Following the Sun’s instructions closely, he was able to obtain a magical gift from each of the three godlings: a deadly club to beat the demon that ruled the forest, a flute that could summon anyone and make any thought manifest, and a bag for obtaining whatever one wished. Finally, the last godling sent the turtle to a lake in the heart of a distant forest. There the turtle hid behind the reeds, carefully observing the advice he had been given. As noon gave way to evening and the light softened, three virgins appeared, dressed in beautiful rainbow-colored saris. The three young women quickly disrobed and jumped into the water, sending soft ripples that rocked the blue lotus flowers. When the women were deep in the lake, the turtle came out of the reeds and scooped up the pile of their clothing. The virgins shrieked in dismay, but he took off as quickly as he could and disappeared into a temple that stood a few steps from the lake. Then he locked himself behind a large stone door.
Soon he heard tentative footsteps behind the door and then a knock. “Mr. Turtle,” they spoke as one, “please let us have our clothes back. We shall give you anything you desire.”
“Can you give me the solar-love flower?” he asked skeptically.
“Yes, we can. Just give us our clothes, and we shall go and fetch the flower for you.”
But the turtle was no fool. “No, that’s not a good idea. Here is one sari. The one who gets dressed can go and get the flower while the others wait.”
That set off a chorus of protests as the young women struggled to cover their naked bodies. “Please don’t make us wait here naked, sir,” they begged. “The shame is too much to bear.”
“Well then, you may all go, but you must first take an oath that you will bring me the flower.”
The virgins swore solemnly and got their clothes back through a half-opened door. They dressed hurriedly and ran to fetch the flower. It was a tiny flower with yellow and orange petals that smelled like the dawn. As Turtle Boy reached for it, they quickly stepped back. “What are you doing? You promised me the flower!” he cried.
The oldest-looking of the three said, “We shall give you the flower, there is no doubt about that, but you must first answer a simple question. Which one of us is the most delicate?”
The boy did not lose his patience; he was intrigued by this riddle, but asked how he was to judge such a thing.
The oldest spoke again. “Once on the way to the pool I walked under a pear tree and a single blossom petal fell on my head. I fainted on the spot and could be revived days later only through the diligent work of the royal doctors.”
The second virgin then spoke. “One summer night I slept on the roof of our house, and a light breeze blew my nightshirt off my arm. A single ray of moonlight hit me, and I was crushed. Only the best physicians were able to revive me and restore my health.”
The third virgin spoke last. “Some time ago I was lying on the bank of the lake and drying myself in the breeze. Several miles away a woman was pounding grain with a pestle in her kitchen. Immediately painful blisters appeared on my body, and I became severely ill.”
Turtle Boy was impressed and congratulated all three for being the pinnacle of delicacy. Then he pronounced the youngest as the most delicate. “The youngest is the only one who made no physical contact with the object of her torment. The flower and the moonbeam, though fine, did in fact touch your bodies. The sound is truly distant, and therefore only the most delicate girl would feel it.” The virgins said nothing, but gave him the flower.
The minister’s son returned home quickly in his human form, but crawled back into the turtle shell as soon as he arrived. He asked his father to lead him to the palace, where the king was mortified to see the modest-looking solar-love flower. He cleared his throat repeatedly and shuffled his feet, waiting for some miracle to intervene. In contrast, the princess was true to her word and happily agreed to marry Turtle Boy, who had managed to obtain for her that rarest of all flowers. She even smiled at the turtle with true affection. The wedding was a grand affair because at that very same time the king scheduled six other weddings for his other daughters. The six lovely girls had been matched up with eligible princes, and the six handsome unions completely overshadowed the wedding of the oldest and most beautiful princess and her embarrassing husband.
After the seven honeymoons passed by in the blink of an eye, the king decided that it was time to select a successor to his throne. Because the king had no male issue, the heir apparent would be the man who could pass a simple test. Each of the young men, dressed in white clothes and riding a white horse, would hunt in the forest for six days. Whoever could kill and bring back the most impressive game would be declared the winner.
Six husbands armed themselves and confidently mounted their magnificent horses. They disappeared in six clouds of dust in the direction of the forest. The turtle received neither horse nor weapon. His wife, the king’s oldest and dearest daughter, actually had to beg for an old mare and a short sword that could not cut through a ripe papaya. He was hauled on top of the pathetic beast and, to avoid falling off, his wife tied him down with some zucchini vines from the garden.
As soon as he disappeared into the forest, the turtle slipped out of his shell and landed on the ground as the handsome prince that he was. Using his magic flute and bag, he obtained a white horse and white silken clothes and then, with a mere thought, commanded all the forest animals to assemble before him. They were led by the demon who ruled the woods, but the prince dispatched him with a quick blow of the club. He stood waiting, surrounded by thousands of large and small beasts in a vast clearing and, as he had expected, the six princes eventually arrived.
