Readers Write In #797: The Wind That Wouldn’t Listen

By Samyogita Hardikar

Most of us have heard at least one story of Lord Shiva performing the Tandav. Some of you might also have heard of the dance that Goddess Parvati danced in response- the Laasya. But I bet none of you know what happened after. 

The two divine cosmic dances — Shiva’s fiery outburst of boundless power and exuberance, and Parvati’s spellbinding counterpoint, the epitome of delicate grace, love and beauty — perturbed the very air around them. Charged with the essence of all the elements, all emotion, all expression in all of time and space, the air around Shiva and Parvati whirred through the universe for millennia to come, eventually scattering everywhere in a mighty explosion. Whatever it touched, it transformed- somewhere a mute bird that opened its beak and started to sing, somewhere else a desert that tasted rain for the very first time. Somewhere — to return to our story — a black mountain that was hit by a tornado so powerful that the collision created a tear at its base. The divine wind entered through this gap and hollowed the mountain out completely. Only the wind lived inside now, and those who came close enough could hear it howling. “A beast has possessed the mountain”, people would say. Children simply said, “The mountain is alive”. 

The children were not wrong. The divine gust of wind had breathed life into the stolid, black rock, and now the mountain was alive. That, in a nutshell, is the story of how Chinvakrayami came into being. The adults weren’t completely wrong either. Chinvakrayami was nothing if not a beast possessed. But no one had truly understood the true extent of his power just yet. Chinvakrayami was barely aware of it himself. He spent his time playing tricks on people with the sounds he could make. He would beguile weary travellers with sweet melodies and when mischievous children came too close, he would send them off screaming and giggling by moaning like a ghost. But he knew he wanted to do more, to be more. He would stay awake at night thinking of all the things he could be. And if he did sleep, he would only dream dreams where he shattered himself into pieces and became something else entirely.  

After dreaming and struggling and trying for eons, Chinvakrayami did it. He managed to break his mountain form, and rebuilt his broken pieces across a nearby river, becoming a bridge that connected two towns. No one could make sense of it. Until yesterday, there was nothing except mist over the river, and now, here was this bridge- stronger and more imposing than any bridge the townsfolk could have built themselves. The old crack in the mountain was visible down one of its columns, but that only added to the beauty of an otherwise flawless structure. People came from miles to see the bridge that had come out of nowhere, and Chinvakrayami basked in the glow of their awe and wonder as they kept on coming. He stayed a bridge for a long while, but then, just as suddenly as it had materialized, the bridge disappeared and in its place was a tiger. The tiger had a deep scar on his right thigh that was the same shape as the tear in the mountain and the crack in the bridge. It roamed around the outskirts of nearby villages, terrifying and enchanting the inhabitants in equal measure. People could tell it wasn’t a normal tiger. It was every bit as fearsome as you might expect a tiger to be, but at the same time, you could look into its eyes and feel as if you were reading all kinds of things going on in its mind- cunning, curiosity, valour, love, tenderness. 

Chinvakrayami spent months as that tiger, until one day, he morphed into a tree. A huge tree with branches that spread out several feet, luscious green leaves creating the most soothing shade for the ground underneath, and a deep crack running through one side of its trunk. And so he went on-  beguiling, delighting and puzzling people in as many forms as he could take. One day he would come as a man with six faces, another day, a demon with ten heads. He became a child, a woman, a magician. He was Bheema; he was Krishna; he was Kaali. He turned himself into a pot of gold, and he took the form of a great big fish to swim in the enchanted ocean that contained sweet intoxicating wine instead of salt-water.  

Stories of Chinvakrayami’s shapeshifting abilities were passed down generations, from parents to children, from grandparents to grandchildren. No one forgot the first time they witnessed Chinvakrayami in his full glory. The thing that he was then would stay forever imprinted on their minds. They would ache to see him again. But he never returned until he had perfected his next form. 

