Romance on a riverbank

It was on the bank of the river which borders his farm that James met Yulia. James was collecting nutmegs from his trees when he noticed a woman sitting on the riverbank. Something didn’t look right. This was a village and this foreigner had no reason to be here on the bank of a river by the side of a private farm. Overcoming his initial hesitation, James walked towards her.

Hello, he said. She responded with another hello. A lifeless hello. Her face looked pale like that of a corpse.

James knew enough English to manage a simple conversation. So he learnt that her name was Yulia and that she was from Ukraine. He had seen bombs falling on Ukraine day after day, month after month, bringing down beautiful apartments, laying waste splendid landscapes, killing people including cute little children who deserved to be fondled. Even the bachelor heart of James wept for those innocent children. Why are we humans like this? He asked himself a thousand times. Why are we so evil? All those prayers he muttered every evening with his parents, all the mumbo-jumbo that the parish priest uttered every Sunday during the Mass, all the hymns that the church choir sang, it all turned to more and more absurd gibberish with each bomb that fell – whether in Ukraine or in Gaza.

Yulia had lost every member of her family. They were all swallowed by bombs. She escaped because she was residing in her workplace far away from home.

A few weeks after she reached India, Prime Minister Modi was doing the Pran something in a palatial temple in Ayodhya. Pran Pratishtha, James helped her. Yeah, she said. What a nice country, she said to herself. A country whose prime minister is so spiritual, so holy. Mr Modi looked like a saintly ascetic all through the ceremony, she said.

James didn’t know whether to smile or to snigger. Our country is not what it appears, Yulia, he said. Maya is what reality is here.

Maya, Yulia said. Illusion?

Oh, you know it!

She knew a lot more.

She had seen the reality of Ayodhya and its illusions too. So many hundreds, if not thousands, of people who were driven away from their homes in order to make the temple’s surroundings beautiful. She had met them personally on her visit to Ayodhya. She was in India much before the Pran whatever. She saw what was happening in Ayodhya. It wasn’t much different from what Putin did to our country, she said.

Illusions.

Can you convince all those people who lost their homes and lands that life is sheer maya? That reality is divine lila?

James was surprised that Yulia, a Ukrainian young woman, knew more about Indian gods’ lilas than he knew. James had tried to learn something about all that after Modiji became prime minister and India’s history started undergoing mutations. But he lost interest sooner than he expected. There was no connection between what he learnt and what was happening in the country.

That was just what Yulia had learnt too: no connection between word and deed. Maya is a good concept in scriptures. Try convincing that little child in Ayodhya that food is an illusion. Try telling that to the child in Ukraine. In Gaza, James added.

I was running away from the Maya of theology, Yulia said. I want to die in this river, she said. This river has been inviting me from the time I saw it from that bridge. She pointed at the bridge across the river a hundred metres or so away from James’s land.  

Shall I invite you to life? James asked without any illusion. He had crossed thirty and hadn’t managed to find a bride simply because all girls of Kerala were leaving the country to study and then work abroad. And he was just a farmer. Nobody wanted to marry a farmer even if he was educated enough, even if he had enough land and income to feed half a dozen children though James didn’t want more than one or two because he was not particularly interested in gifting his children to Canada or Australia or New Zealand.

Yulia looked into James’s eyes. She saw another river there. Deep and serene. Clear like crystal. No Maya. And she decided to drown herself in that river. Life’s ruddiness rushed to her cheeks instantly.

PS. I know this is a silly story. But it was triggered by a friend’s request. My son is a BTech engineer, my friend told me. But he loves farming more than anything else. The problem, Tom, is that he can’t get a wife now. No girl in Kerala is willing to marry a farmer boy. And then this Yulia from Ukraine came in my fantasy….