Climbing Chamundi Hill Read online

  “‘Are you hurt?’ the strange raspy voice asked kindly. I managed to focus my eyes on a form above the cliff just under the fruit tree. It was a large black ape with shiny eyes. I hesitated before answering, ‘I’m not hurt, but I am in great distress. I fear that I shall die soon.’

  “‘Don’t lose hope,’ I heard him say, ‘I’ll get you out of there. But first let me bring you some nourishment.’ The ape disappeared and shortly thereafter a shower of ripe fruit descended on me: bananas, mangoes, and berries. They landed all around, but I ate reluctantly because I was sick of fruit. Meanwhile, the ape disappeared again. He later told me that he went looking for a sack, which he filled with rocks, in order to practice carrying me up the cliff. I thought he had abandoned me, but the next day I awoke to see him climbing down with great skill. It was only when he reached me that I realized how large he was—and how human were his eyes. He told me to get on his back, and I wasted no time. Hanging on to his thick neck as best I could and shutting my eyes tightly, I felt the huge muscles of his back and shoulders as he began to scale the sheer rock. It was a long, difficult climb. With little for him to grasp, the ape often had to suspend himself with only one hand, while his other reached upward to find a new holding spot. His breathing became increasingly strained as the heat of the sun sent rivers of perspiration down his body.

  “When we finally made it to the top—as I looked back down, it seemed like a miracle to me—the ape lay down panting on the grass and told me that he desperately needed some rest. ‘I must close my eyes for an hour or two. The climb wore me out. After I wake up, I shall lead you out of the forest.’ Then he added, ‘These woods are dangerous, my friend. There are predators here that will gladly pounce on me as I sleep. I ask you to keep watch for dangerous animals. If I’m attacked and killed, you will surely die as well, so don’t fall asleep!’

  “I was thrilled to be useful to him. It was the least I could do for the compassionate creature who risked his own life to save a stranger from certain death. I resolved to stay awake and keep a vigilant eye despite my own fatigue. The ape sank into a deep sleep as I sat next to him. The minutes crawled by and turned to hours, while the evening stretched long ahead. Having spent several days in the canyon surviving on a few bites of fruit each day, I was starving for something more substantial than fruit. The thought of eating meat wormed its way into my head and refused to depart. I looked down at the peaceful figure of the ape, lying trustingly on his back with outstretched arms—like a prince on his royal bed. He suddenly took on the appearance of food, a cooked dish. There was so much of him, and I was so hungry…

  “I knew these thoughts were sinful even as I watched them play inside my head. But the hunger was so raw I couldn’t stop. After all, what harm could a thought do? Then it occurred to me that the ‘law for times of emergency’ would actually allow me to kill my savior! It was an old and revered law. A holy man once ate polluting dog meat citing this law…Of course that’s complete nonsense, I know it now, but at the time it seemed so persuasive. Before long, I decided to stop my hesitation, this indecisive fantasizing, and I picked up a large stone. I took a good aim at the ape’s head and swung down with both arms, already seeing the kill. But then, I don’t know, something nudged my hand at the last instant, and I missed. The stone brushed the side of the ape’s head inflicting a serious bruise, but failed to kill him. Instead, the animal jumped up and looked around for his attacker. The minute his deep brown eyes met mine he knew. A flash of utter bewilderment passed across his face, and then a profound sadness, such as I had never seen, softened his features.

  “‘What are you doing, my friend?’ he asked in a strangely calm voice.

  “His inquisitive eyes were now irresistibly clear, which made me confess on the spot. I told him that I tried to kill him, and I told him why. That made him even sadder, and a few tears appeared in his eyes. ‘I cannot imagine the sufferings,’ he said, ‘that would make you do something so treacherous. Nor can I tell you how sorry I feel to have caused you such a powerful temptation. It must have been impossible to resist—please forgive me.’ He spoke with no trace of anger, or even reproach. How could any of this be his fault? His behavior made no sense to me at the time; I just felt shame and a strong desire to disappear, which he must have perceived, for he told me to follow him out of the woods. We walked a long way in silence.

