“You go ahead,” he said. That at least is what he meant when he made that familiar gesture—a quick, upward-turned ruffling of the air before his face— which, if prolonged, might have made it seem that he was fanning his face. Considering the conjunction of circumstances, that wouldn’t have been out of turn either. He then pointed to his phone into which he was already sending the detached monotone he usually adopts whenever one or another ultimatum concerning that ominous word, ‘target,’ is impressed upon his conscience by his higher-ups. Unfortunately, we were before an ancient cave site among the usual holiday crowd, which, of course, means that it was a public holiday.
Standing undecidedly at the foot of a steep cliff makes one, I mean, us, bipeds, look up. Look up to catch a sense of the scale and measure of the formidable object of vision in front. To trace with eyes, the lines that give it shape. On that morning, it meant squinting at a massive rocky outcrop, and taking in the abundance that a still tame sun permitted. Wherever one looked, people were creeping out from the many cleavages of the craggy edifice, so manifestly like termites around their mound.
The call could not have been more untimely since the guards at the ticket counter had already warned us to not carry anything past the entry gate. “Lots of monkeys,” one of them had said while also pointedly pounding his wooden stick on the rough-hewn surface of the steps at the gate. They (the monkeys, not the guards), notwithstanding their preference for food, were game enough to snatch phones as well, he had added. It wasn’t as if phones or photography wasn’t allowed. Only that the guards wouldn’t take any responsibility in case a monkey took a shine to your gadget. The fellows (the guards, not the monkeys) didn’t even look threatening in their sad uniforms which could only have been cobbled together without a thought. But that didn’t stop them from enjoying the kind of discomfort people otherwise experience at the airport security checkpoint just before being frisked. Maybe that is the only fun moment in their job if it involves climbing up and down the slope several times to check what shenanigans people are up to, in and around the caves. One of them had a potbelly to boot, you see.
I was miffed. Right away, I put a curse on the ‘dogawful’ person at the other end of the call. May they find the toilet roll empty that very day when in a hurry, when it shouldn’t have been left empty by any means! Actually, not exactly that, just a minor mishap along those lines. But I was miffed more at my husband and the two hundred-odd menacing steps that lay ahead. Because “you go ahead” could only now mean “I can’t accompany you.”
To cut him some slack, this type of activity would figure nowhere on his list of favourite pastimes: neither the climbing, nor the casual or contemplative— by the latter I mean, the kind where one ends up chasing one’s own missing caudal appendage— wandering some people lapse into around ruins. So whatever the call meant to him, it was already messing with my head, and not even in disguise. As it often happens, the sting, however, was in the tail which I would have preferred to not confront. I got all worked up, my friend, because clambering up a steep path is not my mug of beer either.
Prudence, I must have sloughed off right there. I thrust my phone into the right, front pocket of my jeans, and began shambling my way up. December must have come earlier than it usually does to this part of Karnataka. And December, I suppose, is the favoured month for school picnics. The former half of December, incidentally, is also when I wonder whatever happened to my resolve to get a wide-mouthed jar for storing coconut oil. I too froze at the lowest level itself when caught in a maelstrom of children, some in white and blue uniforms, but many in motley coloured outfits, who were bolting up the weathered steps as if in competition with each other, each one of them like a rat from a trap. Running and tittering all the way up perhaps. Okay, they are children, and uphill running must provide more merriment than the divination of the magic of square roots possibly can, while sitting cooped up like cattle in dingy classrooms. But adults who can talk nonstop while navigating an inclined surface which has no inclination towards making the climb easier, those I both admire against my will, and envy. A downright churlish response, as that is, let me not elaborate on it. I waited until the little monsters reached the top of the first terrace, and disappeared into the crowd already there. So maybe prudence hadn’t completely abandoned me.
