A Gem of a Man

 

                                                                                                by Subimal Misra

 

God first created earth. And then He wondered, who would take care of the vast earth? For that it was necessary to create living beings. And so, just as God wished, beings were created. After that came the time of allotting life spans to them. Now He had to determine how long each creature would live on earth. He wanted to seek their opinion on the matter.

 

The first one to present himself before God was the monkey. He came and asked: “Lord, how long will I live?” God said: “I’ve given you a life of thirty years. You’re happy, aren’t you?”

 

The monkey said: “Must I live for such a long time? That’s just not possible, Lord. It may look as if my life is a very happy one, full of joy and laughter. But actually it isn’t like that. Fatigue accumulates beneath my laughter. All the nuts that people fling towards me and hit me with are bad ones, worm-eaten. Those who throw them think –what better than this would a monkey eat? It’ll survive even if it can’t eat, it’s rapt in its own fun and frolic. Just think about my situation. Besides, in order to make people laugh, I have to make and show all kinds of faces. But beneath all that is an overflowing fatigue. Every time I make people laugh I get exhausted. Lord, please reduce a good part of such a long life”.

 

Hearing this supplication, the Creator reduced his life by ten years. The monkey was pleased, and left.

 

Bucket Baba, of Deoria district in Uttar Pradesh, was very famous. He was renowned for a specific reason. If one went up to him and wanted to ask a question, it had to be written on a piece of paper and thrown into a bucket. After a while, Bucket Baba would insert his hand into the bucket and pick up the piece of paper. The answer to the question would be written on it.

 

Bucket Baba was not a false baba like Rajneesh or Mahesh Yogi and so on. He had nothing to do with millions of dollars. He probably didn’t even have a foreign agent. One heard that Bucket Baba had undertaken penance for sixty-two long years. He had stood on one foot with one arm raised during his penance. There was a story in circulation about his powers. Once Baba and some of his devotees reached a forest. A vast forest, it was a lair of tigers and bears. Everyone, including his devotees, warned him against going through, but he did not heed them. In the dark of twilight, he began walking inside the forest. Halfway through the forest, there was a tiger standing, occupying the path ahead, its eyes gleaming in the darkness. Baba advanced, fearless. Going near the tiger, he patted its head. The tiger then licked his hand and lay down at his feet, like a kitten.

 

Baba returned. And on his return, he delivered a sermon: “Love animals. Man betrays, but not animals”.

 

Be aware that on this earth created by God, Bucket Baba was the one with the longest life. Not merely uneducated villagers, but also accomplished leaders from the world over admitted unanimously that His Holiness Bucket Baba’s age was definitely a hundred and fifty years. It could even be two hundred years.

 

After the monkey left, the donkey presented himself before God. He was not as clever or cunning as the monkey. He was late in arriving. Drawing him close affectionately, God asked him: “Tell me dear donkey, how long do you want to live? I gave the monkey a life of thirty years. Shall I give you the same?”

 

The donkey wept when he heard this. “Have I to live for so long? Please think about my harsh life. From morning till night I have to go about carrying heavy loads of clothes so that people can be dressed in a civilized manner and live decently. Everyday, all the time, I have to hear taunts about not being able to carry even more loads. Lord, you know that my life has been created to carry other people’s burdens. How can one love such a life? I implore you to reduce my life by half”.

 

Hearing the donkey, God felt compassion. He stroked his head lovingly. He reduced his life and made it eighteen years. Happy, the donkey bowed before God and went away to cart more loads. He had wasted a lot of time.

 

There were many stories in circulation about Bucket Baba’s age. One of them was that when the first President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad, was a small baby he had been brought to be blessed by Bucket Baba. On the basis of arithmetic, this incident would have taken place almost 100 years ago. He had said on seeing the child: “The baby shall be President of India”. The people of India, eight hundred million Indians, bear witness to whether that came true or not.

