Upagupta and Vasavadatta

Fiction

“Finally the time has come?” Vasavadatta groaned.  “But it’s too late.  Too late.”

Upagupta sat down beside her on the bare ground of the graveyard where she was left to die with her limbs cut off.  He looked at her.  She could easily perceive the compassion that welled up in his eyes.

“When I was whole and beautiful, I waited for you time and again with my body bathed in the finest of perfumes.  You sent my maid back with those cryptic words: the time has not come.  Now why are you here when I’m rotting and dying?  Rotting before dying!”

“I wish you to know that my love is with you,” he said.

“Love?”  She tried to smile. Or was it a smirk? “I loved you all those years.  The other men were only clients for me.  But you?  You were my love.  You scorned my love.”

Upagupta sighed.  He continued to look into her eyes.

“Whenever I see a lake or a river, I long to bathe in it.  But I feel terribly unworthy.”

“So you never bathe in a river or a lake?”  She remembered watching him once stripping himself off his monk’s robe and stepping into the Yamuna while she was on a journey with a rich client.

“I do, but standing as close to the shore as possible.  Having asked pardon from the water body.”

“Why do you hate yourself so much?”

“Do I hate myself more than you hated yourself?”  He wondered why he used the past tense when he referred to her.

“Hmmm…” She struggled to chuckle.  “Now you say your love is with me.  A cruel joke!”

“No, I mean it.”

“Could you not love me when I was whole and beautiful?”

Upagupta hesitated. Beauty is too relative.   Love is a dangerous word.  It carries a kaleidoscope of meanings.  Yet he knew he owed her an answer.

“Which man would not be swayed by an invitation from the most desired courtesan of Mathura?”  She deserved the honest answer, he thought.  He perceived a sparkle flash momentarily in her eyes.

“Swayed?  Were you?”

“I did not sleep many nights.  You were with me, keeping me awake.”

“I wish that were real.”

“The distance between the real and the unreal is as flimsy as the human mind.”

“You are the mind.  I am the body.”  Vasavadatta seemed inspired momentarily.

Upagupta did not say anything.

“I’m dying happily.  With the knowledge that my love kept you awake in the nights.”

“I love you,” he said.

She closed her eyes.  Her breathing became hard.  And then it stopped altogether.