The Sculptor

A sculptor draws inspiration from life around him. But what if Death is his only inspiration?

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Rana knew he was getting late but there was nothing he could do about it.

He could not make his house come closer nor could he ask the sun to set later.  Things were as they were. He could just press his foot further down on the accelerator.

There was something else that was bothering him.

It was his daughter’s birthday. The little one was turning three and Molly had specifically asked him to get her a doll. His meeting had run late, and it had completely slipped his mind.

His phone vibrated with a trilling sound. Rana grimaced as he answered it gearing up for the tirade that he was sure would burst upon him.

“Where are you?” Molly’s hassled voice sounded from the other end.

“Almost there” said Rana lying unabashedly.

“Okay. We are getting ready to cut the cake now. Have you got the gift?”

Rana remained silent as he debated whether to come out with the truth now or later. In either way, it would not be to his benefit.

“Rana?” Molly’s voice turned dangerously cold.

“Yes..yes…of course I have” said Rana.

“Then why were you not answering me?” asked Molly suspiciously.

“Oh..network issues I guess” said Rana contritely.

“She has been waiting all evening for the doll. So if you are lying I will kill you with my own hands if you break her heart today” said Molly before disconnecting.

Rana sighed resignedly and focused back on the road.

It stretched out long and lonely ahead of him. It would still be another 45 minutes before he reached civilization. Rana just hoped he would be able to make it. 

The car trundled on.

Light began to get sparse as the sun decided to call it a day. Rana turned on the headlights. It was his first time on this road. He had decided to take this one as someone at work had mentioned it would be a shorter one to reach the city.  But now he was beginning to doubt the veracity of that suggestion.

The road just seemed endless. He wondered whether he had taken a wrong turn by mistake.

He did pass a few houses on either side. But they were so sparse and scattered that they would hardly constitute a village. Moreover, despite being part of a national highway, streetlights on this stretch of the road were few and far between.

Then as an unexpected but unwanted source of light in the form of a streak of lightning lit up the road in front, Rana cursed his luck.

This was the last thing he wanted to happen.

The air began to get cooler tempered by the wet monsoon winds that soon followed.

While on other days Rana would have cherished the first rain of the season, today was definitely not one of those. He began to pray that he would be able to reach the next town before the rain showered down in full gusto.

The wind gathered speed and the windscreen became foggy with the dust that blew up from all around him. Thunder rumbled angrily matching the one in his stomach as Rana realised he had not had anything since lunch. Driving always made him feel hungry and he usually picked up a snack before travelling. However, today it seems everything had gone wrong.

As he switched on the fluid spray on his windshield to wipe off the grime, Rana noticed the man.

He was sitting by the roadside cowering beneath a frail cane basket. The wind was too strong making him sway and totter. The man cuddled deeper within the basket seeking its meagre shade as his sole protection against the powerful gale blowing around him.

Rana felt sorry for him. He knew the man would not be able to hold out for long in the storm. Traffic on this stretch was non-existent. It would be some time till he got a lift from someone in this storm.

 Rana slowed down and stopped just short of where the man sat huddled. He lightly honked to draw his attention. The man jumped and peeked out from beneath the basket. Rana lowered the headlights so that the man was able to see better.

Slowly the man got up and shaded his eyes to look at the car.

Rana beckoned to him to get in.

The man slowly walked towards him cowering deeper beneath the basket that he held over his head like a broken umbrella.

As he did so, Rana noticed he was hugging something close to his chest with one hand.

The man silently got into the empty seat next to Rana.

Once inside he gave Rana a relieved smile. Rana smiled back. The man, he noticed must be above 50. He had a small square face. His hair was ruffled and grey with a liberal spray of dust.  His face was unshaven and covered with a grey stubble. He wore thick rimmed glasses that were cracked and frosted. He wore a simple white half sleeve shirt and dark trousers that looked soiled and well-worn.

“Thank you sir. I missed the last bus and was thinking I would have to spend the night here if it weren’t for you. You are like a saviour from heaven” he said. His voice was dry but had a polished educated inflection in his tone.

Rana smiled slightly.

“Where were you going? I can drop you there on my way” he said politely.

“My house is not very far. I could have walked but the storm broke in at just the wrong time.” said the man in an apologetic tone.

