Krishna - Part II

"Om Shanti Shanti"
The words escaped out of Amma's lips as she dipped her index finger in the blood red of the kumkum and made a perfect circle on my forehead. I could notice the mild tremors in her hand. The hand which had held me steady as I walked on my own little two feet..the hand that had held my hand gently yet firm, as we zigzagged through the busy highway after school. The strength was escaping through the fine wrinkles on her skin.

Amma sat down next to me on the cane sofa. The red of the kumkum was still clinging onto her fingertips. Red...blood red...the color that made her my mother and the frail old man in the rocking chair my father. Amma and Appa seemed to have their eyes fixed on me. I knew it was one of those times....

After my board examinations, I had decided to move to the city where I could pursue my engineering. The day I told them about my decision, we had sat in the same positions..the four of us...Amma, Appa, me and the heavy silence. Amma struggled to maintain an impassive, stoic silence while Appa debated with himself in a passionate display of struggle on the otherwise placid face. The verdict was in favour 2-0.

Weekends meant a 3-hour long journey home on the rickety bus and long walks with Appa in the fields. I dont quite remember when the weekly trips turned into monthly trips finally trickling down into unexpected, infrequent visits at the mercy of assigments and hostel "party" sessions. A job offer in the city had ensued. The jury had met again..the verdict 2-0. The trickling stream of visits had meandered over the years - the streak of red showing through..the red of blood.

I caught Appa's glance. The stern black eyeballs had mellowed with age and dissolved into limpid pools of water. But now they were fixed on me. I folded the newspaper and kept it away..."What is it Amma? Is...is anything wrong?"

The tremors in her hands were steadying themselves on the arm on the sofa. I looked at Appa. The man who was my hero all through my growing years, sat coccooned in silence, his gaze fixed upon Amma..passing onto her the strength for uttering the words.

"You remember you asked me many times why I named you Krishna..." the cracks in the voice broke the silence. "The time has come to tell you...."
The next few words were lost in a deluge of emotions, choked words, missing connections put into place. My head was spinning...the words were going around in circles..life had turned a full circle. ADOPTED...the word repeatedly rang in my ears. I was the Krishna...the adopted child...brought up by the generous Nanda and Yashodha. So I was not the dark-hued god...I was not the Gopal surrounded by his Gopikas...I was the adopted son. And who were my parents...? What was the prison that held them in shackles...poverty, relations which could not be named, death....what was it?

Amma and Appa had adopted me...a puny half-starved throwaway from the orphanage. The doctor had diagnosed Amma as incapable of bearing a child. The prescription had been my entry ticket into their lives. The voluntary job transfer to the village and the deliberately avoided family visits had been the wall my parents had erected to shield me from the truth. The faces of the distant aunts loomed infront of my eyes...gushing about how I looked more and more like Appa everyday. The lies flickered in their eyes like hellish fires.

My parents...no I didnt have the right to call them parents...they had revoked it with just one word....ADOPTED. The red...the blood red that tied me to them was just a dye they had injected in the crystal clear of the world, to blur reality. Appa...my hero....my idol...a privilege that was granted to me by the adoption certificate and not my blood. Amma's index finger was still stained red as she wiped away the tears from her eyes. But now it was just the red of kumkum...kumkum that you buy from any shop in the market.

I got up and walked towards the door. Krishna...Krishna..Amma and Appa were calling out to me. Yes...I was Krishna...a figment of a wise man's imagination who wrote an epic, a ghost from the past...thrust into the turbulent waters of reality.

I walked into the fields...the sky was stained red with the remnants of the evening sun. The smell of ripening mangoes whiffed in and out of the leaves. There was a silhoutte in the distance...running across the horizon. A boy of maybe seven-eight years...the full moustache jumping up and down as he ran....a black mark on the sleeve of the oversized shirt.....Somebody was telling a story in the background...a story about three-limbed gods and one-eyes demons.

I turned and walked back into the house....