The first fifty steps did not really demand too much of my middle-aged knees. You could also rephrase it as me being in no hurry. I then shuffled towards the description board, the same kind that you find in such places in our part of the world: uninviting, and badly needing maintenance, but somehow still managing to hold up its SpongeBob SquarePants face for the benefit of those who bothered to take a gander. This particular board also had doodles at its base warning against smoking in the premises apart from the usual one that cautions against tampering of surfaces. But distracted as I was, and still sucking on the question why I had bothered to make the climb, I only barely registered the words on it. History didn’t for once cast its spell.
You are hence spared intricate details of the artworks in that cave complex. I had decided that I was not only out of place but time as well, unlike Rachel McAdams who charmingly fits into the plot of any time travel movie. Of course, it was impossible to not see how deeply the cave was laid into the escarpment, so clearly dwarfed by the rust coloured monolith that rose way up above it which looked as if it was about to crush it to the ground. Like the gaping mouth of a snoring giant which it might clamp shut any moment. And although the enormous, many-armed divinities with socket-less eyes on the reliefs flanking the porch, or the fluted columns of its pillars, or its sandstone walls, striated like human flesh, did not escape my notice, I didn’t pause to gawk at them from various angles as I am accustomed to do in places from another time.
The calm that descends on one while encountering things that have been mutely occupying their space for centuries was sadly missing. A certain kind of tetchiness, denied any outlet in a public space, may find triggers in matters one might otherwise ignore. The floor of the front veranda was littered with footwear of all kinds which several people had left behind, probably out of (conscious or automatic) habit although that wasn’t required of them. My already dour mood soured at that sight. The caves have long since sunk into the blurred lines that separate a place of worship from a place people visit to temporarily ward off boredom. But then, a picnic could be a pilgrimage as well, and vice versa. The sight of the sandals which lay helter-skelter, pointing to all possible directions, kicked here and there further as more and more people streamed in was, whichever way I looked at it, an eyesore. I disliked my response to it even more. But at what point does a custom commonly followed in a region become ingrained as a personal habit? A personal habit instigated by the need to obey some obscure, impersonal command. I still remove my shoes before entering someone else’s house unless they forbid me from doing that, do you? Not that I would have acknowledged it to myself then.
But once I stepped into the ante-chambers, it was no longer possible to go in circles inside my head, like a dog about to poop. It assuredly took a while before vision orientated itself, and the weight of its dim, but not totally dark interior made its claim. In there, the air was cooler, and seemed like an extension of the near absence of light. Even when caught among bodies helplessly brushing against each other, unintentionally exchanging sweat and body odours, a palpable remoteness made its presence felt, so much so that the figures deeply cut into the wall seemed to be slumbering. Neither benign, nor ferocious; simply aloof as if they had been slumbering since their birth. That could put restive apprehensions to rest for now.
My slow march up the slope to the second cave also went by without incident. (I was trying to reel in when I had attempted something similar. Somewhere in Himachal, yes, several years ago. That time I had scrambled much of my way up the treacherous scree slope on all fours.) And once I reached the cave entrance, I found a nook under a pillar just inside the front veranda to rest. From there, I had a nice, diagonal view of the exquisitely carved figure guarding the entrance from the right, and a closer, more elaborate vision of the one to my left, only three or four feet away from where I had found my perch. I surreptitiously fished out my phone, and clicked some quick pictures. Thus far I hadn’t run into a single monkey. And it wasn’t difficult to pretend to be a monk once the deed was accomplished. Pleased as the wily Punch I was to have accomplished what I had been told to not attempt.
Figures painstakingly carved on stubborn rock-faces centuries ago are not mere objects of vision. Often, they wring out something of other faculties of sensation, and in the finest instances the work of the senses itself overlaps. Fingers twitch or tremble because they wish to touch what the eyes are feasting on. If sustained, this summoning can, as long as attentive faculties are spellbound, inspire awe. But usually, places leave their mark depending on what you bring to the moment of encounter, or whatever world one carries within at that point in time. That is perhaps why one might experience the same place in any number of ways.
