The Ecology of Grief: Extract from Resurgence a novella by Balwant Bhaneja

Credit: American Association of Christian Counselors

H

e was holding in his left hand the tawny Samsonite leather bag and in the right a crumpled raincoat. He must be somewhere at the edge of a desert. How stupid that he should be carrying a raincoat in the desert. A solar hat to protect him from the blazing sun would have been more sensible. Obviously, he had not planned to be there. Nor had he any clue how and why he had ended up there. He did not protest as he always wanted to be at some place like that – so different from the cold expansive plains of the North.

Though dazzled by the suddenness of his displacement, he felt at ease there, without his wife or children- alone. He walked along the dusty wide boulevard. Freshly painted musty yellow stucco houses lined each side of the empty road. In the bright mid-day sun, it was quiet, except for the sporadic cawing of a couple of crows. His beige coloured baggy trousers and jacket – everything had acquired the dusty hue of the desert. It reminded him of one of those long takes from an artsy old film shot in an arid wasteland.

He was hungry. Since the street was empty, he had no choice but to knock at the door of one of those brightly painted row houses. The dark rivet knobs were evenly spread over the heavy hand-crafted wooden shutters. There was a heavy steel chain on one of the two shutters and a hook on the frame to which the chain was held on. Instead of knocking at the door, he casually took the chain off the hook as if he was returning home.

The lady with the dark eyes – those women of the desert with big eyes distrusting strangers – stood behind the door. Her head was covered in a black shawl with white laced border, yet he could see the grey streaks in her hair emerging under the shawl. The woman wanted to be sure that he did not cross the sill. He tried to search for a word that might appropriately describe him: a husband, a tourist, traveller, vagrant, a vagabond? He could not understand why he was always seen as an intruder. It must be his thin gaunt face. He could sense the apprehension in the woman’s voice. She was ready to slam the door. But suddenly she changed her mind. Pity perhaps.

The lady must have read his mind. She asked sharply – “Hotel?” Her aggressive attitude showed she did not want to speak to him. He just wanted to know if there was a place nearby where he could stay overnight. Even though unfamiliar with the language, he nodded, “Yes, a place to rest.” Pointing in distance, he could see her hand gestures, she wanted to help. Left, right, straight, near the mound. Abruptly the shutters were shut. The dark rivet knobs with the dangling chain once again stared at him.

He turned around in the direction the woman had pointed. Even with the brightness of the noon, he felt he was walking as if in a jet lag. The hotel once used to be a spa, the pudgy short man at the reception told him. People suffering from rheumatism came to dry their waterlogged limbs here, laying buried for days in the sand, only their heads stuck out of the grains to tan. When the sun became unbearable, an attendant would place sheltering colourful umbrellas over their faces. It was a well known desert spa. Plane loads of people came from all over, especially the fair-coloured from the North. It seemed off season. Place looked empty, with hardly anyone around.

Tourism had been the main business of the hamlet. Most people in the area were engaged in what is called these days the service industry, either catering or as guides for tourists. Interesting, that in the off season, all those who served, mainly the men, would migrate to the North in search of work. In either direction, the town’s inhabitants were meant to serve. Up North, they had a friendly name for them, the “guestworkers”. However as soon as the winter arrived they rushed down South to set up things for the visitors. Attractive spa packages were offered by the town hall to lure tourists: health, food, sex, and even unfathomable ecstasy.

Though it was the off season, there was still a waiter or two around the huge pavilion shaped hall. The hall was supported by slender Ionic pillars, built of iron, walls painted light blue, interspersed by tall windows. He always wanted to eat in such elegant surroundings. The menu was limited but enticing. He enjoyed the red meat. Instead, he chose this time the fish – the poached red snapper served with Portuguese rosé, light and young. Putting the platter before him, the waiter remarked that the red snapper was a very handsome fish (especially when it was brought to the table swimming in steaming wine broth, delicately traced with red). The snapper looked ready to jump at him. Even when he had done a fairly good job at filleting it, the gaze of the fish’s eye unnerved him. He thought the fish’s head, despite being detached from its torso, would from time to time wink at him.

The blink of an eye, fifteen blinks fifteen times and twice again. The watch, seven and a half on auspicious days, days of the week and months, just mere divisions of time. It was there yesterday and will be there tomorrow, remaining unchanged. Ages since he thought of his mother. She always went for the pallo fish’s head. Everybody saved the head for her. Using the long white steel needle, she would enjoy the nibbling at the marrow in the Mundi, the fish head. Her plate would have the Mundi from the father’s fish, his brother’s and his. He remembered sitting across from her,  dilated dark grey orbs of the fish heads staring at him.

