Ra Kidbook

Wednesday 8:55 a.m.
Here's the new first chapter of Light in the Dark. In the movie Padmasam will be played by Sean Connery!

Of course, I can't get the indents to work, but I'll separate the paragraphs somehow.



Chapter One

The family of Padmasam the Sage owned a large estate of farmlands nestling in at the edge of a vast mountain range. Brought up in the family compound, Padmasam was surrounded by a great many brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins - and almost any other kind of relative you’d care to mention - but his favourite out of the whole tribe was his granny. He loved and respected his mother and father, but his granny was different somehow. She was really something else, his granny.


Ruling over her descendants and all the land she owned like a benevolent despot, she berated some, cajoled others, but even the ones she was nice to were never too sure when the castigations would deafen their ears. She’d never shouted at Padmasam, but then again it seemed as if she’d hardly noticed him among all the rest of her numerous descendants.


One day, when he was about ten years old, she came sweeping through the courtyards near the middle of the family compound with the usual small retinue in her wake, and saw Padmasam playing in a corner with some other kids. She stopped and thought for a moment, then shouted him over.


'You are ...' Though she knew fine who Padmasam was, she sometimes had trouble remembering what everyone was called. She repeatedly snapped her fingers at him, waiting for the cue. ‘You are … You are …’ she said.

'I'm Padmasam,' he replied timidly.

'Stand straight. Don't slouch. I've been hearing about you. A clever boy. Now, there are some things you should know about. Your father, may he rest in peace, was an idiot. Your grandfather, may he rest in peace, was an even bigger idiot. But your great grandfather ... well, he had it. And it seems you might have it as well.' she said, speaking quite quickly.

'What have I got?' said Padmasam, a bit confused.

'The brains,' said the granny. 'The brains to think the big thoughts. Why are we here? What is going on with the world? We've got enough ploughmen. We’ve got enough blacksmiths. We've got enough of everything, so we can afford a philosopher. If we don't attend to this, you'll end up a poet. This family needs someone to think for it. You'd be useless at anything else anyway. Too dozy. Don't worry. It's better than working for a living.’ She paused for a moment then. ‘Maybe when you're older, you’ll understand why your granny's got to grow old and die,' she said.

But when his granny did eventually die after quite a long illness several years later, the problem was that Padmasam did not understand why his granny had to die. He was very upset and wouldn’t stop asking anyone who would listen questions about this. Some people told him to shut up. Everyone said the world they lived in was a good place since they all had plenty to eat and there was enough money around to buy him books and teachers, so what had he to complain about? But he did not understand how the world could be a good place when his granny had to grow old, suffer, and die.

He was really upset when his granny died. For weeks after her funeral pyre, he was inconsolable. Always more introspective than his brothers and sisters, no one could get close to him then. He brushed them off. After a while, he said he was okay. But he wouldn't attend to his studies anymore.

His teachers took him aside one day. Your granny had to die to make way for other people, one of them said. Padmasam burst into hysterical laughter at that one. It wasn't very polite. Then another teacher said his granny was in one of the heavens for sure since she was a wonderful woman after all. 'Where is it?' he shouted out. 'Show me one of these heavens!' he demanded of them. You have to die, said another one, so that life has a meaning. Life doesn't mean anything if you don't have death.

'Are you telling me that you have to suffer and die?' he protested to his teacher. ‘Is that what has to happen in this life?’

'Yes,' said the man.

'Well, I won't have it!' Padmasam shouted at them. 'I'd rather be a wild animal than have a life like that!'

Wanting to be like a wild animal when you are fortunate enough to be a human being is, of course, a bit mad. Everyone thought Padmasam was losing it. He hid himself away in corners of the place and when anyone tried to talk to him, he shout: Go away! I'm trying to think! One day one of his teachers told him to calm down, just wait a while and he'd get over it. This drove Padmasam wild.

'That's it!' he shouted, storming off.

The next day all that was left of Padmasam was a chalked note on a blackboard: I'll come back when I can be of some use, it said.

They thought he must have walked into the mountains, which began where the family estates ended. Holy men and magicians were said to live among these mountains and, though few from the fertile plain ever ventured far into these high places, that is what Padmasam did. Avoiding everyone, he went into the wilderness where he hoped no one would find him and where he might have the peace and quiet to think the big thoughts.

