The Question and the Silence

 

The Question and the Silence

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Prabhakar was fifty-five when he finally realised that his life had passed quietly. It felt as though the years had slipped by before he could even keep track of which days were happy and which were not. There were no significant achievements to fill the pages of an autobiography. Yet he knew one thing for sure: people would still remember him with warmth when they spoke of a “good man.”

He was a bachelor, a retired schoolteacher, and an austere soul whose entire wardrobe could fit inside a pillowcase: one blue shirt, one pair of black trousers, and a pair of rubber slippers so worn out that even they would sigh if they could.

He had spent more than half his life waiting for the tiny private school to become government-run and pay him a regular salary, for recognition as a member of government staff that never came, and for pension papers that arrived ten years later than they should have. And by the time the government finally acknowledged him, he was already past forty and had to work fifteen more years to qualify for the minimum pension.

He taught mathematics with sincerity, lived modestly, and ate frugal vegetarian meals, often with mashed potatoes as a side. People called him a maverick teacher, though even that sounded flamboyant for a man who ironed his shirt with a brick wrapped in a loincloth.

Yet something within him was always restless—not a complaint against the unjust world, but a longing for meaningful dialogue with himself.

When he turned fifty-five, he resigned mid-career, collected whatever little savings he had, and decided to do something he had postponed all his life: think.

He walked to Puri, arduously trudging for fifteen days on foot, sleeping under trees, bathing in public tube wells, and drinking tea only if someone insisted on offering it for free. His beard grew naturally, not by design, and it granted him a dignity he didn’t initially recognise. It was only when a roadside tea-seller refused to accept money and insisted he was serving a sadhu that Prabhakar realised what had elevated his stature.

When he reached the Jagannath temple, he had walked and thought all the way, but could not muster a wish. He had surpassed the usual expectations of human life. He did not desire money, marriage, comfort, or longevity. All he wanted was to ask the Lord one question.

Except… he did not know what the question was.

So he stood, his head bowed.

And stood, his hands folded.

And he stood for twelve straight hours in the sanctum, until the guards gently ushered him out, saying, “Babu, darshan over… gharku jao,” meaning: you have had enough audience with the Lord, now go back home.

He emerged from the sanctum and sat in the temple courtyard. One day passed. Then another. Then yet another. He continued to seek a question worth asking God. He warned himself: nothing trivial, nothing selfishly hedonistic.

But nothing happened. No magic, no epiphany.

A few spiritual squatters were pontificating on eternal truth and human duty. Prabhakar was astonished—how had these people become self-proclaimed possessors of “deep wisdom” without asking even a single question of God? They were merely repeating memorised verses, as if determined to impress others by piling up words.

He tried thinking of regrets, but none seemed worthy. His friends had pursued higher education, earned high salaries, married paragons of beauty, built palatial houses, educated their children overseas, arranged enviable marriages for their daughters, and so on… but despite knowing all this, Prabhakar felt no regret.

He tried to remember whom he had hurt, and because he had always spoken his mind without filters, the list turned out to be embarrassingly long and, in most cases, absurdly trivial. Once, he had made a sweeping remark that “one has to be a refugee to succeed in life.” What he really meant was the resilience to rebuild life from scratch and still flourish; yet it was a careless generalisation—true in some cases perhaps, but still a barbed innuendo that seemed directed at a topper whose family had come from East Bengal during the Partition. She had looked at him with such piercing intensity that, for a moment, he felt his knees might buckle. All his life, Prabhakar had wanted to apologise to her once more, but she had vanished from town after completing her brilliant graduation.

Looking back, he realised that most of the people he had “hurt” were simply victims of foolish, half-joking remarks—slip-ups that time would surely have erased from their memories.

He tried recalling unfinished dreams, but he had never been a dreamer.

He even laughed at the idea of getting married at fifty-five and then asking God whether it was still possible.

On the fourth day, he gave up. With a strange peace, he told Lord Jagannath silently:

“Lord, grant me leave for now. If a question stirs in my heart, I will return.
And if you have a question for me, may it find its own way to my heart.”

