When Shiva Smiles

Cover

WHEN

SHIVA

SMILES

Col RK KAPOOR

© Col RK Kapoor, 2014

First published 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without the prior permission of the author and the publisher.

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any living or dead person or events or places will be entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-81-8328-353-3

Published by

Wisdom Tree

4779/23, Ansari Road

Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110 002

Ph.: 23247966/67/68

wisdomtreebooks@gmail.com

Printed in India

This is a fictional story, but it could very well be true, because Shiva, the Absolute Truth, is the heartbeat of this story.

The characters in this book bear no resemblance, incidental or intentional, to anyone living or dead.

Om, the central character, however, could be you or I or any one of us, embarked on the journey of life, sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy, negotiating emotional twists and turns, seeking that elusive light at the end of the tunnel and, more often than not, returning to square one.

O Shiva

O Shiva!

I promised you this book, that day when I lay on that table in that hospital, awaiting the surgeon’s knife, trying not to show the terror that was welling up inside my heart, like a tidal wave.

I was afraid to die and appealed to you to save me, with a promise that if I survived, I would write a book on you.

I survived!

I know that you would have saved me anyway, that you don’t make such deals.

But then, a promise is a promise!

I dedicate this book to Usha, my wife and soulmate, who came into my life at a time when I was lost and stumbling on the path.

She steadied my ship by holding my hand and steering me towards a new dawn of hope, love and faith.

She may have shed her mortal coil, but she is still holding my hand!

I am grateful to…

SHIVA who gave me the initial push! He seemed to say, write a book on me, neither with sermon or preaching, nor with austerity or ritual. Paint a picture of day-today life, with an occasional brush stroke from me.

Usha, my soulmate, who gave me the go ahead for writing this book. ‘Writing is your real forte,’ she said, ‘you have so much to say. This is the best way to say it!’

My three daughters, whom I’d happily call ‘my three sons’, have done the necessary goading and prodding to make me persist with this task. My eldest, Ma Prem Ritambhara, even prophesied, ‘The success of this book is on the cards!’

There are many, oh so many, who have, in one way or another, won my gratitude by helping me stay focussed on this venture. Here are some of them:

— Karishma and Vandana, my buy-one-get-one-free dose of grand-daughters, who shook me out of my spells of idleness and mental blocks.

— Kul Bhushan, who blew away the fogs of indecision and apprehension from my head.

— Amit Bhatia, whose optimistic advice took away my initial jitters. May SHIVA bless him with eternal peace.

— Anjon Bose, art master, and his two students, Priya and Astha, of the Tagore International School.

— Roopmati, singer-cum-lyricist, who provided the tempo in the musical passages of the book.

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— Nilufer, a friend indeed, who, through a spate of Mumbai-Delhi phone calls, kept a live and lively interest in the progress of this book.

I bow my head, in reverence, to Ammi Ji, the Sufi guru, who made me dance in the masti of love and faith, and Osho the Zen Master, who made me scream out my repressions and suppressions, and fly out of the cage.

And finally, Archna Didi, the smiling messenger of God, with divinity sparkling in her eyes, who recognised the child in me and blessed the book.

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Authoritis!

I guess I was born to be a writer!

As I glance back at the eight decades of my life, I recall with childish glee, the first page of writing that flowed out of my nib-holder pen.

I was made to write ‘I will not be late again’ a hundred times, with a cane-wielding school teacher looming over me.

But I was late, again and again. While my ultimate destiny lurked ahead around the proverbial corner, I kept delaying the inevitable by taking detours and bye-ways, in search of career satisfaction.

The twenty-six-year stint in the Army, however, was a blessing-in-disguise for me. It took me on a thrilling rollercoaster ride, filled me with patriotic zeal, and I grew tall in the finest profession in the world!

But I never really grew up! The passing years tinted my hair with grey streaks, but the child within me danced and pranced in the garden of imagination, chasing butterflies.

From the Army to the films, was a hop, skip and jump, which landed me in a make-believe landscape with everchanging visuals. I tried my hand at some serious storyspinning.

