Which Life Are You From?: Story 1—Bunny’s Burrow

By Mayank Gaur

Lieutenant Colonel S.S. Narula, a.k.a. Sunny has been staggered by a series of bizarre coincidences since he arrived in Mhow cantonment in Central India this morning. As he gazes with moist eyes at his childhood bestie’s tombstone, the giant of a man has no idea of the extraordinary turn his life is about to take.

Little Bunny had shaken up the sleepy army cantonment, when she had arrived in town with her English mum, Debbie, and her Anglo-Indian daddy, Major Robert Hudson, in the late ‘70s. She was blonde, beautiful, a bundle of mischief and a reservoir of compassion. She was also mildly dyslexic and occasionally made vague allusions that sounded like memories from other lives.

Love, wealth, expensive toys, the freedom to be naughty - Bunny had plenty and more of everything, except time. When she passed away, everyone was devastated, but one young lad becomes obsessed with her return; Vikram, the teenaged elder brother of her dear friend Vaani. But why? Being a hosteller, he had hardly even met her; and teenagers don’t much care for little kids anyway. Could it be that since the mind cannot remember what the soul cannot forget, Vikram was grieving the loss of a soulmate without even knowing about it?

Thirty years later, as the new age of spiritual awakening begins, Bunny’s Invisible Observer sets up amazing coincidences that will bring her scattered soul family together. And everyone who wept over her grave will smile again, when Bunny returns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: May 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543704488

Mayank Gaur

Mayank is an advertising creative director, writer, film maker, trekker, sports buff, nature lover and spiritual wanderer who explores the continuity of relationships over lifetimes. His strength lies in blending humour, love, hope, tragedy and spirituality in stories that entertain, engage and trigger introspection.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Mayank Gaur.

ISBN:                  Hardcover                 978-1-5437-0450-1

                            Softcover                    978-1-5437-0449-5

                            eBook                         978-1-5437-0448-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover design: Avijit Sen and Ashi Rastogi

Author’s photograph: Akash Das

Partridge India

000 800 10062 62

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

From the Series

Which Life Are You From?

Story 1

Bunny’s Burrow

Mayank Gaur

Dedicated to

My dad, who helped me write this book from the other side.

My mom, my soul guide and my pillar.

My wife Kompal, my everything. She has tirelessly sought out relevant material and social media marketing windows for me since I started writing this one.

My twin boys Arnav and Pranav, my greatest gifts from God.

My brother Milind, my truest critic and sounding board, and his family.

All my uncles, aunts, cousins and their families.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my dear friends - Akash and Avijit for their brilliant inputs in cover design, Ashi and Raju for their many design options, Nisheeth for his candid and extremely valuable critique, Sumati and Nitin for their deep involvement, amazing insights and social media guidance.

Kanishka, my fauji kid brother guided me on matters related to the Indian army. Cheers, brother! I feel lucky to belong to an army family and owe my dream childhood to the armed forces.

Thank you Sumedha, Ajay, Sonu, Deb, Toolika, Chitra, Sumeer, Preeti, Vasundhara, Radhini and Janvi, for taking the pains to go through my manuscript with a fine-tooth comb. Your constructive feedback has helped me immensely.

They are all my soul family; and this is our book.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1     Bunny’s Burrow

Chapter 2     Bunny’s Bestie

Chapter 3     Bunny Happens

Chapter 4     Bunny Goes to School

Chapter 5     Bunny the Pied Piper

Chapter 6     Bunny Meets Sunny

Chapter 7     Bunny and the Charmed Snake-Stone

Chapter 8     Bunny the Great

Chapter 9     Bunny’s Band

Chapter 10     Playboy Bunny

Chapter 11   Bunny Knows

Chapter 12   Bunny’s Knight in Shining Armour

Chapter 13   Bunny’s Everywhere!

Chapter 14   Bunnyland

Chapter 15   Bunny’s Burrow

Chapter 16   Life after Bunny

Chapter 17   Bunny’s Legacy

Chapter 18   Bye, Bunny

Chapter 19   Bunny Again!

Chapter 20   Vikram’s Bunny

Epilogue

Preface

Ancient cultures believed in the reality of divinity: eternal souls, collective souls, karma, reincarnation and other worlds. Then along came modern science, to crucify faith and belief. To recognise observation, evidence, and verification as the only gods—the holy trinity, if you will.

Interestingly though, as science expands its boundaries and yesterday’s intangibles become today’s tangibles, a growing body of compelling evidence from documented science is reluctantly beginning to suggest that maybe, just maybe, those profound beliefs from another time are, in fact, the only truth.

