Orissa

PART I

Gloomy is the chandelier of our life

without a flame to illuminate it...

To be happy

Bay of Bengal. Year 256 BC

"I wish I could be happy, now that I will die by her side. Evade me of these impious thoughts that harass me and go renewed to samsara, away from the decadent body in which I hide scared. I would like to bury the suffering accumulated under this bark without juniper oil, like fruit poisoned by the amber of past withered years. But that viscous rancor that suffers her wounds adheres to my desires like a black comb; and under that translucent macula, inalterable by the rays of the sun, they contaminate themselves with their breath until they rot inside.

I would like to close their eyes and banish the fear from their skin. Make them forget who they are and what they have been, and guide them towards a new awakening in a remote place where they look back and only the emptiness pursues them.

I wish I could do it, but I cannot.

I would be lying if I said that I do not face death with the same fear as the helpless with whom I share this dark mousetrap. Here, hidden from the eyes of the Creator, we dig like rodents a hole so deep that it can accommodate our anguish.

I wish I did not mind doing it, but it is not like that.

In essence, I have spent my life transmitting to the illiterate minds the same doctrines that I have preserved with my writing. I remember precisely those words with which I aspired to convince them not to fear death, to accept their catharsis as the ancestral rite that gives them new life. The righteous will cross the threshold blessed by karma and will reap the fruits of their present existence. The renegades, on the other hand, will see their vital status degraded in honor of their vileness, enduring new hardships that may make them, this time, reconsider.

Vacuous prayers in which their penance could arise.

In most cases I managed to convince them with my rhetoric; it is not difficult to choose when there is no more than one path. But right now, when the time comes, now that I must encourage them with the strength of my faith, the voice of the gods reverberates in my mind like the passing echo of a creed that I do not share myself. In the back of my head, the doubt is shaken, wild, and asks me, scathing and provocative, if I am really prepared.

Am I?

It terrifies me to be dissolved in the infinite cosmos like a simple grain of salt in the sea. Expand my soul between nebulae and return to the world without having reached the enlightenment yet. The fear of not having made merits to enlarge my existence oppresses my chest until it takes my breath away. If the gods consider that I could do better, they will judge me without restraint and I will have to pay the high price that their law dictates.

I can swear that I never broke any moral norm and I always stayed away from the impure, but today I question myself if it was really enough. Praying embraced to the art of writing enriches the spirit and the intellect, but none of them has taught me to be happy. And my time of learning is running out waiting for the first warriors sitting here, while they ascend the steps of the temple, eager to sign my end with steel.

The emperor has cornered us in the confines of the world, a place where the sandy soil is wrapped in the black mantle of the sea to avoid the footsteps of man. A universe of wild waters that does not distinguish the invader from the invaded one, which fills the nets of the fishermen as soon as they sink their ships forever in the abyss in which their widows appear.

Among us there are shepherds who have abandoned their flock and, with luck, still keep the mute company of a dog and its nits. Traveling musicians portray with sad notes their sad melancholy, between whores and charlatans with whom they have once parted the dirty alleys of the city. At their side, old blacksmiths lean against the walls, exhausted by having squeezed their arms forging blunt swords after which their children will lose their lives. And among all of them, peasants and merchants distribute the scarce remnants of their food stores to prevent them from feeding the invading army with the rising sun. Some beneficiaries are probably crooks and thieves who will have stolen or cheated on them, but nobody bothers at this point in judging whoever is next to them.

It is curious to see how anguish strips us. Purge of our interior all hint of prejudice and reveals that, in essence, we all share the same human origin. We wait together, oblivious for the first time to the social order that has always separated us, pending more of what the future will bring us than of our past. Our lives may have discussed differently, but all will come together in the same fatal channel.

For a long time nobody has come to talk to me. Maybe no one has a glimmer of hope, or perhaps they are clinging to it with all their might, jealous to share it with others. I do not blame them for that. I could not. In most cases they have been taught to live without hope, letting them learn for themselves that sometimes a bit of it feeds more than bread.

Not far from me I see a mother breastfeeding her son, a child a few weeks old who until recently cried and who perhaps has not yet had time to contemplate the land in which he was born. So much better for him. It would not be fair to let him live and open his eyes for the first time to see the world around us. We probably have not built it thinking about him or thinking about ourselves. I remember his mother bringing fruits and vegetables on occasion to the temple, always friendly and smiling. A faithful and generous woman like her does not deserve to beget a slave.

On my knees still rest the few parchments that I have been able to bring with me in my flight. They are my only belonging, the only thing of value I have rescued from the flames of the fire. I have written them with my own handwriting over twenty years, transcribing in them Vedic mantras that, from mouth to mouth, have reached our days. Today they will die with me, amid fierce flames that will return their words to the place where I managed to rescue them one day. Often, men forget that certain things cannot be taken from the gods, no matter how much effort we put into it.

I will never forget it.

Like me, others have also dedicated their lives to preserve this kind of divine knowledge, whether in paintings, melodies or carvings of wood and stone. This makes me wonder if perhaps art only reaches such a status when it is able to channel the essence of the divine. Some of these skills require years of effort through exclusive delivery. What other arts will exist whose domain requires more dedication than a single life can cover?

