The Seekers - A Quest to the Questions

The Story of a Story

Our narrator is a writer in search of characters. Unable to find anyone sufficiently unusual among the people closest to his town, he sets out on an adventure, determined to discover characters worthy of his story. At the foot of a hill, near a new town he reaches for the perfect character, he encounters a mysterious man of unknown identity who has been living in a cave for decades. Eventually, we learn who this man is and how he comes to live there. The writer is desperate to end his search, and his desperation find ways to more complications.

'Just come with me, and don't make me suffer your refusals. Otherwise, I'll have to shackle you up with my words and carry you away. You don't realize the strength of my words.' With this strange threat, the cave-dweller finally surrenders to the writer and follows him home. The writer also brings a woman into his house under equally mysterious, almost eerie circumstances. Now he wants both of them to tell their stories.

The premise immediately reminds me of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Here, however, the direction is reversed: the author goes out searching for his characters. But does he really get what he wants from them? Can we create and comprehend a story for someone who merely holds their words? How much of the stories we tell is rooted in truth? Are words powerful enough to represent another person's existence – to free them, or to capture them?

The story can therefore be read as a metaphor for the making of a story itself, and perhaps as a metafictional doorway into the collection.

“If only I could write a line for them, with words that have never been used before…” This line, I think, hints at what follows. The remaining stories are unusual, unconventional and unlike anything I have encountered, as though Kamble deliberately searches for new ways of telling them.

This is also perhaps the most scenic story in the collection, with descriptions that occasionally carry an enticing sense of terror. The writer's restlessness and the growing tension are palpable. It is the shortest story in the collection, but returning to it after finishing the other stories reveals traces and connections that seem to lead into the larger literary universe of Gautamiputra Kamble, until, slowly, some of its puzzles begin to fall into place.

Parvrajak

...

Shilpasan

Imagine, in an endless desert, finding two stone figures carved as if from a single rock: a man bent forward, pressing his thumbs against the toes of a standing woman. Who are they? How are they related? What does this strange gesture mean? How did they end up in an uninhabited desert? These and many other questions arise immediately. The Shilpasan, the third story of the collection, is a blend of fantasy, magical realism, legend, and a quest.

Idfra and Monark, two travellers, venture into the desert to see the stone figures, or shilpasan. Idfra has visited the place before, but its enchantment brings him back, this time with a friend. The 'stone figure was so sublime that it made the whole arid wasteland feel like a lush greenscape. Seeing it had transformed Idfra,' – such was the magnificence of the shilpasan. Their almost silent passage, marked by sparse conversations, quiet remembrance, stories and realizations, gives the narrative an aura of mystery.

Idfra begins telling Monark the legend of how the figures come to exist. The woman of the shilpasan, Sanruta, comes from Kigypt, a strange, almost magical land where 'the sky is always gray, and the air perpetually muggy,' and where the sun rarely shines. Almost every family there makes stone sculptures, including Sanruta’s. Soon, the story takes us into a world where staring at the Sun can transform a person into stone, and, astonishingly, that person can be brought back to life.

Araj and Tejsan are two eccentric and enigmatic figures whose presence raises questions that unsettle Sanruta and turn her into a 'seeker' like in other stories of the collection. Who they are, and how their lives connect with hers, is something the story allows us to discover.

Like the other stories in the collection, The Shilpasan revolves around an individual possessed by an urgent, relentless quest. Art becomes a means of seeking answers, while mysterious people and unexplained events leave behind more questions. Reverence, doubt, fear, shame, magical transformations, adventure, desire, beauty and spiritual self-realization come together in a story unlike anything I have encountered before.

Kamble’s writing is intricate without being excessively detailed. Its strange turns take us into an unfamiliar landscape of existence. Personally, I cannot recall another author who has given me quite this feeling of travelling through such an artistic and mysterious world, except perhaps Herman Hesse.

There is always a quest in Kamble’s stories, and a trail of questions that moves the characters forward. At times, I find myself wishing these stories are real, simply because I want there to be a way to meet these people and visit these places.

Kamble has a rare talent for taking the reader into another zone, where one can sometimes feel lost even when everything seems to be right in front of us, only to be uplifted by the end. The Shilpasan captures the solitude of identity, and the questions that follow us like shadows, especially when we are searching for answers to the mysteries of life.

Tales of Viroopnagar

Tales of Viroopnagar has one of the finest openings in the collection. Kamble begins by creating an ancient, mysterious and almost mystical town settled along the banks of the Aakashnadi. With a river on one side, mountains on another, an ocean of desert in one direction and forest in another, Viroopnagar is a small settlement of roughly two hundred houses, 'obsessed with its old traditions and the remnants of its ancient past.' Its stone ghats, inscribed pillars, sculptures and surrounding caverns give the town a fading historical identity. At times, its landscape even feels supernatural. In my view, Viroopnagar could also represent India itself, although I doubt Kamble intends such a direct allegory.

The open square at the centre of the town becomes the stage for its rituals and, eventually, its divisions. Power rests with the mukhiya, the rtvij, protector of tradition and ritual, and the sarvar-mhatara, the oldest and wisest man in the town. Before the conflict begins, Kamble takes time to establish the town and its idiosyncrasies through multiple tales of its origins, almost like Jataka tales.

