What belief makes or can make:
1) A dead a Sacred Dead?
2) A dead increase it's Deadness?

Ch 1: March 31st - Like a Bubble floating into the air

“You can hide me but not contain me”

I don’t remember if it was an act of telling or permitting. Perhaps it was an act of innocent love? 

But those words echo sometimes in my mind. I don’t remember why she said them; I guess we were playing in the garden then, Innocent.

I remember laughing out loud and daring her, not realizing that she was baring herself for me to see. I wince every time I recall it. If only I had known then what I know now, everything would be so different, or maybe not for the cruelty it could mean. Childhood should never be held against where we stand today; even though the closer we get to the origin the clearer it becomes how far we travel from what we see. If only we were born with clarity. But then do we need clarity when we are born? The sin was not in the birth, if at all it was, it was always in rebirth, something we hold against being born.

I am still holding clenching my fists, wetting the edges of a fragile piece of paper in my hand, reluctant to let air in as I imagined I was gasping for breath. Could it be her? Of course I knew it was her, but when did I know her totally by what she said?

It is sometimes so difficult to know a person without a signature. But this was her signature, it simply read, “Meet me at Smiths on Apr 7^th”. No name, just a date scribbled on the top right corner, March 21^st. Today was March 31^st. 7^th day from now.

This year? I desperately wished so. Yes, desperate is the word and my heart was pounding hard. There was no name, but I knew it was her, I had long known to hope for this letter to come someday.  It felt and sounded much different from how I had imagined it yesterday, but it felt.  Today is perhaps always unique.

Was she dying? Plausible, and strangely that thought didn’t evoke any emotion. Her body I knew had done enough before we parted. She was reborn every day we were together and each day was a lifetime of strain on her.  But I didn’t want any of this to end, this self-inflicted but strangely liberating sense of life. She couldn’t die even if she wanted. She had much more to do and much more to travel and it was always more never less. It was a matter of running even to stand still. But what would an onlooker know?

I know she was not expecting a response or confirmation. She would still wait even if I had not gotten her note in time without an emotion out of place even if I had responded with a denial. She had to be there then, and feel being there with me or without me, every slice of being there was important to her.

I would still write, perhaps. Something might change if I wrote, I told myself. I scribbled back a note, “Smith’s isn’t what it was”.

It was just yesterday that we met, but yesterday was long ago. What is time anyhow? But I am struggling to recall events. All I have in my mind is a set of emotions and images from once. Events were never important anyhow, there are so many of them happening all the time. What you make of them cheat on the simplicity that the events are and they are the keynotes to living.  Only keynotes remain from yesterday.

I had to regain my direction, my senses, those events, those memories, it was elsewhere this world I was invited to visit. I needed no bags, no trains, no money to get there, just respond to the recall with a recall. I was lost, you wouldn’t know it if you were with me for a lifetime, and perhaps I wouldn’t tell. Explanations are messy and tiresome; mystery is more exciting and maintains the chase. I know this too well perhaps. But It was a recall of everything lost, and now was the time to explain and she always made it effortless filling the gaps for you. Believing your story and a willing performer of any character you assign to her. She barely had questions, an occasional “how” maybe, but no “why”. Perhaps because there were no boundaries and no flag posts and she was wary that the why would fall into an infinite abyss? I am inclined to think she knew it all. Perhaps she did sooner or later.

A performer draws from his experiences to create art. What seems to separating art from life is the lack of inhibition on its shores.

But for her there were no inhibitions in life, it was hard to tell when she was performing and when living. It made you distant from her, for you were an alien in her space and you had no point of reference to know her affectations. Her unbearable love was always inside waiting to be given, but who could take it?

I tried. I did. And we parted.

I still am trying, but what it takes to do is always higher no matter how high you scale, then there is the understanding that it’s impossible to be her. And even undesirable, for it might diminish my love for her, and oddly she did not seem to love herself either, she was always looking at me.  I am no mirror, and if I pointed an odd flaw she would laugh and admonish “If I did half the things I already knew I could, I would look to learn something new”. It was true, and I was holding onto a slice of her as I only could, that is before she slipped between the fingers again.

Then again, all this was her as I saw her. She was however, perhaps, different. I hated it. I still hate it. And it is inevitable that I am drawn to love it for the same reason.