And the bug bit me! I began to display symptoms of Authoritis! Itches and rashes of scripting and screenplay writing reached a fever pitch when I wrote Fauji.

Fauji matched TRPs with Ramayana and Mahabharata, blockbusters of those days. It made Shah Rukh Khan shoot up on to the Bollywood skyline. It made my ego shoot up even higher. I basked in ‘borrowed’ glory for some time; ‘borrowed’ because actually it was glory for him and I pretended not to see the S in SRK.

It was a surgeon’s knife, back in ’96, that shook me out of this languor. A cardiac operation restored normal blood supply to my heart, but this experience blew out the simultaneous blockage in my brain!

I turned that corner!

I would write a book! No, I would write many books. And the first book would be on SHIVA.

When Shiva Smiles is that book. It is not mythology, because Shiva is not a myth. It is not biographical, because a biography on Shiva, like him, would be endless!

Shiva is the heartbeat of this book, divine yet subtle, indulgently witnessing mortal existence going around in circles.

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‘My Lord Shiva! They call you the most approachable god in the trinity.’ said Parvati.

Shiva quipped, ‘And yet it took you so many births to reach me, my beloved?’

‘That was because of me, my lord. I hesitated. I loved you but I wavered. I wanted you but I was, as a mortal, apprehensive about becoming your consort,’ confessed Parvati.

‘And I waited for you, my beloved. I allowed you to resolve the conflict within your mind and listen to the true beating of your heart. Once you became totally focussed on being with me, I was with you.’ said Shiva.

‘Which makes you approachable, most approachable, my lord.’

Shiva said, ‘Yes, my beloved! One does not have to go the difficult and the arduous route to reach me. Like that girl down there.’

‘Girl, my lord?’

‘The girl on the mountain.’

The Girl on the Mountain

Anjali shivered as she looked up. All she could see was a vertical wall of rock seeming to stretch into infinity. She had somehow made it to this point, using all her mountaineering skills, but now…

She wondered if she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Panic welled up deep inside her and she shivered again.

Should she go back? She laughed and almost lost her footing, as she recalled the words of her mountain school instructor, Gyan Bahadur.

What goes up must come down. And when you go up a steep uncharted mountain, coming down may be much more dangerous. A slip, down here, may well be your last slip-up.

A piece of rock went hurtling past her into the abyss below. Anjali willed her legs to stop trembling and looked up again.

NO! She would not go back, because if she did and

somehow managed to reach the foot of the mountain, she’d never hear the end of it. They would tease and taunt her relentlessly.

Especially last night at the base camp because of what happened when she had chided them for chickening out.

* * *

Darkness spread its mantle swiftly on the base-camp, as if someone had abruptly switched off the light.

Inside the tent, a battery-powered lamp offered feeble resistance to the gloomy onset of the night. The four occupants of the tent looked even gloomier, particularly Anjali, the youngest member of the team, sitting slumped against the tent pole with a scowl on her pretty face.

Girish, her fiancé, sat on the carpet near her, reassembling his dismantled pistol after cleaning and oiling its components. He was a tall, athletic young man, scion of the Goel industrial empire. He was the leader of their mountaineering team, who called themselves ‘The Fearsome Foursome’.

Girish looked at Anjali. He offered her an oil rag, saying, ‘Here Angel! Wipe that frown off your face.’

‘Very funny!’ she said scornfully, ignoring the rag.

In the other corner of the tent, the other two members of the team, Perumal and Aloke, sat on a camp-bed, talking in whispers. Perumal was a muscular giant, who had won the title of ‘Mister Tamil Nadu’ three years ago, when he was nineteen. He was very fond of flexing his muscles, particularly at Aloke, who in comparison, was lean

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and wiry. A graduate in psychology, Aloke had a scholarly look about him which was further accentuated by his steelframed spectacles.

‘It’s logical!’ Aloke said under his breath.

‘What?’ Perumal asked.

