Agni Chakra

(Circles of Fire)

(Chapter 26)

By Kathleen JAYAWARDENA

Translated by Ranga Chandrarathne and Edited by Indeewara Thilakarathne

I looked at the Gimhana Asapuwa without batting an eyelid. How many times had I roamed through the rooms, halls and corridors of Gimhana Asapuwa?

Yet I could not get over my anxiety.

What passionate plays that Shantha and Kanchana would have enacted under this roof, among these walls?

I could recall a day when the duo having a friendly chat sitting on these chairs against the backdrop of Mozart?s painting of ?Three Musicians?. Though I could not then read Shantha?s passion written over her face, I could now read it in memory. Could I suspect Shantha of such a liaison even in my wildest dreams..?

I was weighted down with an unbearable despair. I stepped into the house as an insane person. My feet banged against the floor with vigour as the anger turned into movements. Shantha smiled with me through the glass of the wedding photo which was sparkled with a beam of sun rays. The dazzling smile in this black and white photograph for which we posed twenty five years ago, had still not changed a bit. Had I noticed the wedding photograph being kept here throughout the year?

?Oh?you have come ..? ?

I was disgusted to watch the image of Shantha emerged out of the house. It was a feeling similar to that of fear. May I not have a wild anger enough to strangle her to death!

I plunged onto a chair and began to unbutton the shirt. I felt the great burden of her definite gaze at me.

?I thought you would call me??, that voice rose slowly; smoothly.

Shantha Dantha Theentha kuduwa?.!

I recalled how we used the above phrase in childhood to describe a crook. The emotions that should be tamed flew onto my dentures.

?Suddenly, I had to go on a trip: a bit long one?

?Then, you could have called me??

?There was no service!?

I told her a lie, wiping the perspiration on the face. I was a bit relieved only after Shantha had left. But I still gazed at her. How often slim Shantha?s sarcastic smile in her wedding dress followed me. This beautiful and serene face tells me something new ?I was reminded of Yasodara in Yasodara Vatha .?Seeta of Ramayana smiling with me?Shantha who loved Sujata?s white dress in the film ? Ransalu? and her refined manners, does everything with an ulterior motive ? Ven. Rahula asked ? Gahanu Kavruda varadenobandena ?(Are there women who could not be sexually provoked), he should have said this imply that there are no males and female saints.

I could remember a song in the film ?Sujatha? which I saw in a cattle shed like cinema in childhood.

?Vishagora Nagavisha Kalata

Sukirida peni ehi davata

Kalatala satak-siv mayame

Bamba mauve sthri??

(Woman has been created by The Creator, having extracted deadly cobra venom and coated it with sugar candy and honey and mixed it with sixty four charms)

When the lukewarm water from the shower washed my body, I realised how unjustifiable my angry mind was. I thought whether the husband and wife could renew the life even at the tail end of life. Can?t she and I purify us through a yellow-water (disinfectant solution) therapy from head to toe?

While wiping the body with a fresh towel, I could recall footages from our wedding held at Sirikotha in Kollupitiya.

The crape tapes waving in the sea breeze...Balloons?coconut flower?the thin and blown up skirts of teenage girls who scurried among the crowd, were carrying trays of black cakes wrapped in gold colour papers.

That album of photographs with its faded cover had got into my hand after twenty-five years. I unfolded its pages with my hands with an intense interest not experienced when it was opened for the first time twenty-five years ago. Lamps lit amidst Punkalas..? She and I stood up on the paddy seeds on the Poruwa. Our fingers being tied up with a string??

I was dejected with both amazement and shame. What kind of action am I engaged in as an idiot? What has become of my wife? Is everything caused by my negligence of her? Isn?t a wife valued within the institution of family as long as she does not taint fidelity? Has novelty been brought about into a family by husband and wife going astray? When people understand this monotony only the same things happens in the same manner almost always? Do these parallel lines merge to form a single line? As Ratnaweera says, issues are created by marriage, love or egoism?

I put the pillow over the album as I sensed intuitively Shantha entering the room. In a second, I realised that I was repenting over Shantha who collected my trousers, shirt and underwear strewn carelessly on the bed. When this woman once betrayed me, how many times had I betrayed her?

In the next moment, I thought whether I could really interpret it as betrayal. I still love Shantha very much. But can?t I love another woman, at the same time? What is this contradiction? What is unlawful? Should we select everything according to the conditioned mind over thousands of years?