I won’t bore you by enumerating the names of the deities on that cave’s walls. (Those names don’t matter a wee bit, not in this kind of banter which slides into gauche reflections all too often because it amuses me to do that, even if it might also fizzle out as casual casuistry.) But because it was smaller in size, the acrid reek of bat poop was stronger in it. The propensity to fill space to the maximum with all kinds of ornamentation that characterises some of the most popular ancient temples, drawing visitors or devotees in hordes was absent in this cave as well. The usual suspects from the Hindu pantheon caught in various movements including the erotic were in fact set off by large chunks of space left totally blank. A flickering lamp in the pitch dark of the night, I thought, would have made both come alive. I had a good mind to end my walk then and there, in that mood. But of course, I didn’t.
Because that was when I bumped into Jackson Lamb. Er… not a lookalike of the brilliant Gary Oldman, except that he was an old man. At least, he looked like one. A louche bloke with a lush mane of gleaming white locks who exuded a devil-may-care attitude. Something at once roguish and droll about him, I thought. He must have had a thing for pockets— the grey-brown jacket he wore had at least six on it— all of them bulging and weirdly sagging with what I have no idea. Trying to entice the monkeys? Or was he purposely weighing himself down while clomping his way up? But why? And there was this other thing: his gait was odd and clunky since he had to stop every now and then to hitch his trousers up his skinny middle. Still, up he leapt the steps, two in a stride. I automatically slackened at the sight of such agility. But no, none of the above had been the first thing that had caught my eye. For, instead of the packet of munchies Lamb would invariably be seen with, he was carrying a complicated-looking DSLR camera although he had taken care to sling its strap around his neck. If that wasn’t snatchable, I don’t know what else could be! That surely pricked the balloon of my furtive delight from a few moments ago when I had managed to click a few pictures.
As you can imagine, all I thought about until I reached the next terrace was about the kind of insouciance he had about him which must have enabled his decision, a statement of autonomy perhaps. It’s possible that his stubble, at least a week old, had something to do with the kind of intriguing air he had about him. The ancient Chinese proverb that equates the clean-shaved face of a male to a meal made of eggs without salt would have you believe that it must have been an idée fixe of that culture in those times. And one tries to imagine the faces of the great thinkers of ancient Greece without their beards, or a Pope with one. The former would seem less intimidating, and the latter well, less respectable, if not less holy. Given that people also customarily grow beards for religious reasons, or from whatever other impulse, the above theory doesn’t hold water though. (Remember Schopenhauer’s morose but funny rant against beards [i]? Where he calls them obscene half-masks, and decrees that the practice of growing beards should be forbidden by the police? But his own mutton-chop whiskers would have put Wolverine, not to mention Hugh Jackman, to shame.) Customs and practices of human individuals, one surmises, aren’t self-explanatory like traffic signals, or no longer are. Or, I tend to masticate these thoughts because I can’t grow a beard. Not that I’m dying to sport one, no way! Facial hair, as long as it is not the hideously ostentatious kind you see on some devotees at the Kumbh gathering, still should make bristling easier for a man when he wants to, that is.
To reroute us from that irrelevant blather, I soon found out why I hadn’t spotted any monkeys thus far. Troops of them, all as hairy as it is possible for them and according to their standards, it goes without saying, were cavorting among the crowd before that cave. If it’s true that pilgrims or vacationers visit places favoured by other people of their ilk, monkeys tend to congregate where humans, in search of consolation or amusement, loiter. Towards the far left, a scrawny, impish boy was perfecting his somersaulting skill, soon joined by another as if the time-hardened surface of the ancient ground demanded that of them. Perhaps because the landing before the third cave, the largest at this site, was enormous. And under the pleasant winter sun, it could stimulate the playful instincts of us, homo ludens, “more bestial than any beast” [ii], and those others we call beasts alike. The crowd before this cave, in any case, was the thickest, and the general mood, feisty.
