7. Her Life Justified
It was late at night, and they were
in bed, asleep. Suddenly Namagiri gave out a loud piercing shriek and sat bolt
upright.
Jolted awake, Ramanujan said, “What
is it, what is it, what is it?”
“O Ramanujan darling, there you are!
Hold me, please hold me!” And Namagiri turned and embraced her husband, hard.
“Your heart is pounding,” he said.
“I had... a dream...” she gasped.
“You mean a nightmare,” Ramanujan
said.
“I dreamed... that shadows came...
and they spoke to me.”
“And these shadows; what did they
say?”
“They said... ‘O Radiance! Your
Excellency! Enlightened Star of India!’ They said... ‘O Victor, Lawgiver and
Sage! Worthy Inheritor! Noble Founder!’ They said... ‘Sri Sri Magnificence Sri
Sri Lucidity Sri Sri Great-Souled Sri Sri Sri Namagiri!’ ”
“Aha,” Ramanujan said. “They know
you.”
“I asked them why they called me
that. They chanted, ‘You are the Harbinger. You are the Overcomer. You are the
First of the Next. One Sunyata One Sunyata Sunyata One One Sunyata One Sunyata!
Therefore we honor you. Our praise echoes across the land. One One Sunyata One!
We come to give you a gift, or do you a favor.’ ”
“What strange numbers. Six hundred
and sixty-six? Thirteen?” Ramanujan mused. “And what gift did they offer?”
“They offered me wealth and power,
luck and privilege, fortune and fame; but this for a span of time limited to
one part in ninety-six of a single day.
How long is that, dear husband?”
Ramanjuan replied, “It is fifteen
minutes.”
“The shadows offered me fifteen
minutes of fame; but what use have I for fame, or fame for me? That is what I
told them; and to this they replied, ‘If we cannot give you a gift then we must
do you a favor.’ And so they did me... their kind of favor.”
“And what kind of favor was that?”
“They gave me a vision... of the end
of the world.”
“And how did the world end? By
flood? By fire? By bolts of lightning?”
“No. By time.” Namagiri hugged her
husband, hard. After a bit she relaxed enough to say, “In my vision, time sped
up. It raged and ravaged like a river in monsoon season. I saw cities seethe
like human anthills. I saw trees sprout, grow, blossom, wither, and decay, fast
as tongues of flame. I saw time as
all-consuming fire, and it frightened me.
“The shadows chirped and hooted at
my terror. ‘O minor servant under an incompetent prince of a forgotten city in
a fallen empire,’ they screeched, ‘we are doing you a favor! For where are your
masters? Behold; they’re gone, all gone!’
“It was true. Time’s fire had
reduced both Prince and Sheik to sunyata.
“The shadows cried, ‘Where is the
vizier? Where are the servants? Where is the palace? Where are the shrines?
Where are your gods? Gone, all gone!’
“The shadows cried, ‘O Namagiri,
where is your washrag? Where is your broom? Your comb and your bed? Your
husband and your child? O Namagiri, where are you?’
“The shadows cried, ‘O lioness of
nothingness, behold thy legacy!’
“And there was nothing. There was
nothing. There was nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing!”
Pause.
“And that was when I screamed, and
that was when I woke up.” Namagiri clung tightly to Ramanujan. “And so you see,
dear husband, that there’s nothing wrong, and there’s nothing missing, and
there’s nothing to fear but nothing itself.”
They lay there quietly a moment,
embracing each other.
Ramaujan patted Namagiri and said,
“Oh my poor beloved, who am I to argue with shadows? Can I deny their denials?
No. I cannot gainsay their words; I can only add to them; for they have told
you part of the truth.”
“... it’s true?”
“Yes, but only half the truth; and
half a truth is worse than a whole lie.”
“And what is the whole truth?”
