My job ran me into this man. By job I mean the development consultancy. Or otherwise, I take any job up for grabs, just anything, for jobs are scarce, little going on, and no dearth of people to take the bread out of your mouth. So, that’s it.

This man was not someone I was after. Nowhere in my head was he when I was ready for the off, nor had any idea that I would bump into him. I was paid to comb the thick of the wood that gets thicker as it climbs higher to the top of the hills. And it was all about tracking down this living creature, I don’t know if I can call them human, though they are perfectly human in every way I can think, bar the thing called civilization. I was told that they could be found anywhere in the plane or in the hills or somewhere in the dense of jungle. You can’t be sure about their whereabouts. And if my luck is in, I could stumble across them on the fringes of wood.

This was when the wood was wild, rich, in its original state, virgin, thick and dark, dangerous and unpredictable, far from the greed of lumberjacks and the rapacity of timber smugglers, running right from the earthly plane, climbing up and up until enveloping the panorama of hills. They blocked out the Sun from reaching their earth. A backpack and a local guide with supplies all I had for the mission to accomplish. They, I mean this human-like creatures, roamed the fringes of the wood, I was told. With a bit of luck I could be right there in front of them.

I understand that the Development Agency was looking for ways of reaching out to them.  They had roped me in so as to pave the way for them to access these creatures with a blueprint. I didn’t poke my nose into how the data I gather would figure in the plan they chart. I keep from doing anything that get on their nerves and queer my pitch. I guess, it was all about fitting them into our mold, converting them into civilized humans.

 

So, I was off for the mission.

The first day we didn’t go quite deep into wood. We withdrew way long before hitting the wall of the hills. We had started after breakfast in the vain hope that luck would be on our side and we find them picnicking around the fringes. But it was no picnic. We spent a good while looking for them. Nothing came of it. There was not a trace of them. It was a hollow search.

The second day we made up mind to make an early start at the crack of dawn.  We did as thought out. Dressed in a leather jacket and a tough pair of boots, backpack hanging down my back and two bags of supplies down either side of his shoulder, we moved in northward direction. This was the shortest route to reach the bottom of the hill. We’d hoped to find them there. We tore into the wood, deeper and deeper, knocking the bushes and branches out of our way, dead, fallen leaves crunching under our feet, mindful of the danger, and yet oblivious of the fact that we’d put the human-like creatures on the run with the very noise of our step. They have eyes in the back of their head. They don’t dread the savage beasts so much as civilized humans wearing clothes. We later learnt that a pack of hunters in the wood had recently pounced upon their grown-up girl, violated her, and slit her throat. They dumped her body in the wood to be eaten up by the savages. The tragedy had struck terror into their hearts, kept them on their toes, turned the creatures even more elusive.

As we had just gotten into our stride an hour past midday in tearing hurry to reach the bottom of the hills, for we had to return to our base before darkness heaps troubles on our way back, we caught the sight of this man appearing out of nowhere just like that, like a phantom, crossed us right before our eyes, walking quiet and gracefully as though gliding, in dignified silence, without doing so much as to lift an eye on us. This dark luminous face man, beardy and thin, tall and graceful, facial bones showing through lustrous skin, with whole being alert like a yogi, little flesh on him, dressed in a pyjama and kurta with patches sewn all over them, pushing 50s or so, on his bare feet. He was incredibly calm and cool in the dense of wood, solitary, deep in the world of his own, not affected by his surroundings. His steps didn’t make noise at all.

Several thoughts hit my head at once. What or who this thing could be? What is he doing in the thick of wood? Where is he going? Where does he live? Is it something real or am I hallucinating? Or maybe I am deluded into seeing something by power of some evil forces!

My local guide looked as if his heart had missed the beat at sudden encounter with this being. He had turned pale. His blood had run cold. Fear writ all over his face. He was gaping at him, broken out in cold sweat, gripped with fear. Not knowing what hit me, I was frozen with shock with eyes wide-opened on him. And then, of a sudden, without any effort on my part, words came out of my mouth. I had called out to him.