Mundi, he tried to enunciate the word. His wife and children would not have understood its significance. Mundi – in his mother tongue, it also stood for a ring, the wedding ring. It must have something to do with the roundness of fish’s orb – the Mundi, Die Mund, Le Monde, Il Mondo… the ring, the noose, the head, the circle, the globe, the planet, the universe…While looking into the snapper’s eye, he continued his musing, enjoying the repetition of the “M” sound, squeezing his lips into a round shape – wishing to kiss someone. He noticed his lips had gone rough and dry.

In spite of its delicious look, he left the snapper unfinished, and turned to the cold strawberry soufflé. The waiter re-appeared to pour the dark coffee into the shiny bone-china cup. Strange eating such an exquisite lunch in the middle of a desert all by himself – the camel soup was all he had expected to be served. It was hot, but the dining hall did not need any air-conditioning. It was neither humid nor sweltering. A gentle breeze wafted in and out of the hall making the thin and soft drapes across the tall windows, now and then brush against him. The smell of the salt in the air made him think that there was an ocean nearby. Clearly, not many knew about the delights of the spa during the summer season. From where he was sitting, through the windows, he could see on the one side the immense desert, while on the other side, there was lush greenery growing all the way up to the top of that mound. He paid the bill and started walking through the arbour towards the little hill. He remembered vaguely a poem from his childhood:

I stumble in the desert wastes

From deserts I clamber up the hills;

I lose myself in the forests.

Without anyone to guide me

I shall not find my way.

If thus I wander everywhere

I shall go from life to life.* (1)

He had mistaken the person working in the garden near the top of the hill to be the chef. It must be his bright white tunic and the white cap. In fact the white cap unlike the ones donned by chefs, was a pheytoe cap the Zoroastrians priests donned. The man in the white was quite tall, very striking. Despite his skeletal appearance, he looked youthful. Around him, he had all sorts of gardening tools: rake, spreader, spade, saw, axe …he would use them first to till and then to smooth the ground, as if to ensure that the rich dark soil of the mound was ready for season’s seeding.

As he approached the garden beds, the man in the white smiled at him. He realized something inauthentic about the smile, it was the upward shape of the corners of the man’s mouth. Assuming the man in the white to be a caterer, he complimented him, “The food was excellent.” The man ignored his comment. “When did you arrive?” He was surprised by his baritone voice. There was a sense of expectancy and familiarity in his question.

“This morning.”

“Welcome. Glad you came.”

How did the man knew him, he wondered. Looking at his tawny duffle bag, the man asked him, “What do you have in there?”

“Just a few clothes and books.” he replied.

The man continued with his activity, reassuring him, “You will like it here.”

Suddenly, his attention was drawn to the bottom of the pitchfork the man was working with. He felt a lump in his throat. A head at the sharp ends of the pitch fork. Casually, the man pushed the decapitated head out from the fork. He could see now spread across the ground human heads: young, old, male, female…cut off from their torsos.

The man in the white robe unperturbed continued to separate them, and plant them as seedlings in the ground. While he stood there dazed by this bizarre sight, the man asked him to wait. He had to go into the tiny bungalow to bring on a wheel-barrow a few more bodies. He dragged the barrow with bodies piled and then started to unload them one by one. The man took the saw from the tools on the ground. He gently felt the teeth of the saw to be sure that they were not blunt; again he started severing some more heads from the bodies. One would have thought there would be a lot of blood and guts spluttering around. But it was just body and head without any mire of innards.

“I bury the head in the ground, and the rest goes to the birds as their feed.”

He was getting alarmed about the man. “I thought you were the chef at the hotel.” The man in the white chuckled, “Chef?”

He was astonished by the empty gaze of the man.

“No!” He paused and then stared into his eyes, “I spin dreams – dreams within a dream.” It seems the man could sense the visitor’s unease. “I don’t know why people are shocked when they see me at work. There is no need for that. I don’t kill anyone. The bodies they bring to me are dead.” Pointing to the dead body which he had picked up to throw at the heap, the man muttered, “Oh how we are attached to bodies – alive and dead!” He had never heard of a people who would let their any one do such a grisly thing. In this day and age, he couldn’t believe such a person could exist, severing human heads and seeding them to grow.