I am not helpless. Neither is she. I am not joyless. Neither is she. But in equal measures we wanted nothing we could sense and feel, but know was there, like an invisible shadow. Everything was a limitation and of no value but that changed nothing in our lives.  It was an invisible layer of separation, visible only because of the separation. You could never grasp it all. Just see cheer or leer and stand back smiling.

You could burst it, but not own it, neither was it unnatural in its creation. You couldn’t hear her scream; it was too personal to her and only she could bear the noise. But you know it is love and you can only try to guard it. I tugged to hold on to “what is” while having a vision of what I wanted and she let it all go.

Like a bubble floating into the air. My Kaia.

PAST - Where are you from.


Dr. Morgan often alone in his chambers was lost in his thoughts about Megha. He was an alcoholic who was now sober from past ten years, but off late his unconscious mind dreamt of liquor.
The cause for his wants of liquor primarily being thoughts and writings of Megha. They bewildered him. Her past he thought had to be known, for in it were the cause for her views and her clumsy brilliance about an economical utopia.
Although he rejected her idea in class by a wave of a hand, he longed to discuss them alone with her. Her initial reports claimed about how she wanted to participate in times to come about international trades and exploit her journalistic abilities to uncover trades that affected crimes and political turmoil in countries.
As a writer he knew she had to know all aspects of morality and ethics and all their echoes that were now surviving to maintain a conflict free trades for world.
His own alienation came about in his younger years. His insights that he kept to himself was the reason for his growing up as an introvert.
One of Megha's passages that he read and re read and the reason being he thought was not to interpret it.
He feared his interpretations more than Megha's unspecified ideas, unspecified ideas he thought were again according to him alone.
Megha defined economics by stating that objects bought the human life in a cyclic and a mechanical cause and effect chain. A chain that chained the human beings now.
The finest passage according to Morgan read:
' If no right or wrong is where mind functions, a country whose governance pushes weapon production and specialization in arms trade would obviously do little to rationalize racial discrimination. Value to value, what would remain would always be a zero sum game. Do odds lead a productive life? Do odds lead a productive civilization? Why are we now thinking and worrying about fundamentalism, when we know about its causes. The cause is what now decides the stakes and stakes decides the morality of trades."

Megha he thought needed guidance. He decided to meet her father.


Gambler - Borders on transcendental causes.

Mornings - Melodies from skies.




"The driver won't take Leesa and the watchman in school too, so Megha you can't take her," Nancy's voice now going cold.
Megha's voice still had a song in her requests, the mornings were filled as usual with Megha asking Leesa to accompany her and Nancy refusing her till Megha actually boarded the bus. The culprit thought Nancy in a very funny way was Leesa too, the way she looked at her when her voice went cold on Megha.
The next hour passed in smiles and tears from the inner most depth of her being.
Megha was growing, changing, like a pure source, she was music to ears. She was developing amazing capacities for music.
"I know it Nancy, I see her, may be my dreams, may be those will be hers tomorrow, but the girl can sing." Biji sounded in a distant voice. Nancy was busy with the sweater, it was almost complete and before November Megha would have a fawn colored sweater same as Leesa's fur. Biji was half asleep and knew Nancy had already dreamt for Megha.
Nancy's imagination sometimes questioned God's gambling attributes and other times she used to remain in tears thanking God for Megha. The days and nights were all one, they were simply glorious.
The town planners were thinking of building a lake, the news paper head lines spoke about it and how then everybody could enjoy a full moon night by the lake. " Good for us, finally something constructive from our government Nancy," Biji sighed and gave the papers to Nancy,  "Biji maa what is lake?" asked Megha.
"You, my child, you are a lake." replied Nancy.
"A big, very big puddle of water," laughed Biji looking at a very confused Megha, "Don't listen to Momma."
"Can we take Leesa there then?" Leesa too looked at Biji.
"yes, yes, yes," laughed Biji hugging Megha.


Past - It is all over your body.

Notes - Whatever is there is your own personal travels.




