THE DIARY OF MRITYUNJAY
“We wanderers, ever seeking the
lonelier way,
begin no day where we have ended
another day;
and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps, we travel.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant,
and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of
heart
that we are given to the wind and are
scattered.
- Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
--------
From,
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to all those
known and unknown faces who never returned home after the Kedarnath disaster
which occurred on the 16thJune 2013. To their families who live
with the scars left behind by those traumatic days.
PREFACE
I reproduce a passage from Hermann Hesse’s book ‘Narcissus and
Goldmund’ which aptly describes the dilemma we face in trying to immortalize
ourselves- ‘He thought the fear of death was perhaps the root of all art,
perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life's
instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves
fall, and in our hearts, we know that we too are transitory, and will soon
disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and
formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of
death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.’
It has taken me a longer time to complete this book than the other
three books, for I had to read and reread it several times while writing, to
make sure there was clarity and continuance in my thought process. But I am
happy that I have been able to arrive at answers to some of the questions that
have plagued me over the years, and I believe that these are also reflections
of the thoughts that occupy the minds of everyone.
That is why Mrityunjay, which means ‘Conqueror of death’, is symbolic
with our bid to immortality.
For more than
a year, after my third book ‘Autumn Leaves – Seasons of Life’ was published, I
did not write much. Even the postings in my blog were few and far between. A
certain listlessness had taken hold of me and I found it difficult to break
out. It was as if I had exhausted myself and was bereft of any new thought that
I could transcribe into the written word. I did nothing and waited. It was then
that I happened to see a documentary on the Kedarnath disaster that took place
in June 2013. That rekindled the angst I had felt while reading about it at
that time, especially so, because a colleague and his wife never returned. I
was aware that friends and relations still hoped for a miracle that would bring
them back, even months after their disappearance. Six years have gone by and
though the wounds would have healed by now, the scars will remain, and the
memory of those traumatic days will continue to haunt.
This was the
trigger that made me write this book. It has nothing to do with any individual
or event and is a fictionalized account of one man’s journey through the midst
of this disaster, in search of a meaning in life, and the redemption of a woman
traumatized by past relationships.
INTRODUCTION
Mrityunjay
literally means ‘Conqueror of death’. This is also a name by which the God
Shiva is referred to. The name of the protagonist in the book was a natural
outcome of the fact that the genesis of the book is the Kedarnath tragedy and
the ruling deity in the temple is Shiva.
Ahalya was the first name that came to my mind
when developing the character of a woman who had been a victim of circumstances
and her own frailty, undergoes the trauma of guilt and betrayal, the
consequences of which make her distance herself from further relationships, and
in her own words she had become ‘numb and cold as a stone’. In the Ramayana the
story of Ahalya is narrated. Ahalya is punished for her perceived infidelity by
her husband the Sage Gautama to become a stone and remain so till her
redemption by Rama. There have been various interpretations of Ahalya’s story
by different authors, but the principal question that remains is as to how far
Ahalya alone was responsible for her predicament. Weren’t the men in her life
more to be blamed for her sufferance? The Ahalya in this book meets her
redeemer in Mrityunjay. There is no resemblance to the story in the epic
Ramayana, except the concept of a wronged woman.
On the 16th
June 2013, the temple town of Kedarnath was devastated by the floodwaters of
the Mandakini and the Saraswathi due to heavy rains in the area and the
overflow from the Chorabari lake. Hundreds of people lost their lives, and more
were reported missing; not to talk about the near-total decimation of what was
once a thriving temple town. It’s in the backdrop of this disaster that the
story of Mrityunjay is set. Mrityunjay who is on a search for a purpose in
life, comes face to face with his own mortality and ends up realizing that ‘the
purpose of life is a philosophical question. We spend our lives trying to find
an answer, but this eludes us time and again. When you think you have found an
answer, a new dimension opens. So, there is really no end’.
It’s also the story of Ahalya who suffers from
the trauma of betrayal in her earlier relationships and finds in Mrityunjay,
the redeemer who pulls her out of the morass she had fallen into and gives a
new direction to her life.
Apart from the
slew of characters who form part of Mrityunjay’s journey, the river plays an
important role in the book. The creative force of its serenity and the
destructive nature of its turbulence on its journey to merge with the ocean are
but allegorical representations of our journey through life.
In his book
‘The Hindu View of Life’ Dr. S. Radhakrishnan writes-
Life is
like a game of bridge. We did not frame the rules and we cannot control the
dealing. The cards are dealt out to us, whether they be good or bad, but we can
play the game well or play it badly. A skillful player may have a poor hand and
yet win the game. A bad player may have a good hand and yet make a mess of it.
Our life is a mixture of necessity and freedom, chance and choice. We may not
change events, but we can change our approach to events.
There is scope
for the exercise of free will within the boundaries of the cards dealt to us
and the rules of the game over which we have no control. This would explain the
circumstances of our birth and the constraints which we seek to overcome. The
dealer of the cards is always a mystery. Is it God?
The four lines
in the poem, ‘Little Gidding’ from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’, aptly sums up
what I have tried to portray in this book ‘The Diary of Mrityunjay’.
‘We shall not
cease from exploration
And the end of
all our exploring
Will be to
arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.’