He grabbed his jhola and resumed walking—this time in the direction of Konark.

Konark stood in contrast to Puri: whereas Puri focused on God, Konark celebrated Man—sculpted, sensual, unapologetically mortal. Prabhakar sat by the sea, wearing his faded shirt and trousers, pondering what sort of divine sign he was meant to receive here, among stone lovers frozen in impossible poses.

He spent the entire night wide awake on the sand. Midnight passed, and the April breeze turned chilly, but he didn’t mind. He kept asking himself: what question have I carried in my heart all my life?

And then, sometime past midnight, a small childhood memory rose—shyly, like a leaf floating up from the bottom of a forgotten well.

He was seven. He and his father were walking back from his maternal uncle’s village. Somewhere midway, there was a small railway station.

His father had asked him to wait there. “I’ll be back soon,” he had said baldly.

But he didn’t return “soon.” Four trains arrived and departed. Evening faded into night. Hunger gnawed at his stomach like a dull ulcer.

He thought of running away on a train to a distant land where rosgullas were free, and everyone wore wool on winter mornings. He imagined his father being insulted by a moneylender, and that was why he left his son behind to spare him the humiliation. He imagined his father meeting another woman—a secret he didn’t want his son to carry home. Prabhakar had also seen an uncle doing this in the village. He feared the possibility of suicide: a familiar whisper among adults when debts became overwhelming. He envisioned everything a frightened seven-year-old could imagine. Or even more than that, as if he had grown wise before his age.

He slept on the bench at the railway platform, dreaming of food—rosgulla, pulao, meat—the usual feasts hungry children dream of.

And at ten at night, happily for Prabhakar, his father returned.

He was silent.

And he was stoic.

No apology. No explanation.

In stony silence, father and son walked home through the darkness. By midnight, the entire family had gone to bed hungry, as usual. Returning empty-handed from the moneylender was hardly the sort of news a husband would wake his wife to share.

The next morning, Prabhakar and his three sisters went to the fallow, waterlogged fields to gather wild paddy. They sifted it by swinging their winnows in reverse so that the ripe grains fell into the tray instead of flying out, and by noon they had collected enough to make a few kilos of coarse rice.

Life went on, but the question remained. It kept hiding itself, afraid of being dismissed as too trivial:

Where had his father gone that day? And why had he left his little boy alone?

Prabhakar had buried that question for five decades. But on the seashore of Konark, it bubbled up again—raw, intact, wordless.

For the first time in fifty-five years, Prabhakar quietly realised something painful: his father must have been battling his own demons that day—debts, shame, helplessness, perhaps even thoughts of ending it all.

But he didn’t.

He came back. Late, exhausted, silent… But he came back whole.

A man who could have run away stayed.

A man who could have died chose to walk home.

A man with nothing left still carried his son back.

However, it wasn’t an answer to any question. But it was an insight into a father’s hidden war. And that was enough.

Prabhakar walked back from Konark to Puri, and then home—not to ask a question, but to silently thank his father… not the deity.

He reached his village a month later.

He resumed free tuition for those in need. Students gathered around him once again—some poor, others wealthy, pretending to be poor, and some pretending to be even poorer. It was the typical village barter system, like exchanging a haircut for a few kilos of mangoes or paddy. Prabhakar received vegetables from his students' kitchen garden to supplement his mashed potatoes. He smiled at their theatrics and continued to teach everyone as usual.

But in the corner of the small room, facing the children, he placed something new: a black-and-white photo of his father. Not garlanded. Not worshipped. Just there, as a quiet witness.

When curious students asked, “Sir, who is he?” Prabhakar replied, “A man who once lost his way… but returned. And because he returned, I am here today to teach you.”

Their curiosity waned after Prabhakar’s gentle prevarication.

He never asked God another question. But in teaching freely, beneath his father’s photograph, he lived the answer he had been seeking.

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By 

Ananta Narayan Nanda

Balasore, 28-11-2025

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