‘The sky is high from where I look at it but it must be coming down somewhere near or faraway! It can’t hang up there just like that! Something must be holding its weight somewhere.’

A stray thought flitted through my mind, didn’t go away or rather grew strong when I was barely 9. I infected two of my mates with the thought. Three ‘crazy’ kids set off for the discovery. We took with us three bags full of roasted rice, onions and salt powder for food security. We traversed long stretch of rice paddy, waded waist-deep through rivers, plodded on through mango groves, banana plantations, and cut across the wood and reached cluster of thatched-roof houses.  The Sun had gone tangerine red in the shape of a cast-iron griddle in the west, soon to go down.  We looked up. Journey from dawn till dusk and the sky was there where it was when we had left off. And, it still appeared coming down at some place faraway.

Delusion! The sky is a delusion. It is not a thing to be known. A futile attempt at knowing the unknown. We concluded and broke our journey.

This was the first lesson I learnt, not taught.

My sister my elder by 18 years visited us for the first time after her marriage. Every one of us walked on air as she had brought a gift of little sweets with her for each of us. Moment of joy for a bunch of kids. We were five brothers, small age gap between us. The euphoria, however, couldn’t last long. She delved into her bag for money to send someone on errand and found ten paisa missing. She gave a suspicious glare to me. The family rated me highly clever amongst all. Cleverness seldom if ever go unpunished. Wonder if it is a vice or a virtue! Everyone gave me a black look of suspicion. I protested my innocence with all my might. The ill-judged opinion or prejudicial thought that it was none other but me who had sneaked the money off her bag badly colored their perception leaving no room for reason. They couldn’t put it past me. My voice of innocence was drowned out by the one voice of theirs. I was branded as thief. Innocence was gagged by lies.

The incident gave me a jolt of dismay. I was tearfully anguished. Sacred words like value, belief, faith, honesty, truthfulness that had only just begun to sink in at that tender age was brutally shaken. I was under the roof of this very house where they taught me things like ‘ill-gotten wealth seldom rewards’,  ‘truth prevails’, ‘honesty pays’, ‘starve to death on thorny bed of truth than to feast on heap of lies’ and so on.

What a fucking joke! No one has ears for honesty! No one has eyes for innocence! They are all talk, nothing more than hollow sermons, empty phrases, which have no meaning, not even remotely to the living. No one honors them.  They are all human invented nonsense. Loads of shit.

I was shocked because I took them for real. It was my naivety to blame. I was a fool to believe in hollow sermons. I was upset because I allowed these tall tale weave together a frame of mind for me. If only I had not let them in my head, I wouldn’t have suffered this mental torment. I allowed them to build this house of glittering glasses in my head and now I suffer because they are throwing stones at me.

I must blow up this house and free myself. I should carry an empty head on shoulder. This was the second lesson I learnt, not taught.

My father died. People thronged in his funeral. As he was a landlord and ruled the village, the whole village turned up. There were sea of people on the bank of the river at his final rites. All sad faces. Everyone lamenting his death, extolling his virtues, cherishing his memory. We set flame to his pyre. His dead body was quickly consumed by fire. Everyone returned home feeling down.

Soon he was forgotten, out of sight out of mind. Nobody talked about him, made no mention of him. It was only me who couldn’t quickly get him off my memory. Several questions ran through my mind. Do any part or anything of him exist in this physical plane after he is gone out of his mortal body? Any residual deposit of him matters after he’s gone? Does anyone know where he went? Is anything of him relevant today? Isn’t it self-inflicting to hold him in memory? Isn’t it that if a thing is not there then it is not there. Why should it live in me?

I found no answer. I learnt that they preach you all bullshit about after-life. They bullshit you about sacrificing your now for something that is never. They bullshit you about empty nothing like fame, glory, great deeds, soul, spirit and all those shitty things. It is all fucking garbage they stuff into your head and rob you of the joy of living. It is empty nothing, just human invented crap. The thing who I called my father until yesterday is not there. He is as good as a dead rat.  He is burnt on a pyre or rot in a gutter or ripped by wolves! Does it matter!

This was the third lesson I learnt, not taught.

During the hot summer, they ran morning classes in schools. This time around the year, the day is scorching. Kids faint from heatwave. Morning classes are easy way out. I was at Grade 7. My parents had put me in a school at a distance of hundred meters away from home. After lunch, everyone would retire to their rooms for afternoon siesta. I had visceral dislike for sleeping during the day time. So, I’d sneak out of home and walk to school to sit on the verandah as draught of air blew in there from open windows. It was cool and comfort there. Sometimes in company of mates and sometimes all by myself.

A girl of unsound mind or rather mentally retarded, my elder by couple of years, grazed goats in the school premises. The school had no gate, no doors and no windows. So, anyone or anything could come in and go out at will. This girl would herd flock of goats into the school premises, leave them there to stray about, and herself sit on the verandah or on the desk in the classroom or scratch lines or figures with a chalk across the blackboard. She wore unkempt hair, shabby old frock without a pair of slippers on feet.

That day I was alone, sitting on the verandah. This girl was chasing a smart lamb frolicking here and there. Of sudden, my eyes roaming around flicked away at two men coming my way. It took me no second to recognize them. They were teachers who taught us moral science and math. The math teacher was a bully of sort. We all lived in dread of him during the 45 minutes class. The moral teacher was suave, a decent type man.

No sooner I identified them than I flew into the classroom at the far end and holed up there with an eye on them. They walked up to the verandah, sat down there. The moral teacher plunged a hand into his side pocket, plucked out a ten rupee note, and waved the money at the girl. The girl giggled, approached them, and accepted the money gladly. They hustled her into the classroom, tore her frock off and laid her on the desk. The moral teacher pulled his pant down and went wild between her legs. The math teacher took turn in raping her.

What a fucking hypocrisy! This man reads out morals to us in the morning. The other bully had given the cane to the innocent boy for walking into the girl only yesterday. They teach us fornication is a sin, paves way to the hell to rot there. They teach us all human are equal and deserve respect and dignity. They teach us humans are different from other animals intellectually and emotionally.

Several questions ran across my mind.  How the fuck are these biped animals who I take for my teachers different from other quadruped animals? Why should I allow myself to be taught by people who are fornicators and are destined to rot in hell? Where is what they teach stuffs like dignity and respect when men can rape a mentally unsound woman at the power of a ten rupee note? What use is this fucking school where teachers are not honest to what they teach?

I literally laughed at it. I laughed at my naivety again. I began to question the very content of my own frame of mind. The content of what they call consciousness. I questioned all the stuff fed into building my mind, my consciousness. I began to realize that all they have done this far is to give me a mind and make me the prisoner of it. Then and there I made a resolve to do whatever it takes for the speedy decay of this mind and walk free of it. Now, I felt sympathy for the teachers. They too are victim of their mind. They teach what they have been paid to teach. They do what they can’t fight down regardless of the stuff fed into their mind. The poor souls are living in conflict – a conflict between desire and denial.

And finally, I am here. I know the sky is vast, expansive, infinite, and boundless and so am I. It was my mind, my consciousness that had made me into a prisoner and deluded me into cupping the sky in hand. I was a fool. The sky cannot be cupped in hand nor can I.