I caught a glimpse of our Lamb crouching right beneath a majestic sculpture in the wide veranda. With his camera tilted upwards, he was perhaps trying to capture it three-dimensionally. I left him to his business there, since I didn’t wish to squander my time, glowering in envy at his almost child-like absorption in his trade while happily clicking away pictures of every possible nook and cranny.
It wasn’t difficult to see why this particular cave garnered more attention than the others. With greater girth and bulk, with its interior cut far into the capacious belly of the mountain which seemed to extend forever, with gorgeous carvings of all kinds adorning its walls, it had that distinct aura one is accustomed to associate with a shrine, of a certain insistence to be seen as a shrine. Decorative figures were more in number. But more importantly, the figures populating its space no longer looked like some forgotten, sepulchral being lurking in the dark, and attended to by creatures of the night.
With my cursory assessment of its appeal made, I dawdled a little, probably wondering what I wanted to do then, stay back for a few minutes more, or get back to the trail? Boredom usually finds its delights. That must have been when I took notice of a couple, probably on their honeymoon, led by a tourist guide who was probably of my age. The expensive goggles pushed back over the crown of his head could not distract one from the young man’s most conspicuous feature; his beefy, muscle-rippling arms still gave his stout body a squarish shape. His face although is a blank slate in my head as a full-frontal view of him, I wasn’t able to catch. But his petite lady clad in a yellow, cherry-print dress had the deep rust-red stain of some intricate mehendi design all over her arms, winding like vines up to her elbows, which made it seem as if the print on her dress was bleeding its juice all over her, and dripping down her fingertips, turning all of her into one luscious, ripe fruit. I decided to follow the party, and eavesdrop on their mostly one-sided conversation in Hindi without making my interest in them obvious of course.
Making oneself invisible anyway is easier when one is among a pell-mell of people lumped together in the musty gut of an ancient, enveloping space, which intermittently smudges the solidity of boundaries that makes each one of us a discrete entity. The guide, it seemed to me, had taken great care to look presentable. That must be his occupational hazard. And that judgement I hazarded since he had to repeatedly position himself in front of the couple, facing them, and hence in my direction too while performing his role. So evidently susceptible to scrutiny. Somewhere along the line, he pointed at the smudgy remains of the frescoes on the cave’s ceiling which I might have otherwise overlooked; whatever must have eaten into the vegetable dyes of those paintings had left behind only disfigured shapes in its wake. The young lady wanted something clarified then. A question that cut into the supreme romp of this all too human, visual surveying, theirs of the space we were in, and mine of them in it. My ears naturally perked up.
“No, none of these caves functioned as monasteries in the distant past”, said the guide in response, his face beaming with gratification, rippling into an ear to ear, toothy smile. That Julia Roberts grin looked genuine, probably it was drawn from the realisation that he had had her attention all along. Or maybe it was a professional kind of satisfaction: whatever he had been droning off until then wasn’t after all in vain. Or maybe both at once. Anyway, like her, I too had connected the very layout of these caves hewed out from stubborn rock on various levels of this mighty cliff to images of seclusion and austere living.
But why does the scaling of a mountain hold such timeless significance in imagination? I don’t need to cite examples from mythologies scattered far and wide here. Whether as the abode of gods or not, mountains raise their imposing peaks too often in the most ancient myths, fables, or fairy tales. Could it be because of its potential for allegory which lends some ascending measure of value to everyday toil that ensures survival? Does it represent some kind of archetype which offers a readily available transference of meaning from actual, physical toil and the joys of accomplishment to metaphysical booty? But the perseverance involved in physical exertion, at what turn does it get joined at the hip to the idea of penance? And how does this entire attempt to move against gravity— for here is an activity where going with the flow of nature is the wrong choice at every step— blow up as some kind of transcendence, fleeting although it might be, and not necessarily confined to the biblical notion of ‘ascension’, beyond human limits including that of knowledge?
