Last night I visited the Necropolis of the gods. It came about because I was thinking about the idea that the gods are immortal and would not have a place where to inter their dead and I wanted just to confirm it. However, to my surprise, I found that they did have such a place and, not only that, they guarded it fiercely. I had no idea whose remains I would find there and was surprised at what I saw.
I will come to that but it was not as simple as just visiting where they lived and asking for directions. Fortunately, I had a guide who was very helpful.
Let me start from the beginning. That itself was unexpected. I found myself on the shore of a river, so wide that I could not see the other shore. There was a pier and a bell. I rang the bell and, from a distance, I saw a boat approach. “Ah, I said to myself, “that must be Charon, coming to take me across. Then this must be the river Styx.”
When the boatman came closer, I could see that he was not at all like the frightening images I had seen of Charon. “Are you Charon?” I asked him.
“Everyone who comes here asks me that,” he replied, “I am getting somewhat tired of answering this question.”
“No, I am not Hermes, either, and, before you ask, this river is not called Styx or the Acheron”.
“You are at the Kalunga line. This is the boundary between the world of the living and the dead as people in your Congo knew. In fact, in Kikolongo, Kalunga means the “threshold between worlds”.
“Alright,” said I, “and you are?”
“You will find out who I am when you return,” he said, and added with a somewhat strange look, “if you return.”
“At least tell me why you ferry people across this divide,” I said.
“Because someone has to,” he said, “and who better than me.”
So, he wanted to give me no answers, I thought. Never mind. At least he will take me across.
“Step in,” said he, “but remember, hardly any who do so need my services to return.”
“But some do, for sure?”
“Yes,” he said, “Some do. These are either very advanced souls for whom this river boundary does not exist, or, in a few rare cases, they are genuinely curious ones like you, who have a strong sense of the self.”
So, I stepped into the boat and saw him clearly for the first time. He was a young man, without a beard, and looked quite fit. He looked at me and smiled.
“Why do you want to visit the City of the Gods?” the boatman asked.
“I have always wanted to confirm that the Gods are immortal,” I said.
“And how do you plan to do so?” the boatman asked.
“On my plane every town and village has a place where they bury or cremate their dead. We even have some ancient ‘cities’ where only dead are buried. I want to see if the City of Gods has such a place. If it doesn’t, I will know that they are immortal.”
“That’s the first time I have heard this reason for a quest like yours,” the boatman said, smiling again, “most come to meet the gods of their choice or to confirm that the gods really exist.”
“And do they?” I asked, “do they exist, I mean.”
“You will see for yourself,” he said somewhat cryptically.
There was no sense of time in the Crossing. In the blink of an eye, or so it seemed to me, we were on the other shore. As I disembarked, I found a young woman standing there to greet me.
“Welcome,” she said, “I am Abeona, the Goddess of Outward Journeys. I am one of the Chimata-no-kami”
“Chimata what?” I said, somewhat distracted by the light surrounding her.
“Chimata-no-kami’, she said, we are a band of spirits who guide travelers.
“Thank you for coming to guide me,” I said, truly grateful.
“I sense that you want to visit the necropolis of the gods,” she said, ”yes, we do have a necropolis here but not exactly like you may have imagined”.
I must have looked surprised for she added, “oh, we communicate telepathically here and the boatman sent me his thoughts before you arrived.”
“Yes,” said I, ‘can you guide me there?”
“Of course,” she said, “I have sent a message to Mara – oh, you may know him as Yama, who is responsible for the spirits after death. The attendant at the necropolis, Ankou has been told to show you around”.
“Come,” she said and walked away, with me closely behind her.
“We will have to go through the City of Gods to reach there,” Abeona said, “just don’t start dawdling there. So many have got lost and never returned.”
“No, I have a lot waiting for me back home,” I said, “and I do not want to disturb any of the gods here anyway.”
Abeona smiled.
We walked through beautiful roads and soon we were in a large round open area with a clock tower in the center. I noticed that this clock tower had no clock. I asked Abeona about this and she said, “There is no clock because time does not exist in the City of Gods.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“This is one of those things that you will have to experience to understand. No one can explain it to you before that.” Abeona replied.
