The dance of the Shesh Nag

The dance of the Shesh Nag
Rajesh Solanki

Six days pass. I’m sleeping under the open sky, with my wife, son and mother. Now, I look at my father’s three-storeyed building quite differently. It never looked so horrible. Yet it has not collapsed although it has been shaken to its very foundations, just like I have been.

At midnight, I wake up suddenly amidst a big clamour. People shout to each other, ‘‘Another earthquake is coming.’’ Their voices send a fresh tremor through my body. My heart beats faster. It brings to mind the day two weeks ago when we were all confronted with an unidentified fear, when the earth shook and everything crumbled, our egos, our ethos, our milieu, everything...

I realise for the first time why my country was a safe haven, the brhmavart, the aryavart, the centre of the earth...All its divine ideologies were solidly anchored on a stable, aseismic earth. I remember, why my grandmother saying, ‘‘We are sitting on the head of Shesh Nag.’’ Now, the nag is dancing. How long will this dance continue?

I read all those newspapers with suspicion. The earth beneath my feet is drifting towards Himalayas every year, they say. Can I call this mountain a cradle of my great culture? Is it the same abode, where my ancestors found solace and supreme peace of mind? How monstrous it has become now! Something boils inside me. Something is boiling inside the earth.

There was a time when I was proud of my father’s creation: his house. Now, my brother’s ten-year-old son asks, ‘‘Why did grandpa build such a big house?’’ I stare into his eyes which are questioning my father’s wisdom. They say, the "continental drift is still active". How harmless this theory once seemed. How terrible, it now seems! My entire knowledge of continents, the Occident and the Orient, has shattered. I have to re-learn my geography, or I’ll face my geographical death.

Just a decade ago, I used to curse myself. The Walled City in Ahmedabad was burning. The flames of social strife were soaring high. Old Ahmedabad seemed to personify hell. Today, it has survived the revolt of the earth. Those tremors have dignified a feudal king, who never allowed any builder to raise a castle on Kankaria Lake.

They say Gujarat is sitting on two seismic faults: one is the coastal area of Saurashtra-Kutchh and the other in the Narmada Valley fault. And they say there is no other way but to construct a big dam here. That it is not our fault that we have to do this. After the death of one lakh people, why is it that we still refuse to accept our faults?

There is a crack in my wall,
Not so deep as that which is in my heart.
The crack in my wall can be cemented,
But crack in my heart will never be healed.
It sends shocks to my conscience everyday...
And says...
If you bury the truth, the truth will bury you.
Truth of ocean, polluted and maligned,
Truth of those rivers,
Sunk and sewaged,
Squeezed and damned,
Truth of those ponds,
Buried and loaded under sky-scrapers.
Still I cannot digest this truth,
I’m waiting for another shock!