We hear of the settlement's beginnings, the reason some houses face south; the five youths lost in the desert; Mukhiya Salvan and his fascination with a flower field, his daughter Kalma, a mysterious rider; events of floods and storms. These stories preserve Viroopnagar's history and perseverance but also leave behind unanswered questions. And unanswered questions, passed through generations, eventually become beliefs, while beliefs become traditions and fears.

The real conflict begins when an arhat stops the ritual sacrifice of a kalvad (sacrificial calf). His questioning of a violent tradition divides the town. Politics, fear and the desire to establish one's own truth gradually turn difference into hatred. The arhat tries to bridge the growing chasm through non-violence, but reason can hold the town together only temporarily.

As tensions rise, disaster finally strikes. The dramatic ending brings destruction, followed by remorse, and only then do people come to their senses.

That, perhaps, is the tragedy Kamble captures so well: nobody has time to reflect; everyone wants to be right. We shelter ourselves in the comfort of inherited beliefs and ignorance, and when those beliefs are threatened, they become weapons.

The presence of the arhat, non-violence and mention of 'uposathi' may make the story appear Buddhist, but its concerns are much larger. Tales of Viroopnagar is ultimately a story of humanity: of tradition, fear, ignorance and our tendency to create hatred out of difference. Its beautiful open-ended conclusion leaves Viroopnagar lingering in the mind, because its stories feel less like tales of a distant town and more like stories of ourselves.

The Search for the Sixth Sense

Let me ask you a question.

Have you ever felt the need to follow something to its very end? A quest that might fill some incompleteness within you, satisfy a desperation, clear the fog around your strange understanding of the world, or perhaps make you question that understanding altogether? And if the search demands loneliness and desolation, would you still be willing to bear it?

Is anything worth dedicating your whole life to? And if not, is there something you can believe in and still remain free? The Search for the Sixth Sense sparked these questions in me.

The Search for the Sixth Sense is an unusual adventure of two individuals, Salvina and Nikay, who meet on a train under equally unusual circumstances. Both are searching for something: an escape, a solution, relief, perhaps even a revelation after having endured enough.

Salvina has a peculiar condition. Whenever she sees someone crying, she feels an uncontrollable urge to laugh. She cannot control this opposite emotional response, and it eventually brings an end to her school life. Now living in isolation, she tries to escape her past through travel.

Nikay, on the other hand, is talented and restless. He too leaves his village school under unusual circumstances. What follows is a remarkable journey through different forms of art and experience, first driven by curiosity and fulfilment, but later driven by one question: does the sixth sense really exist? And if it does, how can one find it, and, more importantly, experience it?

His search sometimes feels like a vortex and at other times like an endless quest.

Eventually, Nikay and Salvina set out to meet an arhat (a perfected being who, in Buddhist thought, has escaped the cycle of rebirth). They hope that this person might have answers to their questions and perhaps free them from the burdens they have accumulated over the years.

But do they meet the arhat? Do they find what they are looking for? I shall not spoil that part of the journey.

Both Nikay and Salvina have, in their own ways, departed from their old lives and begun something new. Nikay's attempt to detach himself from the everyday crises of life raises an intriguing question: can we simply relinquish our claims over our troubles? Can we disown or renounce our burdens?

What makes Kamble's narration particularly interesting is that he does not depend on dramatic events or constant plot twists to keep the reader engaged. The story unfolds much like life itself. Extraordinary events are sparse, but seemingly ordinary incidents, encounters and realizations gradually change the direction of the characters' lives.

The story also touches upon caste-based discrimination, casteism even within the world of art and communal violence. These elements do not dominate the narrative, but their occasional appearance has consequences. A single incident, an encounter, a realization, or even a person with a different way of looking at things can alter someone's life, or at least their understanding of it.

At its heart, the story is about departure and seeking: leaving behind what exists in search of something that might bring fulfillment.

Kamble's knowledge is wide-ranging, and that depth is evident throughout the book. He brings considerable breadth and depth of knowledge to his stories, but he does not impose that knowledge on the reader. The details scattered across the narrative often feel experiential, as though they come from someone who has closely observed and lived through the worlds he describes. Although the story is deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy and carries traces of Phule-Ambedkarite ideas of progress, justice and equality, Kamble never forces a religious or philosophical conclusion upon the reader. The ideas remain part of the world of the story rather than becoming lectures directed at the reader.

His narratives require patience. There were moments when I felt the story was moving slowly, almost as if it had no destination. But perhaps that is precisely the point. Kamble does not rush toward an ending. He allows the questions, experiences and realizations to unfold at their own pace. They do not take you on a whirlwind ride; instead, they invite you to take a slow walk through life and examine it closely. It is therefore, the ending is satisfying without feeling artificially conclusive.

That, perhaps, is the most beautiful idea in The Search for the Sixth Sense: the burden may be lifted not because the world changes, but because we finally realize that the burden was never quite what we thought it was. And somehow, the complexity is eventually resolved through something remarkably simple: a change in the way we look at life. Sometimes the troubles surrounding us are not waiting for a grand solution. Perhaps they are simply waiting for us to change our thoughts about them.