The British thief of Parvati

We are in a London bar, and a veteran thief tells his friends one of his adventures on the other side of the world. The group listens attentively, the presence of the speaker and his unruly voice demand their respect. The person recounting the events was named Henry B. Lorenz. I do not know his age at the time he narrates this story, but I know that in his youth he participated in the First World War, where he didn't learn anything. Later he enlisted as a crew member on a ship captained by a man of unsettling reputation. Thus he traveled the world and its countries, staining each of them with his misdeeds.

Now he is talking about his trip to India. He arrived in Madras in 1923 without really knowing why. It was the captain who wanted to meet with the governor of the city, surely with the intention of developing some clandestine project. Henry was not interested in politics and was given several days off. He explored the surroundings of the port and found some buildings of Indo-Saracen architecture typical of the British Raj, their distinctive shapes amazed him; the River Cooum, however, he considered inferior to the Thames.

In a market he met an English lawyer based in the city. The coincidence that both were natives of Liverpool, facilitated their conversations. They walked together and the lawyer, well versed in Hindu history, offered a lot of information about the country. Information that Henry deemed perfectly useless. Just before saying goodbye, the lawyer spoke about the temples in the area and the rumors that they were hiding a treasure. Henry asked for more details and the lawyer directed him to a village on the outskirts. As a good thief, he had decided to steal that treasure, in the same way that he had stolen the watch from his unsuspecting compatriot. Henry's friends at the bar celebrated the theft.

He continued the story describing his arrival in the village. He found the temple behind some tall trees, removed from the fragile houses. He wandered around aimlessly until he saw a human figure in the distance. He deduced that he was a monk from the unique robes that wrapped him and followed the man. The monk entered one of the four pyramidal towers that made up the temple. Henry stood in front of the gate and contemplated the tower and the shrine erected within it.

In the London bar, Henry fell silent for a moment at this point in the story. The playful expression and the smile with which he had recounted his adventure left his fleshy face. He looked down and gulped nervously. His friends took this silence to be a stylistic device of the speaker, but a more discerning observer would have seen the doubt on his lips and the shyness in his eyes.

Henry composed his expression and continued with the story. He spoke of a tantalizing door inside the tower and how his intuition told him that the treasure was behind it. Henry walked violently through the sanctuary, the monk spotted him and stepped between him and the door. A shove opened the way for him and sent the slight monk to the ground. As he was about to reach his target, a neighbor pounced on him. He shook him off as best he could. The man lacked the monk's inhibitions and seemed ready to fight. Henry explained the fight and all its pugilistic details to the delight of his group of friends. He was victorious. Through his exposure it was clear that he was an expert fighter and that his rival was brave and tough. Everyone was impatiently waiting for the conclusion of the story and he revealed it in the following way: "Do you know what I found behind the door? Nothing! ", and he accompanied those words with a laugh and a slap on the table. His friends laughed with him, the experienced thief's intuition had failed him and his efforts had been in vain.

However, that was not what happened that day in that temple. Let me tell you the truth that Henry won't or can't tell. I will resume the narrative at the point where Henry stops in front of the temple tower, until then the facts described are true. Henry looks up at the tall stone structure. He is overwhelmed by all those colors and the countless forms of the detailed statues, in which Henry identified gods, people and animals. An imposing god dressed with jewels has multiplied his arms, he holds a spear with which he kills a man at his feet and fangs stick out from his mouth. He rests on a light blue halo of inconceivable details, some appear to be flames, others snake skin. Behind the god he sees numerous smaller human sculptures contorting, some of them are blue-skinned, he also distinguish an elephant. Above them rises a goddess, blue and with a dozen heads and arms. These visions paralyze and silence Henry, who only reacts when the monk speaks to him and with a gesture invites him to enter the sanctuary. Once inside, sacred statues await him and hypnotize him. He sees Parvati, wife of Shiva, whom he begins to worship despite knowing nothing about her. Henry feels what we all know to be true, what no one can put into words. A beautiful spiritual experience is something that the reputation of a tough street criminal cannot bear.

In the London tavern the laughter caused by the end of the story began to fade. A stranger who heard the narration recognized the accent and decided to mock the thief: "Those from Liverpool are not even good at stealing. Nothingness is a good booty for you." Henry didn't see the humor in those words, or maybe he did, and got up to face the man. He defended the lie he had told but let out fragments of the truth. He said: "You are mistaken if you think I came back empty handed. I returned from my trip with an adventure, with a fight between two men, with the beauty of a temple and a new faith that has not abandoned me. I advise you not to underestimate nothingness, because it is the only thing that separates the knife in my hand from your heart".