‘What ails’

A woman came to him and complained of trouble sleeping. "I can't sleep," she said, starting to weep. "I just can't." He watched her for a while before replying. Indeed, she looked as though she hadn't slept for a long while: put-together well enough, wearing a nice kurta and a fashionable dupatta, but with a faded luminescence about her, like a fluttering candle in a monsoon wind. He furrowed his brow. "And what happens when you try to rest?" he asked. "It's the noise!" she groaned. "Constant noise – the neighbour's baby, the neighbours fighting, the wind and creaking pines, even the silence resounds! I put my head under the pillow. I put my head under the mattress. I stuff my ears with wax…" He re-crossed his legs and poked at the fire. "I know of a certain tree, a bucolic flourish in the uplands," he said. "Here, I'll write you a prescription," and he drew up a small map, with straight, careful strokes. "It should take you three days and nights to walk. Drink when you are thirsty and sleep when you are tired."

A young boy came to him and complained of restlessness. "I have restless regions," he said, raising his eyebrows repeatedly, up and down. "I have regions that are very restless," the boy shrugged and grimaced. He took a long look at the boy before replying, as the boy's knee jiggled up and down, in double time with his eyebrows. He seemed very restless indeed. "I know of a spring, from which flows very hard water – eons of minerals seeming back out onto the earth's surface, a bucolic flourish in the jungle. The girls from a nearby village come to wash there. Here, I'll write you a prescription," and he drew up a small map, with straight, careful strokes. "It should take you little more than a day, if you run."

His beard was long and flowing, and he had grown fat with contentedness. He had raised the children of a dozen women, his garden had failed only once in a quarter-century, and he had a coterie of cuckoo birds with whom he could speak! His roots went far and deep; he had no trouble sleeping, nor was he restless. "My own bucolic flourish," he sighed one morning, noting a new wind. "But I have just the prescription for this ease," and he took out his pen and his pad, and he drew himself no map.