“Yes. The storm did have a bad timing” said Rana pressing the ignition button to start the car.

They continued in silence for some time.

Rana glanced sideways to notice that the man was still clutching something in his lap while staring out of the window. It looked like a cloth bag. The two sides of its open ends were sewn together. 

“Why don’t you put your bag on the back seat and sit comfortably” Rana suggested to the man.

The man looked at Rana in surprise as if he had said something strange. Then his mouth slid down into a lopsided smile.

“We must carry our own responsibilities around isn’t it? Putting it on the backseat may make us forget them.”

“Don’t worry, I will remind you before you leave” said Rana lightly.

“Do you always remember your responsibilities?” said the man suddenly in a serious voice.

Rana was slightly taken aback at his tone.

The man laughed.

“What I mean is has it ever happened that you put responsibilities in the backseat and forgot about them?” He was looking at Rana with twinkling eyes.

Rana sighed.

“Yes. I did. In fact, today I did forget to buy a gift for my daughter’s birthday.”

“Birthdays are a gift in themselves, aren’t they?” said the man smiling softly at Rana “Every year we gift ourselves with another year of life, our friends and family wish us with health and happiness. What bigger gift can we think of?”

“Your thoughts on life are too profound. Unfortunately, they are a bit too high handed for a three-year-old who still believes in getting material gifts like dolls” said Rana laughing.

“Ah” exclaimed the man as if he just remembered something “A child. How old did you say she was?”

“She will be turning three today!” said Rana smiling “I had promised her a doll.

The man nodded silently. His face had suddenly turned very serious and he appeared to be in deep thought.

Rana found that odd. It suddenly struck him that they had been together for some time now and yet he did not know the man’s name.

“I am sorry I don’t think we have introduced ourselves. My name is Rana. And you are?” Rana looking at his co-passenger expectantly.

He was met with nothing but silence. Rana hoped the man was not feeling unwell.

“Excuse me sir? Are you okay?”

“Huh!” the man looked at him as if woken from a stupor.

“Kumar!” he spoke hurriedly “My name is Kumar. I am sorry I …I was thinking of something else…so ..,“

Rana nodded slightly.

“So what do you do Mr.Rana?”

“I am the Marketing Director for an FMCG group” said Rana.

“Oh” said Kumar distractedly.

“And what about you Mr. Kumar?” asked Rana conversationally.

“Well, you could say I am a sculptor” said Kumar.

“Oh an artist! How wonderful” said Rana pleasantly.

“I wouldn’t say so Mr. Rana because my sculptures may not be so pleasant after all” said Kumar with sudden sadness in his tone.

Rana looked at him surprised.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because my sculptures are different. They are not about the regular subjects that most sculptors use.”

“And what is your subject?” asked Rana curiously.

“Death!”

The road ahead had a speed breaker which Rana missed and the car jerked up violently.

“I am sorry” said Rana wondering if he had heard him wrong “I did not quite understand you?”

“Let me tell you a bit about myself” began Kumar “You see my father was a cremation worker in Benaras. Ever since I was a young boy, I used to help him in the cremation process. I used to sleep near the Manikarnika ghat where the pyres would be lit. It was a busy place. Everyday hundreds of pyres would be lit as people came to rinse their sins before their last journey. The soot and grime of the cremation fires had blackened my face even before I had started growing a beard. The flames of some of the pyres were so high I believed they reached the skies tracing a direct path for the deceased into the heavens. The waters of the Ganges got heavy with the ashes of the deceased. Every evening I used to sit and watch the ashes bobbing up and down on the waters creating ripples till they disappeared into the earth. From earth we come and into earth we dissolve. I saw all that with my own eyes.

As I grew up, I began to feel a deeper connection with the deceased. Because you see, all who were brought to the ghats were not dead. There were some who were brought there as a last dying wish to touch the holy waters before they passed on. Many were abandoned by their families as they were too poor to arrange for proper cremation. Earlier they would simply set the body afloat in the water of the Ganges. But that was banned by the government. So, they would leave them with us. We would wait till the body breathed its last.

I would often sit with these people who were on their deathbed. Hold their hands, talk to them and give them some comfort and watched them pass on to the next life peacefully. I just felt they needed to know there was somebody with them on their last journey.”

“That must have been some experience” said Rana as he listened to Kumar’s story.