What if, then, one were to say that almost everything you believe in is only partially true and in some cases, completely false? That often your puzzling emotions—love, hate, envy, fear—disproportionate as they may seem towards certain people or in certain circumstances, have their basis in another life?

In an age when evolving knowledge and timeless wisdom as well as science and philosophy are just about learning to see eye to eye, I present to you the first of a few stories that may open your mind to a deeper sense of what life may really be. Where do these stories come to me from? I wonder. But I have no doubt that a new age of spiritual awakening is upon us and someday, in the not-too-distant future, a stranger will ask another stranger, the way they once used to enquire about villages and we now ask about apartment complexes, ‘Hey, which life are you from?’

Bunny’s Burrow

CHAPTER 1

What is it about babies that makes us fall in love with them?

They will often respond to people in surprising ways—

frowning at the sight of someone who approaches them with love

and giggling with delight at others

who don’t even show much interest in them.

‘That’s what makes babies so lovable,’ we say.

‘They are too little to know any better.’

But what if they know a lot more than we do?

What if it is us who have been gradually programmed

to replace eternal truth with the ephemeral mirage of reality and we, in turn, will program them as best we can?

This is the story of a man who is deeply, obsessively in love with

a little girl he can have nothing to do with.

It can’t be good. He knows. But still.

He can’t talk to anyone about it—except to babies.

Why?

Well, perhaps you’re too old to know, baby.

So take a peek into Bunny’s Burrow.

Bunny’s Bestie

CHAPTER 2

The big man was feeling a bit self-conscious at the cemetery, which was not like him at all. He was quite used to being stared at by strangers, what with his giant frame making even hefty six-footers look like toothpicks. Also the fact that he had been an Olympian, with golds in the Commonwealth and Asian games, in boxing. Still, it wasn’t common for homely-looking middle-class women from small towns in India to be smiling and gazing at men they weren’t acquainted with. It still isn’t. Yet here was this lady, with her long silver-white hair, walking slowly towards the shelter in the cemetery and looking at him with an air of intimate familiarity as he stood at his best friend’s grave. It was raining mildly, but she didn’t seem to even notice it. Should I know her? he wondered. He had been in town before, as a child, and even though his dad was a giant too, that was where their resemblance ended. His dad was a turbaned Sikh; he, clean-shaven. His dad was enormous around his midriff; he, everywhere but. And he had inherited his good looks from his mum’s family.

Actually, the lady’s friendly gaze wasn’t the only thing that had Lt. Col. Sandeep Singh Narula puzzled. There had been a series of inexplicable coincidences since he had arrived in the army cantonment of Mhow (pronounced mau) early that morning with his lovely wife, Simran, and their two adorable daughters, seven and four years old.

Now coincidences in themselves aren’t that rare at all. It’s just that, busy with the business of life, we mostly fail to spot them. It’s only under certain circumstances, when life encourages us to momentarily disengage from the here and now, that we become receptive to them. The massive officer was temporarily receptive because he was finally visiting his best friend’s grave after three decades. Years ago, he had promised her that he would have the national anthem play in international sports meets on her behalf. It had been his last promise to her. And he had pledged that he would only visit her grave if he ever managed to live up to that promise. The last time he had been here, for his JC (Junior Command) course, he only had a few silvers and bronzes, so he had stayed away from this part of town. Now here he was, with his golds.

There are two kinds of coincidences: the minor ones and the major ones. The minor ones, few and far between, seem to serve no larger purpose than to amuse us. And so we readily share them with those around us. But once in a blue moon, Creation may decide to set up a series of perplexing coincidences to open a chosen one’s mind, however closed it may be, to the game plan that is beyond normal human comprehension. We are usually wary of sharing such experiences with others, perhaps because we are, ourselves, unable to accept what they might be implying. Who wants to sound like a loony anyway?

In military parlance, both kinds of coincidences had barraged Lt. Col. S. S. Narula, a.k.a. Sunny, with the consistency of an LMG (light machine gun) fire today. And the really big one was yet to come …

The day had begun normally enough, with the first few hours being spent in setting up house, which really is a walk in the park for officers, with the flawless efficiency of fauji (military) manpower at their disposal. All along, Sunny had been yearning for the opportunity to go out there, chasing his childhood memories.

