Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life by BS Murthy (classic books for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

would confound him no end. Why should any girl, privy to his past, ever consent to marry him? What if some parents with an eye on his wealth were to brainwash their daughter into marrying him? Won’t that lead to an uneasy embrace to her and a cold kind of nuptial for him? How constricted could be life inhibited by his past? Would he ever come across a dame who would accept him for what he was? Oh, how his life seemed to hinge upon this chance occurrence! What else could he do than daydream of his dame! Of what avail would his freedom be without a loving wife in life? But would he be able to engage a woman with his benumbed mind? Oh, why didn’t he think about it before?

Before he got an answer, he was at the gates of the Misty Nest. As the thoughts of the past returned to the fore, he could think no more of his future. Thus, he got out of the Ambassador as though to cross the threshold. To the silent welcome of his father’s trusted men and his mother's clan who came to see him, he responded with wetted his eyes. But, his gesture of bowing before the bungalow, treating it as his mother’s mandir, brought tears to the indulgent gathering. When he perambulated the dwelling taking her room as   sanctum sanctorum, all followed him in equal reverence. But as he ventured into his mother's hallowed quarters, others held back to afford him the privacy of the momentous occasion.

Entering Sneha's room languidly, he prostrated before her revered painting as he would before a deity and, with damp eyes, he was lost in prayer for her troubled soul. And, touching the frame at her feet, he vowed to fulfill her last wish to uphold the cause of her sacrifice. Even as the maternal memory triggered his filial impulses, he was impelled to reach his father forthwith. But on second thoughts, he felt it was easier to feel easy before his mother's portrait than in his father's presence. So he decided to go by train than catch the flight to reach his father.

After informing his father by wire about his changed itinerary, with a sling bag for his baggage, he got into a packed unreserved bogie of Dakshin Express that day. Finding the place brimming with life, in spite of the inconveniences, he saw the power of hope when man was free. Noticing that a young woman on the platform glanced endearingly at him, he thought she might scorn him if she came to know of his crime.

After two days of arduous journey, made light by the thrill of newfound freedom, he reached Annavaram by bus but not before changing trains en route. As he neared the town he sighted the hilltop temple of Satyanarayana Swami and felt as if his weariness was on the wane. Alighting from the bus at the temple steps, he hired a rickshaw to take him to Vanaprastham all the way eyeing the temple. But, once he reached the ashram, dotted with the thatched huts, his eyes longed to espy his father. When he revealed his identity to the first comer, he was led to his father, whom all revered there as guruji.

Entering that parnasala, Suresh saw his father in his resplendent beard. Gazing at him with a sense of affection, he felt that his father looked every inch a venerable guruji. Thus overawed by his father's aura and pushed by his own emotion, Suresh fell at Gautam's feet. And a gratified Gautam found himself crying over his son’s head even as Suresh began washing his father’s feet with his tears. But the father, wanting to size up his son as a man, readily helped him to his feet. Soon, propelled by his admiration for his son's persona, Gautam took Suresh into his arms, but finding his eyes welled up with tears still, he stroked his lad's head for mutual solace and as if to celebrate their reunion in unison, he too began shedding tears of joy in profusion. Thus, as they both felt their emotions were at conversation, they did not attempt to utter a word for fear of distraction.

When they were lost still in satiating their emotional appetite, Sripada Swami walked in, and in a gesture that none had visualized, he hugged Gautam's prodigal son. What was more, the swamiji kissed Suresh’s forehead and that surprised the onlookers even more. Beholden, father and son prostrated at the swamiji’s feet and washed them afresh with the tears of their souls. Urging them to their feet, the swamiji said that Vanaprastham was blessed by the presence of two blessed souls in them.

By the time the call came for the community lunch, the swamiji was closeted with Gautam and Suresh for long. Thereafter, in an unprecedented gesture, holding them both, the swamiji led them into the dining hall creating a sensation in the ashram. Before the ashramites could gather their wits, the swamiji stupefied them all by asking Suresh to sit beside him. Sizing the import of the moment, Gautam took to serving the swamiji and his blessed son. It was a moment that feasted the eyes of the ashramites and the visitors alike. When Suresh took his turn to serve his father, the swamiji invoked that his hands be forever blessed to serve humanity at large. That poignant moment, all agreed, would be etched in their memory for posterity. And that cherished day at the ashram became folklore in time.

Later, serene with a sense of spirituality that he never before experienced, Suresh went into a siesta. When he woke up, eager to go to Shanti Sadan he reached his father's parnasala to take leave of him. Finding him engaged in conversation with a young woman, a hesitant Suresh stood at the entrance. When Gautam gestured him to enter, the woman instinctively turned her gaze towards Suresh at the entrance. As their eyes met, they instantly sparkled with mutual attraction.