It is with the passage of time, that I may be able to find a clear approach to these issues. But there can be an unbounded love? What will be the nature of love without hatred? Ratnaweera says that the hatred is the most dangerous and useless element in human mind. His view is that the greatest enemy of happiness is the hatred. I am trying to understand the relationship between Shantha and Kanchana considering Shantha not as my wife. Here that consideration should be commenced with me, myself. Now, I am trying to understand the struggle that Shantha put up with, within the confines of the four walls of the house, while I have been globe trotting over the last twenty-five years. Have I taken care even to look into her physical and mental status during the short time I spent with her in darkness? I heard that man should have sex with a woman in the manner similar to that of a painter who draws a painting or a poet writing a poem or a musician composing a piece of music. But do I, who am supposed to be well versed in all forms of arts, know this ?art?? How superficial and crude manner even the ?art? I know manifested in practice? Didn?t I inflict her with pains which penetrated into the very depth of her existence?

I gazed at the wooden bars on the ceiling. I could feel a rain of stars coming down through the ceiling. In a second, I could hear thunders in the sky and the earth cracking. I was shocked. The sky lowered and sheet of clouds completely blocked my vision. I tried to force open the eyes. When the eyes were opened, there was the familiar cobra image. I tried to escape and to stand up but I was where I had been. Quickly the cobra comes towards me. Now the cobra tries to encircle me as if to protect from the rain of destruction. The eyes, nose and mouth in the cobra?s hood are seen clearly. Oh, my god, isn?t it Amritha?s face?

Quickly appeared before me was the cobra damsel called Amritha. I understood what was wrapping around me was not the cobra?s coil but the thin veil of Cobra damsel. I felt a great relief. I am safe in the custody of cobra damsel.

I looked into Amritha?s face with a plea and asked ?what would become of me? What will happen in my future? ? . ? Nothing would happen to you!? she says kindly. I was enveloped with the satisfaction that I experienced following Nadi Vakya predictions.

I suddenly got up as if fallen down from a precipice. I opened my eyes. I was soaked with perspiration. Suddenly I thought of calling Amritha. I did not meet up with her since she gave me the video cassette. I kept the cellular phone switched off for a long time so she could not call me.

Upto now, I was extremely pleased with seeing Amritha and listening to her voice. But, following the complications arising from the video cassette, her company alone could be problematic and became unpleasant because it had made me so confused. But Amritha should not be responsible for it. She gave it to me warning me of Kanchana?s behaviour. But my feelings towards Amritha could be compared to serene moonlight. Now, there is no passionate feeling about it. The novel area she directed me, stimulates me with the irrefutable idea of ?life is waning ?.

Once she said, ?What we called science is the Western Science?.

She once asked me whether I who searched contours of Einstein?s relativism and provided notes on them, knew his statement on Buddhism. One day, she who believes that I take Western Science as Gospel truth said she had seen a group of scientists performed a comedy on television in the mid night in which the 21st century dawn.

Her question was that though the scientists have not been barred from entertaining, they should have better opportunities for entertainment. I also thought really a dawn of a century is only a norm.

Didn?t I develop a sexual attraction towards Amritha just because there was no space for such a development in the conversations we were engaged in? Often she spoke fluently on many subjects. Love, passion, aesthetics, Arts as well as politics often became subjects of discussions. There were instances where she predicted the outcomes on many subjects. Though I really don?t know whether Amritha had the ability to pronounce predictions, it was clear she had foreseen future developments. But she made her prediction not by astrology.

?I think this 21st century is a ?spiritual century??, one day she said commencing another prediction.

?Sir, see, if it is not true, those mighty nations which dominated the last century, would collapse! Specially America. Beginning of it is the collapse of the World Trade Centre. Think about, what a lot of trouble America encountered in the form of natural disasters, even terrorism? Therefore, in the future the spirit of Asia which was like a suppressed ball under the water, will emerge to the fore,?

?I didn?t know Amritha could predict future!?, I said with a smile.

?Can?t you say something about my future spirit??

? Sir, not ?spirit? but? existence? ?, she said.

?During the last four years, the super power had to face situations that it had never faced before? . That was only the beginning. How many years still have passed by? You could see the direction of the world after half of this century; that means by 2050. ?

?Amritha or I will not live to see that!?, I said smiling.

I thought again of Amritha?s ideas as though they were just verbatim. I could see through a third eye, there is something irrefutable in them. How could such wisdom find in a young girl like Amritha?

Amritha compelled me to reconsider the tendency in us to become slaves of conventional education and to accept anything implicitly. It had never been a secret even for Einstein that the velocity of the Earth in space as well as the unwritten laws of nature cannot be measured up. I thought Amritha as well as Ratnaweera were trying to provide a new approach to life. But what I derived from Ratnaweera was written facts. I could have got those from browsing books. But the life experiences that I got from Amritha cannot be obtained either from books or from education. However, Amritha and Ratnaweera have common traits. Could I identify those traits even in Shantha if I had been careful enough?