the beat. ‘Tat-tat-tvam asi,’ said Valmiki
clapping his hands and the child repeated, ‘Ta-ta-tamaswee
…’ The game was good and Lava was engaged; slowly his eyes
glazed and, with his hand in midair grasping the rattle, he fell fast asleep.
Valmiki decided not to move him but lay him on the deerskin mat beside him. Valmiki
watched him closely, and then he was struck by a phrase, which grew into a poem:
What mother could resist giving
her child this sleep
Kissed by the dappled sun
Amidst the fragrance of
shimmering neem leaves
And the percussion of wind riding through that tall
bamboo grove?
What clouds may appear and awaken her dread of future
fears?
Would this playful rattle now
Rear its head in a martial or
meditative spear?
The dribble from his lips now from a nourishing
feed
Could turn to cold blood as he lay
In permanent sleep on a distant
battlefield.
For now this ocean of rest is deep
Even the poets cannot
fill this child’s ears with blessings
The way her love knows
beyond sense and sound …
And it wasn’t quite the way it
had flashed in his mind’s eye. So he closed his eyes and tried to
concentrate on the seed of what the phrase was trying to say. He didn’t
want to analyse it or question it. Just live it—a mother would wish her
child innocence. The sleep that comes with it visits only a child. A mother would do
anything to shield her child from even the thought of danger … and with
each word he slipped into a world of images accompanied by the sound of ocean waves
so he could see clearer with his inner eye. He caught every hue, tone and colour of
the sensation of a child’s sleep, its quality watched by a mother. He
heard the music in the sigh from the mother’s breast and opened his eyes,
driven to write the composition.
Instantly his enthusiasm left him. He
froze. He rubbed his eyes. What was the dream? The mother’s sigh in his
musings or what he was confronting just now? Valmiki slapped his face and pulled his
beard. He was awake. His blood was warm. He stared again. Lava was not lying asleep.
He was not there
. He was not anywhere. The sun had
shifted. Was it really that long that Valmiki had been ‘away’?
‘If a blink of Brahma is an eon of time,’ he thought with a
great sense of futility. ‘Aiyiyo, Narayana! What good is my knowledge,
realization, composition …’ he began to scold himself loudly.
‘Here was a child created by man and woman, in flesh and blood. Its mother
placed the child in my care. I put it there and was playing with it and now
it’s missing from under my very own nose! Maybe I shouldn’t call
Lava “it”!’
He was close to tears, he felt so
helpless. He couldn’t help thinking how all this was going to affect Sita.
‘What all I have put her through in the Ramayana. Firstly, I did not give
her an ordinary birth, so that she would be extra-ordinarily human. The one joy I
gave her was Rama and their love. But before she could enjoy the privacy of her
home, she accompanied Rama into exile. Then there was that abduction—how
strong she was to have withstood the wiles of Ravana. At last Hanuman brought her
comfort, and then … oh! Why is fiction truer than life? The humiliation of
the fire test! That too she endured and was by then willing to leave the stage of
private acts and public men. But I needed Sita to return to Ayodhya with Rama for
the long-awaited coronation. What would life be like in the ordinary court, I
thought, after all the epic struggles? And then, without my even dreaming it Sita
became pregnant, and then Rama, secretly, exiled her.
‘She has stayed on with me
because she feels she has nowhere else to go. While she’s been here she
has taken care of everything; the one thing she had asked me to do was to look after
Lava and what do I do? Go into a spell of composing! Aiyiyo! Where did this child
go? How could he wander off when he
clapping his hands and the child repeated, ‘Ta-ta-tamaswee
…’ The game was good and Lava was engaged; slowly his eyes
glazed and, with his hand in midair grasping the rattle, he fell fast asleep.
Valmiki decided not to move him but lay him on the deerskin mat beside him. Valmiki
watched him closely, and then he was struck by a phrase, which grew into a poem:
What mother could resist giving
her child this sleep
Kissed by the dappled sun
Amidst the fragrance of
shimmering neem leaves
And the percussion of wind riding through that tall
bamboo grove?
What clouds may appear and awaken her dread of future
fears?
Would this playful rattle now
Rear its head in a martial or
meditative spear?
The dribble from his lips now from a nourishing
feed
Could turn to cold blood as he lay
In permanent sleep on a distant
battlefield.
For now this ocean of rest is deep
Even the poets cannot
fill this child’s ears with blessings
The way her love knows
beyond sense and sound …
And it wasn’t quite the way it
had flashed in his mind’s eye. So he closed his eyes and tried to
concentrate on the seed of what the phrase was trying to say. He didn’t
want to analyse it or question it. Just live it—a mother would wish her
child innocence. The sleep that comes with it visits only a child. A mother would do
anything to shield her child from even the thought of danger … and with
each word he slipped into a world of images accompanied by the sound of ocean waves
so he could see clearer with his inner eye. He caught every hue, tone and colour of
the sensation of a child’s sleep, its quality watched by a mother. He
heard the music in the sigh from the mother’s breast and opened his eyes,
driven to write the composition.
Instantly his enthusiasm left him. He
froze. He rubbed his eyes. What was the dream? The mother’s sigh in his
musings or what he was confronting just now? Valmiki slapped his face and pulled his
beard. He was awake. His blood was warm. He stared again. Lava was not lying asleep.
He was not there
. He was not anywhere. The sun had
shifted. Was it really that long that Valmiki had been ‘away’?
‘If a blink of Brahma is an eon of time,’ he thought with a
great sense of futility. ‘Aiyiyo, Narayana! What good is my knowledge,
realization, composition …’ he began to scold himself loudly.
‘Here was a child created by man and woman, in flesh and blood. Its mother
placed the child in my care. I put it there and was playing with it and now
it’s missing from under my very own nose! Maybe I shouldn’t call
Lava “it”!’
He was close to tears, he felt so
helpless. He couldn’t help thinking how all this was going to affect Sita.
‘What all I have put her through in the Ramayana. Firstly, I did not give
her an ordinary birth, so that she would be extra-ordinarily human. The one joy I
gave her was Rama and their love. But before she could enjoy the privacy of her
home, she accompanied Rama into exile. Then there was that abduction—how
strong she was to have withstood the wiles of Ravana. At last Hanuman brought her
comfort, and then … oh! Why is fiction truer than life? The humiliation of
the fire test! That too she endured and was by then willing to leave the stage of
private acts and public men. But I needed Sita to return to Ayodhya with Rama for
the long-awaited coronation. What would life be like in the ordinary court, I
thought, after all the epic struggles? And then, without my even dreaming it Sita
became pregnant, and then Rama, secretly, exiled her.
‘She has stayed on with me
because she feels she has nowhere else to go. While she’s been here she
has taken care of everything; the one thing she had asked me to do was to look after
Lava and what do I do? Go into a spell of composing! Aiyiyo! Where did this child
go? How could he wander off when he
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