From Heavens Above

As an immortal revered soul, she looked at the people she had once been part of. She had christened herself the K soul. Times had changed. Change was a constant so this wasn’t surprising. The cyclic ways of the universe were now known to her and while the cyclic end itself was predictably the same, the means was always different. And it fascinated her. 

The place where she had once lived as an earth being was being lit with a millions lights. People were celebrating her earth son’s homecoming. A zillion years after it had occurred. A zillion years after all of them had ‘died’. When alive, no one had cared. Her son had lived in the forests for 14 years. No one had bothered to stop him. The son who, in order to honour his father’s words, had left for the forest. And the father, her husband, had died in grief - grieving and longing for the very son who had walked out to honour the father’s words. The son could have rebelled if he had really wanted to, and taken care of them. This is how she had always felt. But then, those were different times. Emotions of love were not as strong an emotion as the emotion around keeping and honouring words that came out of the mouth. Her son, in renouncing the state and embracing the forest life, had fallen victim by to his stepmother’s blinding love for her biological son, and who out of this blinding love had manipulated her way through to her husband’s mind. She had been conniving enough to drive out K soul’s son, the heir to be, into the forests. Sadly, she was just a means to the end - the end of so many including her own husband. 

From the heaven above, K soul’s vantage point, she could clearly see that the world of humans hadnt much changed. Women continued to manipulate. Humans had degraded to unimaginable levels - everyone from rulers to the ruled, were  conniving and outsmarting each other for their own selfish needs. Little realising that this was being driven by the law of the universe. It was only a means for the yug to end. 

K soul floated back in time to her earth life. She remembered how her earth life had been shattered when her husband had driven her son out of the land into the forest, and how utterly lonely and cornered she had become after her husband too had  died. She had been relegated to someone not even worth enquiring about after being left alone with no one to call her own. Her other sons, not from her womb, although they loved her, seemed to have been in some kind of remorse that they never came near her. They seemed to somehow feel that they had been responsible for their brother’s decision to go to the forest, and were filled with guilt and remorse. So much so that they wouldn’t come near her. Nothing was the same as before. And it was so ironical. Her husband had chosen to die when he should have stopped his son from going to the forest. The son who shouldn’t have left his ageing parents had even taken his wife along. And also his brother. The brother who, blinded by his love for his elder brother, hadn’t blinked an eye before deciding to leave for the forest with his brother. It could well  be argued that he was the more selfless son who probably didn’t get his due for all the sacrifices he made. After all, he had sacrificed his bodily pleasures and left his wife behind so his ailing parents had someone to take care of them. Or so K always liked to believe. She didn’t want to believe that he could have done it because he didn’t care for his wife. It had occurred to her more than a couple of times that this woman too had suffered the ignominy of being the wife of a devoted brother who could see no one but his elder brother. It had also occurred to her that the daughter-in-law could have thought of them as being not only selfish, but also heartless. 

K soul recalled, with amusement, how later, her son came to be known as the good ideal son and how stories about a destiny that had been pre written for him to wash away the sins being committed in the forest, began to make the rounds. The only sin that she remembered was of that evil man who had tried to lure away her son’s wife and for which, thanks to her son, an entire city was completely burnt down killing many good people in the bargain. Had her daughter-in-law not insisted on having her way, and not gone with her son, none of this would have happened. Her soul mind smiled again as she saw that the dynamics in the human world hadn’t changed much. Family too was a distant cry from what it was when she was an earth woman. The concept of family was shrinking to include just the husband and the wife. Perhaps the seeds for such a family had been sown during her earth life. Regardless, and all of this aside, what amused her most was the festival of Lights. Lamps were lit in every house. Some prayed for wealth as they believed prayers this day brought wealth, while some celebrated her son’s homecoming - even after so many years. She remembered how when her son had come home from exile, she had distributed wealth among all - untold wealth among all. She had in fact made her son do that. He had anyways lived in the forest, and had, after all, learnt to have no need for the riches. Besides, she wanted him to gather some good karma after he had become the cause of his father’s death. However, truth be told, when he had returned home after almost a decade and half, her happiness had known no bounds - a thousand fireworks had lit up her mind and soul. Far beyond any physical firework. She had said to her maidsmate, “mere Deewale nikal rahe hain, mann mein Umang jhoom  utha hai, dimaag ki bathiyaan jal gaye hain, Mera beta mere paas aa Gaya hai”

The fireworks were in her mind then. It had transformed into a Festival of Lights. 

From heaven above she watched the human drama.