Kalan the orphaned son of a rickshaw-wallah in Calcutta

                                                                                                                         By Jacob Gelt Dekker, 17 August, 2007

“The Weeping Wall. I have dreamt my whole life of visiting the Weeping wall in Jerusalem.”

I raised my eye brows, in surprise, since I never heard of any Indian interested in the contested hot beds of the Middle East, and certainly not Kalan, an 18 year young student of the Holy Mary Convent College of Kolkata.  Did the nuns in their devotion do a number on this boy?

   “The Wall is called the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall,
   not the Weeping Wall, Kalan. Tell me, what do you expect
   to find in this bizarre foreign place thousands of years of
   conflict?”

    “Sir, it is the most divine place in the world with
    incarnations of Lord Shiva, not one but two or even three. 
   Jesus Christ was his reincarnation; Mohammed was one,
   and Abraham of coarse and many more.”

   Kalan was used to foreigners.  Since the nuns of the
   Sacred Heart had taken him in as a little boy, after his
   father died in the streets from a sudden pneumonia.

His father, like so many, had come to the big city of Calcutta, to make his fortune as a rickshaw wallah. Rickshaw drivers could make per day five or even ten times as much as farmers per month. 

Only after a few days, the man fell ill and died, leaving his destitute wife and baby boy begging on the sidewalks of Chowringhee, the center of Kolkata's commercial and shopping district the meeting place for many foreigners. One day, the nuns had found baby boy Kalan wandering the streets, naked and loud crying from famine, with his mother nowhere in sight.   Soon after Kalan became the youngest member of the orphanage.

Once, I will  stand at the Weeping Wall, I will wash myself in the holy water of the tears and find out my own incarnation and future karma. I so I will return to the Mother of All.”

“Kalan, I am afraid that you are confusing, ---The Weeping Camel of the Goby Desert--- with  ---The Wailing Wall of Jerusalem.---

 Let me tell you about both stories:

Once upon a time, in the Goby Desert, there was a royal came. She was l very high legged and with a   divine gait. The whole community of camel herders knew and respected this unusual animal and soon named her, Queen of all camels. One day, when they found out that she was with child, everybody celebrated.

 Unfortunately for the Queen of camels, giving birth to her calf   was very difficult. The poor mother labored nearly an entire day and night before she managed to squeeze the young out of her womb.  It was a beautiful white bull calf, worthy his regal mother.

But whenever the calf tried to nurse with his mother, she rejected him as if the birth experience was to traumatic to accept her newly borne.  This continued for a few weeks before the herders noticed and got worried, since camels can do without water and food for a long time.

The herders tried everything like finding an other camel to nurse the calf, nursing the calf with a bottle, but nothing worked and soon the calf was withering and was in fear of death.

A council of elders was called and the men discussed at length what to do.  Finally it was the oracle that told them to find a violinist, who could play for the mother camel while having her calf looking on.

After some negotiation violinist was called and contracted. Once he met the camel, the musician hangs his violin around the front hump of the camel so that the hollow of the camel’s chest cavity was directly next to the violin’s sounding board.  When the baby bull calf squealed with a hungry wail, a very soft sound reverberated in the chest of the mother that was immediately amplified by the violin.  The violinist picked up the tone, and started playing improvisations based on that tone. The regal mother camel pricked up her ears and soon hauled in Unisom with the violinist.

While all the herders watch on, big tears streamed from the eyes of the mother camel, which were eagerly liked up by her calf. Soon the calf move between the hind legs of the mother and suckled the mother milk it needed so badly.

Dear Kalan, this story tells us to listen for whatever reverberates in any conflict, no matter how deadly, even when you think that there is nothing to hear.

So now let me tell you about the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem:

   This wall, or what is left of it, symbolizes the great loss of
   a temple that a great king, King Salomon, once built for
   his god.  Salomon loved his god so much that he built
   the largest and most splendid of all temples for him and
   he told his subject to show respect and worship this god
   for eternity.

   Only a few generations after the great king’s death, the
   city and temple were under siege by Sennacherib the
   ruler of the mighty Assyrian empire, but King Hezekiah
   managed to keep it from destruction and plunder that
   very time. Unfortunately another 125 years later, the people of Salomon and Hezekiah were not so lucky and the temple was destroyed, leaving old men and the plundered to wail over its remnants. Seventy five years later, Zedekiah, yet another king, rebuilt the temple on the remains of the first, but not quite in the same splendor.  Thereafter it was destroyed many more times, until King Herod, a beloved Roman vassal king of the people of Salomon, Hezekiah and Zedekiah rebuilt it again to more splendors then ever before. The temple, named Salomon’s temple, but really Herod’s one, became the center of the world for worship, trade, justice and prosperity, till yet another Roman vassal, destroyed it in the year 70 CE to punish the unruly proud people of King Salomon, Hezekiah, Zedekiah and Herod. Thereafter the temple was never rebuilt in stone bricks. It now lives in the hearts of millions as a symbol and memory of devotion to a great god and a great king.  Its physical remains, a bare remaining brick wall, are still in Jerusalem. Many pilgrims of the people of Salomon come, to wail over the great loss, but also to worship the temple that now lives in their hearts.

So Kalan, what this story teaches us that, symbols of mortar and bricks do not live, but what lives in our hearts will exist for ever.

Please dear Kalan, your name means warrior, be my new hero and hero to the rest of the world and  go to Jerusalem and teach them at the Wailing Wall to listen, even when they think there is nothing to hear.