the light in the eyes

I left the noise of the temple and its fringe of hectic trade. I sauntered along the shoreline, passing the fading concrete hotel with its unkempt garden. I waded in the sea to go beyond the fence and the open sewer. I came to a beach. It was not a tourist beach and so, as is the way hereabouts, it was the local toilet. Nevertheless, I watched the sun set, thankful for a peaceful moment.

I turned inland and found myself wandering through a shanty town of single-room dwellings. The roofs and walls were made from leaves of coconut palms. Children played everywhere, happy, oblivious to the groans of the planet as she struggles under the weight of humanity. Around one corner a man sat on the ground, encircled by five or six children. They sat motionless, their eyes glued to him, a master storyteller in action. 

I came to the edge of the village of shacks, to a no-mans-land, a wasteland separating it from the town. There on a pile of rubble sat a woman, wearing purple. It was all that registered before I saw her eyes. The light that came from them was a peculiar light. It was not just the light of life – that is not so difficult to find. This was a soft, bottomless light that spoke eloquently of infinity and of silence. This was the light that is the source of all light, and darkness too; the source of life and all that is. 

I had not seen that light in the ashram, with its busy schedule and one-size-fits-all teaching. It was not there in the students of yoga, though some of them hungered for it. It was not there in the teachers, though they talked of little else. I had not seen that light in the temples, with their endless streams of pilgrims who always seemed in a hurry to get in and out and back to the market stalls. I had not seen that light in the colourful streets of the noisy towns. But here it was, unmistakable, in the eyes of a woman sitting quietly on a pile of rubble next to a palm thatched hut in a shanty town on the edge of nowhere.

She did not say a word. She did not ask that tedious question which I face a thousand times a day, “Which country?”, “Coming from?”, “Native place?” She did not need to ask, for she knew well my native place, as I knew hers. We exchanged a smile and I walked on by.

(December 2004)