Abeona pointed to the area and explained, “this is the center of the City of Gods”. This city is built in a wheel and spoke pattern with roads going outwards from the center. Each road is reserved for one kind of god. There are roads for gods of creation, gods of destruction, moon gods, sun gods, gods of the earth, gods of water, air, fire, of rivers, rain, storm, the sky and so on. There is a road also for humans who have become godlike. Some of these keep visiting your plane off and on.
“Do these gods get along with their neighbours?” I asked with a smile.
“Oh, they are essentially the same as their neighbours. Their houses are different only for visitors such as you, so that you can recognize them from your own cultural lores.”
I saw one street sign which looked interesting.
“What’s that”, I asked Abeona.
“Oh, that is the sign for the street of the Creation gods. This is the sign of Nye Gyama, “he who knows and sees everything.”
“I see” I said.
“Yes, he has a house on the road for the Gods of the Sky, too,” Abeona said.
Abeona told me about stories of some of the gods as we passed their houses. I will not repeat them here because I am writing this about the necropolis of the gods and do not want to digress. However, I must mention that I was especially struck by the story of Niu Lang & Zhi Nu, the god and goddess of love, that Abeona told me as we passed a house where beautiful robes were hanging in the window.
“These are all woven by Zhi Nu,” Abeona sai. She is the goddess of weaving for the gods and daughter of Shang Di, the Supreme God. Zhi Nu the goddess and Niu Lang, the human, were star crossed lovers, separated by the stars that Shang Di threw to stop Niu Lang following Zhi Nu, stars that we call the milky way. Now the poor lovers can meet only once a year when magpies fly from earth to the Milky Way and form a bridge. Then Niu Lang and Zhi Nu go across to be with each other on the evening known as the Seventh Night of the Seventh Moon.
I found some houses specially adorned with flowers and lights. Abeona explained that when humans celebrate a special day for a god, that god recognizes the celebration and reflects it in his abode.
We finally reached a gate and Abeona said, “This is our Necropolis. You will find no gods buried here as gods do not die even when humans stop believing in them. Can you imagine the Sun, the Moon, the Sky, the Rain, the Rivers etc. dying if you stop believing in them? No, they live on here, with their namesakes and to be met by occasional visitors such as you.”
“Then who is buried here?” I asked.
“You will see,” Abeona said, “I must leave now, as I am not allowed inside the Necropolis. No gods can enter here, but you are no god and you are allowed.”
She turned, paused and turned back to say, “My partner Adiona will be here to guide you back. Be nice to her. She is the goddess of Safe Return.”
And she was gone.
I rang the bell and a shadowy figure wearing a black coat and large hat shuffled towards the gate from inside and opened the gate with a clang.
“Come….,” Ankou said, gesturing to me with a skeletal finger.
I could not quite see his face and, for the first time, felt trepidation at my enterprise. However, it was too late to do anything about it and so I followed.
“Why are gods not allowed here?” I asked Ankou on the way.
“Well, you see, what we have buried here is what they had to give up to become gods,” Ankou said, in his gruff voice, “despite what you may have heard in various stories made by humans who think that the gods are in their own mental and physical image, all the gods in the City of Gods are truly sublime. We do not want any of them to come and risk being tempted by any of these things that we have buried here.”
I could hardly contain my surprise but Ankou would say no more.
We eventually came to a large building. Ankou opened the solid looking door with a key that was as big as my arm. As the door swung open, golden lights came on inside. We entered and the door slowly sealed behind us. I looked back and saw that there was no door knob, key hole or anything else that could open the door from inside. I shivered slightly.
I looked into the room to see that there were sealed golden caskets all over the huge room arranged in neat rows. On each was a name engraved in English and Hindi.
“Why these two languages?” I asked Ankou.
“Because you can read them,” Ankou said. When someone comes who can read Arabic or Japanese, the names will be in Arabic or Japanese. It works for everyone.
“Do many visitors come here?” I asked.
“No. However, those you consider seers on earth come to deposit what they have given up. You are the only one who has come out of curiosity.”
I went through some rows, reading the labels. I saw the caskets of Anger, Envy, Sloth, Slyness, Depression, Greed, Pride, Lust, Delusion and many other such things.
“Satisfied?” Ankou asked after I had seen about one fifth of these caskets.
“Yes.” I said.
“Do you understand?” Ankou asked.
