The child had stopped breathing before the sun reached its highest place. Yet his mother continued to warm a little brass bowl of water beside the hearth, fearing the fever might return. Outside, the settlement baked beneath an obdurate summer sky. The mud walls of the houses had turned the colour of old turmeric, the narrow lanes shimmered beneath the heat, and even the cattle had withdrawn into the thin shadows of neem trees. From somewhere beyond the courtyard came the slow grinding of grainstone, circular and monotonous, while a pair of bullocks moved past with bells tied loosely around their necks. Their dull clinking seemed indecently cheerful.
She sat beside the child and watched his face. Only that morning he had been restless with fever, his small fingers clutching at the edge of her garment, his lips dry and cracked. She had pressed a wet cloth against his forehead, whispered stories into his ear and promised him sweet cakes when he was well. Then, shortly after midday, his breathing had become shallow. She had called for the neighbour, then for the old woman who knew herbs, then for anyone who might know what to do. By the time the old healer arrived, the child had already become strangely still. The healer had touched two fingers to his neck, lowered her eyes and said nothing. That silence had been the first thing the mother refused to understand.
Now she lifted the child’s head and held him against her breast. His body was still warm. That was enough. Warmth, she thought, could not belong to the dead. She carried him into the lane. People moved aside when they saw her. Some stared, some turned their faces away. A woman drawing water from a well whispered something to another woman, who immediately pressed her palm against her mouth. The mother did not hear them. She walked from door to door, asking for medicine. Not herbs, not charms, not prayers. Medicine. Something strong enough to call back breath.
At the first house, an elderly farmer told her that his wife knew a remedy for fever. The woman came out, looked at the child and began to weep. The mother grew impatient. “Do you have the medicine?” The woman shook her head. “At least tell me where I can find it.” The woman opened her mouth, but the farmer answered instead. “Sister, there is no medicine for this.” “There must be.” The farmer looked at the child for a long moment. “We buried our eldest son three rains ago.” She stared at him, irritated by the irrelevance of his words. “I did not ask about your son.” “No,” he said quietly. “You asked about medicine.” She moved on.
The lane opened into a small clearing where an ancient banyan spread its roots through the earth like the fingers of a sleeping giant. Beneath it sat a monk, utterly still amid the restless afternoon. His robe was the colour of dry earth. The mother would have walked past, but his eyes rested upon the child in her arms. There was no alarm in them, no pity, no attempt to look away. She stopped. “Can you save him?” she asked. The monk regarded the child for a long moment. “There is an ancient remedy to your trouble,” he said. Hope rose through her like sudden rain. “What must I do?” The monk pointed towards the houses beyond the clearing. “Bring me a handful of mustard seeds.” She almost laughed with relief. “Remember it should be from a house where no one has ever died,” instructed the monk. She nodded quickly, turned towards the village, clutching her child more tightly, and went on her search.
At a house, she found a young woman kneading dough. The smell of roasted barley and wood smoke filled the courtyard. A baby slept beneath a woven cot while a little girl played with a clay cart. “Mustard seeds,” the mother said. “I need a handful.” The young woman smiled and reached for a small jar. Then the mother remembered the instruction. “But tell me first,” she said, “has anyone in this house ever died?” The young woman’s hand stopped halfway to the jar. The smile disappeared from her face. She looked towards the sleeping child, then towards the little girl playing on the floor. “My mother,” she said softly. “Two years ago.” The mother’s hopeful eyes dulled. “Your seeds will not work.” She left to continue her search.
The village seemed larger now. The sun had begun its slow descent, but the heat remained trapped between the walls. Dust floated above the lane in a pale haze. Somewhere a potter’s wheel turned with a low, rhythmic whirr. The scent of cow-dung cakes drying against a wall mingled with jasmine from a shaded courtyard and the sharper odour of sweat from men returning from the fields. She walked on, carrying the still child as carefully as though every step might disturb his sleep. At each doorway she asked the same question before asking for the seeds. “Has death ever entered your house?” Each time the answer came in a different voice, but it was always the same answer.
At the next house, a merchant gave her water. His hands trembled as he poured it. “My daughter died last monsoon,” he said. She did not answer. “She was eleven.” Still she said nothing. “My wife has not entered her room since.” The mother looked towards the doorway behind him. A string of faded flowers hung above it. Dust had gathered on the threshold. “Do you have mustard seeds?” she asked. The merchant nodded and turned towards the kitchen. Then she stopped him. “Your daughter… was she the only one you had lost?” The man stood with his back to her for a moment before lowering his head. “No,” he said. “My father died before her. And my younger brother, many years ago.” He returned with a small handful of mustard seeds and placed them in her palm. She looked down at the tiny yellow grains. They seemed impossibly small for something she had believed could bring her child back. She closed her fingers around them, then slowly opened her hand again and let the seeds fall. “Your seeds will not work.” She walked away.