“Yes it was. But then over the years I began to feel something happen within me. As I sat holding their hands and listening to them and talking to these people, I began to feel a strange power flow within me. I experienced a new strength build up within me. I did not know what it was till later.” said Kumar

“What did you find?” said Rana, intrigued.

“The first time I realised it was when my father died. I was always very good at making clay models. I had learnt it all by myself. Seeing my penchant for it my father had requested a sculptor to take me in as his apprentice.”

“But didn’t he want you to follow in his profession?” asked Rana, surprised.

“No” said Kumar smiling “He never wanted me to follow in his profession. Besides, I think he was not too happy with the fact that I was getting personally connected to all his clients. He wanted me to keep it strictly professional. But no matter how much I wanted to, I could not distance myself from the people. To me they were not just mere bodies but souls who had lived and breathed just like me and who now needed a more peaceful passage into the next world, and I believed it to be my moral responsibility to help them do that. He wanted to stop that. So, at the first opportunity, he moved me.

But Destiny had something else in mind. One night, I had a dream I saw my father. He looked as if he wanted to talk to me. His eyes were filled with tears as if he was in pain, but his mouth was smiling as if he knew it was the last suffering that his body would have to bear. I woke up then and began sculpting. I began to sculpt my father’s face. By the crack of dawn, I was done with it. It was exactly how I saw it in my dreams. Something within me told me that it was the last time I would be seeing his face. I set off for home.

On reaching I was told my father had passed away last night.”

“Oh My God! I am so sorry to hear that!” said Rana offering his condolences.

“No but you see the thing is I felt that I had already known that my father was no more. In my dream when he looked at me, it was as if he was telling me he was leaving. It was as if I could feel his death!” said Kumar.

“That happens sometimes Mr. Kumar when we are very close to some people and if they are going to leave us, we can sometimes feel that.” said Rana as way of explanation.

“No. I think, it had something to do with that strange sensation that I had felt earlier as I sat holding the hands of the deceased. I think it gave me the power to feel death.” said Kumar.

“How can you be so sure?” asked Rana trying to reason.

“The next time it happened with my master, the sculptor I was apprenticing with. I had the same vision and got up to sculpt his face. Next morning when I went to his room to show him my work, I found him dead. Twice is too much of a coincidence wouldn’t you say that.” asked Kumar looking at Rana closely.

Rana shrugged with a confused look.

“Then the visions increased and every time I had a vision, I used to sculpt the face I saw and waited to hear from the family.”

“But how did that happen? How did you know all the people?”

“I think fate played a role in that. With some twist of fortune or rather misfortune in this case, I would brush against the unfortunate family and pass on the news to them. Most of the time I would be late in reaching them. But sometimes I would be just in time to spend the last moments with them and help them pass on peacefully to the next life.

And last night, I had another vision. Of a face that was as joyful as a mountain stream, as pure as mother’s milk and as delicate as the morning dew. There were no tears in her eyes and her face was lifted up in the most heavenly smile I had ever seen. As I woke up to sculpt my vision I ended up creating the whole figure and not just the face. It belonged to a young girl!”

Rana felt a cold chill creep up his spine. A sweat crawled down his forehead and his hands began to get clammy.

“Mr.Kumar…are you..?”

“Mr. Rana” he said gently as he placed his hand on his arm.

Rana stopped the car.

“I will get off here. It’s time you went home too.” He said sighing.

Rana stared at him speechless as Kumar alighted.

He was still staring as he watched Kumar walk away into the surrounding darkness. The storm had stopped. There was an eerie calmness all around.

It was some time till he regained consciousness, and noticed the bag that Kumar was clutching stashed under his seat.

With trembling hands, he picked it up. His fingers fumbled as he tore open its seams. Inside lay a small clay figure.

Despite the tears that blurred his vision Rana could still make out the slight slant of his daughter’s eyes as it stared back at him. The cherubic smile that always brightened his day seemed to light up the darkness in his car.

“No!” Rana whispered hoarsely.

The silence within the car was suddenly shattered by the shrill ring of his phone as it began vibrating beside him.

He ignored the incessant ring as he cuddled the figure close to his chest hoping to treasure the moments a bit longer as he held onto his precious life.

He would let Molly know later that he did remember to get the doll!

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Cover Image credits: Photo by James Sutton.