Good Karma, Bad Karma

Hello everyone. It has been a long, long time since I have written a blog post. With the chaos and the isolation, and the ever-changing circumstances of our lives these past two years, it has been quite difficult for me to focus and stay motivated with my passions. However, I finally feel as if I can come back to the keyboard and write again. I promise to push myself to be as consistent as possible and keep practicing writing and posting for you all as I have been for these past 10 years. To kick off my first post of 2021, I thought I'd start with a story that I created during a creative writing class I took recently at college. I chose to write about this particular thing because I was inspired by Indian epics that I grew up reading, like the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha. I have always been captivated by the fruitful language and engaging plotlines of these timeless examples of mythology and wanted to try it out for myself. This piece is loosely inspired by the works of Vajra Chandrasekera and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for their vivid imagery and also flash fiction elements. I hope this piece can draw you into a different reality than ours, one that is full of culture and adventure:

It is the 16th century, in a village in Northern India. The cows moo in the streets, their bells clanging to a beat. A single fly buzzes incessantly in his ear. He swats it away angrily. Raj Sharma is a poor beggar on the streets, but he wasn’t always this way. He lays lazily under a mango tree next to a row of straw houses. The sun peers playfully through the leaves of the tree, and a beam of sunlight falls on his face. Raj’s eyelids fling open and he wipes the sweat from his forehead, swatting away the fly that has settled on his head. His stomach rumbles loudly, and Raj looks down his loin-clothed body to his emaciated stomach and rib cage jutting out. “I’m hungry,” he thinks to himself.

Raj looks around and sees a butcher selling freshly butchered meat in a tiny wooden stand off the side of the road. His eyes fixate on the freshly cut meat and his mouth waters. At that same moment, something bonks on his head and falls to the ground. Raj looks down and sees a ripe, luscious mango. Immediately, he grabs it and latches his teeth into the soft skin of the mango. After finishing his mango, he pats his stomach in satisfaction, feeling content after a long time. Raj wasn’t very fortunate growing up.

Born as the son of a poor landowning peasant, he grew up waiting in anticipation for his next meal. His father, Pranav, would work tirelessly tilling the fields to provide the crops that were necessary for the kingdom’s food supply. Impressed with his dedication to his land and devotion to the kingdom, the raja summoned Pranav to his palace.

Once in a blue moon, the raja appointed dedicated laborers to go on quests in search of treasures to add to the wealth and opulence of the palace. Pranav had agreed to journey to Cairo to retrieve the golden skull. The legend has it that the skull was hidden in a secret chamber in the Great Sphinx. Even the Pharaoh was unaware of this priceless treasure, it was an heirloom from his ancestors lost in time. The journey to Cairo was an arduous journey filled with pirates, seasickness, and sweeping the grimy deck. Pranav would arrive in Cairo a week, describing his journey in a detailed letter, before hopping on a camel headed for the Giza Necropolis. However, this would be the last of his letters, and the last time Raj would see his father.

No one knows what happened, but the local folk has many theories as to what happened. Some say that when he went on his quest, he was sentenced to an untimely death by the Pharaoh. Others say that he was mummified alive by the pharaoh’s assistants because he was supposedly “loitering” on palace grounds as a foreigner. With Raj’s father’s disappearance, no one was left to care for the land. The king was both saddened and enraged by Pranav’s disappearance but was forced to move forward and appoint someone else to till his crops. As a result, Raj was abandoned to live on the streets, alone and afraid. He barely got by, being a servant boy for rich families or helping the butcher cut his meat. Eventually, he ended up becoming homeless. Despite all of his struggles and bad karma, the wheel of fortune would soon turn and his luck would change.

Raj jumps up and dusts himself off. “Time to beg for alms as usual.” He thinks to himself in contempt. Just as he begins to walk up to the first house, he hears someone yell “Stop right there!”, in Hindi, from behind him. Raj looked over his shoulder and turn around swiftly, only to see a palace official with a manuscript scroll, staring him down. “Are you Raj Sharma, son of Pranav Sharma?” The man asks impatiently. “Yes he is I,” Raj replies in hesitation. “You have been summoned to the highest court of the Raja, you will be transported there immediately”, the official replies. “ Wait! But.. how, why---” “No time for questions we’re losing time!” And with that, Raj is thrown into the back of a chariot.

A few hours later, they arrive at the Raja’s palace grounds. The Raja’s palace was the most magnificent and majestic in all of the lands. Dubbed “the City of Gold” by the local folk, the entire palace grounds is constructed with 24-carat gold, with diamonds and gems embedded into the walls. Raj finds himself mesmerized by the sheer grandeur and luxury of everything around him, he has never seen anything so beautiful. He is quickly snapped out of his trance when the chariot comes to a sudden halt. “Screech!” the chariot sounded as it dragged against the bronzed tiles that led to the palace.

