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STORIES FOR SEEKERS
A Glass of Water
A Parable Retold

When the sage Narada stops to fetch a glass of water for Lord Vishnu, he falls into a life he never meant to live—a village, a love, a child, a flood. A modern retelling of the ancient parable, A Glass of Water is a meditation on illusion, memory, and the strange beauty of forgetting.

XVI.

There came a time when the village forgot what it used to be.

 

The tamarind trees at the southern edge were cleared to make space for more houses. New families arrived—relatives of relatives, strangers with familiar names. The temple courtyard was expanded. A second well was dug.

 

One man opened a sweets stall. Another began selling thread.

Someone built a roof tall enough to see the river bend in both directions.

 

People started using the word before more often.

 

“Before the new houses.”

“Before the fire.”

“Before Aru was walking.”

 

Even I said it, without thinking.

 

The clay changed, too. A little softer. More silt. It required longer drying.

I adjusted without complaint.

The wheel felt natural in my hands now, like it had been passed through generations I had forgotten I belonged to.

 

Meera grew quieter in those years.

Not withdrawn—just still.

She had always worked efficiently, but now there was grace to it. A kind of knowing. She would sweep the courtyard before sunrise, and I’d catch her standing in the dawn light, eyes closed, face tilted upward like a seed waiting for rain.

 

Aru grew into his limbs. His voice deepened. His hair never settled.

He began carving small figurines—animals, gods, shapes he never named.

Some he buried in the garden.

Others he lined along the windowsill, as if waiting for them to wake.

 

The village spoke of turning the canal into a full irrigation channel.

The men argued about where to divert the water.

Meetings were held.

Nothing changed.

 

A traveling merchant came one summer with stories of a war beyond the hills.

No one listened.

A woman gave birth to twins with hair already braided.

The priest declared it auspicious.

 

Time passed like wind through thick grass—seen only in how the light moved.

 

Sometimes I would pause at the kiln, hands coated in clay, and listen to the sounds of the village:

Pounding grain.

Laughing children.

Goats arguing with no one.

 

It felt… full.

Not happy. Not sad.

Just complete, in the way a bowl is complete once it holds something warm.

 

That was the morning he arrived.

 

A man with a crooked shawl and sandals made of rope. He walked with the easy rhythm of someone who didn’t need to be anywhere. His beard was white. His eyes—too bright.

 

“Which way to the river?” he asked me, though it was plainly in sight.

 

I pointed.

 

He didn’t move.

 

“You still have time,” he said. “But not as much as you think.”

 

Then he smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Just… knowingly.

 

I opened my mouth to ask something, but he was already walking. His staff tapped softly on the path.

 

I told Meera later. She said, “Maybe it was a sadhu.”

 

“Maybe,” I replied. “He asked the way to a river he could see.”

 

She shrugged. “Gods play tricks. So do fools.”

 

We didn’t talk about it again.

XVII.

The air turned first.

 

Not with wind or rain, but with something stranger—a pressure, as if the sky had leaned in too close to listen and forgot to pull away. The trees stopped rustling. The birds vanished. Even the insects seemed unsure, dragging their wings low and slow, like everything had grown too heavy to rise.

 

The villagers called it the thick time.

 

Old women covered their mirrors. Children were made to nap twice a day, though none could sleep. Everyone moved slower, as if each motion had to be paid for in sweat.

 

By the third day, shirts clung to our backs before dawn.

By the fifth, no one cooked indoors.

The thatch roofs felt like they might catch fire from the inside.

 

The river became a refuge. Not for bathing. For surviving.

 

Men stood waist-deep in the current, arms crossed like trees waiting for lightning.

Women sat in silence, legs trailing into the water, whispering instead of laughing.

Even the buffalo wandered in and refused to come out, eyes half-lidded in the muddy shallows.

 

Children floated on reed mats, speechless.

 

Meera and I joined them.

 

But Aru refused.

