A tryst with love

Sep 7, 2010, 12.00am IST
Pranav Khullar.

I'm not sure what woke me up – the strong call of the muezzin or the peacocks.

It was three in the morning, according to my watch. That's the right time to wake up, my guide had said to me the previous evening. I looked around for him. He was fast asleep and snoring, too. The tomb of Salim Chisti seemed still and calm, a milky white in the darkness.


Another couple of hours and the month-long fast of the holy month of Ramadan would be over, giving way to festivity and Eid celebrations. I got up cautiously, the Archaeological Survey guide still snoring to my left. I stood there, in the huge, roofless quadrangle around Chisti's tomb. I could sense a prairie-like placidity.


Even as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see that a few devout were at prayer already, savouring the last day of the holy month. Kneeling on their rugs beneath the open sky, lifting their hearts directly towards a divine presence, they mingled with the silence at Fatehpur Sikri, Agra.


The enormous Buland Darwaza, the ornate gateway some yards away, stood out in the night like a Sphinx, a symbol of man's search for meaning. Beyond it, on the outside was a world of differences and identities and roles. Inside here, one had crossed the threshold to enter a world of oneness and harmony that seemed to precede all existence. I closed my eyes.
I remembered Jiddu Krishnamurti's words: "Truth is a pathless land... the mind that goes into itself goes on a long pilgrimage from which there is no return." I wondered when our role-playing would end, when we would be jolted to awareness of the faith beyond all faith.


The cool, crisp air coming in from the desert seemed like the proverbial creative breeze, revealing deeper truths than what we normally seek. The peacocks continued calling out vigorously even as the devout poured their soul into prayer.


When I opened my eyes, the first rays of the sun had just lit up the red sandstone of Fatehpur Sikri. While my guide could be seen sleeping at a distance still, there was no one else in sight. I rubbed my eyes. The devout had left, it seems – or had they evaporated in the morning sunlight? The young caretaker of the Salim Chisti tomb was waking up. The epiphanic moment had passed.


The fast of Ramadan gave way to peace that could be felt all around. Instinct told me that this peace cannot be held hostage – neither by threat of war nor any other kind of violence, because the power of love and bonding is so much stronger than divisive forces that seek to shatter the peace. Love is the ultimate answer to all.
The epiphanic moment may have gone, but the experience had left behind the lingering taste of a timeless truth – of man's essential Self, beyond his created self. As I wound my way back to the hustle and bustle of the bazaars of Agra, I felt like a Qalander, a free soul myself, having stumbled upon what seemed like an ancient secret – a secret that is ironically programmed in our DNA, yet forgotten and held captive by the ego. Eid, therefore, is a beautiful reminder of our tryst with love, with fellow beings and creation itself.