In the many walls of this temple, carved in granite, survive the images that the master stonemasons of the area extracted from some recited verses. They populate the corridors, shaping our history. The history of destruction that we are living and the one that is still to come. In the small room in which I find myself, far from the windows that connect with the world, dwell in the shadows the scenes that narrate the great ode to the young liberator, the one that would emerge from among us to finish off the invader and give us peace again A brave boy, with more impetus than scope, fighting, determined, against enemy forces that claim to usurp their people and their freedom.

But the invader has arrived and nobody has been able to even slow down his progress. The Kalinga region has succumbed to its ferocious onslaught, as if the goddess Kali had returned to earth to annihilate all of humanity again. Villages and walled cities have fallen in their wake, seeing how they brandished the weapon with which, without hesitating for a moment, they murdered their brothers to rise to the throne of the kingdom. His grandfather, that courageous warrior capable of expelling the unyielding king of Macedonia from our land, today would be ashamed to see his son’s son spilling the blood of his neighbors for taking their houses from them.

And meanwhile, in the wasteland, between rivers of blood and viscera, there is no sign of any hero; only a handful of brave defenders of their people who give their lives before their home. And they all do it in vain.

They call him the Cruel. A furious demon that does not know of forgiveness nor of compassion, which is enlarged biasing the life of hundreds of enemies without the slightest hint of mercy. He will finish us off and crush our kingdom to order his slaves to raise it back over its ruins.

I only hope that Iama’s balance will bring him the greatest of sufferings and his soul will wander lost until the day when Brahma vanishes and the world is absorbed by the primordial Absolute.

We may be there, oh, great emperor! And among other ruthless murderers I will see you regret these acts.

I would like to do so, and never doubt that I will do so."

When the emperor enters the temple next to an outpost he annihilates without compassion each and every one he finds there hidden, without distinctions of sex, caste or age. Then orders to take the bodies outside and burn them with many other corpses in the nearest pyre.

The great warrior remains motionless with his eyes closed for several minutes, without his heartbeat increasing with the decadent rhythm that marks the end of the war.

The humidity inside the temple refreshes his skin, scorched by the sun and the fire of the bonfires. Among those walls he only hears the distant cries of the most laggard in dying, which dissolve in the air and reach his ears like a muffled whisper.

The calm of the place makes his soul return from the deepest hell to the earthly world, like the effect of a drug that begins to subside after hours. His wounds and scars remind him that he is also human and, at times, he may even feel pain. The muscles of his limbs relax, his accentuated features soften and his pupils dilate in the center of his reddened eyeballs. His appearance resembles that of any other strong warrior in his army, but still retains that halo of supremacy that makes him distinguishable among the rest of his men.

The emperor removes the hair from his face and rubs his eyes, burned and stinging with sweat. The shadows that surround him dissolve timidly in the air, revealing the richness of masterfully carved walls. On the ground, very close to him, between manuscripts, crude musical instruments and other orphan objects, the emperor finds a torch still incandescent. Protecting it between his hands, he manages to fan the flame with the arid breath that comes from his lungs. Then he brings the fire to the walls and discovers something in them that arouses his interest.

As he traverses the walls trampling the bloody carpet that his wrath has woven on the ground, his initial curiosity gives way to a fear that, moreover, gradually becomes a deeper feeling. It is the first time he has felt such a thing in a long time and has caught him off guard, stripped of the mantle of wrath, invisible and protective, that covers him in battle.

A feeling of weakness runs through his body just before he felt his legs bend and fall to his knees. The horror that seizes him makes him shiver as only the cold of the highest peaks of the Himalayas had managed to do. Meanwhile, a trickle of tears springs from his, now, scared child eyes.

No one had ever seen him do it and nobody would ever see him do it, but in the darkness of that little temple, lost in a corner of his immense empire, the great conqueror wept with his soul shattered for the rest of the night.

Under the glare of the stars

Bhubaneswar, Orissa. Year 1896 AD

Nagesh observes the night sky through the small window opened in the wall. It would be difficult to determine the number of hours that he might have spent his life lying on his bed contemplating the sky. He knows that when night falls and the world turns black, the most dangerous creatures of the forest come out to hunt, and it is time to take shelter and wait patiently for the light of a new day to return. Only the sky out there, still infected by that sinister tone that surrounds it, remains calm and serene, and can be covered with white lights that mitigate the darkness scattered at its feet. Thus the universal equilibrium between good and evil, between pure and blinding haze, is preserved, and life can thus continue its languid and anodyne decadence. It is something that Nagesh knows very well and that is why he waits, protected under the cover of the moon and his dazzling retinue of stars, to which sleep gradually takes away his consciousness.

On a more earthly plane, a curtain separates him from the disturbing blackness that cohabits with them inside the hut. His father hung it a few months ago right on the edge of his bed, tired of his incessant insistence. He often tries to convince him that he is already old enough to face his fears and warns him that the least expected day he will retire it to make a cloak with it. Nagesh recognizes that a little more cover would do him no harm on the freezing cold of the mornings but, for the moment, he still prefers to spend a bit of cold at dawn if he manages to be safe from the threatening darkness.