Ramanujan said, “Your existence is
transient; that is true. Your life is absurd; also true. Your legacy is
nothingness; again true. But your legacy, though nothing, is no ordinary
nothing; your life, though absurd, even so has meaning; and your existence,
though transient, even so is
vindicated.” He kissed her on the forehead. “You are; and you ought to
be; so all is well.”
“I ought to be?”
“Yes,” Ramanujan said firmly. “Your
life is justified. You are a good person; the world is a better place because
you exist.”
Namagiri sighed, and relaxed just a
bit. “It’s nice of you to say that...”
Ramanujan said, “No! I do not just
say it. I know it, and I can prove it.”
“And how could you prove such a
thing? With mathematics?”
“And vision. You see... while you
were dreaming, so was I.”
“And what mathematical vision did
you dream?”
“Of you, within the land of
magicians. Yes, the cold rainy place, where you taught me fantastic mathematics
in a dream within a dream. Tonight I dreamed once more of that land; only this
time I knew when I was.”
Namagiri asked, “You knew ‘when’ you
were? How long ago was it?”
“But you see, dear, it wasn’t a
‘long ago’; it was a ‘yet to be’. My dream was not about the past; it was about
a future.”
“ ‘A’ future, you say? Then
are there many futures?”
“Time is a tree, this life one leaf;
but love is the sky, and I am for you.”
“And this alternate future is a past
life of yours?” she wondered. “Have you been re-incarnating backwards in time?”
Ramanujan said, “So my dream
informed me. Alas, my soul has striven counter to the current of time; and let
me assure you that only the game fish swims upstream!”
“And what have you swum so far
upstream for, you gamy fish?”
“I came back for you, beloved.”
“And this future, your past; what
was it like?”
“It was the future you made;
the world your invention created.”
At this Namagiri burst out laughing.
(Ramanujan quietly sighed with relief.) She said, “How odd! You dreamed a
magician’s world created by sunyata?”
“By nothing less than nothing,” he
said.
“Created by a placeholder? By naming
the void, I made a whole world?”
“It had your number written all over
it!”
“And why should a great big world
need so much emptiness?”
“In that world, all clerks and
scholars could do their sums easily and correctly.”
Namagiri asked, “Your magician’s
world is a computer's paradise?”
“Yes!” Ramanujan said fervently.
“Children could compute! Princes and sheiks could compute! The very rocks
could compute!”
“It couldn't have been much of a
change,” she said.
“But it was, it was! The world I
witnessed... it was glorious, Namagiri, and terrifying, and beautiful, and
wonderful, and huge. And you were the one who inspired it. It was a
future of big cities and bountiful harvests and mighty engines and wide
highways and tall towers; the people could fly like birds, see beyond the
horizon, speak across the seas. And it was you who showed them how.”
“I did that? Me?”
“Yes, you, dear; for you taught them
what they needed to know. Sunyata; no more, and no less. Their wagons ran like
stallions, their chariots flew like falcons, their towers scraped the sky,
their bridges spanned great bays, their cities shone like clusters of suns. The
lightning and the lodestone were their servants; the sky their highway. The
Moon bore their footprints, and their eyes and ears had gone further yet. And
it was you, it was you, who made it all possible.”
“But I did nothing!”
“Yes, beloved; and it was your
Nothing that did it. Before you came, mankind didn't know the simplest thing;
but now, thanks to you, they do. You taught them mathematics, the language of
Heaven. Their sages could count the stars in the sky and the sands of the
desert, thanks to you. For them, the equinoxes, tides, passages, eclipses,
conjunctions, and comets were no mystery, thanks to you. They could see the farthest star and the
tiniest mite. They could hear the bat's chirp, the whale's song, the sun's
roar... and even echoes from Creation itself. And who taught their sages, their
artisans, their clerks, their smiths, and even their princes and sheiks? You
did.”
“Did they know I did?”
“No, they did not. Only I know that
it was you, it was you, my darling, my sweetheart, my brilliant hidden
treasure, my genius, my goddess, my beloved Namagiri.”
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