At the edge of the settlement she found an old widow sitting beneath a peepal tree, sorting lentils. The woman’s fingers were bent with age, yet they moved with sagacious patience, separating stone from grain. The mother approached her. “Have you seen death in your house?” she asked. The widow looked up. For a moment there was no sound except the leaves trembling above them. “My husband,” she said. “My two sons. My daughter. And everyone I once knew as a child.” The mother lowered her eyes. “Then you cannot help me.” The widow resumed sorting the lentils. “Perhaps,” she said, “you have already been helped.”
The mother did not understand. She searched until light became amber. She went to the houses of potters, weavers, farmers and traders. She entered courtyards where lamps were being lit and kitchens where rice was steaming in clay pots. She saw children chasing one another around pillars, women braiding hair, old men smoking beside doorways. Life continued everywhere with an almost cruel indifference. A calf bleated for its mother. A conch sounded from a shrine. Someone laughed behind a reed screen. And everywhere she found death. A carpenter had lost his father. A washerman’s wife had lost two sons. A young bride had been widowed before completing her first year of marriage. One family had lost a newborn; another had lost an old grandmother whose body had been burned only that morning. At one house, a man told her that death had taken his entire family during a fever season, leaving him alone.
She began to ask the question differently. “Who have you lost?” Nobody had an answer that was only one name. The village slowly changed before her eyes. Or perhaps she was the one who had changed. Until that afternoon, death had been a wall enclosing her own courtyard. Now she began to see that it had no walls at all. It moved through houses like wind through reeds. It entered palaces and huts, old age and infancy, the rich and the hungry. It did not bargain. It did not ask whether a person was loved too deeply to leave.
By twilight she was tired enough to stumble. The child in her arms had grown strangely heavy. She stopped beneath the banyan tree and looked at his face. His skin had lost the faint warmth that had sustained her hope. For the first time, she did not call his name. The monk was sitting beneath the tree. She had almost forgotten him. “I found no house,” she said. The monk looked at the child. “No house without death,” she continued. He said nothing. “I thought there would be one.” “I know.” She lowered herself onto the ground. For a while she simply sat there. The child lay across her lap. The last light slipped from the leaves and the first oil lamps appeared in distant doorways, tiny refulgent points against the gathering darkness. She heard the village breathing around her. A pestle struck grain. A cow shook its bells. Somewhere a woman sang a lullaby to a living child.
The mother touched her son’s cheek. It was cold now. She had spent the entire day trying to defeat something that had never been her enemy. Her fingers moved through his hair. “I wanted one more morning,” she whispered. The monk remained silent. She looked towards the darkening village. There were thousands of mothers there, she thought. Thousands of fathers. Thousands of children who would one day become memories. Every house was carrying something invisible. Every doorway concealed an absence. Every flame would eventually go out.
Her grief did not disappear. It did not become noble or beautiful. It remained a wound, raw and immeasurable. But for the first time she stopped asking why the wound had been given to her alone. She gathered the child against her breast. Then, very slowly, she bent and kissed his forehead. “Sleep,” she whispered. It was the first time she had spoken to him without asking him to wake. The monk watched her rise. Together they walked towards the river.
The night had become cool. Jasmine breathed its sweetness from the gardens, mingling with the faint smell of funeral smoke drifting from beyond the trees. The moon had not yet risen. The river moved beside them, black and soundless, carrying reflected fragments of oil lamps downstream. At the cremation ground she laid her child upon the pyre. She did not look away.
When the first flame touched the dry wood, she closed her eyes. Somewhere behind her, the monk began to speak softly about impermanence, about the ceaseless coming and going of all things, about how clinging could turn love into suffering. His words were not a command to forget. They were an invitation to see. She listened. And when the fire finally consumed the small body she had carried through the village, she did not reach into the flames. She simply stood there until the last ember collapsed into ash.
More than two thousand years later, people would still remember the story of the woman who went searching for mustard seeds in a house untouched by death. Some would remember the lesson. Some would remember the miracle of a grieving mother learning to surrender. But the mother had remembered something simpler. No one lived without knowing death. That night, when the fire died, Kisa Gotami took her first breath as a woman who had finally understood that acceptance does not make grief smaller. It teaches the heart how to carry it. And the monk beneath the banyan tree, the Buddha, had helped her see it.