In his epistolary account, “The Ascent of Mount Ventoux”, Petrarch claims to have made it to the summit for his own pleasure only to soon rue the grossness of human passions including that of his love for Laura. The consolation channelled from Augustine’s Confessions which he reportedly reads from, in that desolate frame of mind, is to obliterate what he considers his worldly yearnings, and to devote himself to his own soul’s struggle toward god: “How earnestly should we strive to trample beneath our feet not mountaintops but the appetites which spring from earthly impulses!” [iii] I’m tempted to call that a Pyrrhic victory. Or was the arduousness of his effort necessary to arrive at such a conclusion, an arrow that hits the mark only after the poet surveys the valley from the top of the peak? A world apart from the leap of joy that the Carpenters’ song which everyone knows celebrates then.
But, but, the leap…
Remember how Camus’ reading of the allegory refuses to have any truck either with the leap to willed death as a reasonable solution to misery and human struggle for meaning, or the leap of hope granted by faith as the ultimate panacea? The quote from Pindar with which he embarks must be the pivot here because it delimits the realm of human aspirations strictly as a matter concerning the world we inhabit, the only world familiar to us in the scheme of things. Other than a dogged, defiant repetition which makes of time a perpetual present— because fallen-ness here stems from the confrontation between human need for clarity and unity, and “the unreasonable silence of the world”— and with nothing to justify, not even immoralism, the only kind of hope allowed here is what Kafka’s moles possess [iv]. They go on even if only to die “[l]ike a dog!” [v] Sisyphus says ‘yes’ because the rock is his thing. It still rolls. And as long as it rolls, he will “exhaust the limits of the possible” [vi].
But there’s an undertow here. True it’s that the picture he paints is wretched and dismal. And yet, joy, a tiny sliver of it, a quiet kind of joy which tells him that “all is not, has not been exhausted” isn’t disallowed [vii]. Maybe because Sisyphus is banished to his fate in hell not only for crossing the limits of us mortals both by discovering the secrets of the gods, and by defying death, but for his levity, his other crime, as well. Like his rock, that is his thing too. One who stole a peek into the realm of knowledge denied to humans, and played a successful prank on death once, but who is also still capable of levity must be a dangerous entity to the gods, whether of this world, or of the other. One might juxtapose to it the insult Mephisto slyly flings at the biblical god when he says in his opening speech in the Prologue to Faust: “Pathos from me would sure make you laugh/Were laughter not a thing you’ve learned to do without” [viii]. Maybe, here we see why Camus ends the extended essay with that gem of a final statement. The scope of transcendence although denied, Sisyphus remains human even in his hell, as one who is capable of levity.
And Sisyphus, as most Malayalis know, has a counterpart in ancient Malayalam folklore: in ‘Narayanan, the Madman’ [ix], or ‘The Madman of Naranam’, as he is more commonly familiar, another mountain climber who performs the same feat in endless repetition. Except that this timeless tale presents a variation. While the former’s rock rolls off on its own accord, the latter takes his hands off his rock every time he reaches the top to watch it tumbling down the slope. That, in any case, is when he bursts into delirious laughter as if that represents his moment of triumph. It is probably half-directed at himself, but that doesn’t stop him from going after his rock yet again. An analogue to the above is also offered in another activity he reportedly indulges in often, that of counting the number of ants crawling in a line [x]. Even when he finds himself in a situation where he coaxes a boon, instead of a curse from Kali for using a cremation ground, her abode, as his place of rest, he turns the idea of divine intervention itself on its head by asking her to shift the infected swelling in his right leg to his left. Condensed as it is, the myth doesn’t explain much but he too seems to see his destiny on the human scale which makes him the master of his days.
