An absence of error

Clear and present calm

Chapter 5 An absence of error

Most people, can, in the course of a lifetime, identify the one point in their life, that came to define all else. That one point may be in many different forms.

It has come to be fashionable these days, for a man to point to the day he met his wife, as the one that changed all else. The wife, no doubt, is grateful for the experience. However, in the course of their lives, where the realization of this fact grows to be a durable and permanent part of their experience, something very curios happens. It is the day when one person, in the relationship, commits an act of 'grand theft life', of the other person.

When we realize that the other, truly loves us more, we let fall our defenses and permit ourselves to be carried away on the arms of the savant. This we do by offering our tangible body to the inspired life of the other. Thereafter, the die is cast.

Julius Caeser took Rome. Othello married Desdemona. David plotted and brought Sheba into possession. The God of the most high took the life of Christ. The Hwang Po river captured China. Gangothri gave the joys of his life, to preserve a principle and in doing so, it preserved him, in the long run. In falling all the way to the bottom, the man thereafter, can only move up.

In Mike's experience, the childhood Neela-Kozinsky relationship, had evolved into the savant Mike-Gangothri and was thereafter threatening to become the true love of Pan-Herakles. Each represents a point in the life of the universe that defines all else. Where it had been necessary for the universe to raise three such points to define the all, it must be considered that there are three universes in god's creation.

Mike had sold his interest in the hotel, packed a few things and left. Gangothri sat in the garden, drinking coffee, while listening to the reports of the wedding in the Sindh in Pakistan, as told by the chef.

He had taken the midnight train from Srinagar to the Pamirs. From there, he planned to travel to the Massandra Palace in the Crimea. He had been there only one time before, while in the Navy. He had unfinished business.

Charles was in love. For a man who had lived with the angels, all his life, this was experienced as unusual in his being.

“We had an understanding,” it said. “A savant learns and thereafter must come to recreate the experience as knowledge of thyself. Otherwise you cannot claim your life's achievements, in this lifetime, as yours.”

 

“What's going to happen?” he asked.

“That depends on you, son,” it replied.

He was sitting in the balcony of his apartment, overlooking the bay of Santa Monica. He had been going over the contents of the envelope that Shelley had given him. But his mind was not on McClellan.

It was with Shelley.

Charles had understood only too well Shelley's description of the Almeg. It is what the English language calls the innamorata. However, in his case, it did not confuse him. It had on the contrary, led him to a life of understanding of himself and the world. It was his dearest friend.

In Shelley, his dearest friend had at last appeared before him, in person. A part of him referred to the experience as the culmination of his life. Another part denied it and referred to the will of Shelley as the true innamorata experience. In the third universe of his reasoning, he realized that it was his wife, from whom he had become separated over the last eight years.

He realized that there was no amount of money that McClellan could have paid him to walk away from all these. He had to come to intuit what the mahimorata of the universe wanted of him.

He had mixed a cocktail of rum, yogurt, lime and salt. He drank from the tall glass. It helped him stay even tempered.

He remembered an expression from his childhood days that always summed up all his difficulties.

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” he whispered rhetorically.

Gangothri sat quietly in the back of the boat as it floated down the Ganges. The river flowed through a virtual history of India from the early Kushan kingdom where the Buddha came to rest, through to Indraprasatha, the burning match of the Mahabaratha and finally met the sea at Kolkata, the birthplace of the Great Kali and the life of Siva.

He was thinking about the chef's fondness for palliatives. When she realized that Mike had left, she had come to a whole lot of conclusions. This brought her to substitute for Gangothri, the loss of his friend Kozinsky and then Mike.

When she brought the coffee to him on the third night of Mike's departure, she had lingered for just five seconds more than usual. Gangothri had made eye contact with it.

They had spent the whole night making love, over and over again. Just before dawn, they had come to a new intimation about their desires. He had taken her from the back in a gesture that resembled expressing one's passions in reverse. It promised in his mind the greatest expression of intelligence he had ever known.

 

It healed all his divisions, he saw clearly the destiny that became the hallmark of his life, he was over it all. In his endearment to grab and hold it to himself, in a life that has been long parched, he had strangulated her and killed her on the bed.

The banks of the Ganges reflected it all.

God drove Adam from the garden of Eden. Herakles killed his wife and his social nature. Cain killed Abel. The Kauravas burnt the Pandavas in the house of lac.

In the words of Gilbert O'Sullivan, ' they had all loved, not wisely, but too well.'

This was the beginning of the third universe for Gangothri. To live again, he must first die.