Where angels fear to tread

Even If they knew nothing else, the ancients in our land knew about one thing for sure, (you guessed it! I knew you were smart from the start!).
And that is?

Now don’t disappoint me, it’s on the tip of your tongue.

Still mute? Still silence personified?

Oh you still want to play the saint with me, alright, alright. But let me inform you, I am the greatest living saint on earth at present, and I know about it too. May be not the “full particulars” as one of my former colleagues used to say, but yet I know a li’ll about it.

C’mon you can do it. That is it, you win all the prizes!

-Our ancients were pretty conversant with the force that brought us out into the world!

My oblations, oh great recreational and procreational force, without you there would be nothing in the world, the world would be a vast and dumb place.

I used to ask my mother how I came to this world, as a little child. In fact I was very persistent. She never evaded the issue. She used to say that I came from her belly.

I would then ask:

“But who put me there?”

“Your father.”

“How?”

“Well you see this small dip on our belly; it opens up when we are asleep. He dropped you into my belly through it.”

“But he has a dip on his stomach too. Why did he not drop me into his belly?”

Mother looked at me with amusement. I recognized my mistake. The dip opens up only when we are asleep, and when you are sleeping you can’t put something into your belly.

She was watching my consternation closely. She took pity on me.

“You were in his belly alright; he took you out of it and put you in mine. “

“He can’t do that while he is asleep”

Well I thought I won my point and was elated. Hurrah.

Mother laughed out right.

“I took you out while he was sleeping and asked him to put you into my belly when I doze off.”

Things were getting very complicated for me by then. I strongly suspected that mother was making fun off me. But the story fascinated me as well. So I asked her a little doubtfully.

“But why?”

"Well you see children need milk to grow. Only we mothers have it."

I thought long and hard about it for some time. How could I drink her milk when I am in her belly? It all became very confusing. I considered my mother very intelligent. She always used to have the upper hand in all the arguments we ever had. There must be something in what she says. I was very worried about something else too. What if some one would puts some children into me through the dip in my belly.

She was carrying my younger brother then and I used to watch her belly bulge and recede sometimes with great fright. She said it was the baby kicking inside her belly.

I secretly resolved never to sleep from then onwards. Think of the horrifying after effects.

Now she said sweetly.

“If you want to know anything more just ask you know!”

I knew that she had me confused but was not ready to give in.

“Why did he get me in the first place then?”

“Well very naughty children are given to men for sometime for safe keeping.”

“Who gave me to him?”

“Why don’t you ask your father about it? “ She laughed.

That was never going to do. Children are good at judging people, although I could not have said it in so many words I intuitively knew that my father was the strictest moralist around then and was completely humorless. He never spanked any of us, but on this one I was not quite sure.

Well that was my first inquiry into the nature and truth of human procreation. I later realized that there is more to it than it appears. The tremendous force often catches people unawares.

It even caught one of our great sages while he was crossing a river in a boat. The river was big and the sage was alone with the boat-girl. She was exquisite and very young while the sage was old and had not seen anybody for a long, long time, let alone a lovely young thing.

Till then he was immersed in the inner wonders and suddenly there she was, sweet, fresh and eminently consumable. A real and unbeatable wonder of life. The Indian sages always knew when they were beaten.

He became a sage of life in an instant. He pointed to the sky and told her about an auspicious planetary formation. It was never going to occur in a thousand years again and was the most suitable moment for procreation and copulation. The sages of India have always been well informed that way. Whenever they wanted sex on the sly there would be a divine constellation not to be missed somehow. Such stories abound in the epics.

The girl was the daughter of a fisherman chieftain. Se was black and smelt strongly of fish. But would that deter our sage, he persisted and the girl may have become curious too. But she had all her beans with her and was practical and cool.

She was offered anything and everything in his capacity for the spurious of pleasures. I can’t blame the sage; the lust for young flesh can be quite inflaming.
The girl put forth her demands.

That,

The thing shall be done in secret and she would remain a virgin even afterward and not encumbered with any offspring from the incident,

And that her foul fish smell shall be replaced by a fragrant one.

The sage agreed to all that.

The boat and surrounding water body was suddenly enveloped by a thick fog and the event took place. The girl conceived there and then and gave birth to a boy, who grew up to be a youth within the space of few moments and departed for studies ( I should not laugh and remember Spinoza’s treatise on religion, but what to do, I am human after all!). She became fragrant.

The sage was called Parasara and was never heard of again. The girl became the wife of king Shantanu and her children and grand children and great grand children enacted the whole drama of the great epic Mahabharata.

Who do you think the writer of the epic was? Her first born of Parasara- the great Vyasa who disappeared for studies the moment he was born.

Such is the after effects of a sage’s lust.