The Flag

Watches closely, as his mother swindles it. Saffron water in the bucket besides her. A night, where the dawn doesn’t seem to have arrived whenever you open your eyes and with closed eyes you see the dreams of the day ahead. Soon after she is done with keeping in his bag, she goes to bed… not before kissing her son on his forehead. Shaven in the morning, with the echoes of mantras that may not be deciphered by his innocent ears… And the smoke of dhupaas so thick, that his eyes turned wet.

The dawn, came a bit early on that day. But not before, he was awake already. The bag, white, made of cloth… but not old… a custom made bag for the day… As he wears his saffron clothes after a bath by the well. His mother is feeding him the sweet, made of all that she could find in her house… but yet he eats , with joy… But he doesn’t smile… not today… The mantras resume, as one of the old men chanting them, comes near the boy. He has a copper kalash with dhupa inside it, a haze of smoke, he walks past through it. He moves his hand in front of the kid, as if to draw a circle, with that kalash held in his strong bare hands. The kid watches, not with curiosity alone but with pride… that it is his opportunity… Ravi, Shashi, Agni… all the three forms of the same eternal God…. All must be worshipped and be made happy… And so he begins. With a stick as his walking support and his bag around his neck and covering his back. He is going to walk alone… the journey he must complete… the mantras get louder, from the window of the house his grandmother watches… as his grandfather plays the traditional percussion “ghatttam” in the living room. As other drummers join in… And the Brahmins, who were awaiting this moment, take the Shankhaas and the Shankhanaad so deep as if it would reach the heavens. The boy walks on… he is not even supposed to look back, but even thought doesn’t touch him to do so… as he is excited about the journey ahead.

He reaches the shore… the shore of the sea from where they came… ‘they” who his father fought all his life… and gave his life for his land… He stands in the small boat that was left for him… he then gets out of it… for a moment he forgot his lessons... the ones that his father taught… then he throws his bag in the boat… pushes in the sea… water is shining like silver… he stands in its glaze for a while… just as if he is not going to complete what he started… but then he runs for a short few steps, through that water… it was a bit warm… and then jumps into the boat. Pushes his stick into the sea-shore sand below and uses it to push his boat into water… And then he rides on. Holding on to the stick and head held high… wind fluttering his vastra… eyes towards his destination…

The fort. The same fort that his ancestors built, with toil and protected with pride… the fort that stands in the sea, overlooking all of their villages on the shore and like a father gives them early warnings of storms to come… and the worse… The fort, his destination…

He gets down by the shore of the sand which made the fort’s island base. As he faces the tall walls, the walls his great grandfathers built… bringing in stones weighing more than an a bull, in their small boats… and then raising them with bare hands… And the anchors… huge in the shape of the tops one would play as a kid with…

He then enters through the main gate, left open… rusted… for years now… after they lost the battle… and the fort… The fort, an abandoned treasure… the conquerors fear of the curse of the fort would have them… But they fear more of the flag…

He goes then to the market place inside the fort, and through it to the palace… and to its vast terrace… now deserted… Wild climbers make the palace home… He goes to the staircase that takes from the terrace to the hill top… So he reaches… the place, tallest in the sea… he could see all of his village from there… he could imagine his mother’s anxious eyes waiting to watch this, as they all would have gathered now in the temple… And then he takes the cloth, swindled inside his bag… saffron bright… with golden border… and he hoists it on his stick, the same stick that guided him all the way… not a sign of fear nor tiredness on his face… as he holds his flag high and starts running from the hill top… The bells in the temples of the shore villages echo as Shankhanaad joins them… and the man in green robes, with his white cap and beard… sees the flag on the fort… in awe he stands… as he knows… its not by forgetting his own legends he will worship his new god…