When they saw the majestic figure with all the animals surrounding him they exclaimed, “Greetings, Your Majesty. You must be lord of this forest. We have scoured the woods from one end to the other and have failed to see a single game animal. And here they all are with you!”
“What is your wish with my subjects?” asked the prince.
The hunters told him about the test they were facing and begged for permission to hunt. The prince shook his head, but said, “I shall give you each a deer if you lend me a piece of your clothing.” The six men gladly accepted the strange offer and tore off pieces of fabric from their royal shirts. Then they rode back to the palace to show their game. The prince, meanwhile, retreated into the shell and told his wife to present the king with the better half of a rat. The king was as furious with this offering as he was delighted with the six large deer. In a fit of rage, he drove the princess out of the palace.
In the course of the next five days this very same routine repeated itself, but the young men had to offer other articles to the turtle prince in exchange for their game: rings, earrings, locks of their hair, and other items. It was a small price to pay for the chance to become heir apparent, and the king was properly impressed with all of them.
On the final day, the turtle made preparations to go before the king in order to make his own case. When the princes saw him lumbering in his shell, they burst out in laughter and joked that his chances would improve if he were to bathe or anoint his shell. The turtle ignored their nasty comments and went off seeking privacy by a pond. He removed his shell, in which he kept his three magical objects, and entered the water. Unbeknownst to him, his wife had seen him emerging from the shell and was struck by his beauty. As her husband swam in the lake, the princess seized the shell and threw it into a pot of boiling water. The prince emerged out of the water into his wife’s arms, his shell gone forever. He dressed in blue and gold silk garments, and the two went to the palace to meet with the king.
“Who are you?” asked the bewildered king when he saw his daughter walking next to a striking young man.
“I am Turtle Boy, the minister’s son and your eldest daughter’s husband,” the prince announced. After a pause he added, “And I am the heir apparent.”
At these words everyone in the room burst out in laughter. After all, he had been able to procure only six half-rats while the ot
hers served up deer and antelope and boasted great hunting skills.
“Your Majesty,” said the prince calmly, “at the cost of interrupting all this merriment, I must tell you that it was I who captured all those animals. I gave them to my brothers-in-law in exchange for these.” He tossed on the floor all the things he had collected from the princes—pieces of clothing, earrings, locks of hair—and told the king about the bargain he had struck with the six men.
The king glared at the princes with barely contained rage. “You lied to me,” he boomed, “deceived me like a dumb tourist in a flea market—just to win the throne!” He promptly demoted the six to the status of court servants and gave all his daughters to the turtle boy, whom he pronounced heir apparent to the throne.
We had moved only a few steps from “hangman’s tree,” I realized, but I was happy for the old man’s slow pace. “What a strange story! I really don’t know what to make of it. It reminds me of ‘The Frog Prince,’ I suppose.”
“Ah yes, the golden ball in the pond…And here we have a solar-love flower—what a wonderful coincidence. And what do you make of the frog prince, then?”
“I don’t really know—as a marine biologist I’m highly skeptical…” The guide laughed kindly at this. “It seems like it’s about coming of age, learning to accept sexual feelings. I’m not sure—there’s something very psychological about it.”
“And our little turtle boy here, is he also coming of age?”
“Possibly. Coming to terms with who he really is, his inner nature—the prince, I guess.”
The old man pointed behind me to a smallish tree. “Sandalwood. This is our staple here in Mysore—have you bought any carvings?”
The sweet-smelling figurines, hand-carved with great care to avoid any sign of individual artistry, were everywhere in the city. I loved their smell and had picked up several broken icons that had been left on the floors of workshops—that made them unique and eccentric. I shook my head.
The old man asked, “Was it wise to tell this story when I did, after the Brahmin’s failed magic?”
I could not fathom where he was going—it was one of those questions he liked to ask in order to set me up for a theoretical point. Or so I thought. “I’m not sure, but there seems to be some progress there. The Brahmin failed, he remained stuck, while the prince learned how to move forward.”
“Toward something?”
“Sure. He seemed to be more fully adult, confident. He became more authentic to his inner, true self—damn, it sounds so corny when I say it.”
“Well, don’t torture yourself about it. It’s an excellent answer. Of course, it’s exactly the opposite of what the story is telling us, but that’s another matter.”
I knew it! I knew there was something I should have seen, but didn’t. I’m not sure what it is about old Indian men, guides especially. They have a gift for making you feel like a child, and the harder you fight that feeling, the worse it gets. But I was curious. “What do you mean?”
“From where I stand, it’s a story about having a very solid sense of self, a rigid one in fact. And it’s a story about getting rid of that notion, attaining selflessness, transcendence. That is what the kingdom stands for, you know.” He winked mischievously, which seemed to undermine what he was saying, but he continued. “It’s a gradual process, my friend. We can’t achieve transcendence immediately. We must first win the princess—that’s immanence, it’s the atman of the Upanishads. You’ve heard of these scriptures, I’m sure. And to win atman—of course, we’ve never lost it—we must first obtain the solar-love flower…”
I had read the Upanishads, as Rony urged me to. My friend also explained some of the famous passages, about Yajnavalkya and Janaka, and Shvetaketu and Uddalaka Aruni. I learned about the individual self merging with universal Self, but I doubt I understood it any better than Emerson and Thoreau had two hundred years earlier. Still, I thought I knew something. “Don’t tell me,” I pleaded with the old man, who was just watching me. “The flower is the grace of God!”