As the years went on, sightings of Chinvakrayami became too few and far between. Sometimes townsfolk would encounter him after a lifetime, in places they least expected-  in the form of a wasp trapped inside a water lily, or as the embers in the hearth of a house that has just collapsed. They would be shocked to see that he had become those things, just as fully as he had become a tiger a long time ago, and they would shake their heads and click their tongues, half in wonder, half in sorrow. 

“Why this?”, an old man once asked Chinvakrayami on finding him in the exact shape of a torn kite stuck on a thorn bush, “Why did you become this? I still remember the time when you were a tree. I sat in your shade, I played around your roots, I hung from your branches. It was the happiest time of my life. I remember being awestruck by the tiger. The way you walked, the way you roared. You were a sight to behold. You have the power to be whoever you want to be. Why don’t you become those things again? Why this?” 

But Chinvakrayami only had one rule, a single rule that the divine wind had whispered in his ear for centuries- 

Never take the same form twice. 

He loved the people, and just as they longed to see him as a tiger again, he longed to see the awe and wonder that the tiger had once seen on their faces. But even that love and longing wasn’t enough to make him break the one rule. 

His quest took him to some strange and remote places and often forced him to take the most mundane forms. Some people still kept their eyes out for his next avatar, no matter when it came or what it was. A snake, a rooster, anything. But others, like the old man, convinced that Chinvakrayami would never again be the thing that they wanted him to be, couldn’t bear the idea of having their dreams shattered once again, and stopped going to see him even when he did appear. His name started being spoken less and less. Children heard fewer stories of this master shapeshifter. But the ever-changing Chinvakrayami never gave up. Even after the people had stopped coming, he never stopped trusting that they would eventually come. All he had to do was get the next form right, and they would come back. 

Love is a strange poison. A sip of it will give you the might of a thousand elephants, but too much of it, and you and your beloved will be ensnared in the grip of a thousand snakes. It can turn dreams into demands and trust into tyranny. The only way to get the snakes to uncoil is to let some of the love slip away. It will break your heart, but only then can you breathe again. 

When Chinvakrayami returned next, it was a long time before anyone noticed. It was the old man who saw it first. The same old man who had chided and abandoned Chinvakrayami for not reclaiming his former glory when he could have. Returning after a long pilgrimage, he saw that the road leading out of town had now split in two. The new path seemed to turn and disappear behind a small hill. Old as he was, tired as he was, he decided to venture a bit further down the new path. It seemed to call out to him. As he turned around the hill, he immediately understood why. On that path, just a few paces from where he stood, was the tree. The tree that he remembered so fondly and had so longed to see again. It was the same tree, except this time, it was made entirely out of rainclouds. A vast canopy of silver mist, he had never seen anything like it. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it. When he finally did, he saw that the tree was only the first of all the marvels in sight. Just a few steps ahead, stood a mirror, and as the old man stood facing it, he realised that reflected in it was not his own image, but the face of the kindest person he had ever met. A few steps further down he could see a fire burning, and the smoke that emitted from it wrote words of poetry in the air. The path seemed to stretch on as far as the eye could see, and the old man realised that a whole lifetime wouldn’t be enough to take in all its wonders. 

His heart full of joy and his eyes full of tears, he walked into the town and told everyone about the fork in the path. The word spread fast, and people started flooding in from everywhere to visit it. No one to this day has managed to walk all the way to the end. Not just because the path is endless – indeed, no one knows if it really is endless – but because every sight in it will stop you in your tracks and make you spend hours and days, staring, admiring, and pondering. Thinking thoughts that you’ve never thought before. People who have made it the furthest down it will tell you that its longest continuous stretch has a familiar looking crack running down it. Legends of Chinvakrayami the shapeshifter are recited and revisited every single night at bedtime. And when the old man tells the story to his grandchildren, he always ends it by saying, “If he had listened to us when he could have, we could never have seen what we can see today.”