Vimukta (Short Story)
“Vimukta”
(Set in Pataliputra, Two decades after Ashoka)
In the heart of Pataliputra — the once-majestic capital of an empire carved by kings and softened by dharma — there lived a man who did nothing.
His name was Vimukta.
People said he had once been named something else, but he had stopped answering to it long ago. One day, when asked who he was, he had said, “Vimukta — the one who is let go.”
Whether it meant freed or lost, no one could say.
He lived behind a dye-maker’s shop, in a broken lean-to of bamboo and canvas. When it rained, water pooled near his bedding. He didn’t bother moving. He placed a clay bowl to catch the drops and watched them fill — as if the bowl, not he, were the one waiting for something.
Once, the dye-maker’s son offered him a blanket in winter.
Vimukta nodded. “Thank you,” he said. But didn’t take it.
When asked why, he replied, “If I warm myself today, I’ll shiver more tomorrow.”
He took no apprenticeships. Refused offers of work. Accepted food when given, but never begged. Sometimes he swept courtyards, but only until someone told him to sweep better — then he would leave. He did odd jobs by accident: carried bricks for a mason once because the rhythm felt pleasant, then never returned.
He spoke little. And when he did, it was often something like:
“That bullock is more certain of its path than I’ve ever been.”
Or:
“The sky doesn’t ask the birds where they’re going.”
People called him many things. A wasted soul. A ghost in daylight. A man who had seen too much, or nothing at all.
Each morning, the city roused itself with clangs of metal, cries of sellers, and prayers muttered under breath. And each morning, Vimukta sat at the same corner of the Ganga ghat — barefoot, dry-eyed, arms folded loosely — and simply watched.
Children splashing water. Caravans unloading sacks of lentils. Scribes with ink-stained fingers arguing over temple accounts. Lovers parting without touching. Lamps lit for gods.
He watched it all, as though it were a play written by someone else, performed for someone else.
Life passed in front of him like a river — constant, noisy, flowing — but he was only a stone in its bed.
He had once been offered marriage — the widowed daughter of a basket weaver. She cooked well, laughed often. She came to him, shyly, during Holi.
“You have kind eyes,” she said.
“I have tired ones,” he answered.
She asked if he would stay, work, live.
He replied, “That’s what most people do — stay, work, live. But I don’t think I’m most people.”
She didn’t return.
During the festival of Kartika, a fire broke out in the cattle yard. Men ran with buckets. Women screamed. Children wept.
Vimukta stood at the edge of the chaos, chewing raw tamarind pods.
A man shouted, “You’re strong — help us!”
He looked at the fire. “It will burn what it must,” he said, and turned away.
That night, people cursed him. Called him soulless. Unfeeling.
The next morning, he returned to the ghat and watched the ashes floating in the river.
Sometimes, people tried to understand him.
“Were you hurt in your youth?”
“Did you lose something?”
“Were you once a seeker of truth?”
He would listen, expressionless, then say softly,
“I am simply someone who forgot to pretend.”
Children grew up around him. Courtiers changed. Traders came and went. The streets changed names. Old wells dried up. Stupas were repaired.
But Vimukta remained — not like a pillar or a saint, but like a shadow that everyone got used to.
People began saying things like:
“That’s just how Vimukta is.”
“He doesn’t interfere.”
“He sees, but he doesn’t respond.”
One day, during a sudden storm, Vimukta didn’t show up at the ghat. Nor the next day. Nor the next.
The dye-maker checked the hut behind his shop. The canvas was torn. The bedding gone. The clay bowl overturned.
Someone claimed he had taken a ferry east.
Someone else said they’d seen him walking into the forest.
The potter swore he was lying buried in the sand behind the stupa.
But no one knew.
And no one searched.
The city moved on.
The markets shouted.
The boats docked.
The prayers rose again.
And the corner by the ghat remained empty —
as if it had only ever belonged to someone who was never really there.
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