The summer Ninay turned ten, her elder sister told her that she should learn to help around the house. Housework should be done the perfect way, her sister said. “No mess. No noise. No clutter.” But Ninay accidentally dropped plates, cups or spoons when she washed the dishes. She splashed water all over when she mopped the floor. The leaves all the more scattered when she swept the yard. Her sister always scolded her.
“I do not know how to do it the perfect way,” Ninay sighed.
Disappointed with her as the days passed, her sister told Ninay to just go and join her playmates. Ninay’s playmates always gathered in a nearby clearing. They hopped barefoot on the crabgrass fields. They jumped on each other’s backs. They raced against each other from one tree to another. Ninay stumbled when she hopped. She failed to jump high enough and hit her playmates’ backs. She lost every race. Her playmates teased her and called her names.
“I’m no good at outdoor games,” Ninay told herself.
One day, Ninay decided not to join her playmates in the clearing. She took the path into the woods. This path ran alongside a creek and had a line of dead trees on both sides. She had not gone far when she came upon a lone banyan tree bursting with leaves. Its intricate roots looked like thin fingers clutching the soil.
“Ninay …,” she heard someone whisper her name. Ninay looked around, but there was nobody else near the banyan tree. She stood still, but she did not feel afraid. The voice, though strange, was soothing and calm. “You’re finally here,” the voice followed through, “we’ve been waiting for you.”
“Huh!” Ninay exclaimed. “How did you know I’d be coming?”
“We’ve been here for thousands of years. We’d always known that someone would come one day to help set us free.”
Thousands of years, Ninay couldn’t imagine how long that was. And what help could she possibly give to this voice? She couldn’t wash plates without dropping them, couldn’t run fast, couldn’t do this, couldn’t do that…
“What do you want me to do for you?” Ninay asked, moving closer to the banyan, from inside of which the voice seemed to come.
“Please help us sew the cloth for our resurrection.” The voice said.
“I’m afraid I cannot sew well,” Ninay replied. “And what does resurrection mean?”
“To resurrect means to live again. Please help us live again.”
Ninay fell silent. She didn’t understand what the voice just said. She felt sad because she might fail its expectations, too. But she liked that new word: Resurrection.
“All that we want is your commitment to help us.”
“Yes, I want to help you!” Ninay said, though doubting herself.
The banyan suddenly shook. Its branches writhed and swayed. Ninay moved away, thinking that it would fall to the ground. But it only opened up its trunk. Ninay gasped as little shapeless figures and bodiless faces stared at her from inside the trunk.
“Hello! I’m Ninay. And you are?” Her eyes darted from one bodiless face to another. The shapeless figures went round and round the trunk.
“We are spirits. We are gods and goddesses. We are muses. We are dreams. We are stories. We are love songs and lullabies. We are poems. We are rhymes. We are hops, glides, taps, and turns. We are pirouettes. We are paintings, sculptures, mosaics, drawings, and sketches. We are love.”
“You all seem to be powerful. What help do you need from me? You see, I cannot do much.”
“We are stuck here unless you help us come out. You will be our hands, our heart, and our mind, so that we can be free,” the bodiless faces replied.
Ninay gasped. “What do you want me to do?”
“You have to sew the thread of life around us. Once you do that, we will all find our creators.”
“Thread of life.” As she said the words, Ninay saw showers of light like threads pouring from heaven and rising from the ground. She touched them and felt their strength. The banyan’s trunk opened wider and a curled-up form from within emerged.
“Please take it out,” the bodiless faces said as the shapeless figures went round the curled-up object.
The object grew bigger and heavier as Ninay held it and slowly laid it on the ground. The bodiless faces and shapeless figures handed a plain white strip of cloth to Ninay.
“That cloth should fit snugly, so that the spirit trapped in that curled-up form could rise. Then, all of us spirits here, now without bodies and shapes, would find our creators and become what we are meant to be.” The voice emphatically spoke this time. The bodiless faces expectantly looked at Ninay, even as the shapeless figures endlessly went round and round them.
“I will do my best,” Ninay answered.
Ninay went to a nearby thorny bush and got herself a fine little thorn. She used the thorn to make holes on the cloth. She gathered the showers of light, one thread after another. She pushed each thread into each of the holes she made with the bush’s thorn. The shape of the curled-up form changed as she darned a bit here… “Oh, it’s a leaf,” or as she cut a loop there… “Hey, now it’s a tree, a mound, a flower,” and as she made cross stitches here and there… “Aye, it’s a cat, a dog, oh-oh, that’s a star!” The bodiless faces chuckled as they watched Ninay sew the cloth around the curled-up figure.
Ninay did her task quietly. Creases, loose threads, and missed holes came up, but she persisted. The sun had long set and darkness had come, but she continued with her task. Until the curled-up form that earlier took the shape of a flower, a tree, a stone, a mound, a bee, a cat, and a star, slowly took the shape of a person. The cloth fitted it perfectly. Ninay stared in amazement as the person stood up. The threads of light that she had used for sewing had transformed the person into a portal of light. Light filled the entire woods.
New leaves sprouted from the dry branches of the line of dead trees. Birds simultaneously sang. The creek gurgled with fresh water and lotus flowers bloomed alongside water lilies all over it. The bodiless faces and shapeless figures, all of them whole and well-formed, jumped out from inside the banyan’s trunk. Various colors, of sunrises, sunsets, skies, mountains, and seas, flashed as they flew, ran, and danced to where they were meant to go.
“Thank you for setting us free, Ninay,” their voices trailed behind them.
“Welcome, dear spirits,” Ninay replied.
Resurrection…Ninay repeated her newfound word. Her sewing was not perfect, but the finished product helped set the spirits free. The bodiless faces became whole and the shapeless figures gained form. That was what mattered. She would remember that each time her sister would ask her to help around the house.
“Ninay! Ninay!” She heard her sister’s voice, calling her again and again.
“Coming, sister!” She called back.
Ninay ran home, as fast as she could.
