Vasudeva and I were doing our usual everyday tasks when we heard distant cries from a young boy. Vasudeva hurried out and before I knew it, he comes in carrying a sickly woman in his arms with a boy following him closely behind (whose face perplexingly reminds me of something...). While Vasudeva was cleaning up her snake bite I looked at the woman and quickly recognized her: Kamala. It all connected then. The boy with the worried eyes and tremblings hands is...my son. I have a SON.
I went to Kamala and assured her that her son was here. She struggled to speak. She told me how old I've become, how I am now more like the Samana who stumbled upon her town than when I left her, how that boy standing over there was my son.
The boy, my son began to cry. Instinctively I pulled him into my arms and began to sing a recital of a Brahmin prayer I learned when I was about his age. Thankfully my method worked and he began to fall asleep.
I took another glance at Kamala. Life and color were draining from her aged face. Soon she will die.
A few moments later she was awake, face strained with immense misery and agony. We shared a quiet moment together, sharing the pain, looking into each other's eyes. Straining to whisper, she notes how something about me has changed.
"Have you attained it?" she asks.
I haven't. In that moment I had an internal struggle...do I tell her the truth? I knew that she was in her last moments. No. No, I couldn't. So I didn't. I gave her a smile, a smile assuring her that yes, I have found peace, and placed my hand on hers.
"Yes, I see it. I will also find peace." she says.
Not wanting her to spending this final moment still searching, my last words to her: "You have found it", and with that being said, she passed. I just sat there for a while, observing her face, recollecting all the memories I had with her.
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