But outside tonight everything seems quieter than usual. The birds that usually narrate with their chirps the stories of the forest today are silent and barely disperse among the leaves timid remnants of their existence. It is as if the immense vegetative framework that surrounds the universe has stopped and no one in its bosom has anything left to tell. As if time was frozen in the heart of a glacier and, although certainly in motion, its progress was dogmatically imperceptible. They are occasions in which one has the impression that someone has given too much leeway to the intricate machinery that moves the world and, little by little, it could last forever.

Sometimes these things happen, especially on rainy nights, when the animals remain motionless and silent, watching carefully how the drops fall on the fallen leaves. Then it is the storm that is responsible for populating its score with prissy watery sounds.

However, there are also times when fate is broken, like a crystal glass beautifully carved when hitting the ground, and someone announces loudly that from that moment everything will be different.

The two intruders attacked in the middle of the night. They burst into the hut as if they had just materialized in the depths of the forest. They do not seek to act with stealth or caution, nor do they care to knock down the farming implements that pile up next to the door. Despite the commotion generated, the intruders are far from being mere thieves without purpose.

The noise makes Nagesh’s father wake up startled, who quickly realizes the seriousness of the matter and reacts quickly. Instinctively, he tries to get hold of a hoe that has been thrown out and has fallen a short distance away from him. Nagesh, on the contrary, is panicked and curls up under the blanket, closing his eyes so hard that he even sees colored lights under his eyelids.

One of the assailants immediately guesses the adult’s intentions and anticipates them, kicking away the tool just before he can grab it. Afterwards, the two swoop on him at once and reduce him with a handful of well-calculated movements. Although in the interior of the hut darkness reigns, none of the assailants has ignored the constitution of the man, thin but well defined thanks to the hard and continued work, and from the beginning they understood that acting together will astonish their efforts and possible setbacks.

Nagesh’s father tries to writhe on the ground in despair, but all his intentions are in vain. Surely, in other circumstances the intruders would have had more difficulties to reduce a man of such dignified height, but the surprise factor plays in their favor, and the larger of the two soon manages to hold him by the arms. The other takes advantage to take a club from the ground and hits him in the stomach. The man roars in pain, all the air leaving his lungs.

Do you want us to kill you?! Calls out the smaller intruder only two spans away from his face. With a new punch in the stomach, he clearly states that he does not expect any response. Bloody bunch of garbage! He shouts again, accompanying his rhetoric with new blows.

While the corpulent intruder keeps the man immobilized, whose resistance is less and less, his smaller companion takes a quick look at the room, inspecting every corner. Nagesh continues hidden under his blanket, paralyzed as if it had solidified on his body and prevented his movements with freedom. Upon hearing the steps of the intruder through the hut, the child feels that the blood freezes in his veins and his heart stops without warning.

Further away, the burly assailant decides to release his prey, leaving him to fall to the ground stunned by the amount of blows received. The head of Nagesh’s father hits violently against the ground, causing him to lose consciousness. When hearing it, Nagesh cannot avoid that a shriek of anguish escapes between his lips, betraying his presence and his location.

Behind that curtain! The taller outlaw shouts to his companion, evidencing his leadership.

I heard it! Reproaches the other, annoyed, making a dismissive gesture with his hand so that the first stop giving orders.

The big man approaches Nagesh’s position kicking everything on the floor and jerking the thin curtain that separates them. Behind, he discovers the small round bulge that forms the body of the child crouched under the rough piece of cloth. Seeing him try to camouflage himself in this way, the assailant cannot contain a loud laugh.

Well, it seems that there is something moving here below! He exclaims with irony, and with a quick movement removes the piece of cloth that covers the boy. Wow! But it is not a mouse!

When he finds out he’s discovered, Nagesh tries to get away, but the man throws his arm towards him and grabs his head with his big hand, forcing him to sit up on the bed.

For a few moments that seem eternal, Nagesh has one of his father’s murderers in front of him, but fear prevents him from opening his eyes and confronting the executioner face to face. He notes his deep breath, laden with nauseating odors, whipping him in the face like waves on a cliff. It is unpleasant even for him, who is accustomed to living among cattle, where the sour smell of manure predominates over all others.

The burly intruder brings his left hand to the back of the belt and closes his thick fingers on the hilt of an elongated knife. But when he prepares to bring the ramrod weapon something seems to make him stop.

Let’s finish the job before all this scab covers us completely and let’s get out at once! The petty assailant orders, as he hits Nagesh’s father with the tip of his boot, who is still lying on the ground.

When he makes sure he does not react, he lights a match and slowly brings it closer to the pile of dry straw that forms his bed.

The threads do not take long to be dyed a fiery red, giving off a suffocating smoke that rises up enraged over their heads. The smaller guard puts his hand to his mouth to preserve his breath from the smoke, which is becoming increasingly impenetrable. Frightened by the frantic advance of the flames, the assailant sends a last voice to his companion to hurry and he chooses to leave the hut without delaying a moment more.

The burly guy, on the other hand, seems to debate internally between taking the boy’s life and leaving him in the hut and letting the fire be the one who fulfills his purpose. Surely he have never shown any hesitation in erasing from the map as many children as they have required, in infinite different ways and always with the same determination. And surely he will consider his work as worthy as any other. If someone asked him why he dedicates himself to it, he would respond, convinced, that if he were not the one to carry it out, it would be someone else who would do it.