 

Bucket Baba lived on a machan built on a tree, avoiding contact with sinful earth. The machan was made of bamboo and was 15 feet high. Most of the time Baba didn’t want to descend to the sullied earth. He blessed everyone from his perch on top. Thanks to God’s blessings, there was no shortage of sadhu babas in the country. Some of them possessed great powers. Frauds like Rajneesh and Mahesh Yogi had amassed millions upon millions of rupees and were in the pink. But Bucket Baba had no money. Yet, compared to them, Bucket Baba was the genuine baba. He did not take any money from anyone. He didn’t even touch something as sinful as money. However, if he was offered pure ghee, prepared at home with pure thoughts and wearing pure garments, he accepted it, but not with his own hands. Baba did not receive anything himself, his disciples received it on his behalf. He only blessed the offering. He had no objection to unadulterated pulses and flour, and fresh fruits as well. Some Marwari devotees had biriyani prepared by satvik brahmins and sent it for Baba. He accepted that gladly. He loved to eat biriyani very much. But these biriyanis were, of course, entirely vegetarian, made using Ganga water, pure cow’s ghee and cooked on a sandal-wood fire. He did not object if any devotee offered fine saffron silks. However, if the cloth was cotton he returned it. Cotton pricked his soft body too much. He wanted to be turned out in a civilized manner in decent society, and so he always wore silk. Recently a devotee had donated him a video cassette player. He watched films sitting on a branch of the tree. He said, “Everything is God’s divine play”. His enemies say quite a bit of money had to be spent to get an electric connection for Baba’s machan, but the fact was that this was given by the devotees. If a devotee gave something out of love, could any guru decline that?

 

The donkey left. Soon after, out of nowhere, came the dog, panting, and presented himself. He was quite old, his teeth gone and his sight meager. He was in a bad way for having come all this way. God asked him to rest for a while and gave him a piece of meat to eat. As he didn’t have teeth, he sucked and gnawed at the meat with a lot of difficulty, but finally ate it up. Once he’d eaten, he felt quite content. God asked him: “How long do you wish to live? Monkey didn’t want to live for thirty years. Donkey thought a life of thirty years was too tiresome. Shall I give you the thirty year life? What do you say?”

 

Paws folded, whining, the dog said: “Lord, I’ll be completely finished with a life of thirty years. Please be kind and don’t give me such a long life. As long as I’m young I can run around, I can chase robbers, and so people like me. As soon as I’m old and my legs are no longer strong, and I’ve no teeth to bite with, they snap and curse at me and drive me away. One look at me and you’d understand everything, Lord. Haven’t eaten a morsel in three days. Please think about my condition, Lord”.

 

God felt compassion towards him. Accepting his logic, God gave him a life of twelve years. The dog was happy and went away.

 

The greatest accomplishment of Bucket Baba was that he was one of the leading voices of the movement to ban cow slaughter. Under his leadership, the cow protection movement had spread throughout India. In his view, God dwelt in every part of the cow. Cow was Mother. From the day cow slaughter stopped, India would be transformed into Ram Rajya. The sorrows and suffering, the violence and conflict, and the riots and commotion would all disappear. The fundamental cause of the all-round backwardness of India and Indians was the slaughter of cows.

 

Baba was also famous for divining the future. Everything he said was fished out of the bucket. It was said that many devotees from all over the world came to get Baba’s darshan. Recently the Japanese prime minister’s paternal cousin’s brother-in-law had come for a darshan to Baba’s ashram. He came to receive blessings on behalf of the Japanese prime minister. His disciples said it was because the prime minister had much work, and was busy day and night, that he couldn’t come personally, and instead sent his paternal cousin’s brother-in-law. Many political leaders of this country also went to him and he gave them good counsel. Ordinary people came too, as did businessmen. The famous and well-regarded film director, Raj Kapoor, had put into the bucket the question about what kind of picture he should make, so that it would do well in the country. The answer that emerged was that he should come up with really eternal themes and put in a lot of sex. Only Indians would know what the outcome of that was. Satyam Shivam Sundaram, … Ram Teri Ganga Maili – who in India had not seen these films? Even outside India, in countries like Russia, in the communist countries, all those films were well-regarded and had been highly acclaimed.

 

Once Sanjay Gandhi too had put a question into the bucket. The answer that emerged said: “Never be separated from Mother Earth. Make sure your feet are always on the ground. If you fail to do this, you will die”. And exactly that happened. When his feet rose above the earth, when he tried to fly in the sky, he died. He went away, leaving all of India in darkness.