The boarding school seemed strange to Mehga, nobody spoke to her. The ceilings were so high, they seemed too dark in corners. She had a confidence in her walk and wanted to be the best in class. She asked Kumar to buy a small house and stay there instead of the school in her letter. Kumar agreed but from the next term and that if she fared well in this term. She kept her promise and so did Kumar.
Sneha walked in to where Rose had left Megha. Sneha became her only friend. Sneha's parents visited the school often and when they took Sneha out for lunch, Megha accompanied them too. Sneha's mother liked Megha's long black hair, she use to sit with her and before leaving them back at hostel give them both a nice head oil massage.
She finally thought with Sneha around nothing bad will ever happen to her and from now on everything would be fine, her dad had already promised a small house near the school after the term and then she and Sneha would stay together there.
Kumar was surprised with the stack of letters on his deck when ever he came back home from Megha, some of them were blank pages, some had a lot to say. He knew Megha could read herself from inside and the best way to avoid her would be to keep reminding her that he had lot of work.


Mornings - Omnipresent.

Work - Each cognition depends on past perception.

Kumar had lost sense of chronological time. His traveling made no sense of day and night. He often found himself in an isolated tunnel losing himself for hours together.
The last he remembered of Rose was a pale face in pain asking for a medical diagnosis, he had left her lying in the hospital as he had a flight to catch.
Today he waited with bare walls for his daughter. He had no clue what and how he would welcome the child.
He hired a care taker and saw to it that he renovated a room and filled it with toys.
"Of course I forgive you, Mumma asked me to do so and the Sunday- Church class I attended always taught me forgiveness," Megha replied softly to Kumar's question of forgiving him.
"but your photo that Mumma showed me looked different from you," she concluded to sit without talking to Kumar for the rest of the drive back home from airport to house.
Megha couldn't sleep for most of the nights, she laid awake having lucid visions, which seemed to be more real than reality.
She first made friends with a cat, she called her cheenu. Cheenu purred and meowed and filled Megha's days with laughter. Cheenu used to watch Megha from breakfast to dinner, when she bathed, till she tucked herself in bed. Sometimes Cheenu disappeared for hours together and Megha as the time passed used to become sure of her not returning back. She would come back to the sobbing Megha, who then for next couple of days tie her and sleep.
Kumar had now changed three care- takers, he could not handle her passive-aggressive behavior. Always saying yes to all her demands, he again took Megha as work unable to crank up any emotions inside of him. The only thing that comforted him was Megha looked and walked like him. Her being quiet for hours together would not hurt him, but now she had to join a regular school. He decided to send her to India, and put her in a boarding school.
Megha was happy to be out of that place but she pleaded her dad to let cheenu come with her.
The next morning she got up to find Cheenu missing again but this time she never returned.



Notes - They have to contain a life.

Therapy - The indeterminate perception is always attributive by default.


Rose one morning happened to read Megha's diary titled  'Letters to God'.
She was touched by her innocence. She thought may be some people lose everything, the loss takes away the imagination to see the future. The loss is not because of some speculation in market or some trust issues or because of arrogance, not because of losing a limb or a lover. The loss has to happen in the corridors of minds, that individual's mind.
Megha was starving she thought. 'I have no right to take her away from Kumar,' she wrote in her letter to her aunt, 'I see here people staying in the premises of the churches, amongst them some barely live human existence, wire fences marks the limitation of their world. Then there is this human spirit that asserts itself which I realize reading Megha's diary. She sometimes does play with those children along the barb wires, laughing and singing. In me I see a new leash of surviving and being resilient, for Megha at least.'
The letter was never posted.
Megha was very humble, the teachers and Nuns called her human touch very striking. She was open and vulnerable.
She was later to understand the definitions of good and bad fortunes and their disadvantages and advantages.
She trusted the guardian after the death of Rose to return to her father in Germany.
She kept her self open in the fire that burnt her soul, the sun rise she saw from the window of the plane she flew would bring her more troubles she knew. She was eight and she knew somehow the value of hope.



Work - It is what that has to be DONE.

Pets - Unrestrained Moments of Joy.



"It's a fawn colored Labrador retriever puppy, female, I checked with the owners, they seem to be good people." Biji had called up Nancy during lunch hours.
"How much?"
"Eight thousand rupees Nancy."
"Expensive?",
"yes, but one look in her eyes and you don't won't to look anywhere,"
"you won't show it to Megha before buying it Biji?"
"You want me to, actually it isn't necessary."
"May be you should."
"Okay, I guess the owner has had a litter of eight puppies."