Meanwhile, the jaws of the fire close fiercely around him, effectively diminishing the escape routes. The man begins to be impatient with doubt and finally chooses to discard ramblings that deepen his insecurity, throwing the body of the child on the bed. Then he turns around and goes coughing towards the door.

But the man stops again in his tracks, turning his head back.

"That damn boy!"

Outside, his buddy awaits him at a safe distance. Bordering the wooden frame that delimits the door, a flaming halo threatens to swoop down on the head of those who dare to cross it. At the same height, roof crossbeams creak, weakened by combustion. The man closes his eyes, protects his face under his arm and crosses through the arc of fire.

As if fortune had allied with him, a moment later the roof gave way to the threshold, leaving him buried under a handful of furious debris.

You will not say that at this point a child has made you doubt who you are, the petty assailant insinuates, before coughing dryly on his face. The big man looks at him with watery eyes and, once again, gives him a contemptuous gesture. The last thing he plans to do is to describe the enormous insecurity that he has noticed in holding the boy’s face.

They both turn and finish witnessing how the colossal flames greedily devour the small construction of adobe, wood and straw.

After a few minutes, the smaller assailant decides that it is time to get away from there before someone finds them in the area, and both enter the undergrowth that grows at the edge of the road.

Nagesh wakes up feeling the first drops of water piercing like cold needles on his face. He is lying on the ground, a short distance from the still smoking remains of the hut. Many embers still remain incandescent next to metal objects deformed by the heat and some thick trunks that have not been consumed at all by the fire. No remains, however, of his father’s body, nor even focusing the search on the place where the man lay unconscious. He may not have been alive when the flames originated.

The boy’s first movement is just a slight tremor.

In fact, several minutes pass before he can lean on his knees and get back up, even with great difficulties. His limbs were numb, perhaps because he had been too long in a bad posture, and the tingling that goes through them shakes him abruptly, threatening to bend them.

Nagesh feels dazed and disoriented by the large amount of smoke inhaled. He can notice the discouraging taste of ash in his mouth. He has the feeling that he is still floating in a dream and he pleads with all his strength to end it as soon as possible. Pray that his mind is satisfied with the pain inflicted at this point and allow him to wake up suddenly, resting peacefully in his bed, under the glare of the stars.

But far from vanishing, events take on more lucidity and consistency, and nothing can be done to stop them. They seem to know how to take hold of his head and slowly twist it to handle it at will. Just as vermin hungry for palpitating viscera corrode his insides, forcing him to swear that he will never forgive himself for not doing anything to help his father. Nothing, other than hiding like a coward under an old threadbare blanket.

After several minutes struggling to come to himself, the boy manages to recover a glimpse of integrity and begins to walk along the path. He does not establish any concrete course, he moves by inertia like a sleepwalker attracted by a strange and irresistible melody. On his skin, the intensity of the night’s freshness and the humidity of the environment contribute silently to the slow recovery of his senses, and little by little the blood flows again through his veins.

Although at times it stops raining, the rains that have occurred for several days have turned the path into an impassable mud. On its surface, the footsteps of the cattle that walk through it daily have created a soft and irregular layer of clay of several fingers of thickness in which their feet sink as if sucked by the subsoil.

Given the difficulties, the boy chooses to join the edge of the road, where the grass provides a much more stable way to move. In it, Nagesh advances for a long time until the icy familiar drops of water begin to fall again and make him slow down. Although at this moment he does not realize it, it is the first time that he enters alone in the darkness of the night, something he had never dared to do, not even accompanied by his father.

While walking, Nagesh’s mind comes back again and again at the time of the incident. A cyclic repetition of spectral images that makes him, without having been an eyewitness to it, reconstruct a good part of what happened. The scene is reinforced by the sounds picked up by his ears. In particular, Nagesh recalls the voices of the two thugs and their repulsive laughs, more like the squeal of a slashed pig than any other sound provoked by a human being. A sound that can never be forgotten, no matter how much he tries to bury its resonance under a mountain of medicinal thoughts.

Perhaps if he had come to know his mother, the warmth of her memory would mitigate the great hole that had just opened inside him. For him, it would be like those roots that, in the last instance, prevent the absent-minded passer-by from sinking forever into a pit of quicksand. But, unfortunately, Nagesh will never be able to resort to them.

In this humid time it is enough to introduce the feet for a moment in any puddle so that the leeches get tightly attached to the skin. And with the path flooded in such a way, by the time Nagesh warms up, several parasites that travel on his legs feel fully satisfied. However, he has not noticed a single sharp snap that the slippery animals have spread on the surface of his lower extremities.

One of the first buildings that stand beside the road, taking advantage of the proximity of large wooded areas and fertile fields, is the abbey of Bhubaneswar. Guided probably by his instinct, Nagesh does not come up with any other alternative to seek relief than the religious congregation that runs Bishop Msgr. Dumont. He knows that beyond the border area of ​​the city it is not worth asking for help. The safest and most sensible thing, in fact, is to avoid entering its streets, because even taking advantage of the camouflage of the last nocturnal shadows, misfortune can wait behind any corner.

Fortunately, some of the monks must have left recently and the gate to the courtyard of the abbey is open. If this had not been the case, most likely none of them would hear the bell and Nagesh would have to wait for them to get up to pray.

