dharma wasn’t around, he kept trying to manifest ships. He prayed to Maira to compose his energies and fix his problems with magic. He played and replayed the lessons she gave him. He told himself he needed to push deeper, go further into the magic to be able to find the strength to keep the ships aloft and intact.
And then it happened.
Dharma heard a loud thud in his father’s room. He rushed in to find his father standing, looking around confused and dazed. His body looked frail, the wounds from his fight had healed, but his skin was covered in bruised patches of blackish-green, and the left side of his jaw was swollen.
“Appa. What happened?”
Without saying anything, Gangadharan looked down at his legs, one of which was lodged inside a block of wood.
“Apppaaaaaa!”
The wood had formed from Gangadharan’s skin, like a mutant growth made from his blood and bones. The part of his skin that touched the wood had turned black and bark-like. Fresh blood, dark as night, glinted in grim reflection.
“W… What happened?”
“I think I just had a breakthrough, but… but it’s not fully there yet. I mean… I don’t think I can grow an entire ship out of my leg bone.”
“This is madness! What kind of magic are you using? This is not in any of the books…”
“I found some of Maira’s old notes. I… I… kanna, I tried not to. I tried building without using my blood and bone, but it didn’t work. It kept crashing and I realized I couldn’t skip that step.”
Gangadharan dragged himself towards the nearest wall, fresh blood oozed out with each painful step. His forehead glistened with sweat, he was running a fever.
Dharma rummaged through his notebooks to find something, anything. Healing spells, or reversing spells, some mantra to undo this mess. His head swam at the thought, the carnival around him shuddered. Some of the creatures lost their integrity, disintegrating into wisps of light.
“Dh… Dharma…”, Gangadharan whispered, before fainting.
#
When he came to, he saw the guru-ji sitting by his bed, a look of exasperated relief on his face.
“How are you Gangadharan ji?”
No reply.
He continued, “It is not wise to combine mantra and tantra, the dark arts with the light ones.”
“Hnnnh,” was all Gangadharan could respond, but a silent tear rolled down his cheek. He was in pain, but still desperate.
Without warning, the school principal walked into the room. With a quick namaste to the guru-ji, the principal walked up to Gangadharan to check on him. His leg was so swollen it looked as though he had elephantiasis.
“Gangadharan ji, it has become septic,” she told him with no emotion in her voice. “The best thing to do is to amputate it. If we use potions and mantras, it will take a long time, and even then, there is no guarantee that we can save it.”
#
Gangadharan’s eyes snapped open as he woke from a fever dream. His body was burning, but his breath fogged as if he were in the snow of the Himalayas. The air in the room felt dense, miasmic, the scent of raw mangoes failing to overpower the stench of death. A smoky cloud materialized at the foot of the bed. He watched as Maira’s spirit stole its way towards him. She floated by his bedside, diaphanous, barely visible. She had no discernible features, no night-black eyes he could gaze into.
She floated to where the wooden block was clamped onto his foot. It looked like an animal’s death-hold on its prey. He felt her energies settle on the wound, fire-hot like angry lava, hungry and grasping. A hot tear trickled down from his eye as he felt her longing. He fainted.
By the time he awoke in the morning, she had left, but not without a sign; an ankle bracelet of energy, visible to no one but him, pulling him to her.
“Dharma,” he called out.
“Dharma is sleeping, he sat with you all night.” Guru ji’s voice spoke.
But they didn’t need to wait long. Dharma walked in soon enough, aware that Gangadharan had regained consciousness.
“Appa…”, he said, his voice breaking as he walked to his father and held his hand.
“I’m sorry, kanna,” was all he could say.
#
On the morning of the ceremony, Dharma came to his room and touched his feet, for a blessing before he set out.
“Kanna, sit down. I want to discuss something with you.”
“Yes, pa. How are you feeling?”
“Good good. Look. I have an idea. I think that my accident happened because the mass was too heavy. My energies have been heavy ever since… your amma…”, his voice choked and Dharma reached out to hold his palm. Gangadhar swallowed, pushing the pain away, and continued, “…so I am manifesting heavier wood.”
“And my ships are still only pure light. They’re like blueprints, not solid.”
“Yes, Dharma, I know….”
“We… we need a ship that is strong enough to be intact and light enough to sail.”
“Yes,” Gangadharan beamed, before continuing, “Take me with you.”
