The Magician's Childhood

As a child, I was lively and happy, wandering in this beautiful and colorful world, I can say that I was like a fish in water, even in the animals, flowers, and trees or my dream of the primeval forest, I was as comfortable as at home, I have unlimited energy, ability to pass through the sky. Rather than wear me out, my fervent desire has made me happier. I had learned to do some magic tricks, and no matter how much I practiced them when I relearned them later, I could never do them that well again, I just didn't know it at the time. I was easy to like and easy to win the trust of others, whether as the head or disciples or unidentified role, I can handle it all. For many years, my younger classmates and relatives believed in my magic, my ability to subdue Satan, my reputation for finding treasures and crowns, and so on, and worshiped me as a god. I wandered in paradise for many years, although my parents told me early on about the accident of the snake in paradise. I dreamed of my childhood for many years, and the world belonged to me, and everything was at my beck and call, and everything was listed in an orderly manner around me, ready for my play. Whenever there was any dissatisfaction or new desire in my heart, whenever there was any shadow or headache in this joyful world, I could easily escape into another fantasy world that was more free and full of harmony, and when I returned from this world, the outside world became lovely again. I lived in paradise for a long time.

In my father's small garden there was a cage made of thin wooden bars in which I kept some rabbits and a crow. I spent endless hours and centuries there, enjoying the warmth and the joy of being a productive person. The rabbits smelled of life, of grass and milk, of blood and fertility; the crow's large, rigid black eyes were like the lamp of eternal life. I spent endless nights there too, lighting the rest of the candle heads, beside the sleepy animals that emitted their body heat. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a good companion, I often made plans either to dig for treasure or fairy herbs or to lead a band of horsemen to conquer areas in need of rescue, where I ordered the execution of bandits, relieved poverty, freed prisoners, burned down robbers' dens, crucified informers, pardoned surreptitious vassals, won the love of the king's daughters and understood the language of animals.

In my grandfather's large study there was a very large and heavy book, which I often read and consulted. In this all-embracing book, there are many ancient and beautiful appendages - sometimes you open them and they come into view vividly, sometimes you can't find them, they seem to be enchanted and disappear. There is a story in this book that I can't read, but I think it is so beautiful that I often find it and read it. But it is not always there, it must be time to find it by chance, sometimes it is completely missing, hiding, and sometimes it seems to have moved to another secret cave. When reading it, it is also sometimes amiable, as if people can understand a few points; sometimes gloomy, rejecting people from a thousand miles away, like the attic door as closed. Behind that door, I heard that sometimes you can hear the ghosts before dawn: the sound of laughter or a heavy sigh. It was all full of reality and full of magic, and the two were in harmony, and all belonged to me.

Even the statue of a Hindu god in my grandfather's glass-doored bookcase, stuffed with treasures, did not always have the same face and the same dance. Sometimes it is a rare and comical face, exactly as it should be, created and worshipped in strange and mysterious places by strange and mysterious people. Sometimes it is a masterpiece of magic, with a subtle, inscrutable expression, its ever-satiating, cunning, grim, inscrutable, and teasing face seems to be deliberately trying to make me laugh so that I can have an excuse to take revenge on me. Although it is made of yellow metal, it changes its eyes, and sometimes it looks at people's askance. At other times, it seems to be an amorphous symbol, not beautiful or ugly, good or bad, ridiculous or frightening, but simply reminiscent of simplicity, antiquity, nameless, like a charm, a moss on a rock, or a pattern on a pebble, but behind this image and face, there is a deity, unreachable, although I could not name it in my childhood, my reverence, and familiarity with it, It is Shiva, Vishnu, or God, Life, Brahma, the Great Self, the Tao, the Mother of Eternity. It is the Father, the Mother, the Yin, the Yang, the Sun, and the Moon.

In the glass-door bookcase, on either side of this Indian idol, and in Grandfather's other cabinets, there were all kinds of treasures: wooden rosaries, scrolls of shell-leaf scriptures inscribed with ancient Indian texts, tortoiseshell carved from green jade, small Buddha statues of wood, glass, crystal, and clay, embroidered tablecloths of silk and linen, cups and plates made of brass, all from India, Siam, Burma, and Ceylon, that palm bank of The island of paradise, where ferns abound and where the gentle, deer-like Sinhalese live. It all still smells of sea and faraway places, of cinnamon, sandalwood, and all kinds of spices, which must have passed through the hands of yellow-skinned and brown-skinned people, the tropical rain and the water of the Ganges, the hot equatorial sun and the shade of the primeval forests. All this belonged to the maternal grandfather, a highly respected, stout old man with a large white beard, a man of great erudition and more authority than either his father or mother. His wealth and power are much more than that, he not only has those Indian idols and trinkets, and those painted sandalwood boxes full of carved magical stories and characters and coconut shell vessels, but this entire living room and the family's book collection, he also knows magic, well-educated and wise. He knew almost all the languages of men, probably more than thirty, and the languages of the gods, even the stars, he seemed to be good at. He could write and speak Pali and Sanskrit, and sing songs in Canary, Bengali, Hindustani, and Sinhalese, and although he was an authentic Christian who believed in the Trinity, he knew Buddhist Sanskrit chants and Muslim prayers. He had lived for decades in the hot, harsh living conditions of the East, and had traveled in every way: by bullock cart, by wooden boat, on horseback, on a donkey ...... No one knew better than he did that our city and country are but a small part of the earth and that there are hundreds of millions of people of different faiths, with They have their customs, languages, colors, gods, virtues, and vices. I love him, respect him, and am a little afraid of him. He was my God of all answers, and I trusted him with all my heart, and I learned more than I could ever learn from him and from his Penn, who was dressed as a Hindu god. This old man, my mother's Abba, was always invisible in a jungle of secrets, just as his face was invisible in a jungle of white beards. From time to time, his eyes showed compassion or sardonic wisdom, and at other times they shone with downbeat or Rohan-like shortness. He traveled all over the world and was visited by many people who spoke English, French, Hindi, Italian, and Malay, and often went on their journey without a trace after a long conversation. These people were either his friends, his ambassadors, or people who were doing something for him. I know that from such an inscrutable man, my mother also picked up some of the old, inscrutable depths. She had also lived in India for many years and spoke Malayalam and Canarian, sometimes in a language her old father did not understand. Like him, her mother often had that strange, vaguely wise smile.