By the time he finally got into his car after an early lunch, it was noon. He would have preferred to do this trip by himself—there are memories attached to the most insignificant things from childhood, like trees and wells and swings and rivulets and tuck shops, that mean nothing to others—but his feminine brood would have none of that. Therefore, they were left with no choice but to endure his quirky behaviour: stopping to stare with a puzzled expression at things that seemed to have no stare value at all, talking to himself, and astonishingly, playing mushy oldies on the car’s music system.

There is always this inherent risk in revisiting the theatre of childhood after a long gap, isn’t there? Things change, mostly for the worse, as they had in Mhow. It was still thankfully lush green, but now, boundary walls and barbed wire fences cordoned off most of the open spaces. As a result, cars took more time to reach some places little kids used to reach on foot back then. The golf course by the Golf View apartments was gone, and the rivulet beside the colony had changed its course, surrendering its right of way to human ambition. Most of the lush fields and forests were now drab concrete jungles. Sunny’s school campus at Swarg Mandir, which had been a collection of old bungalows with sloping tiled roofs, had completely vanished. Apart from a handful of sturdy buildings, like the two churches, there were very few survivors—like the small hillock that Bunny had everyone (little kids) believe was a volcano about to erupt. It hasn’t yet, Sunny noted, and he smiled to himself. Also standing tall was the brooding neem tree, with countless screeching, sinister-looking bats hanging and crawling about, upside down.

Sunny tried his best to take this altered landscape in his stride, beginning to feel the slightest sense of gloom for a paradise lost. Then the coincidences began to tiptoe up to him with the stealth of wildcats on the prowl. Small coincidences first, followed by staggering ones.

As he drove up to the old market’s corner, the girls commanded him to stop at a golgappa wallah (roadside Indian snack stall). While they gorged on the golgappas, he stood around, trying to connect the present with the faintest memories of the past. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pinch on his calf, and when he looked down, he was astonished to see the dwarf, barely reaching above his knees, looking exactly the way he had looked three decades ago. ‘Thoda chote nahin reh gaye bhaiyya kad mein, ummeid se?’ (You turned out a little shorter than you had hoped to be, didn’t you, brother?) the dwarf said in a squeaky voice, and everyone around broke into the kind of unrestrained laughter one is not likely to hear in the elite circles. Even his family laughed with them. This was exactly what shorty had done with his dad years ago, in exactly the same spot, and the crowd had laughed just as loud then. He told his wife about this weird coincidence, and they both laughed and dismissed it as the small-towners’ charming refusal to move on with the times.

A little later, as they drove along, his elder daughter screamed excitedly and pointed towards a hedge around a dilapidated old bungalow. She had seen a three-legged dog cross over from a tiny gap in the hedge and disappear into the other side. ‘What did it look like?’ Sunny asked.

‘Black and white, a bit like a pointer but smaller, with the lower half of its left hind leg missing,’ his daughter informed him—a vivid description that belied her young age and revealed her fine upbringing at the same time.

Sunny slammed on the brakes instantly, taking his girls by surprise. He ran up to the hedge, looked around, and came back shaking his head. ‘Disappeared,’ he said. ‘You won’t believe it, girls, but when I was here as a child, there was a three-legged dog that looked exactly like the one Winnie saw.’

‘Well, who knows, this may turn out to be our Wonderland after all. Don’t you think, girls?’ his wife said, smiling, and the wide-eyed girls wholeheartedly agreed.

‘There are many stray dogs everywhere, and every now and then they are attacked by other stray dogs or run over by vehicles. Entirely possible for black-and-white dogs from different times to have a hind leg missing,’ Sunny said to himself, dismissing his own mind games before they had even started playing.

But the major coincidences that came later rattled him from within. And he couldn’t get himself to speak to even his wife about them, because, he reasoned, he was just being the sentimental fool that he most certainly wasn’t, by wondering if there was some larger purpose to them. As they approached the Golf View apartments complex, where he had lived as a child, he was stunned to see a rainbow over the colony’s horizon, just where it had been the day Bunny had gone away. His mother never tired of remembering aloud how Bunny had said that a rainbow would come to take her away. Then as he slowly drove his car around a turn in the colony, there it was—the tree with the golden guavas. The front garden of the corner flat was awash with sunlight that pierced through the clouds gathered around the sun, making the handful of ripe yellow guavas look perfectly golden, just the way Bunny had said they would be when she breathed her magical breath on them from Bunnyland. That was where she had believed she was going to then. That was where Sunny had continued to believe she was for many years after she had gone away. She had lived in this house once, and the two of them had planted that tree together. He switched on the car radio, and Mary Hopkins was singing, ‘Those were the days, my friends.’ It was one of the first English songs he had heard as a child, thanks to his bestie and her folks. Even though he preferred to come across as someone who wasn’t particularly fond of romantic ballads, he had to admit that it was singularly apt on this occasion. In fact, the song was a part of a much larger exposure that had triggered his transformation from the rowdy son of an officer from a farming family into the refined gentleman that he turned out to be. Memories buried deep within the graveyard of time were beginning to come alive, making him wonder where they had hidden themselves all these years.