Shocked by such a grotesque sight, he wanted to sneak away and warn the townsmen of the presence of this deranged man amongst them, carrying out the hideous act under their noses. While he hastily walked down with his bag to the other side of the mound, looking for some kindred soul who would listen to his story, unconcerned the man in the white kept on spreading the heads in the dirt.

At the foot of the hill, two handsome men, one of them slightly bald and older, suddenly appeared from within the yellowish haze of the desert. He was bewildered at the way they greeted him as if they knew him. Dark hair, overnight unshaven face, yet dapperly dressed – light pale beige cotton suits, open collar shirts, dusty loafer shoes – almost like him in appearance. He found in his excitement he was mumbling, trying to tell them about the man in the white on the mound. He felt he was perhaps not making any sense to them. The two men while consoling, told him not to worry. Putting their arms over his shoulders reassuring and comforting him, they told him that he had come to the right place, and that the man on the top of the mound meant no harm.

They said that it was true that the man on the hilltop was a priest. He was the priest of the moen-jo-dharo, the mound of the dead. They laughed at his suggestion that he might be a psychopath. The older gent remarked, “He is a nice man. He separates the spirit from the matter. He is a Seer.” Seer. He was felt a bit giddy. It must be the sun or the wine he had taken earlier at the hotel. He did not understand what his new companions had meant by calling the man on the mountain a seer. Anybody with eyes who could see was a seer.

The friendly awe, with which they had described the man, stopped him from asking further questions. He thought he would wait for a right moment to raise the subject again. The two men had by now flanked him. He was glad to have met some friendly souls in this desolate place. For a long time, the three walked around the barren town. He did not know how they had become such close buddies so quickly. The trio, with their arms around each other, were deeply engrossed in their conversation punctuated with loud laughter. They reminded him of his friends from the past. In spite of the isolated and forlorn look of the town, his two new buddies seemed so well informed, so worldly. They talked endlessly about everything, anything under the sun: wars, politics, economics, religion… He was impressed with the wealth of knowledge they had. So rarely, one meets people with good looks and a good head.

They laughed at his comment about the seclusion in the desert. “Desert is not an island. We have books, we get newspapers, we have satellite antennas to tell us what’s happening around. Information is no problem.” The three stopped in front of an impressive tall octagonal shaped building with a pyramid sloped roof. The building had huge entrances with wide arches. He was not sure if the building was a church, temple, synagogue or just an old market gallery. The building’s shape had made him think of a huge gazebo-like music hall. His friends seemed very proud of the building. Repeatedly, they would remark about its style and the architect who had designed it, both of which he had never heard of .

Like the town, the inside, the hall had been freshly painted in the deeper tangerine yellow. There was something enchanting about the light transparent glass ceilings, beyond which one could see the pristine blue sky, calm and tranquil. He was surprised to see his reflection in the glass of the ceiling, his jaded image wrapped in a yellowish tint, mounted hazily against the blue sky. His friends noticed the amazement in his eyes.

To help him relax, they took his raincoat and his bag from him. He was thankful for their kindness. He did not know how long he had been looking at the sky or was it the glass ceiling? Half asleep, half awake. It was as if he dreamt that he was not dreaming. Seeing, yet without the seer and the seen. He kept on looking upward. Suddenly, he realised that he was standing all by himself. His friends were nowhere to be seen. He remembered that they had his bag and the raincoat. While he was gazing at the sky through the glass ceiling, they must have slipped out. Maybe this was one of their practical jokes. Still, he was worried. He had been warned to be careful from the possibility of getting robbed while travelling in the desert. His raincoat had stood him in all sorts of weather.  A chill ran through him but not wanting to be seen as a sucker, his self-esteem pushed him to chase the two without knowing in which direction to move.

When he had entered the hall with those men, there was just one street leading to the building. Now he realised this was not after all a small one-street town. Each of its seven entrances had roads radial extending out of the town. He was not sure which one of those the two might have taken. To his surprise, the grill gates hidden inside the arches of the entrances slowly started to roll down. The shutters on the gates had a strange mechanism. While coming down even before they could barely touch the ground, they would begin to rise upwards. Of all the seven gates randomly coming up and down, and up again, at least a half would be open and a half would be closed at the same time. He was captivated by the phenomenon of their descent and ascent – there was a rhythm to their creaking rise and fall, a rhythm similar to the swinging colourful ornate wooden horses of a merry-go-round. His anxiety about the bag and the raincoat was diminishing. He was amazed at himself, saying first inside his head, and then loudly, “Who cares? Who cares? Who gives a …” The more he repeated these words, the lighter he felt. At such a moment, the sounds of cymbals, bells, organs should have begun to echo in the hall. But nothing of that sort happened — except the sounds of the rising and falling grills continued in the primal silence.

