"Ashok's Third Eye"

Maria Roman Tak

15 October 2009, 03:53

Ashok had two dreams in life. One was finding a good, pretty girl to marry and the other one was getting a new eye. There was not a single day that Ashok didn’t think about his two dreams or made them part of his morning prayers to his favorite god Hanuman ji. The rest of the things in his life, the few rupees he carried in his pocket, his piled-up existence in the slum and his tiring job in the farm, didn’t matter.

‘Hanuman ji, please give me a new eye first so that I can rightly choose my wife,’ he prayed with his eyes closed and with his palms joined tightly at the temple in Chakkar Wala Bagh at sunrise before starting a long day of work .

Ashok had lost his eye in a fireworks accident when he was just thirteen and since then, instead of a coal black-coloured eye, his left eye was as white as milk. He was a tall, slim, young man, in his early 30s with a gentle gaze. Lately, and maybe to aid in his quest to find his soul-mate, he was growing a small moustache which bended slightly on its tips giving him a charming look.

Pooja, one of the housemaids at Chakkar Wala Bagh, always used to say about Ashok that he had a ‘saaf dil’ , a clean heart, and with these two words she would summarize that he was a man to trust. In fact Ashok’s face and gestures would speak of an innocence and goodness very difficult to find in a servant, who were normally always ready to sneak away from their jobs at the slightest chance.

He would talk to the cow as he pulled her with the rope on his shoulder. He would bring the fresh limes and spinach from the farm in his knitted topi (hat). He would climb the walls of the farm as fast and fit as a monkey to bring a cold drink or chips from the roadway shop and he would walk as a daydreamer.

It was mid October and Diwali was approaching. The sounds of crackers, the smoky air at night and the endless lines of stalls selling fireworks, sweets and deepaks for lights were bringing the city to life. There was no other festival as bright and joyful for Hindus as the festival of Diwali, and every adult or child, of every cast and place, rich or poor, would anxiously await for Diwali to come.

Ashok counted the rupees he had in a stripped bag of cloth he had been carrying since morning. Today he was determined to find a doctor, a healer, a saint, anyone in the crowded city who could help him to get a new eye. And a pretty girl, he thought for himself. ‘With long hair, almond-shaped eyes and a bewitching smile, the image of the most desirable woman in the world’ he heard himself saying while he set foot on the road.

He would always blame his white eye for his little or close to no luck with girls, who would tease him or ignore him for good. And the few girls he had gone for a date with proved not to be the type of woman he had dreamt for, either too greedy or too ugly.
The streets were buzzing with activity and his first stop was at Ram Devji ka mandir, the smallest but most attractive temple in the whole city, a small house of god placed on a pavement of a busy crossroad. In the midst of the honking of vehicles and the noise of the rabble, people would get off their bicycles or their scooters to seek for blessings of Ram Devji, the deity riding on a white horse.

‘Om, shanti, shanti, Om’, chanted the long-bearded sadhu in orange robes who was placing the red dot or tikka between the devotees’ eyebrows.

‘Swami ji, I need a big favor, big help, I need a new eye. This one just causes me too much misery in life,’ Ashok told Tulsidas, the most-renowned saint of the entire city, famous for having cured serious maladies that at first sight would seem incurable or brought hope into a man’s interminable list of despair, pointing to his left white spot.

‘I pray to Hanumanji everyday but how long will I have to wait, I’m running out of time and patience,” Ashok said with a desperate tone. “I need to find the right woman to marry, Swami ji, and I know that I am unable to do that with just one eye,”

‘My putra (my son), you’ll find your soul mate in this life only, that right person would be the one that accepts you with just one eye, have faith in God,’ Tulsidas said with his eyes closed and his legs crossed on the pavement as if he was talking to the wind rather to a person.

‘You have one eye, a magic one, whose purpose is to reveal to your inner self the suitable girl. Use it,’ Tulsidas said and turned his attention to the next devotee, a woman with her face half covered by a veil which hardly could hide the traces of her fresh tears.

Use it, use it, Ashok was echoing the sadhu’s words in his mind as he continued walking towards the city. It was midday and still warm for this period of year. Soon winter would be approaching and the burning gust of wind from the desert would be replaced by the refreshing and chilly air from the Himalayas.

He felt encouraged thinking that his ordinary eye could gaze into the woman of his dreams. But how would he do it? He smiled and stared at the dozens of girls he crossed in the street, trying to put his eye to work. Some would shyly smile back while others would look with disgust in return, and for most of them, Ashok thought disheartened, he was just simply invisible.

He took a ruffled piece of paper out of his pocket. On it, Rakesh, a worker and friend at the farm had scribbled the name and the address of Dr. Mahaveer Chand, an optician whose reputation as the city’s ‘eye doctor’ was highly credited by word of mouth.
He had reached no.23, the doctor’s office address written on the paper and rang the bell. The long queue of people sitting and standing outside the office was not going to deter him from trying his luck.

‘Doctor, …doctor Mahaveer, my,… my,… name,… name, is, is Ashok, “ he stammered at the sight of a tall and stocky man in white robes who immediately got sight of his left eye.

‘What is your problem?,’ he doctor said.

‘I have have very, …very, …very little money but a big… big desire to have a new,..new eye. I want want to find a good, good girl to marry’ he said slowly and in a faltering tone. Ashok had never felt as nervous before. Only comparable to the day he kissed Latika his neighbor to feel what a kiss to a girl was like.
‘Doctor, would you help me, please?’

‘How much money do you have? ’ asked Dr. Mahaveer who seemed not to have the patience and kindness Ashok was looking for.

Ashoks’s shaking hands reached the bottom of his pockets and handed the doctor a stack of rupee notes that he had been saving for the past 20 years. Doctor Mahaveer hastily counted with his fingertips and said, ‘not enough, you only have 30,000 and the operation and medication would cost you around 100,000 only. I’m sorry, come back in the future.’

As soon as the door slammed, Ashok felt a tear falling down his cheek and all his hopes ruined. He put the money back in his pocket and with a slow pace, as if he was dragging his feet, he reached the farm at sunset.

He sat on a stone near the well exhausted after the long day. His gaze lost on the horizon. He had no energy left to milk the cow or even make some chapatis for dinner, and praying to Hanumanji was out of the question. He felt the most miserable man on earth.
Suddenly the back of a young woman captured his attention. She was thin, medium-hight, her black hair in a simple braid and a gracious figure. She had come for water at the well and she daintily was holding the big steel matki on her head. She turned around, smiled at him and looked him deep in his milky eye as no one else had before.

Only then Ashok knew that his two dreams had come true: he had seen the girl he wanted to marry with his new magic eye.

Comment

  1. A very heart-lifting short story, worthy of inclusion into “A Thousand and One Nights” – this being night number 1,002..

    — Gareth · Dec 31, 19:25 · #

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