The boy crosses the distance that separates him from the door of the main building like a soul going through the trail of tombs in a cemetery. With trembling hand, he hits the knocker twice in a row and waits under the insistent rain that, far from subsiding, seems to tend to intensify. After a few seconds, and not getting an answer, he hits again with more force. Someone then slides the cover of the peephole to the other side and reveals a pair of expectant eyes that are immediately fixed on his silhouette.

Who calls at this time? Asks an insecure voice, shortly before recognizing him. Nagesh??

Then the creaking sound of iron pins is heard and the door opens halfway. Behind it is Anuj, the young novice of the bishop, with the face of having seen a ghost.

Nagesh, come in! But what happened to you? Asks the worried boy, without getting any response.

At the end of the corridor emerges the curved figure of Brother Alfred, who hurries towards them carrying a candle not very bright. Before saying a word, the monk closes the door again with the bolt, rubs his bald head and vigorously tightens the knot of his cassock.

But... what happened? What are you doing here at this time? Asks Brother Alfred, almost paraphrasing the novice and getting the same sort of response. We have seen what looked like a small fire in the forest; it will not have anything to do with the reason that has made you come, right?

Assuming the silence for an answer, Brother Alfred pushes the young man inside the abbey, still warmed by the fire that survives in the kitchen, and makes him take a seat on a small stool. Meanwhile, Anuj is sent to his room, in search of a thick blanket and a clean cassock so that Nagesh can change his clothes.

The monk takes a quick look around and takes a knife from the table to warm it to the fire for a few seconds. When the metal sheet becomes incandescent, Brother Alfred approaches it to the different leeches that resist adhering to the boy’s legs. The parasites twist and come off submissive to the contact with the red-hot iron, leaving marked thin trails of blood that testify to their brief coexistence.

When he returns to the kitchen, Anuj helps the monk to undress Nagesh and dry his body before shrouding him in the cassock that has brought him. As the novice’s complexion resembles Nagesh’s, the garment fits great. It is not new nor beautiful, and its touch is harsh, but having been able to get rid of the soaked clothes and begin to feel the heat of the fire comforts him.

Once they have finished dressing him, Brother Alfred takes a bowl from the rack and fills it with some soup left over from dinner. With a markedly paternal gesture, he tends it to Nagesh, who agrees to take it more for getting its temperature than for appetite.

While observing how he empties the bowl of soup, Brother Alfred tries to clarify the facts by asking several questions, but he cannot get Nagesh to open his mouth for anything other than tipping the spoon inside. Understanding that what the child needs most is rest and tranquility, the monk chooses to let him drink the broth in silence.

When Nagesh finishes, Brother Alfred accompanies him to a free cell on the upper floor. There he helps him undress and puts him to bed. Afterwards, he retires to his own room to pray, past six o’clock in the morning. Taking advantage of the fact that he is already awake, the novice does the same on the floor below.

But while Brother Alfred joins the individual prayers that each monk effects for themselves in solitude, Bishop Dumont decides to allow himself a few more minutes of delay. Taking a good time by the window, looking with an expressionless face towards the place where, until the rain dispersed it, a thin column of smoke waved. His mind could be as empty as debating existential dilemmas, that at this point in his life his hard factions know perfectly how to preserve his thoughts.

After a few minutes of guarantee since he calculates that the monks have returned to their beds, Monsignor Dumont quietly leaves the room and goes down the stairs slowly, as if the last thing he was worried about at the moment was to fulfill his religious obligations. However, he does not even think about giving up his clerical duty this morning. A new day is about to start, from which everything will be different, and Monsignor Dumont feels that he should thank the Lord for it.

It is not a special day

Bhubaneswar Abbey, Orissa. 1900 AD

Fine! I give up! The boy protests, desperate, releasing the udders of the nervous animal and letting it go with the rest of the herd.

You still have not given up? Asks his friend as he arrives next to him and realizes that the bottom of the bucket is barely smeared with a few drops of milk. If you keep trying, you’ll get the goats to give sour milk for at least a month.

So you think?

Of course! Recognize it for once, Nagesh: you do not have a good hand for the cattle.

Nagesh growls resigned. It is not pleasant for him to admit his defeat, but he knows that deep down Anuj is right: he takes terrible care of the animals.

You’re right in the end, the boy laments, swinging the bucket between his legs. As it oscillates, the milk leaves behind a white film all over the metal lateral surface. I do not understand why they behave like this with me. I treat them with the same softness as you. I caress them, feed them and clean their hooves when it has rained and they are covered with mud. Sometimes I even sing softly to them to calm down. But none of that works, and every time I approach they are just as sullen as the first day.

Wait, hold on... Did you say you sing to them? His friend is surprised before laughing. Wow! I did not know you knew how to sing. And where have you learned those songs? In the city?

Do not mock, Nagesh reproaches, annoyed. Most of them were sung by my father when I was little so that I would fall asleep and I keep a great memory of them all. Also, you know that I have not been to the city for a long time.

Forgive me, Nagesh, his friend apologizes, feigning great regret. Maybe they just do not like the way you sing, he resolves, laughing again.