Author’s Note
Some stories survive not because they are complicated, but because they contain a truth that refuses to grow old. The story of Kisa Gotami is one such story. Preserved in the ancient Buddhist tradition, it tells of a mother who, unable to accept the death of her child, searches for a cure and is eventually asked to find mustard seeds from a household that has never known death. Her search becomes a journey from denial to understanding, and from understanding to acceptance.
I have encountered this story in various forms over the years, and perhaps that familiarity was precisely what made me want to approach it differently. Rather than retelling the well-known parable, I wanted to inhabit the day on which it happened. I wanted to walk with the mother through the dust of an ancient settlement, hear the bells of returning cattle, smell wood smoke and jasmine, see oil lamps appearing one by one as daylight faded, and feel the terrible weight of a child who is still warm but no longer alive. The philosophical idea would emerge not from explanation, but from the houses she entered and the people she met.
I have deliberately withheld the names of both Kisa Gotami and the Buddha until the very end. For most of the story, I wanted the woman to remain simply a mother and the monk simply a stranger beneath a banyan tree. Her grief, after all, belongs to no particular century. It belongs to anyone who has ever stood before something irreversible and wished the universe would make an exception.
The mustard seeds in this story are therefore more than an element of an ancient Buddhist teaching. They become a measure of human longing. She believes she is searching for a handful of seeds, but in truth she is searching for a house untouched by death. Such a house does not exist.
What moved me most in this story was the idea that acceptance is not the opposite of love. We do not accept because we have stopped loving. Sometimes we accept because love has taught us that we cannot hold another life forever.
Grief does not become smaller when we understand impermanence. The wound remains. What changes is the way we carry it.
And perhaps that is the quietest courage of all.
Copyright © 2026 TRISHIKH DASGUPTA
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trishikh Dasgupta
Adventurer, philosopher, writer, painter, photographer, craftsman, innovator, or just a momentary speck in the universe flickering to leave behind a footprint on the sands of time... READ MORE
This story is Free, and if you have found something here that stayed with you, some of my other books (collection of short stories, novels, and more) are available in print and digital editions. They gather many unique journeys, quieter questions, grand adventures, hair-raising anticipation, and stories that continue beyond this page.
Thank j you Ned for sharing my story with a larger audience.
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What a powerful retelling of a timeless story. The mother’s desperate search for a house untouched by death captures something deeply human—we often understand loss intellectually, but accepting it in our own lives is another matter altogether.
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Dear Vermaji, thank you so much for such a thoughtful response. You have captured the heart of the story beautifully. We may understand impermanence as an idea, but when loss enters our own home, the intellect often becomes powerless before the heart’s refusal to let go. I think that is what makes Kisa Gotami’s journey so deeply human. She does not overcome grief; she learns to carry it. And perhaps that is the quietest form of acceptance, when we stop asking life to give us back what it has taken and find the courage to continue carrying the love that remains.
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A deeply moving and thoughtfully crafted retelling of Kisa Gotami’s story. The narrative captures the universality of grief and the difficult journey from denial to acceptance with remarkable sensitivity. The central insight—that acceptance does not diminish love, but teaches us how to carry loss—is both profound and timeless. The closing image of Kisa Gotami taking her “first breath” after her child’s last breath is particularly powerful. A compelling reflection on impermanence, grief, and the quiet courage of acceptance.👍
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Thank you so much for this deeply thoughtful reading of the story. Your observation about the “first breath” after the child’s last breath is especially meaningful to me, because that was the quiet image at the heart of the story. Kisa Gotami does not cease to grieve; she simply stops fighting the truth of what has happened. I wanted the story to suggest that acceptance is not an abandonment of love, but perhaps the way love survives when we can no longer hold the person we love. I am delighted that the story’s journey from denial to acceptance and its larger reflection on impermanence resonated with you so deeply.
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👏🤝🎉
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This fascinating story gets to me, Trishikh!
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Thank you TW, it’s my retell of an ancient Buddhist story. It has always intrigued me, and has given me much comfort in facing loss of life.
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My brother, haha you tricked me! Kṛśā Gautamī (Sanskrit: कृशा गौतमी; Pali: Kisā Gotamī) was the wife of a wealthy man of Shravasti. But I pictured her as a peasant woman for some reason. You made this tale come to life for me again in a way I did not expect. Before it was a story that even the wealthy cannot escape death. But this was more down to earth.
I even experienced hearing the voices and sounds of all the people you mentioned. By the time she saw the monks and asked for the mustard seeds, I knew who this story was about. But this really took me by surprise. Thank you. 🙏 😊
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Dear MM, haha, I am delighted that I managed to trick you! Perhaps that was one of the little pleasures of this retelling. We know Kisa Gotami’s story so well that we often approach it already knowing where it will lead. I wanted to take away that certainty for a while and let her simply be a mother walking through an ancient village, desperate to find a cure for her child.