At night he'd make himself a shelter from leaves and branches, and the next day abandon it, and walk on. Whenever he saw another human, he walked further into the awesome vastness. Though he managed to avoid both starvation and predation by wild beasts, Padmasam began to realise that far from understanding all about life and death, which was what he’d hoped to do, in fact, he’d started to lose his mind.

Without anyone around to talk to, the little voice in his head started talking to itself. Eventually, he would find himself standing around muttering complete nonsense. Unconnected words and phrases drifted through his consciousness. Waves of emotion, good and bad, swamped him sometimes. He'd have to get a grip. He'd have to focus his mind somehow.

He began to do this by concentrating on the air going into and out of his nostrils. He found if he did that for a while, the rambling nonsense in his head went away and his mind would really become quiet. His breathing was very dependable. Air always went in and out of his nostrils. He could count the breaths going in and out. He could count up to ten or until a thought occurred, then start again. Sometimes, when he was doing this, his mind and body began to fill with a pleasant sensation of quiet alertness.

One day he was sitting by a stream, staring into the water and counting his breaths when he saw the reflection of a man, who was standing behind him. The man was dressed in animal skins and had a plaited beard with long matted hair.

‘I’ve been sent for you,’ he said. ‘If you want to be any use to anyone, you’d better follow me.’

There was a collection of caves dug out of a hillside where holy men lived, and they took Padmasam in, and taught him things about heaven and earth which very few people knew. Soon he could sit for hours and hours, and his body would fill with bliss. They taught him a breathing technique which allowed him to prevail against the coldest winter. Eventually, he could stay warm in the middle of a blizzard.

Sometimes he seemed to become breathless and his mind filled with ecstasy. After many years spent with these holy men, he didn’t need to sleep. He could go for months and months without eating anything, surviving on breathing in the essence of starlight. By the time he was a grown man and in his prime, the holy men in that hermitage had nothing left to teach him, and he walked on.

Then one day he came upon a perfect spot. It was a large overhanging rock looking down upon a great wild valley between mountain ranges. A stream ran down close by. In the years since he’d left the holy men, he'd seen many good places to sit, but this was exceptional due to the wonderful viewpoint over the valleys and the jagged mountain skyline. He determined to stay in this place until he died or understood everything.

All kinds of strange things happened to Padmasam while he sat there, but if you'd been watching him from afar, you'd have just seen him sitting there. Almost all the strange things that happened to Padmasam happened to his mind. And he sat there for an awful long time. Soon he did little else. One day he sat down and didn't get up. At night time he was still sitting there. The weeks passed, the months passed, the seasons passed, and he still sat there. So deep had he gone into his mind that he didn't notice when the snow fell. Neither did he notice when the sun beat down. He felt neither heat nor cold. He just seemed to be sitting there.

One day, when he thought he’d understood everything he was going to understand, he decided to get up and go back to where he’d come from. But the Padmasam who stood up was not the same as the Padmasam who’d sat down. His hair, now grey, almost stood on end. Though it is possible to describe what Padmasam looked like - he wore a cotton shift which, like a nightdress, almost stretched to the ground - the way his mind had developed was way, way beyond the descriptive power of mere words.

When he finally got back to the fertile plain of his childhood, he noticed how much things had changed. Then by talking to the people there, he slowly came to realise that his whole family had died. And not only that. Their sons and daughters had died too and so had the next generation and the generation after that, and the ones after that. They were all dead.

'Well, I suppose that's just the way it goes,' Padmasam said.

Padmasam realized he must have been over two hundred years old. He wondered how he’d gotten to be so old. If he'd been dead, everything might have made more sense. He could make things happen by just thinking about them, but he didn’t really want anything for himself. Padmasam didn't really care about himself at all. All he cared about was other people.

Since everyone in that part of the world seemed happy enough and prosperous, Padmasam said goodbye to the descendants of his brothers and sisters and cousins and set off back towards the mountains. He walked and walked and walked on until he came upon the old and new kingdoms, a land divided by a raging torrent, surrounded by mountains on all sides.

The people there were not happy or prosperous, but needed his help more than he could ever have imagined.


Of course, I'll probably have to re-write that another fourteen times in longhand .... but if anyone would like to buy a percentage in the final profits, I'm open to offers!