The King of Lunatics - 1

They tell this story in the village below the hill. In the years I have carried this story, it has grown a little at the edges, the way stories always do. The heart of it has remained unchanged, however, in spite of a whole millennium and a half that has passed since the time of our protagonist.

Those were the days when kings ruled in Valluvanad and the Bharathapuzha ran fuller than it does now. A Brahmin scholar named Vararuchi was counted among the nine gems of King Vikramaditya’s court at Ujjain, and it was said that grammar and logic sat in his head like lamps in a temple, always burning, never flickering.

Vararuchi loved a woman he was not permitted to love, a woman of the Paraya caste, the lowest in the land. He didn’t know who she really was. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone anywhere near her. Panchami was found floating in the Bharathapuzha and was adopted by a poor childless Brahmin without knowing anything about her low-caste origin. During his long wandering in search of wisdom, Vararuchi met Panchami and was enchanted by her wisdom and beauty. 

The two went walking and walking, seeking wisdom and meaning. Twelve children were born to them as years passed by. Vararuchi didn’t permit Panchami to carry any of the children with them. “God who gave mouth to the child will also give it food,” Vararuchi said when Panchami questioned his order to abandon the child on the wayside.

Each of the twelve children was rescued by different people belonging to different castes. The child who went on to become the protagonist of our story was raised by a family at Naranam in the Palakkad country which is now a small district in Kerala. The child grew up lean and quick-eyed, with a laugh that arrived before his words did. He studied the Vedas under masters who found him, at first, a delight, and then, quite soon, a problem. He learnt everything they could teach him. Then he began to ask questions that they could not answer.

He was too wise even for the learned men, what to say about the ordinary folk! So they all called him Bhranthan, Madman. Thus he became Naranath Bhranthan, the Madman of Naranam.

“Master,” the boy from Naranam asked his teacher, “if everything we do is strictly bound by our past karma and dictated by destiny, why are you angry at that fellow? Didn’t destiny decide he would forget the verse today?”

“Acharya, the stars tell us which day, which time is ideal for which action. So will our house alone stand if a deluge carries away this entire village because you built this house after consulting the stars?”

The gurus first called him too young for such questions. Then they thought the questions were dangerous. Finally, they declared that he was not normal. Bhranthan. Madman.

“The flaw is not in my lack of understanding,” the boy said to himself. “The flaw is that I understood.”

In a kingdom of twilight, where shadows are truths, seeing the full sun is insanity.

Bhranthan grew up and became a man. He soon left the family that had raised him and hit the roads. He owned nothing that could not be carried in one hand: an iron-tipped staff, a small copper vessel, and a piece of cloth. When he was hungry, he begged for food. But not readymade food. He asked for a little raw rice, some lentils, a handful of vegetables, and a pinch of salt.

“Why?” the women asked. “Is my cooking not clean?”

“Your cooking is clean, mother,” he would say, laughing. “But a man should know how to make his own meal. If I learn to eat from every hand, one day I’ll have to smile at every face. I’d rather cook badly and laugh freely.”

So he cooked for himself, one meal a day, on three stones that served as his oven.

He had a schedule that never changed and people noticed it sooner than later. Every morning he came to the foot of a hill near Thiruvegappura, a modest hill of laterite and scrub above the paddy flat, and at its foot lay a great round boulder.

He put his shoulder to that boulder and pushed it up the hill. His left leg that was afflicted with elephantiasis protested. “Wait,” he said to his left leg, “until the day comes when I’ll get the elephant shifted to the other leg.”

At noon, more or less, the boulder reached the zenith of the hill. Naranath would stand there, at the top of the hill, look out over the green valley – the herons in the shallow ponds, the Western Ghats rising blue and enormous in the distance – and then step aside to let the stone go. Down the hill.

It rolled. It gathered speed as it moved down. It bounced here and there and came thundering down the slope, raising dust, and settled at last, breathless, at the very spot where it had begun its upward journey.

Naranath Bhranthan laughed watching the whole game. Madman.

It was not a mild laugh. It was the laugh of a man who had seen the funniest thing in the world. The laugh rolled across the valley louder than the stone had, and it could be heard, people swore, two villages away. He clapped his hands like a boy at a fireworks festival. Then he wiped away the sweat from his forehead, picked up his staff, and walked down to beg his lunch as though nothing of matter had happened.

The stone continued to make its motions, upward and downward, day after day, like a sacred ritual.

***

PS. I originally started writing this story for a folklore anthology project, but I missed the deadline following the sudden and tragic passing of my younger brother. Now that it is finally complete, I am sharing it with you here in two parts. The second part will be up tomorrow.

Rayiranellur Hill in Palakkad district of Kerala is believed to be the place where Naranath lived. Read more about it at Kerala Tourism from where the illustrative image of Naranath is taken.