That brought him to an abrupt halt. He turned around, gave us a gracious, compassionate look. I didn’t know how to reciprocate, gave him a silly grin.  And then, I plucked up courage to walk up to him while my guide stayed rooted to the spot.  Just as I was about to open my mouth to utter some nonsense, he asked me to keep quiet with a gesture of hand.

“I know what has brought you deep into the wood. Go back! You don’t know what you are in for! Their blood is boiling. I don’t want you quench their bloodlust. The Raje (the human-like creatures) don’t want to go your ways. They are okay the way they are!”

I explained to him that I had not come at my will but the job. “Quit it, he said.

His response robbed me of words. After a brief pause, I said I would be glad to get a glimpse of them from afar. “But your job requires more of you! I don’t want you to go about the job,” he said. I fell silent thinking deep how I should work around to him.

“I am one of them. Do I serve your purpose!”, he said as though he had read my thoughts before they could take any shape in my head.  “Yeah, I’d love to hear something from you about them”, I said giving him an imploring look.

He took a seat under the tree and gestured that I should follow. I did as told.

He got into it. He said him and Raje had one and the same roots. The only difference is that the Rajes took to the wood way long before he did.  They were royals and so was he.  As their kingdom fell to the ruthless warriors of Genghis Khan, the surviving royals took refuge in the wood. It was long way back. Rajes are their direct descendent. They have lived in and off the wood for centuries. As with him, he came to the wood at his 20s. He left behind his mansion, people who he lived with, wealth he owned, possessions he was proud of, power and privileges he exercised. He didn’t long for the wood. It so happened that he ended up here, met the Rajes, grew fond of them, assimilated into their community and lived with them.

To the world out there he is long dead. To him, he is in the wood in total freedom, free from everything, in a boundless freedom, freedom to the extent that he’s even free from the need to know whether he’s living or dead. It never occurs to him to question or doubt his own existence or de-existence. To him, it is senseless, needless, purposeless and simply meaningless. Nothing gives him thoughts. There’s no purpose, no mission, no goals, absolutely nothing. There’s nothing he is living for. He doesn’t even know things like peace, joy, comfort, bliss and all that. He says, there’s no such thing. It is absolutely nothing there. He’s no problem with this nothingness. He’s totally merged with this nothingness.  And what has come out of it is nothing. He’s nothing. And then he says, he wouldn’t barter his total freedom for anything peace, joy, happiness, bliss, comfort, God, heaven, and anything that human mind can think of.

He called it a natural state of existence. “This is how you are – take it or leave it! You can paint yourself in myriad of colors to feel, look, or think different. I have no need for it. I enjoy the color I was born in. I’d love to die in the same color if the thing you call death comes to me.”

He goes the way of any other living beings. He doesn’t have anything in his head. It is completely empty. His head doesn’t receive anything, nor does it issue anything.  He lives on anything the Rajes gather in from the wood. He goes by hunger and not by taste, driven by need and not desire.  He says, as long as he has his body, he can’t escape hunger, sleep, and sex. The single-room house made of mud and thatch that Rajes built for him is where he crashes out. He craps in the wood and sleeps with Raje women and girls.  He sleeps with just anyone around when his body craves for a woman. He doesn’t know things like greed, desire, passion, love, pain and those things. To him, there’s no question, no knowledge, no need to know, no need to reason, no need to think, absolutely nothing.

His story brought forth a natural question. How he ended up being what he says he is?

To this he said, “I don’t know. I don’t know how I came to be what I am! This is what I was supposed to be. There’s no need to know it. And he chuckled.

While I was still engrossed in conversation with him, couple of Raje girls came out of the bush, albeit coyly. The adolescent girls had nothing on them except a strip of cloth or leather to cover their bits. They stood behind the man with their hands lovingly resting on his shoulder. Their gesture suggested that had huge trust on him.

They were the same age with the one that the pack of hunters violated and murdered the other day.

It was an hour before darkness swallow the wood. We parted. The man with the Raje girls trailing behind him walked off. Soon they disappeared into the thick wood, out of sight. We walked back. The local guide filled my head with many popular myth – mystical, mysterious, occult – associated with this man. I have the whole life to figure him out.