‘Those two! Girish and Anjali. Like poles attracted to each other. A perfect example of beauty and the beast.’

‘If Gary were to hear you say that,’ Perumal hissed in his ears, ‘He’d break your specs while you were still wearing them! And, so would…’

Girish’s voice interrupted him. ‘What are you two gabbing about?’

‘Nothing really!’ Perumal replied. ‘I was telling Aloke about the wind howling outside. It sounds like a pack of wolves gone mad!’

Aloke quickly chipped in. ‘And I told Perumal that it was the venturi effect!’ He adjusted his specs in a typical manner. ‘The narrow valley acts as a funnel and sucks in the wind, which then rushes at a great speed, producing this keening sound—’

His voice choked off in mid-sentence as Perumal gripped his throat.

Girish laughed. Anjali showed no reaction.

Perumal released Aloke’s throat, saying, ‘It sounded like wolves to me!’

‘All I could hear was chickens!’ Anjali said with a sarcastic laugh.

They gaped at her.

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‘Only chickens would abandon a mission halfway!’ she said.

‘Not abandoning it, Angel!’ Girish said. ‘We are just postponing it. It’s the wrong time of the year.’

‘If I remember right,’ she retorted, ‘we chose this time of the year for the challenge it offered.’

‘This is no challenge!’ Perumal said. ‘We thought the rainy season would be over by now, and it would be possible to scale a vertical rock face like this one!’ He whirled on Aloke, who had begun to adjust his specs. ‘And one more word of logic out of you and I will…’

Aloke promptly closed his mouth.

Anjali stood up and moved to the tent’s door-flap, saying, ‘I see what you mean. We should come back at a more suitable time, in dry weather. And what’s even better, when they have built a motorable road all the way to the top!’

She opened the flap, looked back at their astonished faces and said, ‘Good night, girls!’ And with that, she returned to her tent.

* * *

Sitting precariously on a narrow ledge, halfway up the mountain, Anjali could not suppress a giggle as she recalled the expressions on their faces when she had called them ‘girls’.

Back in her tent, she had tossed and turned in her bed, not willing to accept defeat at the eleventh hour. She had sat up with a sudden resolve. She would do it alone!

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In the early, predawn hours, she had quietly left the camp, climbing gear in tow. She had left a message for Girish, saying that she was going to take some photographs of the rock-face, and would be back in some time.

The screech of an eagle somewhere above her, jolted her back to her present predicament. She had to find a way out.

At that precise moment, the eagle attacked. It had been watching her for the last one hour and now felt threatened by this intruder.

The eagle flew out of its eyrie, gained height, folded its wings and plunged down on the girl, emitting an earpiercing cry. Before she could react, the bird raked her parka with its razor-sharp talons and flew away.

Anjali lost her foothold and fell. Luckily, the anchor rope remained steadfast and she dangled in space like a puppet on a string, flailing her arms in pain.

Up above her the eagle was getting set to attack her again.

From somewhere below, Girish’s voice reached her. ‘Stay cool, Angel. Pay out the rope gradually and lower yourself. I’ll catch you. And don’t look down. Come on now!’

The eagle came diving, but a piercing scream from Perumal made it veer away and disappear.

Anjali shut her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart as she lowered herself. There was an ominous cracking sound from the crag around which the anchor rope was moored. Anjali, in panic, tried to descend faster.

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Girish’s voice was very close by as he said, ‘Now swing to your right and left. That’s it! Bigger swings…that’s it…’And suddenly she was in Girish’s arms.

He quickly freed her from the anchor rope, and not a moment too soon, as it went tumbling behind the rocky crag, narrowly missing them.

Girish said softly, ‘No wonder I’m in love with you. You have the ability to defy the odds and dare the elements.’

Anjali hugged him tighter. ‘So, be warned. One day I may defy you too.’

‘I dare you!’

Perumal and Aloke joined them. Aloke said, ‘So, What happens now?’

Girish released Anjali from his embrace and said ‘Angel, now that you