This is the most incredible piece of tragedy I have ever come across.

He recounted this tragic piece to me just preceding he closed his eyes, which,
paradoxically, he commented, ‘were never open as they are open now.’

With eyes closed tight together, pain and anguish still finding place on his
face, voice slowing down gradually, I heard him speak his last –“look, you have
to be to see.”

The seeds of his conflict were sown somewhere beneath his dwelling, which,
incidentally, sprouted one fine day, in the shape of a map on a terracotta
tablet, indicating vaguely a hidden treasure, somewhere.

“Well this somewhere was somewhere, unknown to me. Somehow, I managed to have a
faint idea of the place where this somewhere was, but not the path”. He began
his story thus and continued.

“Well, as it happened and let me tell you it all went on in the most obvious
manner, I went on from one path to the other, all much the same, though,
differing in texture and colour.”

He took a deep sigh and continued- “These paths lead me nowhere because they
arrived nowhere. I traveled from nowhere to nowhere. I arrived at from nowhere
to nowhere. The paths were known because the unknowns were known. The
unknowable remained unknowable, somewhere remained somewhere, alluring but
elusive.”

He continued – “Tired and in despair I sat under a tree, on the path unknown,
but much the same as any other path, known. I pondered, visually, in trying to
decipher the lines indicating the path in the treasure-map. To my utter
bewilderment I discovered that these lines had no beginning. It really had no
end. So it could lead me nowhere”. He took a deep breath and commenced afresh
– “I was damn tired and was lost. But as it happened to be, I went through the
map and for the last time, scanning the lines leading from nowhere to nowhere.”

Uncertain and utterly confused, I scanned the map without scanning it and lo! My
goodness, the ever illusive somewhere – was there. The lines in the map
indicated the place of the hidden treasure to the place of my dwelling and to my
utter shock I had lost the path of my dwelling in the utter confusion of paths.
I knew not how to return, which path to follow. The place, so distinctly I
remembered, but the path I had almost forgotten. I was lost. Lost for ever.”

Silence prevailed for sometime. I thought, he had finished.

Though I failed to make out much of what he said but nonetheless I felt sorry
for him. I was about to express my sympathetic feelings, but I realized that
there was something more to his story. I provoked him with just a ‘then’?

“Thence came the end. I had nothing else than to wait”.

“Wait for the ultimate. Certain, despite its uncertainty. I stopped roaming.
I stopped pondering. I stopped altogether.”

“Let me tell you.” He continued without a pause. “I had never experienced
silence communicating in profundity. And to my surprise I knew. I knew in
silence. I knew my dwelling was there where I sat and so was the treasure. As
a matter of fact, it was there all along and everywhere. Â’Cause everywhere was
nowhere in particular, Â’cause it was everywhere. And I tell you, all known and
all unknowns, all paths and all pathless ness are here. This moment.”

He paused for awhile and then continued – “And alas! I found it at last. Don’t
you think itÂ’s a strange story and funny too. DonÂ’t you think that this
‘somewhere’ is absolutely precarious and unidentifiable.” – he chuckled.

I had no reply. He did not expect it either.

“And you know, normally one doesn’t return to the same spot though one tends to
think that he has. On physical plane one presumes where one is but in totality
one cannot. The only course is to stick to where one is, wherever he is. It
helps to discover. To see. You know, I did not discover it. I simply knew
that I knew. Locating where in space with the aid of memory is absolutely
non-sensational. This where can only be located in time. You know?”

I was completely baffled and my head was spinning. I was just unable to
decipher the paradox.

He probably understood my state and so he continued to illuminate in his own
paradoxical way.

“Yes, the treasure is here because its everywhere, which is nowhere in
particular but is everywhere in reality. In the essence of its own reality.”

“But could you……….”He did not allow me to complete.

“My life, I thought, the treasure is here. It was all along and everywhere I
dwelled, without dwelling. It was everywhere wherever I went, without going.
It was all along the path I followed, without following and it is too late to
imbibe with the enlightenment, too late to become obsessed with it. You know
you have to be to see and this requires an obsession and it is really too late.
Look, you have to be to see.”

03/15/2002

Posted on 03/15/2002
Copyright © 2024 Ashok Sharda