 

He had grown lean in the last year—shoulders broader, eyes sharper, voice thick with something he hadn’t yet learned to name. He ate when he felt like it. Slept wherever sleep found him. Sometimes he vanished for hours and returned with nothing but silence.

 

That morning, he climbed to the roof and stayed there all day.

Shirtless.

Arms folded.

His skin glistened with sweat and sunlight.

He watched us below like characters in a story he’d already outgrown.

 

Meera shaded her eyes and looked up at him.

 

“He’s sulking,” she said.

 

But her voice carried something else—

Not worry.

Not yet.

But a premonition.

 

That evening, I walked home alone.

The path silent but for the soft squelch of my own steps.

The sky overhead was the color of boiled iron—not stormy, just full.

Taut.

Like the drum skin before the first beat.

 

I passed Hari’s hut.

 

The door was open.

 

Inside, the boat stood finished.

 

It filled the space entirely—no room for a chair, or a mat, or a life.

It gleamed with oil and resin.

A thick coil of rope lay wound like a snake beside it.

The hull was dark, smooth, perfect.

 

Hari stood at the bow, polishing a brass bell with the sleeve of his shirt.

He looked at it like someone remembering a name not spoken in years.

 

He didn’t look at me.

I didn’t speak.

 

At home, Meera sat with a bowl of chopped vegetables she hadn’t touched.

The knife lay beside her on the mat.

Her eyes were on the sky.

 

“Aru?” I asked.

 

She pointed toward the canal.

 

I found him standing at the edge of the water. Not in it—just at it.

Still.

 

He didn’t look up when I approached.

 

“What are you doing?” I asked.

 

“Watching,” he said.

 

“For what?”

 

He didn’t answer.

Just turned and walked away.

 

That night, he went to bed early.

Meera didn’t speak.

I didn’t ask.

 

And outside, the air held its breath a little longer than it should have.

XVIII.

It was just before dawn when I felt her shift beside me.

 

Meera rarely moved in her sleep. She slept like someone making peace with gravity—deep, still, surrendered. But that morning, she stirred. Turned away. Then back. Her breath caught, once.

 

When she woke, the light was only beginning to sift through the thatch—thin and pale, the color of smoke before it remembers fire.

 

She sat up slowly, her hand resting on her belly, though there was nothing there now to carry.

 

I waited.

 

Sometimes she spoke without prompting.

Sometimes she didn’t.

 

This time, she did.

 

“I dreamed of crows,” she said.

 

I rubbed my eyes. “They’re always around.”

 

“No,” she said, quietly. “Not like this. They weren’t moving. Just… standing. All of them. Lining the river. Hundreds. Facing the water.”

 

Her voice wasn’t shaken. Just thoughtful. As if trying to remember something that hadn’t yet happened.

 

“And then,” she added, “they stepped in. One by one. No flapping. No sound. Just… gone.”

 

I sat up beside her. “Was it the storm dream again?”

 

“No,” she said. “This one was quiet.”

 

She stood, brushed her hands on her sari, and went to light the stove. As if that were the end of it.

 

But all day she moved a little slower.

Missed a step while sorting grain.

Forgot the salt in the lentils.

Stood too long at the window while Aru carved patterns into a gourd he didn’t plan to keep.

 

That evening, I asked if she’d told anyone else.

 

“No one wants a dream right now,” she said.

 

And that night, when she lay beside me again, she reached for my hand—

something she hadn’t done in a while.

 

Her palm was warm. Dry.

 

Still holding something.

 

That night, after she slept, I stepped outside to breathe. The rain had not yet returned, but the air felt heavy with its promise. I looked toward the river.

 

On the far bank, barely visible in the starlight, a single crow stood. Facing the water. Silent. Motionless.

 

Then it stepped forward. One foot. Then the next. Into the dark.

 

Gone.

Continue to Part 7

© All content copyright 2017-2025  by Daniel McKenzie

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