“That’s very nice,” he smiled. “I like that, although that’s not what I was going to say.”
Of course not. What did I expect? “What then?”
“Perhaps I should not say, you’re giving such wonderful interpretations. Who knows, perhaps you’re right and I’m wrong. I should not like to lead you astray…”
“But what were you going to say about the flower?” I raised my voice. “I’d like to hear…” He could have been teasing me, but there was no way I was going to let him change the topic. “Come on, oblige me!”
“Let me just say that many of these stories—especially about animal people—are about who we are in our ordinary existence, how we come to be the people we are, and how to unmake all of that. The essential first step—renunciation—means untangling our ego, our very identity. Although the goal is transcendental, the means are always mundane. We control them, not God.”
“So the flower is some psychological symbol, not a divine one?”
He shook his head and smiled at the same time. “As you might expect, I do not like these distinctions. Let’s just say that the flower is a key in the process of unmaking who we have come to be through our family’s expectations or those of our friends—our place in the world. For each one of us such a key exists, but it is unique.”
“Well then, why is it solar, and a flower?”
The old man began to laugh. He rolled his head backward and grabbed his sides as he roared, but there was no malice in his laughter. He seemed happy for some reason—perhaps he liked my insistent focus on the flower. “The reason it’s solar and a flower is because it’s my gift to you. It’s your key, my friend, and no one else’s. Remember that.” After he settled down a bit, the guide added, “I know this is hard—let me help you with another story.”
Just before he began we heard an excited voice behind us. Several steps down the path a man about my age and a boy were bending over a step and gesturing excitedly. We backtracked immediately—I suspected a snake—but when we reached the spot, the source of excitement turned out to be a small common tree frog. The tiny amphibian had been shading itself next to the step, but the sudden commotion made it panic. It tried to hop up to the next step, but failed repeatedly. The boy and his father—I assumed they were related—argued about something and laughed. I asked the librarian to translate.
“The boy wants to take the frog home, but his father claims that the frog is a pilgrim and must not be disturbed.” The man, who was wearing green trousers and a cotton shirt, appeared modern enough—a professional man. Was he teasing the boy or was he serious? The boy seemed more excited than disappointed. Suddenly, the frog, which had gathered some strength, took several quick leaps sideways and disappeared behind the green tecoma shrubs. The father and the boy stared at the spot, then noticed my feet. That made them forget the frog—they giggled happily. In an instant they turned around and charged up the hill.
TO TRUST A WOMAN
The gentleman who was my neighbor before I retired, a successful merchant named Udhay, once told me this story about his days as a young man. He told me that he had been the only child of a couple who suffered through a tense marriage. His father was a wealthy trader who had married an exceptionally beautiful woman—just because he thought it would showcase his earnings to competitors. Unfortunately, she may have been too beautiful for him, and he never learned to trust her. Even when she was pregnant with Udhay, their only son, he suspected her of infidelity. It was not until the boy was born, showing a crescent birthmark on his chest—identical to his father’s—that the merchant relinquished his suspicions about the pregnancy.
The rich merchant loved his son and spent hours playing with the boy or sharing the wisdom he had accumulated in a fruitful life. He taught him how to be assertive around other boys, how to make and invest money, but mostly how to conduct himself around women. Long before the boy was ten, his father already lectured him about the dangers of femin
ine wiles. “Be careful with women, son. Especially the pretty ones. They will lead you on, make you think that they love you—but in truth they are always planning your downfall.” Little Udhay did not get much out of these lectures; his father was very disappointed to see the boy run to his mother and ask her what daddy was talking about.
The boy loved his mother. She confined herself to the house, managing the household and the servants, often telling him stories, and showing him how to worship the gods. He sensed his mother’s deep sadness, although her demeanor would suddenly become overly joyful whenever her husband came home. To the boy this meant that his mother was trying to cheer up old Lemon-Face.
As Udhay grew into a teenager, his father assumed an even more active role in educating him about the ways of the world. He brought him to work in his shop, occasionally even on business trips. Once, when the boy was fifteen, his father took him to the district capital on a trading expedition. At the end of a long workday, the merchant showed Udhay to a famous brothel in order to demonstrate to him just how cunning and dangerous women can be.
The madam of the house was a monstrous old woman called Yamajivha. She had a huge protruding jaw and crooked teeth beneath a bulbous nose. She shrieked in laughter at the sight of the sweet-looking boy and his serious father. “Wait here,” she said rudely to the two guests, “I’m in the middle of something.”
Climbing Chamundi Hill Page 9