This reciprocal correspondence was established the very first time Sisyphus himself was introduced to some of us dreamy, callow students of literature by a youngish professor, who had an eclectic interest in matters that had little to with the syllabus, in one of the many mind boggling chats outside the classroom. A contagious lightness would seep into our over-earnest gossip, usually exchanged when we were out of his earshot, as we meandered from Sisyphus to the ‘The Madman’. That excitement, tainted as it probably was by presumptions of being well-versed with whatever we were chatting up about, perhaps had more to do with the marvel of thinking about such associations across time and place. But this madman, confined to his solitude and his bizarre pursuit who neither needs the adoration of disciples including the likes of us, nor makes an appeal for eternal redemption must represent the foil to the hope-selling messiah who needs the clique of devotees to be counted as one. Mad or not, he has nothing to preach. Maybe because he doesn’t see any lasting deliverance as ours to claim.
But do not allow me to lead you on here. I couldn’t have been considering these thoughts during my walk up the slope. More pressing matters were at hand, and the mountain actually delivered a mundane revelation around then. The ground before the third cave surprisingly turned out to be the highest. The cliff path thereafter, I discovered, veered to the left, and dived to a level much lower to the one I was on.
A bunch of people had taken over the steps to the last cave, to ease their tired calves perhaps. I weaved my way down through their midst, sticking to the right where the rock wall was higher than my height. If they did mutter silent curses to me for disturbing their moment of comfort after the exhausting walk, I wouldn’t be surprised. Those steps, you see, also came with a splendid view. The cave was to my right but on the opposite side, the trail abruptly ended in a sheer drop of the cliff to a vast, placid lake. Offering the kind of view that makes one miss a breath. That makes one realise, a few seconds later that one did miss a breath.
It drew one to the edge of the cliff where there was a largish tree which I couldn’t name, leaning in a gentle curve to the lake far below. Small wonder that there was a huddle under that tree. Whether in stupefaction or entrancement, they lingered there, many of them ignoring the monkeys all around, and clicking pictures on their phones— of the grey expanse of that lake under a clear blue sky with no trace of turbid masses presaging rain, of the ancient temple by its bank on the far side which lay derelict, of the rugged protuberances on the cliff enveloping it — as an intermittent, cool breeze would waft up from the quiet waters, rumpling the leaves of that tree, soothing sweaty brows. Understandable it was that the small cave on this final terrace would fall short in comparison. It was largely empty. Even those of us who had straggled in seemed to be doing that only to take a perfunctory stock of things there since we had any which way reached thus far. It made even the total nakedness of the tirthankaras on its walls look otherworldly.
On my way back, I almost ran up the steps to the level above, trying to best the nimbleness of Lamb the photographer as it were. I believe it was Francis Ponge who wisely said that those who attempt to describe a stone would soon find themselves caught under it [xi]. Winding my way through the still dense crowd on the third level, and the garble of their voices, I was soon brought to a halt, a halt at once dreadful and cartoonish. Because, engrossed in my little game to puzzle out the mystery that the old man had presented to me, I had failed to take any notice of the one thing that should have mattered to me.
For, there it lay, the wide stretch of that hard ground in all its nakedness— a nakedness that was all too real, one that was pressingly of this world— with the sprawl of its hard surface suddenly sinking at the far side into an immense, rectangular gap with nothing flanking it on either side. Like an oubliette, except that there was no trapdoor to any dungeon underneath it. How appropriate it is that that word, ‘oubliette’ is drawn from another which means ‘to forget’! Oh, to forget, if only one could do that!
An understatement it would only be to tell you that I dragged myself gingerly to the rim of the giant yawn of that rocky pathway. It was all too clearly wider than the horizontal stretch of my arms, left and right combined. I cautiously veered to its extreme left, at least twenty feet away from the cave entrance and its front veranda, to steal a sideways peek of the steps below, which had now magically turned into a fragile rope ladder, hanging too close to the wall behind it. Now, this fear, this vertigo, all too real to me, I said, is cartoonish because it can only be known from the inside. And it wasn’t as if I was stranded in precarious snow on top of Mount Everest, and a miscalculated step would have been fatal, or near-fatal as it proves to be for the protagonist of that harrowing Emilio Fraia story [xii]. Nor was it the case that I had no options to consider. I still had my phone, remember? I could have easily walked back to the safety of the cave-belly away from the monkeys, and placed a call to my husband who knows how I tend to wilt and wither away when this pincering fear has me in its grip. Still I couldn’t bring myself to do that somehow, probably out of some kind of pride in subterfuge. A more level-headed person would have sought the help of someone or other from the throng loafing about all around on that stretch.