What happens is that in this stupid convent you have never heard anything other than the annoying whistles of Brother Zakkary’s piccolo, and that prevents you from appreciating other melodies that are really worthwhile.

It’s not a convent, it’s a monastery, Anuj corrects. But in that I give you the reason, Brother Alfred should never have given it to him. I am sure that, over time, he himself has reached that conclusion.

Monastery, convent... whatever it is, Nagesh concludes indifferently, as he gets off the stool and puts the bucket next to his companion. You finish milking. Meanwhile I will go to the garden to water. It has not rained for several days and the vegetables will end up drying up.

It does not look like it will take long to do so, observes the novice looking at the sky, apparently quite calm. I think you’re going to work in vain.

I’ve already done that, trying to milk those damned animals, the boy roars, pointing to the group of goats that graze parsimoniously by the fence.

Hey, Nagesh, his companion says before the boy leaves the barn. I have not forgotten that today is your birthday.

That Nagesh would not have noticed until now, did not prevent today, in effect, be the day of his birthday. The room that lived inside the monastery, far from his house and his father, and the room that had been totally overlooked. As on previous occasions, it has had to be the novice of the bishop who will remember him.

I have something here for you, he says, handing him a small, long object wrapped in a piece of cloth.

What...? Nagesh asks, surprised.

Yes, this year I wanted to give you a gift. After all, you do not turn ten every day.

It was not necessary, the boy acknowledges with some regret for not having had a similar detail with him. I have never given you gifts.

Come on, his friend says without giving it the least importance. That’s because you could not do them even if you thought about it.

Nagesh unwraps the package carefully and inside finds a small wooden knife with his name engraved on fire in the handle. One can see at first glance that it has been done by an inexperienced hand, because it reflects in equal parts that mixture of awkwardness and illusion that first-timers put into their work. The blade of the knife shines impeccably reflecting the sunlight, just before being veiled by a cloudy cluster. Nagesh fumbles the edge with his finger. It is a low quality metal that is probably nicked by cutting the air, which for Nagesh does not subtract a bit from the good will that accompanies it.

I did it with Brother Alfred, but he barely had to help me, recognizes the boy, very proud.

Thank you, Anuj, a laconic Nagesh smiles. It is a forced grimace, but it satisfies his partner, who turns and whistles to get the attention of the nearest goat.

The animal approaches lazily ruminating a ball of straw. Anuj places the bucket under its udders and starts milking with dexterity.

Hey, Nagesh, if you go to the garden, why do not you pick up some potatoes? We’ll prepare rabbit to celebrate your birthday and the potatoes will serve this time as a side dish, not as a main dish. The ones in the cupboard are full of sprouts, so we’ll leave them for another occasion. Take the ones next to the wall, which are the ones we sow first. I hope that Brother Gorgonio does not realize that we have used them before the old ones.

Has the bishop given you permission to kill a rabbit? Nagesh asks, knowing that Monsignor Dumont is not much inclined to consent to the inclusion of meat in the ordinary menu.

Of course. He has said that one day is a day.

Nagesh is sure that those words have never been uttered by the bishop, let alone to justify the celebration of his birthday. But his stomach dictates that he obey and stop questioning his friend.

Fine. Potatoes to accompany a rabbit stew, he confirms, without much conviction to go out the barn door.

While crossing the yard towards the garden, Nagesh takes a new look at the knife that Anuj has given him. If it is not because he keeps it in his hands, at this point he would have forgotten again that it is his birthday. Although, to tell the truth, it is not something that would matter to him at all. It is not a special day for him and he does not even feel that he has something to celebrate. He does not understand why Anuj insists every year in considering the opposite. He believes that in a life like his, the specific day in which someone wakes up every morning does not keep any relevance. During these years, the only date that he has never erased from his head has been the day when two strangers set fire to his hut and finished with a beating his father’s life. Two months and sixteen days ago have passed four years of that, but the memories are still alive in his memory as the first day and many nights dance in his head for hours before letting him fall asleep. Even sometimes, having already fallen asleep, they stay awake in his brain and make him relive a thousand times what happened. He does not remember all the details of that night clearly; some of them have been relegated to the depths of the subconscious and others have escaped his gaze. But, as he plunges his knees into the ground and begins to pluck the rounded purple tubers, Nagesh swears again for the most sacred thing that he will make them pay dearly for the cause of his misfortune.

A slight change of content

The abbey is, in fact, a set of small buildings linked together around a central courtyard and separated from the outside by a thick stone wall. It was built several centuries before, it served as a military fortress for the Mughal army almost two hundred years ago, in its time of greatest expansion and prosperity. When that great empire began to crumble, the British took control of it and began to use the emplacement for military purposes initially, and religious later. In this way, a small monastery was founded in its interior to place some of the first Beatus who arrived in the region a few months later. Thus the establishment of a new creed that joined the immense amalgam of religions already existing in the subcontinent, with the undeniable will to break through among them.

The passage of time has been responsible for turning the abbey into one of the oldest enclaves of Christianity in East India, despite its limited impact.

During the last few years, few structural reforms have been made in the facility because, among other things, the monks do not usually see with pleasure that someone breaks into their place of prayer with the hammer and chisel.

