Knock Knock!

Childhood in Cameroon was synonymous with the outdoors. A world devoid of malls and cinema theatres, our Heaven was the lush garden brimming with birds, insects and flowers, particularly blue bells, and hibiscus, my favorite. Sundays meant visits, from the townies, and long lazy lunches, table tennis matches, and much laughter. One Sunday in May, a few of my friends were playing in the garden, as I began climbing the trees. I climbed up into my treehouse, to show off my secret hideaway to my city friends, and to savour a few secret minutes by myself. From the corner of my eye, I saw a funny looking drumstick crawl out of a hole in the branch but did not think much of it since it was a fruit bearing tree and home to squirrels, woodpeckers and parrots. Ten minutes later, I made my way down from the treehouse, gregariously placing one foot in front of the other, feeling the bark of the tree with my hands for a firm hold, when I fell down with an awfully loud thud. A dozen pairs of eyes on me, was the last I remember. In my mother’s words, I fell off the tree like a ripe fruit, blanked out! The benign drumstick had bitten me. Sunday afternoon and the only available help in Victoria was at the local doctor’s house. He treated me with some potent medicines I was told later, which put me into a coma kind of slumber for three days, rattling with fever. You were not waking up my mother would recount with teary eyes. The ice packs did not shake you up, the prick of the injection needle did not jolt you awake, the noise did not startle you. Do you have any memory at all, she would ask regretfully, of those three days? I did, but I had no idea what it meant. Scared and a bit coy, I camouflaged my narrative, making it sound comical and exaggerated. I suspected the experience was different, but it took me several months to articulate my tale and after that the word Trishanku became a commonly used amusing reference point at home, particularly in our family’s decision-making gridlocks.

King Trishanku went to his guru Vasishta and asked him for help to perform a ritual by which he could ascend to the Heavens while he was still alive. Vasishta declared the law was that no living person can go to heaven. Go and do good deeds and you will go to heaven when you die, he continued. Disappointed, Trishanku went to the great sage, Vishwamitra, for help. Vishwamitra performed a big Yajna but the gods did not want anyone to break a law and enter heaven alive, so they did not accept the offering of the Yagna. Vishwamitra was furious and promised Trishanku he would send him to Heaven with his own powers. “Rise Trishanku.” With these words, Vishwamitra then willed the King to ascend. Immediately, Trishanku started rising up towards heaven before the startled eyes of the assembled sages. However, as the King reached the gates of heaven, Indra and the other Gods said, "Oh Trishanku! Retrace your steps, as you are not yet deserving of heaven. You are unworthy of this exalted station. You foolish human, fall down again to earth!" Trishanku started to fall headlong towards the earth. As he was falling, the King beseeched sage Vishwamitra to save him. Immediately, Vishwamitra said, "Stay! Stay!", and the fall of Trishanku was arrested. The King was suspended in mid-air. To fulfil his promise, Vishwamitra went on to create a parallel Heaven for Trishanku, cloning the stars and the galaxies. He was about to clone Indra when the Gods pleaded him to desist from such an unworthy endeavor. Vishwamitra, much calmer now, agreed but continued to insist on Trishanku remaining in the new heaven he had created, with his mortal body. The Gods agreed, and Trishanku remained midway between earth and Heaven, in his new Heaven, Trishanku’s heaven, but upside down. He is still awaiting entry into the real Heaven.

As I deliberate about the current times with the invisible enemy ruling our world, I know that the world we were all so comfortable in, has moved radically. Routines and business as usual are not usual any longer, with each of us sense-making our new predicament. What we often criticised - the traffic, the noise, the crowds, the chaos and run of daily life, is today a loved memory, with our hearts crying to go back in time to the world we knew. Tough, but a world we loved. Our world. Today, no one knows when it will end, no one knows where it will end. All we know is that we are in between a place of yesterday and tomorrow. The old world has gone, the new one is yet to appear.

I was upside down, right above myself, and I could see myself lying down on the bed, I told my mother, histrionically demonstrating the position of both Me’s. With a supportive hug and faraway look in her eyes, she knew she was indulging a 10-year-old, treading on a path that could probably influence my imagination for ever. You are so lucky, she said to me, to have seen the best of you from my eyes. Did you see how special you are to us, she continued, and why we love you so dearly? You entered my world, she concluded, but decided that you like yours better! And with that, she put to rest the mind of a ten-year-old who was fearful of the unknown territory she had witnessed.

Three different journeys, three different midpoints, three different experiences, all suspended. Limbo - between here and there, now, and then. As an unsuspecting child, my mother kept reminding me of the special opportunity to experience what I later understood, was a meaningful point of oneness - two worlds coming together as one. I had come back to my little mortal world, happy. Trishanku left the Earth for heaven, but remained in neither, suspended, inverted, neither happy nor sad.

Where is the then, if we are in the now? And can we too, like Trishanku, make the in-between world our new world?

Here are a few thoughts to ponder – Are we Trishankus or is the world Trishanku’s Heaven? Are we currently inverted or will the new world invert us?

Your views?