Balanandaswami reminisces

That evening, Bala submitted the second report (on Aunt Lioness) to Jags. Jags was impressed with the report but skeptical on how highly Bala had rated her. Did Bala not know his divine powers?

Bala quietly retreated to the other room.
Watching the cubs had unsettled him in a way he could not put his finger on.
First there was this that watching the cubs play had reminded him of his childhood and how he and his brother pranced around.

Bala and brother in cubhood

Then there was this delightful game they played, jumping on one another by surprise.


Then his memories moved onto his mother. How Mum fox looked after them. And played with them much like Mum Lioness played with the cubs. Slowly more memories came to him. The tail pulling, the loving bites and sleeping together.

Mum Fox and Bala

They had been four to start with. But the forest was unforgiving. Two cubs didn't survive the tough life. Mum Fox took it in stride. The two survivors grew up, playing with each other, and other animals. He felt a heaviness in his chest as he remembered Mum Fox come home one day with dinner to find only two cubs. The memories began flooding him and he forgot about Jags and Kracks and the meaningless, selfish present.

Where is my brother, Bala thought? We fought and seperated over some small treat one day. Never to meet again. Oh, he would give anything, he thought, to find his brudder again, and play with him, like the lion cubses did.

His thoughts came back to the four cubs. What was it about them that unsettled him?
Was it just the memories of his family that came back? Or was it the way they looked at him. Yes that was it.

The look in their eyes

It was a look of, perhaps, love for all others. How could he, he thought, harm them when they had this look in their eyes. He had never seen such a look before. Even when they cast a charm on him on the tree, it was the same look. No malice. He almost felt they might have been wondering why Bala did not come down to play with them.

There was a lot working inside Bala. He realized that after all these years, he really did not know who he was. How much he longed to go back to Mum Fox and Brother.

Thinking thus, he fell asleep.