Wanderings in the Twilight Zone

Wanderings in the Twilight Zone - Part 2


Wanderings in the Twilight Zone - Part 3


Wanderings in the Twilight Zone - Part 4


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I came here, to this place Gokarna on the southwest coast, in the state of Karnataka, yesterday. I had wanted to go somewhere, somewhere quiet and a drinking friend suggested Gokarna. “You would be able to write something”, he said. And I came, traveling two nights by bus - recuperating one afternoon in Bangalore.

The story of Gokarna is that once the king of demons - Rawana, worshipped Lord Shiva for many years, undergoing many hardships. Eventually Shiva was pleased by Rawana’s devotion and abnegation. He appeared in person and presented Rawana with a small Shiva-lingam as a reward for all the hardships the latter had undergone.

As the fable goes, the white gods were scared. The demon king Rawana would come to yield enormous power with this lingam given by Lord Shiva himself. Something had to be done to prevent Rawana from taking this lingam to his capital. They conferred, and odious as they were as a lot, they sent a young Brahmin child to intercept Rawana, who was on his way home from the Kailash mountain.

This child caught up with the demon king somewhere near Gokarna. He told Rawana that he had lost a precious toy in the sea and that Rawana should help him find it. Rawana was kind, he wanted to help this pretty, desolate child.

“I can’t put down this lingam”, he ruefully told the child, “Shiva has warned against putting it down, it can not be lifted or uprooted again”.

“ I will hold it for you while you find my toy”, cried the small Brahmin boy. “All right”, said kind, gullible Rawana and went off to the sea after handing over the precious lingam to the boy to hold.

No sooner he entered the sea, the boy started shouting, “It is too heavy, I can’t hold on.”
So before Rawana hastily retreated from the sea, the boy had already put down the Shiva lingam, from where it could not be shifted again.

Naturally a temple was later built around this place and Gokarna came to be an important place of pilgrimage.

This is not a very special story. India abounds in stories like this. I am primarily interested, as always, in my own story. The unenviable task before me, however, is to delineate my own story from all the old stories.


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Many years ago, I was thirteen or fourteen years of age. A popular movie was running in a cinema hall near our neighborhood. I was standing outside the hall at noon show time. I should have been at school but I can’t now remember why I was there at that hour.

There was a huge crowd, milling at the ticket window. I was just idly watching – I had seen the movie before. And I had only a rupee in my pocket. The ticket was priced two rupees.

There I spotted three middle-aged ladies. All acquaintances of my mother – one young and two of my mother’s age. They were standing in a cluster, away from the crowd jostling for tickets, comprised mostly of men.

Quickly I presented myself. “I will get you tickets”, I said. They had not taken much notice of me hitherto but were quite pleased to see me here. One of the ladies gave me a ten-rupee bill.

I struggled against the sea of humanity outside the ticket windows and bought four tickets for rupees eight.

When I returned to the ladies and handed over to them their three tickets, I was unable to return rupees four. I gave three saying I had used one rupee towards my own ticket.

Now this was unpardonable. They were quite shocked. One of the women asked why I had not sought permission in advance. It is not difficult for anyone to see what a caddish thing it was to do. I had seen the movie already. And surely this sort of thing would get relayed to my mother.

What was the motive? What was the impulse? I had just blotted my copy-book with those three women for the rest of my life.

Somehow neither my mother nor father confronted me with it later. Apparently the ladies did not think it serious enough to report.

What is important is that I would like to know why I did it. This and so many other things. When young as well as later.

Great mathematicians or economics researchers are often able to show or establish a mathematical co-relation or pattern in human behavior. I am deficient in this direction. However, last evening as I stood in the doorway of the Shiva temple in Gokarna I felt there was a logic. A logic, a pattern that could piece together all the myriad experiences, all sins, all desires. All the weakness in fact and make it into an explicable whole.


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They are getting to know me in Gokarna. A fat, ugly old man who insists on moving about wearing shorts. The amiable old waiter asked me yesterday, “Would you be looking for a woman, sir?” in very polite Hindi. “No”, I told him. “I am looking for God.” “There is no God here, sir. Only temples. Temples and greedy priests. I am here since last forty years but I haven’t seen God. May be He went off somewhere else. God here is money.” He further educated me.

A few years ago I went to an Indian restaurant in Kobe. An Indian cook who had worked in Japan for long time had opened this small restaurant in Motomachi. He ran it along with his Japanese spouse. He came over to my table and we chatted a while. When I mentioned to him I wasn’t happy in Japan and wished to return to India, he said he had just returned from a long holiday in India. “Don’t go to India. People there talk only about money”, he solemnly advised me.