  “After some time the ape spoke again. ‘I think I understand all of this better now,’ he said, ‘and I must thank you from the bottom of my heart. You see,’ he explained after thinking for a moment, ‘after I pulled you out of the canyon I began to feel pride, even some heroic bluster. And you know, our fall begins with mere trifles, but then in no time at all we plunge into a precipice—a moral abyss—deeper than the one that trapped you: egotism. But now you have wiped off every trace of my vain puffery.’ He walked silently, then added, ‘Unfortunately, you did this at a great cost to yourself. This sin will someday bear grave results. In the meantime, please try to avoid repeating this act, and remember that evil deeds usually begin with a thought.’ Shortly after that he showed me to my home and disappeared.

  “My life returned to normal. I continued to farm, visit the temple, and donate food to the poor, just as I had always done. The shame of my action never fully disappeared, but it was private shame. Only one other being knew what I had done, and he was far away. Still, that knowledge was enough to gnaw at my soul like a minute parasite.

  “Years later, a traveling holy man visited our temple to recite the Ramayana, the ancient epic about the righteous king Rama, and to teach us morality. In the evening, before he began his sermon, he told us that everything he knew about dharma, about morality and religion, had come from his own master, an ape living in the forests of the Himalayan foothills. The ape, he added, had a deep scar in his forehead, by which we should all recognize him as the Enlightened One, the future savior of humanity.

  “That same day—the day my hidden shame became true guilt—I fell ill. Within weeks I reached the pitiable condition you see before you. Even my wife and children shunned me, while strangers turned away in horror at my sight. I left civilization behind, vowing to protect the forest animals from the harm of humans. If I may be presumptuous, Your Majesty, I urge you to avoid the sin of unnecessary killing. I do not expect my disease to be cured in this lifetime, but perhaps my future will not be so bleak. My fondest desire is to die for the sake of a helpless animal.”

  The king thanked the leper, whom he called a holy man, and returned to his capital. From that day on he forbade all hunting in his forests and lay down his own weapons.

  A cloud was covering the sun when the old man finished telling the story, but for some reason I felt hotter than before. My feet were fine, but I felt like sitting down to examine them. We were moving slowly and only made it to the last booth, which was flanked by small nim trees and several fresh-looking tecoma bushes. The old man, who had not looked at me once while narrating the story, now stopped and turned to me with intense curiosity.

  “So, my young friend, do you think the king was right to regard him as a saintly man?”

  I felt a bit silly being addressed like a pupil by a stranger in a knitted vest on a hot day. Besides, the old eccentric must have known I wanted to look at my feet—he had a bemused little glint in his eye. It was simplest just to answer.

  “No, he was merely honest about doing something awful. I don’t think that makes him a saint.”

  “And, of course, a saint would never do something that bad?”

  “No decent person would do what he did. Sure, I know saints sometimes claim, maybe even boast, that they are the worst sinners of all. I don’t think you can trust them on this. Even St. Teresa, my mother’s favorite saint, thought of herself as vile. Anyway, usually they whine about little things—a thought, a whiff of temptation. By their reckoning, everyone is a damned sinner. Their mother sinned just having them. Here it’s evident this man did something treacherous. Undeniably despicab
le.”

  “Well then, why does the storyteller,” he poked his thumb into his chest and winked at me, “bother saying that the king thought him a holy man?”

  “I’ve no idea. You tell me.” I was looking around now, trying to find a place to sit, or something to lean on. Would he mind if I sat on the floor of the booth? It looked too decrepit to be sacred. My feet didn’t hurt, but there was some irritation there, as though something had stung me.

  The old man noticed that I wasn’t paying much attention and asked my permission to sit down on the step. Embarrassed, I nodded assent and sat down next to him.

  “These empty booths…” he gestured with the cane. “In the old days holy men would sit here in meditation or yoga. Pilgrims venerated them like the gods on top of the mountain. Now they’re for lovers and old geezers…” He looked away when I began to examine the soles of my feet and changed the topic. “Do you think this man was going to heal from his leprosy?”