 

After that, right at the end, came man. Seeing him, God said: “Neither monkey, donkey or dog want to live very long. How can creation survive then? You have to live for at least thirty years”.

Crestfallen, man said: “Only thirty years? No more?”

God asked him: “Why do you want to live longer?”

Man said: “I’ve just built a house beside a bounteous river. I’ve learnt to light fire. I had planted trees, flowers have bloomed on them, and there’ll be fruits in just a few days. I covered the fields with green stalks. Next winter, the harvest will come home. Won’t I enjoy the fruits of my labours? Please increase my lifespan”.

God said: “Fine. I had reduced monkey’s life by ten years. I give that to you”.

Man said, in a crestfallen tone: “Only ten years? No more?”

“Fine, I give the twelve years of donkey’s life also to you. Are you happy?”

Man stood silently. He was not happy.

God smiled and said: “Alright, you’ll get the eighteen years of dog’s life as well. But you can’t get any more than that”. Man was not content with that either. He raised his head once and looked at God. He wanted to say something. But realizing it was inappropriate, he took his leave with a glum face.

 

One heard several kinds of opinions regarding Baba's age. But no one said it was less than a hundred and fifty years or two hundred years. If asked, Baba would reply: “I've become Indraneel. I do not age”. Baba's disciples explained what exactly this “Indraneel” meant. Those who attained self-realization after severe inner and yogic practices were able to transcend life and death. Baba was definitely two hundred years old, it could be even more. He had seen the Sepoy Mutiny, he had seen the time Lord Dalhousie was Governor General of India. If asked whether he had lived at the time of Shivaji, Baba merely smiled mysteriously.

 

Politicians from all over India ran to Baba to receive his blessings. He distributed blessings generously among all of them. Devotees said: “All those who took Baba's blessings before elections won. Indira Gandhi lost in '77 because she had forgotten to take Baba's blessings”. This was the unknown secret behind Indira losing then.

 

And thus did man receive a total of seventy years of life. The first thirty were from the Creator's own compassionate design. The splendid days of infancy, childhood and early youth rushed by and were gone before he knew it. He did not realize what he was losing. In this period his health glowed, his mind was keen and he was proficient in his work. He was rapt in living. Then came the turn of the monkey's ten years. The lustre of early youth gradually waned. Outwardly he would appear to be hale and hearty, but inwardly, a sense of fatigue steadily accumulated. Handfuls of dry nuts were flung in his direction, but actually they were worm-eaten, lacking any substance inside. Then came the donkey's eighteen years. He had to carry the washer-man's loads, carrying clothes to and from the washing site all the time. Every day he had to hear rebuke about being unfit for work. The final twelve years of his life were a dog's life. He lay curled up in one corner. He had neither teeth to chew with nor claws to strike with. He got to eat only if someone took pity on him, or else he went without anything.

 

Came the time when the long-lived Bucket Baba finally laid down his body. Because of a mere snake bite, from a snake slithering up the trunk of Baba’s tree. It had bitten him in a very critical spot: right on his penis. It was rumoured that Baba wanted to be taken to hospital. Some detractors said: “Baba wept inconsolably then. ‘What are you doing to me? Take me to the hospital immediately, or else I'll die’. But the disciples didn't let any of that happen. “Let Baba die, but if he was taken to the hospital the greatness of his soul would be dented”. They tried faith-healing, they gave him herbs and roots. But Baba's life was over.  And thus did Baba give up his body. Negative-minded people say a lot of things. But who could alter destiny? After all, the circumstances of his death were pre-written on his forehead.

 

Before being consigned to the fire, his whole body was daubed thickly with cow dung. He was dressed up in cow attire. 14 thousand cows took part in his funeral procession, and there were 9 thousand buckets. 9 thousand cow protection committee members, each one receiving 9 rupees a day, marched in front, carrying the 9 thousand silver buckets on their heads. Behind them was a procession of 14 thousand cows. Behind that came Bucket Baba's dead body. The government of India voluntarily agreed to bear all the expenses of the funeral procession. Photo features of that procession of cows were published all over India, and for that matter, in foreign newspapers too.

 

THE END

 

(1987)

 

 

This is a translation of the original Bengali short story, “Manush Ratan”, by Subimal Misra. Translated by V. Ramaswamy