“Now, before we present you to the king, we must rid you of those rags”, says the palace official. Within moments, Raj is whisked off to the palace dressing room and dressed in a spare uniform. As they enter the royal hall, Raj is taken aback by the tall ceilings painted with ancient murals depicting the lives of the ancestors, calcutta marble floors and columns, and the thrones encrusted with the rarest of gems. Raj and the palace official kneel in respect to the Raja. The official introduces Raj, gets up quietly, bows, and proceeds to leave the hall.

“Years ago, I sent my most dedicated laborer on a quest to find a priceless treasure, a golden skull, to add to our collection of worldly treasures”, the Raja begins in a gravelly voice. “However, he never returned and I had no way to find him, until now”. “Recently, we received a coded letter from your father. The letter is addressed to you and he is asking you to come to find him. He says he has several clues to help you find him. We have no idea how this got to us, as our messenger found it at the bottom of his bag. I only discovered that he had a son after receiving this letter. So, I immediately sent my trusty messenger to find you. And here you are.” he continues. We must send you to Cairo at once! Find that skull and bring back your father! If you do so I will grant you 10,000 gold coins.” bellows the king. Ten thousand? That’s enough to give me mangos for a lifetime, he thinks to himself. “I dutifully accept, your lord”, he replies in return. And with that, Raj and a small crew are thrown onto a small ship sailing towards the port of Cairo.

The ship crew consists of 4 main members, Krishna the ship’s captain, Sagar the cook, Mitra the deck sweeper, and Rishab the steward. The four men are the Raja’s private ship crew, so Raj was deeply honored to to sail the seas with them.They reach Cairo after 5 days, and Raj opens up the wrinkled letter to see the first clue. “Can you read this out to me?” he asks Krishna the captain (he’s the most educated one). The first clue reads, “I am the where the one goes to buy, the apple of my eye”. “Maybe he wants us to go to the market?” Raj ponders in silence.

They arrive at the apple stand in the Cairo marketplace and nestled in one of the crates, is another scroll of paper. Preoccupied with arranging his apples,the apple vendor looked up and replies, “I come here to sell apples every day but I never noticed that scroll until now! Someone must have dropped it into the crate when I was not looking!”. Then, he shrugs his shoulders and continues to arrange his apples. The next riddle reads, “I am where the cat lies down but never gets back up”. “The Great Sphinx!”, Rishab shouts. “Beware of the guards, they are as ferocious as the Great Sphinx himself”, cautions the apple seller.

A quick camel ride and they arrive at the Great Sphinx, which is heavily guarded by well-built men wearing Sphinx headdresses and carrying sharpest of spears. A chill runs down Raj’s spine. “There is no way we can get close to the Sphinx right now, let us wait until the coast is clear. And so they wait, hidden behind their snoozing camels. Eventually, the summer’s heat wear the guards down and they all doze off. “Now is the perfect moment for entry.”, whispers Raj. One by one, they tiptoe up to the statue of the Great Sphinx.

Partially buried near the foot of the Great Sphinx, Sagar notices another scroll. The scroll reads, “I say this with great fear, but do not look behind my ear.” Raj runs as fast he could to the side of the great Sphinx. He notices a small rectangular button tucked away behind its ear. Silently but swiftly, he leaps onto the Great Sphinx and presses the button. The button begins to recede behind the Sphinx’s ear, and the entire statue begins to shake violently. Raj is flung off the statue, but luckily falls into the arms of Mitra. “You are most welcome”, Mitra remarks in annoyance. “Thank you for catching me..” He replies with embarassment. While Raj dusts himself off, the sand blocks near the sphinx’s belly begins to part ways to reveal a small crawl space. They all stand frozen in awe, unable to comprehend what had just occurred. I wonder where this may lead, Raj ponders in silence.“Let us see where this takes us!” he says frantically.

One by one, they crawl through the tiny crawl space, to find themselves in a large chamber filled with diamonds and jewels. Wow! On the inside it looks so much larger than it seems on the inside, Raj thinks to himself in excitement. Trophies,necklaces, and crowns made of sapphire, rubies, amethysts, and many more gems fill the chamber to its ceiling. The sand “doors” shut slowly and silently behind him. Raj and the crew jump up and down with immense joy for their serendipity. As they celebrate their good fortune, Raj notices a familiar-looking object in the sea of jewels. A gleaming gold skull with ruby eyes, and between its jaws, lies another scroll. His era of good fortune was just beginning.