The Boy Who Sang in the Pillar

In a great pale palace at the edge of a desert, there lived a king named Hiranyakashipu who believed himself to be the greatest thing in the world.

He was tall, and his arms were strong, and his voice could fill a room until no one else dared speak in it. He had everything he wanted, except for one small thing.

He had a son named Prahlad. And Prahlad would not bow to him.

This was not because Prahlad was rude. Prahlad was the gentlest child anyone in the palace had ever met. He bowed to the cooks. He bowed to the elephant drivers. He bowed to the old woman who swept the courtyard, and he greeted the small dogs that lived under the kitchen stairs.

It was only that, when his father said, "Bow to me as if I were God," Prahlad would smile, very softly, and say, "Father, I bow to you as a son. But God is something else."

This made the king very angry.

One afternoon, in the great pillared hall of the palace, the king sat upon his high seat and called for his son.

Prahlad came in. He was perhaps six years old. His hair was tied back with a small thread.

"Where is this God of yours?" the king asked. His voice was almost laughing, but the laugh was thin.

"He is everywhere, Father," Prahlad said.

"Is He in the floor?"

"Yes."

"In the curtain?"

"Yes."

The king pointed to a great stone pillar nearby. It was thicker than three men together. It had been carved from a single piece of mountain.

"Is He in that pillar?" the king asked.

Prahlad did not even pause.

"Yes, Father," he said. "He is in this pillar. He is in this breath. He is in the small space between."

The king's eyes grew very dark. He lifted his great club and walked down from his seat. The court fell completely silent. Even the small birds that had been singing in the windows stopped.

He stood in front of the pillar.

He lifted the club.

He struck.

Now what happened next is told in many ways, in many tongues. The grandmothers tell it one way. The temple singers tell it another. The little Pillai-pakshi birds that nest under the eaves of South Indian temples tell it, they say, a third way, in a song that has no words.

In one telling, the great stone pillar made a sound like a bell.

In another, a deep golden light came out of the crack in the stone, and a figure stepped through who was neither a man nor a lion but had something of both, and who said only, very gently, "You called."

In the smallest, sweetest telling — the one for tonight — the pillar did not break at all. It only began, very quietly, to hum.

At first it was so soft that only Prahlad heard it. He turned his head, smiling.

Then the cooks in the kitchen heard it, and they set down their pots.

Then the elephant in the courtyard heard it, and she lifted her great ears.

Then the old woman with the broom heard it, and she sat down on the step and began to cry softly, because the humming reminded her of a lullaby her mother had sung when she was very small.

The king lowered his club. He could not lift it again. The whole hall was full of the humming now. It was coming from the floor, from the curtains, from the small space between.

Prahlad walked, very slowly, toward his father. He took the heavy hand that had been raised against him and held it gently in both of his own small ones.

"Father," he said. "Can you hear it now?"

The king did not answer with words. Tears were running down his cheeks, and he did not know why.

Prahlad lifted the king's hand to his own small chest, the way a child shows you something he loves.

"It is here too," he said. "It was always here too."

The king sat down on the marble floor. He stayed there for a long time, with his son's small warm hand on his chest, listening to the humming of a stone he had thought was empty.

Little mother, somewhere inside you tonight, a small one is humming. You cannot hear it yet with your ears. You hear it instead with the slow drum of your hand on your belly, with the secret smile that lifts the corners of your mouth when you are alone.

That hum is older than fear. It is older than anger. It is the same hum that once came out of a stone pillar in a great hall in a country far away. It says only, very softly — I am here. I am here. I am here.

Tonight, when the day grows quiet, lay your hand on your belly and listen. You will not hear with your ears. You will hear with the small space between.