He found that though he was on the ground, his hands elevated, were moving upwards, floating up  getting lighter and lighter. Arms outstretched, staring at the blue sky, his feet moved and he began to swirl, round and round, as if he was a mendicant dervish dancing in the desert.

***

”That last image — hold on to it.”

The psychotherapist Dr. Satte intently looked at him. He had dark circles under his eyes.  He was responding to what Mahesh had just described, “A very primal dream, that’s understandable.   Indeed the loss of our dear ones does bring a sense of deprivation in us.” Satte’s gaze was fixed on him.  “It’s about love – wanting to be loved and one’s incapacity to demonstrate love. What was the name of your friend, you said…?” There was empathy in the therapist’s tone.

“Satinder.”

Dr. Satte was looking through the window of his office towards the slope of the hill with new crocuses emerging through the fresh grass. The park ran up to the edge of the high-rise buildings of downtown Montreal. In the distance the Saint Lawrence River and the clear blue sky in the late afternoon filled the remaining top of the frame.  The doctor excused himself and returned with a small brass can to water the plants in pots on the table. “I always water the pots around this time of the day just before leaving for home. The evening is perfect for them to have peace and quiet to absorb moisture.” Then turning around, he said: “Sorrowfulness brings an imposed isolation, not from our physical surroundings, but an isolation that we create within ourselves. We become judge, jury and guilty at the same time. It’s unhealthy. Grief, it’s numbing.  Strong and deep, it keeps us bewildered. Dreams and nightmares happen – they startle you awake, others you try to hold on, eyes wide shut, stopping us from falling asleep.”

“How long must one wait?” He wanted to ask.  Looking outside the window, Dr. Satte seemed to have heard his question, “In one instance, it’s just a formality, soon forgotten and dealt with. In other cases, the wound continues. There is no easy recourse, but one has to wander through caverns of memories until ready to own the past – the good, bad and the ugly. But eventually it ends.”

Handing his patient a copy book, the therapist noted. “I want you to write your thoughts in this, any dreams or thoughts of those gone and the way in which they left. As you keep taking the sporadic snapshots of the state of affliction within, you will notice a gradual change taking place.”  Satte continued. “Patience.  One day you will suddenly realize something has unlocked.  You have neither rhyme or reason for it. You feel light, light as a bird nursed, ready to fly again.  Time does heal.”  Satte gave a hearty laugh. “the will to survive always wins”. Mahesh continued to be puzzled.  Then becoming serious, Satte added. “Your heart knows in the unity of spirit where you belong, love is not afar. “ The therapist looked at the clock on the wall. “I hope this helped.”

Dr. Satte had one more patient to see.

*******

Author Notes
Hymns of Guru Nanak, Translated by Khushwant Singh, Illustrations: Arpita Singh. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1991, p.38
This is an extract from an unpublished novella, entitled, RESURGENCE by Balwant Bhaneja.

Balwant (Bill) Bhaneja was born in Lahore and left India in 1965 for Canada. He has written widely on politics, science and arts. His recent books include: “Peace Portraits: Pathways to Nonkilling” (2022), Creighton University and Center for Global Nonkilling, USA; “Troubled Pilgrimage: Passage to Pakistan” (2013), Mawenzi/TSAR, Toronto;  a collaboration with Indian playwright Vijay Tendulkar, entitled: “Two Plays: The Cyclist and His Fifth Woman” (2006), Oxford University Press ,India; “Quest for Gandhi: A Nonkilling Journey” (2010), Center for Global Nonkilling, Hawaii, USA.  As a playwright, his works have been produced by BBC World Service (English adaptations of The Cyclist, Gandhi versus Gandhi), Ottawa’s Odyssey Theatre (Fabrizio’s Return), and Maya Theatre (The Cyclist), Harbourfront, Toronto. From 2012 to 2022, he was coordinating editor for peace and arts Nonkilling Arts Research Committee (NKARC) NewsLetter, Hawaii, USA. He has widely published short fiction in English and Hindi including The Beacon. He holds a PhD from University of Manchester, U.K. Email: billbhaneja@rogers.com

This author in The Beacon