The cemetery had changed too, or at least it looked very different from the faint memory Sunny had of it. There were obviously many more graves around now, and as time passed, Sunny began to get disheartened at not finding Bunny’s grave anywhere. It wasn’t where he had imagined it to be, and since it had begun to drizzle mildly, there was no one in sight to guide him. But then, just when he was about to give up his search, a titehri bird (lapwing) called out from the other side of the boundary wall at the far end. Tut-tut-tut-titiou. Twice. A brief pause, and then a third time. Sunny looked in that direction and spotted, beyond the trees, another graveyard on the other side of the wall. As he approached it, he saw that the lapwing was perched on top of a tombstone, looking towards him, and he froze at the sight of it. There lay the grave that Sunny was sure he was looking for, and beyond it, another gate, which looked vaguely familiar. Some call it the blink effect—an instant recognition or comprehension of something, with no apparent logical basis for it.

As Sunny and his family drove up to the other gate, a gentle wind was blowing across; and winds have memories too. This was an old wind, laden with the smells and sounds of cherished experiences Sunny had long forgotten about. ‘Ah, the smell of wet earth and the melody of a birdsong,’ whispered the big man to himself as he tried to ignore the lump that was beginning to form in his throat. Soon mini cascades would tumble down from the channels of tiles on sloping rooftops in the few remaining bungalows in town, and if permitted by the bungalow owners, poor kids and puppies would have a whale of a time under those cascades.

‘Sunny, can’t you do this later when it’s not raining?’ his wife casually asked.

‘It’s just a little drizzle, darling,’ he said. ‘But why don’t you all stay in the car while I pay a quick visit to that grave I told you about? It’s a memory from childhood.’ But then, females of every species are easily swayed by curiosity, and so they all went in.

‘Daddy, how do you know when a drizzle becomes rain?’ his little daughter Ginnie asked as he deposited her inside the shelter in the cemetery. It was raining mildly now.

He smiled. It was a question he had asked too, in the same town, a long time ago. He ruffled her hair lovingly and said, ‘It never does, sweetie. It never should.’

‘That’s a strange answer, Sunny!’ his wife exclaimed, but he had started walking up to the grave. As it is, riding on the wings of overwhelming memories, he was too far away in time to hear her anyway. It had been drizzling back then too, as a few army families enjoyed a laid-back Sunday afternoon in the front garden of Bunny’s house. It was one of those many get-togethers where parents and kids used to be part of the same gang. As the clouds began to show more serious intent, Bunny’s mummy had called out to the gang from their veranda. ‘Come in, folks, it looks like a cloudburst is coming.’

‘But why, Mummy?’ Bunny had asked.

‘Because you’ll get drenched and catch a cold, baby,’ her mother had said.

‘Then how come I don’t catch a cold when you drench me under the shower every morning, huh?’ Bunny had shot back, and everyone had laughed, her daddy the loudest.

‘Hey, it’s okay, honey. It’s just a drizzle, really,’ Bunny’s daddy had said.

And then Sunny had asked, ‘Uncle, when does a drizzle become rain?’

‘When it scares grown folks indoors, that’s when,’ Robert uncle, Bunny’s daddy, had declared in his inimitable, jocular style. Everybody had laughed. Only Sunny, Bunny, and her daddy had stayed out that day, playing Frisbee in the pouring rain, without a care in the world.

Right now, if he could, Sunny would ask you, ‘When it rains, what do you do? Run in or rush out?’

In the honest answer to that question lies a huge insight into our own lives. Without being judgemental, one has to agree that the social conditioning that makes adults out of children has its side effects too. What, for instance, can grown-ups ever lose from occasionally stepping out to enjoy a splash in the puddles?

Major Robert Hudson was by far the most popular parent in town, very mature and thoroughly childlike at the same time, but more than anything, he was the happiest man that Sunny had ever met in his life. Till Bunny had gone away. Today Sunny missed him too, very badly.

Sunny’s wife