Fear is a language that doesn’t need translation often. But there was a frog in my throat, and only a croak would come out of my mouth had I tried to speak. Or, even worse, nothing would come out of it, and I would be wildly semaphoring to some stranger there. Like an incubus this embarrassing fear was squatting on my chest. And I was sweating profusely, no, horripilating, but my fingers had grown cold, and my knuckles white like the rib-tip of a tattered, old umbrella. Any moment now, I would tumble down as if I were a sack of potatoes. No amount of wei-wu-wei could have solved my ridiculous predicament. What was needed was judicious action.
Judicious or not, this was what I ended up trying. I whirled back, and retraced a few steps. Then I moved to the extreme right, and sat down on the ground, like a mendicant, legs folded under thighs. It must have looked as if I was suddenly seized by a desire to perform yoga in public. And my face might have adopted the rigidity of a wooden mask in defensive response, the same way a doctor’s might when he/she informs some befuddled patient that the latter has some idiopathic condition, to cushion the impact of the information primarily, but also to not look like an idiot. Pushing my hands on the ground, I crept forward a few inches, like a legless person would. Keeping my head down, avoiding eye contact, trying to not think about the sneer I might have definitely invited, still losing with every little movement of my body, whatever was left of that human notion of dignity. But the incubus exultingly gnawing at my heart was quicker. Before I reached the mouth of the hole, it had already jumped down to the foot of the stairs, and was now leering up in gay abandon.
“COUNT THE STEPS,YOU LILY-LIVERED LOSER,” yelled a nasty voice in my head.
“Yes, ma’am, twelve is the answer,” I obliged.
And counting backwards, that too I tried.
Also, thinking up rhyming words.
“Yellow, shallow, something, somewhere is lying fallow…”
“Game, name, oh what a shame…”
Where numbers don’t work, wispy words should. Not in this instance though.
The nasty headmistress in her nun’s pristine white habit was in cahoots with the evil thing at the base. She was already his faithful mistress.
Gripping the edge of the ground with trembling hands, slowly, delicately, I tried to lower my posterior onto the first step, ignoring the fish-hook of the cramp that had sunk deep into my knees from behind. It was only a few inches apart, a foot maybe, but units of measurement, as you know, are deceptive. Inches tend to expand or contract.
But to have managed that much was to have the mad clanging of church bells in my ears, a whole lot of them, all in unison, as it does in some melodramatic, horror movie. Because no longer on flat ground obviously demanded that I stretch, and dangle my feet down, and find another step at the appropriate height to safely, firmly plant them. But my squirming movement down that hole on my back could now turn into a crawl, since my legs that had gone missing could be back in action. Except that a slow pace would only collude with my long-lost nerve. The only way to make it down was by evacuating the mind.
“Snap out of it. Do not think, do not pause,” whispered a little voice.
A little voice that reminded me that I had been on a Ferris wheel more than half a dozen times with my son.
In quick succession, I maneuvered to drag my derriere across the first two steps, and then pretended to be just sitting there, allowing the impatient legs– literally, all legs and only legs– of those in a hurry to overtake me. The urgent need of the moment was to have something to grip other than the step I was barely parked on. Now, the boundary wall there was not exactly a proper wall, but boulders at various heights, and occupying that spot since who knows when. In a gushing wave of relief, I extended my palm to the nearest one, like a toddler reaching for its favourite toy, or like a lover touching his beloved.
