The mother is seated on the large red lotus. She is the maid. She is dressed in a red skirt and blouse. And I, I am the lotus. It is my very being. Has my body morphed to become the flower? Maybe, maybe not. Yet it is my very being. My self. My ego. My awareness. My intellect. Whatever you wish to call it.
The Void, The House and The Forest
Who is the mother? The flower is the womb. But why is the daughter the womb? Or does it mean something else? Is the lotus enlightenment? Is the daughter the enlightenment?
What is this? Why am I seeing this? Wait… wait, wait, wait. I am seeing this. How am I seeing this if I am the lotus?
Am I the lotus? What made me think that I am the lotus? Why was I so confident about it, even when I could see the whole thing from here?
I look down, but I see no floor. I have no body, yet I can see. I look up, and there is no ceiling or sky. I look around. It is all black. Yet I can clearly see the flower and the mother.
Why is the mother seated on the flower, and why is the flower me?
I know I am the flower. I can feel it. I can feel her presence on me. Not weight. Not pressure. Just presence.
The black around me is the void. The flower and the mother are existence. I am aware of my existence; hence I see myself.
But who is the mother? Why is she seated on me?
I found myself seated at a kitchen table. I had a pen in my hand. “I have a hand,” I told myself.
I turned my head down and looked at myself. I was a young woman, dressed in a blue silk saree.
There was a notebook on the table. I took it and opened it. It was blank. I wrote my experience on the first page. As I came to the end of the page, a hand appeared from the side and tore it. I lifted my head to see who it was.
It was the maid. The mother. She was dressed in the same red blouse and skirt. She crushed the paper, threw it into the hearth fire, and continued stirring the pan. She said nothing, and I said nothing.
I started writing on the second page. I wrote the same thing that I had written on the first page. Again, as I came to the end of the page, she tore it, crushed it, and threw it into the fire.
I wrote again on the third page. It was torn, crushed, and thrown into the fire.
I wrote on the fourth, fifth, sixth, and all the way up to the hundredth, the last page. They were all torn, crushed, and thrown into the fire.
Once the notebook was over, she smiled with satisfaction, knowing that I would not write anymore.
She closed the pan and walked out of the kitchen. I looked through the window. She walked out through the back door. She took the rake and started gathering all the dried leaves into a corner of the backyard.
Once all the leaves were piled, she dropped the rake and stepped onto the pile and stood there.
She became the fire and burned all the leaves. I rushed to the backyard and stood a few feet before the fire.
Once the leaves were burnt, everything collapsed into the fire. The backyard, the trees, the house, everything. All that remained was the void, the fire, and an altar below it.
I stood at the same place. I was not the young woman anymore. Once again, I had no body.
I am the altar, and the mother is the fire. I felt her presence on me. Not the heat. Not the light. Just the presence.
Who is the mother? Why am I calling her the mother?
Why is she on me? Am I the womb of my mother? Is the daughter the womb of the mother?
Is she dependent on me? Or has she descended on me?
I turned back and found myself standing in a forest, dressed in the same blue silk saree. It was a dense rainforest. I looked behind, and it was forest all around.
I heard the sound of a river and walked in that direction.
After a long, slow downhill walk, I saw a river between the trees and shrubs.
I kept walking down, constantly shifting my view from the river to the path before my feet and back to the river.
Soon, I reached the bank and looked around. I saw the mother seated in a relaxed posture on a rock in the middle of the river.
She turned her head and saw me. We made eye contact. Her face turned furious. I got scared and ran back and hid behind a tree. I crouched on the ground and looked at her.
I saw her open her mouth, and then I heard it. She ululated. The sound from her throat made the sound of the river seem like silence.
I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to run away, but the sound had a physical pressure on me. I couldn’t stand. I crawled away. After a few yards, I turned into a cobra and kept crawling. I saw a conch shell ahead. I shrank to the size of a worm and hid in the deepest spiral of the shell.
The sound stopped in a few minutes. But soon the conch shell moved. I was being lifted. Then air flowed through the shell. It was being blown. The sound shattered me.
I crawled out after the first blow, before it was blown again. It was she who was holding the conch shell.
She grabbed me by the tail, holding it between her right thumb and middle finger. She looked at me with the same fury. I was terrified. She dropped me on her head. I sank into her black, tangled hair. I was back in the void.
I saw a conch shell where the fire altar had stood before. The shell was facing up and was filled with water. I am the conch shell, and the mother is the water. I can feel her presence in me.