I remember disliking temples since young. They were always noisy, crowded and dirty, filthy with rows of lepers and other beggars outside. The thick smell of incense mixed with rotting fruits and open urinals nearby caused nausea. And the people thronging these places were mostly low class. Uneducated, un-smart. They could not ever even form a queue for anything. They would all rush at the same time to see the deity or to take Prasad, making it totally impossible for everyone. And innumerable crying babies.

Some of my elderly aunts often exclaimed how beautiful some particular statue or painting of God looked. I could not agree. I failed to see any beauty or serenity in that cacophonic ambience.

I liked to visit old forts, palaces, castles. These were mostly big and empty. And these buildings were connected with important, powerful people who had shaped the destinies of men. I felt the atmosphere.

I was born a Brahmin but erudition was never stressed while I was growing up. Education, yes, or rather qualification that would lead to a well-paid, respectable job. Nothing else was imbibed. No one was interested in metaphysics. Some superstitions persisted and some religious rituals were observed. But spirituality, no. Success, ambition, material goods, power all were naturally advocated. This was the India in which I grew up. India which is same as that of my waiter’s who wants to earn a few rupees on the side by bringing me a woman.

I have built a nodding acquaintance with an old priest, whose house is facing the main street. This is low season and he spends time sitting in his veranda watching the passers-by. Seeing his family name, inscribed in the front I thought he was Marathi and spoke to him in Marathi.

“We are Maharashtrians but I can not speak Marathi”, he answered in Hindi. “Our family shifted here many centuries ago and we speak only Kannada.”

He asked me to sit down by his side and further said, “I don’t see you inside the temple much.”

“I am not a pilgrim.” I answered.

“Yes, you are not a devotee, that is apparent. But still you are here.” He said giving the statement much meaning.

I kept quiet knowing more would come.

“You have connection with this place from your previous birth. That is why you have come.”

“Shastriji, I have visited and lived in very many places. All over the world. Does it mean there was previous connection with all those places?” I remonstrated, but kept my tone respectful.

“You think you have lived long but your life is only beginning now. You can’t be more than fifty, are you?”

I was impressed by his accuracy. Most people always felt me to be much older.

“What are you searching, my child?” The old man put his hand on my shoulder.

“Nothing in particular…”

“No, you are”, he cut me short, “you walk down this road everyday but you notice nothing around. You are in yourself totally, always”.

I was a little taken aback by his animation and also realized that the local people might be finding me a little odd. Any way I had to answer this old priest who was intently waiting for me to speak. I often ask my language students to write an essay on their dream. It’s a regular ploy. But having to answer for myself I needed to think a little.

“I want to atone for my sins”, I finally said.

“No, no, no”, the old man wagged a finger at me, “the feeling itself is enough, the realization is the main thing. One becomes pure automatically.”

“But………R 30;..”

“Don’t worry. Punishment is inescapable. It will come in some form or the other. If not now then in some other birth. But atonement is related to consciousness. It is the highest state.”

“But then one has to remember one’s past sins all the time”, I said laughingly.

“Of course. One has to. Doing good things and being conscious of the wrong is the sure path to salvation.”

“I should give you some daxina for such rejuvenating advice”, I said, getting up.

“I don’t take money for talking. If you wish to offer a puja, I shall be very happy to assist.” The old man was rather curt.


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Does having short, thick, ugly fingers and podgy palms constitute a sin? I don’t know. Perhaps bad karma of previous births visiting this one.

Likewise a desire to sleep with every woman around?

The inability to do anything consistently?

The list could be interminable.

Wallowing in self-pity certainly seems quite close to the mark. Also the obsession with self would definitely qualify. Cardinal sins both.

But I have to expiate.

However, before I launch in on to another shameful story I wish to provide a bit of comic relief.

Recently my girl friend announced amid a group of friends, “I like him because dogs like him instinctively. And he is able to hit it off with children instantly. This for me is enough indication that he is a good man.” I was embarrassed and weakly said, “What about cats?” “They need a second look”, a friend rejoined.

In India in those days a kind of quasi-military training was given to high-school boys. Nothing like conscription, it was actually a joke. Comic like every other thing handled in independent India.

I joined the air-force wing. I was a predictable disaster. Stocky and knock-kneed, I looked terrible in the uniform which consisted of navy-blue shorts and a shirt with lapels.