When Gautam introduced her as Vidya Rao, the woman in-charge of Shanti Sadan, Suresh was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude as well. As he thanked her for her dedication to his cause, she told him that she owed him more for being a beneficiary of his vision. In time, seeing Suresh’s impatience, the guruji asked Vidya to show his son how his dream had turned into reality in Shanti Sadan. But Vidya suggested to Suresh that they might stay on to hear the guruji’s discourse that swamiji himself was wont to attend. She further said to a proud Suresh that people flocked to Vanaprastham to hear guruji’s talks that the swamiji hailed as the gems of Hindutva.

At that, an overwhelmed Suresh touched his father’s feet impulsively, and said he was blessed to be his son. In time, having heard his father with rapt attention, the son realized why so many thought hearing his discourse was like awaking into the dawn of enlightenment. At the end of the discourse, as Suresh went to fetch his handbag, Vidya waited for him in contemplation. By then, Annavaram’s horizon had turned orange.

 

Episode 5

Sprouts of Love

 

Following Suresh with her eyes, Vidya thought about swamiji’s benign gesture to him that she had heard about. She felt that swamiji’s regard for guruji’s prodigal son vindicated her own position. She recalled that day when swamiji briefed her about the life and times of Suresh. How even before she could recover from the shock of what she had heard, swamiji placed Suresh’s photograph before her! And didn’t he ask her to make Suresh’s story privy to every inmate of the Shanti Sadan!

How impressed she was with what she saw of him in that picture! How puzzled she was when swamiji ordained that Suresh’s pictures be displayed all over Shanti Sadan! Didn’t he theorize that the picture of his youth and the plight of his soul would enable the inmates to reflect upon their hurt from the angle of the culprit’s suffering? It was swamiji’s belief that the very fact that the inmates owed their succor to a reformed sinner might help them overcome some of their own bitterness. Besides, as Suresh happened to be guruji’s son it would have value addition as well, would it not?

How swamiji’s disclosure and his diktat affected her! Why she found herself staring at the photograph all the way to Shanti Sadan! How handsome he looked in that picture and what mischievous smile he had! Didn’t she feel as though he was smiling at her? What a pair of magnetic eyes he had! How they had kept her glued to the frame for hours on end all these years! How long did she search for the clues to his criminality in his serene demeanor! But did she find any? And having found none, didn’t she fall in love with his attractive face? All the same, how shocked she was when she realized that!

How troubled she was that he was serving time at Tihar for rape and murder! How the mixed feelings of awe and pity perturbed her! Didn’t she in the end pardon him for his crime as he showed the strength to reform himself? How glad she was that he was a sensitive soul! Didn’t she feel proud of him that he turned out to be a Good Samaritan? Did she ever think about anyone other than him from then on? How often did she wish he had not done what he did so that he wouldn’t be languishing in the jail? What a wonder that she began to see his crime itself as misdirected masculinity! How she waited for him in the hope that he too would fall in love with her! Did she have a wink ever since guruji told her about his impending release? Now that he had come, could her eyes keep sleep away for her to cherish his visage all the night? If he looked handsome in those pictures, oh, how divine he appeared in his person!

Why, was he not swept away by her as well? Was he not all the while looking at her on the sly! Well, he was unable to take his eyes off her! No doubt, he was fascinated by her. Was it love at first sight for him too! Wouldn’t it crystallize in his heart as it happened with her? After all, fate was kind to him in the end. Having spoiled part of his youth, it’s as if it developed second thoughts about the fairness of it all. And in regret it granted him love as he came out of the jail! Why make him lose time on dates and all to spot his mate! Hadn’t he lost so much time already? And she too! Thank God they could meet at last. Would fate unite them without losing further time?

As she was lost thus, he walked up to her as one would to a girl next door. But, as he neared her, his sprouting love, abetted by the radiance of her soul, swayed him. Mystified as she was by swamiji’s affection for him, she stared at him as though in a trance. And when he came near her, it seemed to her as if the magnetic force in him brought her back to her senses to make her feel shy even more. And as he too failed to be bold with her, she suggested a shortcut as if she was impatient to lead him to the altar. As he followed her, they took to the fields in the twilight.

In that short stroll made longer by their languidness, as each wanted to be nearer to the other, they found themselves nursing their togetherness. Thus, their proximity in the wilderness infused a sense of romanticism in their enamored hearts. As he turned his gaze skyward, as if to find out what the stars might foretell, he saw the moon peeping from the horizon. As though on cue he looked