Almost as originally, the main building still has two habitable floors, in addition to an attic that could perhaps be considered as a third and which is practically empty. The ground floor is made up of the kitchen, the dining room, the refectory, two small rooms obtained from the division of a larger room, the library, the latrines and an L-shaped corridor that connects each room with the others. The upper floor is constituted exclusively by two rows of individual rooms, occupied in their majority by the monks and the bishop. Both floors are connected through a narrow stairwell, which also gives access to the attic storage room. Although it cannot be considered precisely a palace, the building is large enough to allow the coexistence of the monks without some having to be all day colliding with the others. And in the unlikely event that the community expanded, a certain individual space would still be guaranteed for each one.

The second construction in size, of all those that form the abbey, is the chapel. It was built from the remains of an old armory and offers a solemn place that invites to prayer slowly thanks to its small and high windows, through which a warm light enters in the mornings and during the sunsets. In the words of Monsignor Dumont, "a modest altar and four rows of benches is all that is needed to celebrate a good mass. The rest are a pair of ears, a proper dose of devotion and the word of God." In general, no one objects or rejects such a claim.

The chapel has a modest bell tower, from where the calls to the religious office resonates every day and a beautiful clock of mass adhered to the exterior wall, in which the rays of the sun point punctually to the canonical hours. It must be said that the person who installed it did not had great skill and, because of a defective orientation, the clock carries an inaccuracy of about five minutes. But knowing that, no monk can put it as an excuse for a delay in their duties.

Giving shape to a quadrangular interior courtyard, the dependencies of the animals are located. In the past they served as stables to house the horses of the Mughal warriors, but nowadays they are adapted for purely cattle-raising purposes. In a relatively small space, the monks enabled a smaller stable where they could raise a small herd of goats and sheep, a pigsty with some pigs, and a pen for hens and chickens. Also, from time to time, the monks receive some baby rabbits that move to a small pen in a corner, and feed them with beet leaves until they get the right weight to be slaughtered or sold.

Apart from the previous buildings, the abbey also has a carpentry shop, a warehouse, a wood-fired oven where bread and biscuits are baked, a cellar to preserve the wine produced by the monks themselves and a shed used mainly as a barn.

It can be considered that the origin of the abbey, in the terms in which it is known today, goes back to the year 1877, when one of the superior monks who occupied it, Brother Jeremy, received the distinction of abbot, translating that mention to the monastery, which from then on began to be known as the Bhubaneswar Abbey. In fact, it did not stop being a whim of the governor of the time; the first idea that crossed his mind when he thought of thanking the monk for his spiritual services, but the abbey name was well received and lasted over the years.

Its beginnings were marked by the instability caused by insecure and vacillating people, who felt mostly lost in a place like that. The cultural, nutritional and even climatic change diminished the will and the charisma of those first preachers who, far from promoting the Christian spirit among the locals, spent the hours worried about their own lamentations.

In the following years, several generations of religious followed each other without any leader emerging from them truly capable of consolidating themselves within the community, let alone giving it a certain attraction so that the professed of other religions could notice it. Somehow, the abbey had settled in to attend to the needs of the British, but it was far from having the relevance that the Holy See would wish for any of its dioceses or apostolic prefectures.

That period of stagnation seemed to come to an end with the death of the last abbot and the arrival of Bishop Monsignor Dumont. But after a hopeful start full of drive and determination, his contribution ended up being as unsuccessful as that of his predecessors and the abbey was plunged back into the most revealing ostracism.

Bishop Dumont began his mandate assuming that the old fortress would continue to retain the abbey denomination, although he was responsible for making it clear from the beginning that he was not willing to be degraded to the treatment of abbot. But apart from not interfering in the agency with which people could refer to the monastery, which basically did not matter much, the bishop’s concessions were not much more. Dumont established a rigorous routine applicable to anyone who decided to continue in the order, imposing among other things the obligation to attend the canonical, minor and major hours, and the celebration of two daily masses, an exclusive morning for the monks and another open-door evening for those who wish to participate in it. The confessional services would continue to maintain their relevance, also being extended to the weekend.

The measures were received with a restrained displeasure, to which none of the religious dared to give voice, supported in the opinion that the excess of hours devoted to prayer would not have an absolute impact on anything, but soon they became accustomed to the new demands without accusing too much that controversial increase. And it was not the plan to stand firm against the willful requirements of the new bishop made abbot. Actually, their occupations were few and they did not lose the opportunity to do other things because they were praying more than occasionally.

On the economic level, Bishop Dumont soon met with Brother Anderson to draw up a plan that would impel the purchasing power of the congregation, lately his request for government contributions and private donations. Monsignor Dumont understood the need to gain prominence in internal finances and focused his efforts on agriculture and crafts. Not in vain, the abbey had underexploited lands that could supply the community itself and offer a surplus destined for sale to third parties.

But in the long run, the bishop discovered that his plans had sinned pretentious and disproportionate. After all, there were not more than half a dozen old, weary religious in the monastery who no longer had the energy or inclination to carry out such demanding physical labor in exchange for a few coins they did not want at all. In general, their only needs were not to go through hunger or illness, to pray every day so that He from above would not feel disappointed and to read for hours some texts of different themes. Of course, each of the monks had their own interests and hobbies, but neither did they seem to serve to monetarily refloat an institution that ran the risk of being archaic and outdated.