After a few weeks of training which consisted mostly of parading early in the morning before school hours, a selection was made of cadets who would participate in the annual Independence parade in which real army units also joined.

A total of some 150 boys were picked up from all the schools in the city. Needless to say I was not. Then began the rehearsals for the big parade. Those were held in a ground near my school.

I could not tell at home I was not selected. I had already told many false stories of how the instructor praised me everyday and so on. So I told my mother I have been selected and that I must attend the rehearsals regularly.

And I did. I used to put on my uniform and dutifully present myself at the appointed hour. The rehearsal was only for the selected candidates so I was not allowed to join the drill. I just whiled away my time, a couple of hours every morning, standing under some tree or watching crows pick grain. Surprisingly there were a couple of boys like me, but we did not chat. When the other boys went home after the drill, I would also go home. The instructor was mean enough not to offer me a food packet that was distributed among cadets after the rehearsal. At home, however, I would tell my mother I was full with the sandwiches given at the parade.

Then the day of parade came close. All boys were given some money to get their respective uniforms laundered and starched for the big parade. When I asked my mother for money, my older brother interjected, “They have not given you washing allowance?” He had attended this training a few years earlier and knew everything.

“The instructor pocketed it all. He is horrible”, I replied.

My mother gave me money to get the uniform ready and also sewed up a missing button on the shirt.

I left home 6 o’clock in the morning to walk up to the big parade ground on the Independence Day. Once again I had to sit under a tree for next few hours. Fully uniformed with nothing to do and terribly hungry.

The parade ended around 12 0’clock. The parading cadets went out from another gate to the police head-quarters where a big, festive lunch awaited them.

I could not guess what the correct time to go home was. So I waited till late and only when the hunger became unbearable I began the long walk home.

“You were not in the parade”, my brother shouted as soon as he saw me.

“I was with Aero-modeling”, I said. Aero-modeling was a truck on which an old fighter plane was mounted and a few boys surrounded it, standing guard.

“No, you were not, I saw very closely. You were not in the parade.”

“Leave him alone, will you?” said my mother, “He looks hungry!”

Later in the evening I overheard him telling my mother, “He was never selected, from the beginning itself. I checked with a boy. Just lying all these last few days.”

“You leave him alone, will you?” I was grateful to hear what my mother said for the second time in the day.

“But what is the benefit in this lie? Wasting hours every day and sure to be found out one day. He is the laughing stock of every one in school.” My brother was fuming. I was very fond of him from beginning but on that day I wished he wasn’t around. At least he shouldn’t have gone to watch the parade.

Any how similar things kept happening. I was learning to tell lies. Apparently without necessity. I added up my own imagination to books I read or the films I saw. They had to be more and more interesting. More than what they in effect were and I kept adding. And every time I told a story there were new additions. Fantastic and naturally untrue additions.

Once I went to a nearby forest with two of my friends. On the way we encountered a small pond. A few lotus flowers bloomed towards the middle of the pond.

I could swim. I stripped to my waist and swam across to the middle of the pond. I took three lotuses home to my mother when we returned in the evening.

She was happy to get the flowers but it wasn’t satisfying enough for me. I began weaving a tale. The pond became a big lake, swarming with water-snakes. And how my legs became entangled with the lotus weeds. The whole thing became a big, thrilling adventure. I had recently read a classical story in which the heroine died choked by lotus roots. My own story became the saga of a brave boy who brought lotus flowers to his mother putting his own life to great risk.

I overheard a conversation between my parents around this time.

“He lies too much”, my mother was saying, “everything is exaggerated, embroidered.”

“He will become a writer”, my father wasn’t too worried.

“You should spend a little more time with him. I don’t understand literature or art”, my mother persisted.

“This is difficult age for a boy. So many strange things are happening to one’s body.”

“But why tell lies?”

“The reality is too difficult to handle. They want to escape.”

“Credibility is important.”

“What is credibility of a child? Or of anyone else for that matter?” My father was a philosopher.

It has begun to rain in Gokarna since this morning. It was dry and parched hot when I came.

But now it has started to rain. A hard shower lasting only a few minutes, followed by long drizzles.

Rain does wonders to me. Rain is nice. It takes away dust and refreshes air. I decided to come here when I read it was deluged by torrential rain. But when I arrived and some more time still there were no showers. Only humid heat.

Rain is special. A boon from the Gods. Moist and cold, my equilibrium gets restored. I should now be able to pursue the narrative less bleak.



Wanderings in the Twilight Zone - Part 2