  “I don’t really know. I do think you’re making a lot out of a simple little story.”

  “Yes, of course I am. Yes, you’re quite right. Please forgive me…” For a few moments we sat in silence. There was no sign of a bite on my feet; they were just chafed a bit. Then the old man continued. “You know, we Indians have long since thought that there is a connection between who you are and how you feel. Even the venerable old Ayurveda tells us that the life of the mind and the health of the body are connected.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard this often in Varanasi.”

  “Varanasi? What were you doing there, if I may ask?”

  He seemed to have a gift for ignoring my impatient tone of voice, which only forced me to play by his rules. I told him that I was living in Varanasi and working as a biologist. The Ganges, unfortunately, was a fine place to study if you were interested in polluted marine ecology. I’d been there for a year. The old man nodded vigorously, as though we had something in common.

  “Ah, the pollution! I see…have you found much of it? Our Mother Ganga is said to be ever pure, you know.” His accent suddenly became exaggerated, as though he was mocking a foreigner’s imitation of Indian accents. His eyes, I suddenly noticed, were a startlingly clear green—like a cat’s.

  “I’m afraid you’ve been misled. It’s not very pure at all. It’s got high levels of chemical pollution, organic, industrial, farm runoff—you name it. Just the sewage…You can imagine the health hazard to all those people who go into the river every single day…”

  The old man broke in, “If I may ask, why did you choose this type work?”

  “Lots of reasons. I don’t know. I suppose it’s intrinsically interesting for a biologist. Maybe it’s important. For now I’m just trying to finish my doctoral work in ecological biology—inland marine ecologies.”

  “But why Varanasi? Why the Ganges? Were you unable to find polluted waterways in America?”

  “Touché,” I said, feeling irritation travel up my spine. He was nosy and he kept begging for permission to ask, then apologized for asking. I didn’t feel like letting him poke around in my life just because he had told me a story. “I’m not sure. I’ve been to India before, but I wanted to stay a bit longer.”

  “I understand. With your permission, let’s get back to the leper…Do you think he might heal?”

  “Okay. Sorry.” My heart wasn’t really in this game, but he was waiting for some answer, so I spoke halfheartedly, academically. “There’s a documented connection between psychological facts, say depression, and physical conditions such as infections. But this case, leprosy, is extreme. I mean, you see, leprosy is a disease of…”

  “Yes, of course,” he interrupted again. “What do you think the story is about?”

  It was a dramatic shift, but I went right along. “Betrayal. Sin and punishment. Maybe nobility. I have to say, though, it reminds me of one my grandmother’s favorite stories. It’s a Russian tale, a parable actually, she loved to tell us.”

  “Would you like to tell it?”

  “It’s very short, and I’m no good at this. Just a little story about a man who falls into a well and clings to a bush that grows out of the wall. The plant gradually slips out, so he knows his time’s getting short. But to make things worse, two mice—black and white—come along and start gnawing at it. That’s basically it. I don’t remember how it ends. I suppose he falls down. I think it comes from Tolstoy’s Confession, so he probably does die…You know those moody Russians.”

  “Your grandmother was Russian?”

  “No, not really. She was from the Ukraine—Kiev. My paternal grandparents came to America when their revolutionary dreams went bust in the late 1920s.”

  “And how did she, your grandmother, explain the parable to you?” There was that teacher tone again. I decided to ignore it.

  “My grandmother replaced her communism with enlightened humanism, then existentialism. She was a depressive. To her the story was about the absurdity of life—you know, a short burst of terror followed by eternal darkness. Just like her marriage, I suppose.” I heard a bird call in the trees—a parrot I thought, but I couldn’t spot it.

  “And you, do you agree with that?”

  I did not want to commit myself to a clear-cut answer. He was poking around again and this was too close. “I guess so. Maybe.”

  “And you think this story I just told you is similar?”

