Free At Last In Paradise

(Book I)

Hardly a day passed in my childhood without being reminded of the fateful night. Some children would refuse forthright to let me join their teams in competitive games. Others would beg me to join them, specially when luck had turned against them. I have often heard myself being called 'black-eared'. To be called black-eared is to be rated good-for-nothing. In our native idiom, a pun on this pejorative term also had the meaning of 'devourer of time'.

As disconcerting as being called names were equally frequent occasions when I was pointed out in a crowd by strangers who seem to be impressed by what they considered a miracle. It was worse when people asked me for details of the night's happenings and expected me to know all answers. The strict code of conduct which was ingrained in us by home, temple and community and, later school, required children to be always polite, obedient and obliging to adults. There were times when I wished I was never born. Few could attribute a miserable childhood to a natural disaster from which one escaped miraculously!

I have no idea when the family took the decision that I would be a monk. Perhaps it was a vow taken at the time of my birth or shortly afterward. If so, it could have been taken by my father. Mother had been in pain for almost the whole day and in shock for long hours after my birth.

As I came to know later from different accounts, it was an unusually dark night. Heavy unseasonable rains had lasted over three days and nights with intermittent thunder and lightning.

As was the custom, our neighbors had taken turns to bring us meals from the time mother was incapacitated. Father had asked a few of our closest relatives and friends to be in readiness to carry her to the house of the village physician if the midwife felt incompetent to handle any unexpected situation. The males huddled together in the leaking verandah around an imported chimney lamp whose flame threatened to blow out with every gust of wind. As the night grew and no encouraging news came from the women inside, someone suggested that they should chant a particular religious text. Associated with a ferocious bandit named Finger-Garland whom the Buddha converted to a saintly life, this short text is believed to be significantly efficacious in easing the pain of childbirth.

An elderly relative of mine who was a teacher by day and a astrologer/witch-doctor in his spare time used to describe most dramatically the events of that night which he remembered from his teens:

'That bout of lightning literally lasted hours. The clap of thunder which followed was the loudest. The lamp was about to blow out and I reached for it. But I failed and the glass broke into smithereens even as the oil on the unpaved earthen floor caught fire. I was stamping on it when my knees plopped. I felt as though I was in a boat shooting the rapids. I was groping in the dark for any available support when an eerie crushing and scraping noise deafened us. In the cacophony of voices, shrieks and wailing, the voice of uncle Big Banda was the loudest asking us to take cover from what he described as 'an enormous earthquake' and the next was the distinct cry of a new born baby from inside.