Thus, Bishop Dumont ended up succumbing to the historical neglect that had always surrounded the different rulers of the abbey, limiting their aspirations to a more earthly and attainable plane. And his brothers thanked him.

Since his arrival, the hierarchical order in the abbey had been clearly established, summing up with incredible simplicity: Monsignor Dumont was the one who would direct it and make all the decisions. It is true that in practice some monks attended him personally and most of the matters were treated in common before any decision was made, but he always reserved the last word.

The main collaborator of the bishop and right hand from the beginning was Brother Anderson, who until then had served as vicar general and was also responsible for the finances of the abbey. He was one of the religious who had been in it the longest, having coincided with the last two abbots and, therefore, knew well their situation, the social framework in which was framed and how it had evolved over the years. Brother Anderson soon gained the full confidence of Monsignor Dumont, who allowed him to continue administering the funds they had as before. At all times, the bishop did not hesitate to reserve the right to supervise his tasks from time to time so as to be aware of all the financial news at first hand.

Another monk with great weight in the monastery was Brother Saravanan, a native verses seduced by the slopes of western thought that, nonetheless, retained with some roots of the Hindu principles. Although in the eyes of the bishop he guarded it in secret and only externalized one of them, Brother Saravanan internally combined both beliefs, Christianity and Hinduism, and took advantage of the best of each one according to his convenience. Brother Saravanan had entered the abbey with another of his companions, Brother Visharad, who was more impulsive and temperamental. Both came to lend for years their priestly services in a Hindu temple in the city where they had earned a great status and widespread recognition. They arrived with great illusion and immediately embraced the new doctrine without reservation, convinced that they had finally found their definitive place in the world. When Brother Visharad, dissatisfied according to the official version, preferred to return to his old creed, Brother Saravanan had to seriously consider his future. After much meditation he decided to remain in the abbey, because deep down he did not lose the hope of finding in it what he had been searching for so long and had not been able to find in all the previous years of priesthood.

Monsignor Dumont used Brother Saravanan to learn more easily about the nature of the people of the place, the existing structures and territorial divisions and how to deal without risks or mistakes within that particular clash of cultures. The bishop knew perfectly well that it was necessary to understand the mind of a person in order to influence it, so if he wanted to bring his religion closer to the inhabitants of a place dominated by another, he should take advantage of the weaknesses that they presented. Although Monsignor Dumont would not like to think in those terms, it would be like a parasite looking for the wounds of an animal to lay its eggs. And it was that he knew that any small moral path of access would constitute a breach to penetrate the consciousness of the human being and, once inside, could already be altered at will.

It was not the time to impose doctrines by force. It would not be sensible to try to do it. Not while they were a minority.

In addition to interceding in the intercultural relations of the bishop, Brother Saravanan carried out essential translation tasks. The British, in general, had many problems to deal with Hindi, and especially with the Oriya, their dialect evolved in the Orissa region. An adapted English is what Monsignor Dumont began to use in religious services so that his message could reach the always small number of local assistants, who were gradually learning to use English to communicate with each other, after several years of British occupation.

Similarly Nagesh, or in his day Anuj, also had serious difficulties in understanding the foreign language and even more so to be able to express themselves in it. Armed with patience, Brother Saravanan was teaching them some words and small phrases to be able to communicate in a more or less fluid way with the rest of the monks of the abbey. Nagesh had no idea of ​​speaking or writing, even in his native language, so it was very difficult for him to learn new expressions in an unknown and different language. Thanks to Brother Saravanan he managed to communicate with others in an elementary way during the first months, under the constant pressure of Monsignor Dumont, who saw his lack of understanding as a serious barrier to inculcating his new religious values. And it is that, although when the bishop visited the villages he used a very limited Hindi that served him to communicate with children and adults, within his domains he refused to behave in that way.

Following the route through the hierarchical structure of the abbey were Brothers Jacob, Gorgonio, Alfred and Zakkary, four elderly religious with scarce pretensions of class progress.

Brother Jacob was, before Brother Anderson, ahead of him for seven or eight years, the oldest member of the abbey. He was a sexagenarian monk who once played a fundamental role in the consolidation of the congregation. His wisdom helped forge good relations with the local government, fostering a time of good understanding or that translated into good subsidies and certain tax privileges. During those years the abbey was partly remodeled and the property of the adjoining fields was granted, which became an important source of regular income. Later, Brother Jacob ceded leadership to other members of the abbey who were perhaps less able, forced in some way by the irremediable decline in his mental faculties. Not that he was senile, much less, but it is true that with age the monk had begun to be more introverted, less interested in taking part in institutional relations and more in rambling to his intros on philosophical theories. It was as if, half a century later, Brother Jacob had decided that the time had come to recapitulate his life.

When he was aware that the monk would no longer be an important diplomatic asset, the still abbot Jeremy decided to grant him some sort of spiritual retreat. Since then he was considered almost an honorary member of the abbey, charged only with reading old books, teaching philosophical lessons to Nagesh and Anuj since their arrival, and observing the sky with melancholy, beyond the walls that isolated him from the outside world.

For his part, Brother Gorgonio had arrived at the abbey as part of a new colonizing flock. Shortly before the