  “Well, there’s a fall down a cliff followed by a moral breakdown and a punishment, something like that. So I saw some similarity. You don’t think so?”

  “You’re quite astute, for a scientist.” He giggled softly. “Of course, you can say a lot about India, but never accuse us of being absurd. My countrymen, you see, do not recognize empty space—a vacuum—precisely the sort of thing your grandmother dreaded. You’ve seen the walls of the temple at Somnathpur, no? Every square centimeter is accounted for. This one is a story about a world full of things, animals, fruit, intentions, and errors. And every single thing means something. Everything is connected to everything else like the tree vines in that forest in the story.”

  “So there is no randomness, no accidents or tragedy?”

  “Not really. But don’t get me wrong, friend. Of course, that does not mean that all’s well in our world. On the contrary, things are usually very wrong. Listen to this story.” He stood up stiffly, and as I followed him up the steps, he told me the following tale.

  THE BRAHMIN AND THE GOAT

  On the banks of the Godavari, a magnificent river—the very Ganges of the South—a Brahmin was once getting ready to perform a sacrifice for his ancestors. He was a righteous and learned man, jewel of the three Vedas (he has mastered the Vedas and lives by their example), and a magnet for students from as far away as Varanasi. He commanded his students to prepare a goat by taking it down to the river, bathing it, hanging a garland of flowers around its neck, feeding it with grain, and in every other way consecrating it for its ritual beheading.

  The students did as they were instructed. They bathed and groomed a large goat, and just as they were ready to garland it, the goat burst out in laughter—a long and ringing laughter, like that of a human being.

  “What are you laughing about?” asked the shocked students, but the goat kept laughing. “Tell us what it is, or else the Brahmin will be very angry!”

  At those words the goat stopped laughing and began to cry. He moaned and sobbed like a grieving parent and refused to respond to the students’ questions. Finally he said, “Take me to your master and ask me in front of him.”

  The students led the goat to their guru and told him what happened. The man looked at the goat with amazement and asked it why it laughed and why it cried. This time the goat was quick to respond.

  “As your students were bathing me and getting me ready for the sacrifice, I suddenly remembered my past lives. I remembered that long ago I had been, just like you, a Brahmin who knew all the Vedas and all its secret rituals. I remembered that one day I performed a sacrifice for my anc
estors in which I beheaded a goat. For that one crime I was condemned, through karma, to live five hundred lives as a goat, each ending with a beheading. I have now lived all but this one life, and today I shall end the punishment and return to life as a man.”

  “I am very happy for you, dear goat,” said the Brahmin. “But then, why did you cry?”

  The goat paused before answering. “I was thinking of you.”

  A chill ran down the Brahmin’s back. He had thought the ritual texts made him safe, but now he realized that if the goat should die, his own fate would be sealed. So he said to the goat, “Do not worry, dear goat. I shall not kill you.”

  The goat laughed again. “You have already consecrated me. The wheel of karma cannot be stopped.

  Whether you resolve to kill me or to save me, today I shall die by the force of my own actions.”

  The Brahmin instructed his students to free the goat, but to watch it carefully to prevent any accident. It was a clear and beautiful day, but as the goat stretched its neck to feed from a bush that grew under a cliff, a thunderbolt suddenly struck a boulder, which crashed down and decapitated the animal.

  “So, my friend, can you say why the goat died? Whose karma killed it?”

  It was a quick little tale, much less than I expected. We had only covered six or seven steps at the pace he was setting. The sun emerged from behind the cloud, and I squinted as I answered. “To me it looks like his own karma. He even said so himself: ‘I shall die by the force of my own actions.’”

  “So he did. But isn’t it also the goat’s karma that causes the Brahmin’s downfall? Despite the fact that he tries to protect the goat?”

  “Yes, I agree, but that seems so unfair! I mean, if it’s the goat’s lot to die, why should the Brahmin get entangled in that? Maybe the Brahmin had to work out some of his own karma and at that point in time their karmas—can I even use the plural with that word?—got tangled. Or something like that.”