But all the palms that had grazed it across centuries had given its surface a smooth, almost waxy finish. That was its sole, silent reciprocation. A toy that could not be wound up to action. A lock that could not be jimmied open. And everything, every-effing-thing comes with a lock. (Schopenhauer must have been right, when he wasn’t fulminating about beards or the women of his time, that is: “everything in nature is at once appearance and the thing in itself …” [xiii].) My sweaty, right palm slipped across the rock’s surface, and fell back to my side like a dead leaf. And that was when I heard a snarl.
I heard it before I could attach a face to it. On another boulder a few inches behind the one I had touched, and which was placed at a slightly lower level, there was a monkey, aggressively baring all her teeth to me while sun-bathing with an infant to her right. Sitting on that rock like a queen on her throne. And her decree could only have been a verdict against my unwitting trespassing, a flat out declaration of her regal right over her territory. No chance of wheedling my way into her good graces. And at my age, I couldn’t possibly flaunt a hickey from a monkey. So, abandoning my vertical crawl, I scrambled to the left, while still on my back, my defeated arms back on the step I was perched on, and my feet like a paddle wading across another one further down. And then pushed myself, well, to push my way down the next two steps, leaning my torso heavily to the rock on my left. All that was required now was to repeat the process until my dazed head was at a height lower than the rocks on either side. Then I could metamorphose into a proper biped, up on my feet.
The rest of my tread down that path, I cannot now peel it apart into separate actions in an orderly sequence. Some living, breathing part of me was still looking down from the edge of that nightmarish maw. I no longer remember what I was thinking, or whether I was. All of me tightly tangled in a knot, body jolted back to its fundamental predicament that it is a body, fallible, bruisable. And circumscribed to the dos and don’ts of the moment, to not look up, to relearn the use of hands in locomotion, to not lose sight of my feet, to bring eyes, hands, and feet together for this most basic need to make it across until the descent was complete. And, all of that, only to get back into my skin.
Nevertheless, once I found myself on the firm, flat ground of the second terrace, I couldn’t help turning back, to have one last look at the steps I had descended. And ahead of me, beyond the sharp turn the slope took towards the landing before the first cave, beyond the flight of steps leading to it from below, somewhere way down there, I knew my husband would be waiting.
He might be sitting on the jutting half-wall next to the ticket counter, or standing wherever he had found a shade, and most probably, reading mail on his phone. His neck bent forwards, his shoulders, when looked at from behind, stooping in a slight curve while he is thus occupied, and which usually makes him resemble a punished child in his corner. But now I had a horror comedy to share with him. And with you, to whom I natter on and on, on very important matters like my occasional, social gaffe. You must anyway imagine a woman who wriggled down a mountain path like a creepy-crawly happy.
Endnotes
[i] Schopenhauer, Arthur. Essays and Aphorisms. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Penguin, 2014.
[ii] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Faust, Part 1. Translated by David Constantine. Penguin Classics, 2005, p. 13.
[iii] Petrarca, Francis. “The Ascent of Mount Ventoux”, The Italian Renaissance Reader. Edited by Julia Conanway Bondanella and Mark Musa. Meridian, 1987, p. 20.
[iv] Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O’Brien. Vintage, 1955, p. 28.
[v] Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Translated by Idris Parry. 1994, p. 182.
[vi] Quote from Pindar’s Pythian iii, Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O’Brien. Vintage, 1955, p. 2.
[vii] Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O’Brien. Vintage, 1955, p. 122.
[viii] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Faust, Part 1. Translated by David Constantine. Penguin Classics, 2005, p. 13.
[ix] Sankunni, Kottarathil. Aithihyamala [Garland of Legends]. DC Books, 2009.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ponge, Francis. The Voice of Things. Translated by Beth Archer. McGraw-Hill, 1972.
[xii] Fraia, Emilio. “December”, Sevastopol. Translated by Zoe Perry. New Directions, 2014.
[xiii] Schopenhauer, Arthur. Essays and Aphorisms. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Penguin, 2014, p. 24.