Megha named her new friend Leesa. Leesa was in her seventh week and had black button eyes that wouldn't leave Megha's eyes. The head use to twist and Megha would know Leesa wants to be carried.
Leesa would run all over the place, tumble at will and keep staring Megha. She was proud and the friends that spent the evening with her and Leesa as their center of attention would thrill Megha. Every evening she had a story for Nancy, Leesa did this, Leesa did that, her  oratory resembled Biji a lot.
"Momma look BijiMa and I made a box house for Leesa, she can now sleep near my bed."
The corrugated box house lasted only for one night, the next day Nancy hunted for a carpenter to get one simple box made for Leesa.
Every morning there was a new tantrum of taking Leesa to school too. Every evening Nancy thought she had gone back in to past when she bought Megha home. Medicines, what food to give, what not to give filled all the spare hours.
"Biji, all your fault," said Nancy one night completely exhausted."
"Mine, look who's telling me this." and she burst out laughing,
"she was trying to make her sit and then later how to shake her bums, Oh Nancy! you had to see it to believe it how hilarious it was."



Therapy - Try A Puppy.

Opposites - Everybody understands in bits.



"They are promoting me, seems like work trouble, I guess more of paper work and management issues," Nancy seated herself besides a sleeping Megha, she took of her glasses and continued, "I have to sort this out."
She did think of quitting the job but was afraid to act. Her concern for Megha and giving her a hundred percent attention was the cause behind the fear.
Megha had now some friends in the neighborhood and she spent the evenings with them. Biji would always accompany her and never leave her out of her sight. 

" Hug Biji and she won't be hurt anymore." Nancy smiled to a pale Megha.
"No hugs, no kisses, she knows very well she can't hide behind you."
"then bring me my own dog, I want it," Megha suddenly threw a fit.
"this all your fault Nancy, look she is turning in to a brat now; and she was fine actually, the minute she saw you, she knew she had a cover." Biji winked at Nancy and kept the voice cold and stern.
" listen to BijiMa Megha, you cannot play with street dogs, they can harm you."
"I know tili from when she was a small pup momma, BijiMa saw it only today," the voice was now flowing in tears, "ok, ok, we will see about it tomorrow, now come here, let moma get fresh, she has just come back. Come here, are you hungry?, want some noodles," Megha came out and followed her BijiMa.
"Can I have a small pup of my own BijiMa?"

Much later in the evening as Nancy sat drinking coffee she pondered and smiled, "Remember Biji her potty training took so much time, she refused to let go off the diapers."
"yes, yes but I guess the diapers are an addiction of sorts, they provide safety to the falls, the child senses it can fall when ever  and it does not hurt; and the child feels dry all the time, they cost a lot too, in our times we had almost fifty small cloths hanging all over the place, drying." laughed Biji, "I know, the diaper packs wouldn't even last a week," said Nancy while stroking the neck of Megha who was deep in some fantasy dream. She smiled in her sleep.



Pets - At a certain age they are always around.

Healers - A way to be human again.

Nancy was happy to see her swing. Little Megha would sit on the swing and twirl it round and round till it was all tightened up to rotate back to it's original state.

Her stance in the kitchen when hungry was like a stalk with little just about to bloom flowers.

Sometimes she would walk in a drunken state, never at a place, from here to there like some butterfly.

"You lose a great deal if you don't observe children in this age, it's an education for us." Biji spoke while cooking curry.

"I can't take of my eyes from her. my father would have done the same, may be," relaxed Nancy in the soft rays of setting sun.

"You had to know or hear my mother speak of me with sand, me in sand and sand in me, she said this for all children, how and what sands do to us in that age, pity we have no beaches here."

"Could we watch a movie, some movie about sea and beaches or oceans, or this summer we could go somewhere?" Nancy got up and raced to the kitchen.

"Yes, yes." laughed Biji.

"The other day as I came out of bath, she was standing by the door, waiting for me to finish and step out, her face full of questions, pale and she might have had shrunk too, she held my hand and took me to the veranda and showed me a pigeon that was lying still, I touched to find it being dead and she ask me where is the bird, I was surprised by her question, she might have been occupied with what was happening, she might have seen it in movement and then it going still, so she wanted to know what happened, and I was wondering how could I explain her."

"yes how could one explain it being alive or dead to this age."

"Sometimes all these books how about teaching children are all lies, I threw all the books out," laughed  Nancy.

"How did you manage?"

"managed it, but all my answers made her ask , then momma where did it go? her eyes never left my eyes."

Opposites - Anything we know of it is speculation.