“I think I do,” I said. “The gods have given up all these to become gods, yes, I do”.
“You too can give up these and become a god, if you wish,” Ankou said, “but only if you are ready. Not everyone is.”
“I am not ready,” I told Ankou, “but one day I will be.”
“Come again when you are,” Ankou said. “Let us go now. I can sense Adiona waiting for you outside.”
We came out of another door at the back which opened by itself when we approached. There was a niche in the wall just before the exit. I was curious to see what was in it. I went closer and saw there an ornate casket, much bigger than the rest. On it was written, “EGO” in bold letters.
Ankou read my thoughts and said, “All who want to be gods must surrender their ego here. If you want to keep your ego, you cannot become a god.”
“But we have so many stories about Gods feeling insulted and vengeful. Is that not their ego acting up?”
“As you say, they are stories. You can make up any story you want and you humans tend to be very imaginative.” Ankou said.
“Some stories have a germ of truth in them but almost all are merely ones in which humans have imbued the gods with their own biases and qualities.” Anku continued.
As I was thinking about what Anku had said, he spoke again, “Do you think the wind is angry when it becomes a storm? Do you think the fire is vengeful when it burns? Do you think that the earth is fearful when it trembles? No, the god of wind or of fire or of earth have no such emotions. They act a they must.”
Ankou paused and continued, “it is the same with all the gods. They act as they must. One day, you will realise this too.”
“Hmmm….,” I said and thought – another thing that I must experience to understand. I asked, “why have you put this casket at the end?”
“It becomes easier to surrender the ego when you have surrendered the rest,” Ankou said, “and that is why we have put this casket at the end.”
“But if we surrendered our ego first, wouldn’t all else come automatically?” I asked.
“When the time comes, you will find that your ego is not so easy to get rid of. You may become loving, compassionate, calm, without anger or lust but the ego remains alive and well.”
“Hmm….,” I said, as we exited the building and the door closed softly behind us, “I will definitely think about that.”
Ankou gave me a smile that was less grim than his usual ones and we moved around the building to the front gate of the Necropolis where I found Adiona standing. Like Abeona she was wearing a white robe and there was an aura of light around her.
I thanked Ankou and greeted Adiona with folded hands and bowed head. She smiled and returned my greeting in kind. We walked mostly in silence. On the way, Adiona said, “Did you learn anything by your visit here?”
“Yes, I did,” I said, “I learned so many things. Most of all I learnt that I am not ready to become a god, as yet.”
Adiona gave a chuckle, and I added, “I also learned how kind all gods are, even Ankou, who tends to the Necropolis. And, you and Abeona, helping a stranger like me.”
“Oh, Abeona and I are always there to teach children not to fear on their journey through life. You are a child here, and we cannot but help you.”
As we neared the pier, I asked Adiona, “Why did I not see any gods? Do they always keep inside their houses?”
“You did not see any gods because you did not come here to see them. If you had, they would have been here for you.” Adiona replied.
When we reached the pier, I saw the now familiar boatman there. He smiled at me and waved, asking me to step on the boat. I thanked Adiona and the boatman and I started our journey back. I was silent, trying to take in everything that I had seen and heard. The boatman was quiet too.
When we reached the other shore, I stepped on the pier and turned to thank the boatman. The boatman smiled and said, “Before you go, do you want to learn one more thing?”
“Of course,” I said instantly.
“There is no river and no boat, between your plane and where you have been,” the boatman said, “you see the river and the boat only because you expected to see a river and a boat. If you had not, we would not be here. No. There is no Charon, no Styx no Acheron. In truth Kalunga, the threshold between the worlds is only in your mind.”
“Oh!” I said, surprised, “so I have imagined all this?”
“Some of it, yes,” the boatman said, “the Necropolis is real, of course. The City of Gods, too. Both in a way not understood on your plane. Maybe one day we will find you here.”
“Thank you for everything,” I told the boatman with folded hands and turned to go.
“Don’t you want to know who I am?” the boatman called behind me.
“Of course, I do!” I said, eagerly.
I turned around and drew a deep breath of surprise. There was no river, no boat and no boatman. Instead of the river, I saw a beautiful green meadow. Where the boatman and the boat had been, there was a large mirror.
Kishore Asthana
kishore.asthana@gmail.com