“But how? You’re in no condition to…”, he stopped mid-sentence to look at Gangadharan’s foot. A bracelet of energy appeared around his father’s ankle, making Dharma agog.
#
They wheeled Gangadharan to the grounds at the edge of the village. A cool wind blew towards them from the forest. It carried not only the scents of the forest, but a fetid smell from the spirits as well. A reminder that their beautiful microcosm needed both mantra and tantra, that magic needed both light and dark. All the participants of the ceremony had turned up along with their family members. Each child was accompanied by a parent, while the other sat in the stands to watch. Young boys and girls meditated, levitated, murmured chants as they performed their last minute rehearsals. The air was festive, but also tense. No one wanted the humiliation of a failed journey.
They spread out, dotting themselves at various points across the grounds, choosing spots that gave them enough room so as to not be too close to the others’ ships. Dharma chose a spot in a far corner of the grounds
He sat down next to Gangadharan, who had to sit on a rock because he couldn’t cross his legs. Carrying a chair was out of the question because it would aid the conjuring of wood for the ships. The parent and the child had to manifest the ship together, after which the child would climb into the ship and sail to the forest.
It was time.
They began with a prayer.
Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |
Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |
Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||
The chants calmed their excited hearts and they began the grounding meditations together, sending their awareness to the core of the earth, gathering energy before letting it rise up again from the soles of their feet all the way up to the crown of their heads. Each consciousness was like a soft mist, round and filled with various hues of the rainbow – the son’s bright and light, the father’s deep and saturated. Then, as if on cue, the mists elongated upwards, moved towards each other and commingled like a pair of preternatural beings. The effect was magical. Guru ji, who was there to assist Gangadharan, gasped.
Dharma’s light energy began moving. With the deft strokes of a master painter he began painting the outline of a ship in the air. First, a long line for the base, then two quick upward strokes at each end to create the bow and the stern. Then, he flipped the angle to fill in the bottom and sides of the ship with quick strokes to weave a tapestry of light for the wood to materialize around. Finally came the mast. No matter how much magic the ship sailed on, having a sail would make it easier.
It was Gangadharan’s turn. He focussed on the tip of the bow. From it, he extended three thin shafts of wood, making them trace along the weaves created by Dharma. From the tip he extended three thin shafts of wood. They traced along the lines in Dharma’s blueprint. It looked effortless, but it consumed Gangadharan’s energies at a rapid pace. By the time the wood connected with the beginning of the hull, he was spent. He strained to keep it aloft.
When the ankle bracelet began pulsing red, Dharma swooped in. He sent light to buffet his father’s energies. The redness of the bracelet turned a touch golden and that was when he felt the strong tug pulling on Gangadharan. Dharma realized that Maira was calling his father.
The sky turned dark as clouds gathered around them. The wind grew sharper. Eddies formed all around them.
They grew the ship’s hull and deck simultaneously, the two parts advancing like parallel waves.
Around them, the eddies converged into a storm, cutting them off from everything around them. Lightning flashed in the sky with every surge of power from Dharma’s hand.
The ship was forming rapidly, but as it advanced closer to their bodies, their energies became unstable. The wood began creeping in stronger, jerking erratically. It was moving towards Gangadharan’s feet, trying to fuse with them. Dharma intensified his light to slow the wood’s progress, but it fought back, continuing to grow with greater intensity. It was being driven by a force stronger than he could control. Every time he tried harder, it fought back.
“Appa! You have to slow down,” Dharma screamed to be heard above the howling winds.
Gangadharan said nothing in response. Instead, he gently clasped his hand around Dharma’s palm, cutting him off. Dharma’s mouth opened into soundless wail as he watched the deck grow around them and creep into Gangadharan’s feet. He felt the energy’s intention as it slowly turned his father into a block of wood.
Dharma turned, unsteady on his feet, to face his father. The clouds broke. Thunder clapped, cold and merciless, and their eyes met under its harsh light. Dharma saw the tears pooled in Gangadharan’s eyes. He watched a smile form on his father’s face as the wood crept up.
By the time the rain lightened and the sun peeked through from behind the thin clouds, his father glistened rich and dark. The winds calmed into a breeze tinged with the piquant smell of mangoes. Dharma turned around to face the forest and steered the ship –the ship that had been his father, steady and noble, pulled by magic into the Forest of Longing.