And I love that you heard the voices and sounds of the people along the way. That was exactly what I hoped to achieve. I wanted the story to feel less like an ancient Buddhist parable being retold and more like something unfolding around us: the cattle bells, grinding stones, village lanes, oil lamps and the many quiet stories of loss behind ordinary doors.
Yes, by the time she reached the monk and asked about the mustard seeds, the secret was probably out! But I am glad the journey before that still managed to surprise you. Thank you, my brother, for reading it not merely as a familiar story, but for stepping into the world I tried to create around it. That means a great deal to me.
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It was hard not to step into it haha. Often reading your stories it is as if I had walked through an invisible door to another time and another place. And before I realize it, I am already there. The truth is even after I knew what the story was, I still felt immersed and heard all the voices. Even the person that was laughing behind the screen.
And it’s true….we suffer in sadness but the world moves on indifferently. But that may also be a blessing in disguise. Often when I am sad, I go to those who are not and who don’t know I am sad. And I seek to bask in their happiness. And it somehow manages to heal.
But the end of that story, I felt a combination of numbness, acceptance, and relief, all at once. And I felt a kinship with Buddha at the end too. This strange monk who helped even when I did not know he helped. Because by this time I felt as if I were her. As if for a brief moment in time, my own identity was gone.
And I was able to share hers.
This is one of my favorite stories of yours. I love how you approached it and changed it. And how you were able to keep the identity of all involved hidden for a time. And even after I figured it out, it still felt different and more realistic to me. I congratulate you my friend.
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Dear MM, I think this may be one of the most beautiful responses anyone has written to one of my stories. Thank you, my friend. What you have described about stepping through that invisible door is precisely the experience I hope for when I write. I do not merely want the reader to see another time and place. I want the boundary between the reader and the story to disappear for a while. And knowing that even after you had recognised the story, you still heard the voices, felt the grief and remained inside that world means more to me than I can easily express.
I also loved what you said about seeking out people who are happy when you are sad. There is something quietly profound in that. When we are grieving, it can sometimes feel almost unfair that the world continues as though nothing has happened. Yet perhaps that very indifference can become a kind of mercy. The laughter of someone who does not know our sorrow, the ordinary rhythm of life continuing around us, can remind us that there is still a world waiting for us beyond the walls of our grief. We do not have to abandon our sadness to bask, for a little while, in someone else’s happiness.
And your description of the ending, that strange mixture of numbness, acceptance and relief, is exactly what I hoped would remain after the fire died. I did not want Kisa Gotami’s acceptance to feel triumphant or suddenly peaceful. Grief rarely offers such neat resolutions. I wanted it to feel like something quieter, almost physical, as though after struggling against an immovable truth for so long, the body finally becomes too tired to fight.
But what you said about feeling a kinship with the monk moved me deeply. He is deliberately an enigmatic presence in the story, someone who helps without announcing that he is helping. He does not take Kisa Gotami’s grief away. He simply creates the circumstances in which she can discover something for herself. And perhaps that is why, by the end, you felt that your own identity had briefly disappeared and that you had become her. If the story allowed you to cross that final distance between reader and character, then I could not ask for a greater compliment.
And yes, you caught me eventually! But I am delighted that even after you knew who she was, the story did not become merely the familiar tale you already knew. That was my greatest hope when I began writing it. I wanted to take a story whose ending is known to millions and give it another heartbeat, another landscape, another set of voices, so that for a little while Kisa Gotami could become simply a mother, and the Buddha simply a strange monk beneath a banyan tree.
Thank you for making this one of your favourites. More than that, thank you for entering it so completely. The fact that, for a brief moment, you felt you had lost your own identity and shared hers is perhaps the finest thing a reader could give a writer.
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Thank you for your praise my brother. i would like to add, is that when the Monk or Buddha is speaking on grief, I l feel that he is also doing a funeral blessing for the child’s soul. And a sort of cleansing on her as well. Not some flashy magic. But a quiet frequency bath.
It was actually one of my two favorite scenes. The other being the sounds of the village. I know that she became one of his followers eventually. But here I saw and witnessed it in such a different way. How do I explain it? She became a wanderer of dead to the world.
And instead she joined Buddha as a friend as well as a disciple. I feel closer to her because of your story. I can’t thank you enough for that.
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Dear MM, my dear friend, you have once again found something in the story that makes me look at it differently myself. I absolutely love your description of the monk’s words as a “quiet frequency bath”. That is such a beautiful way of seeing that scene. There is no miracle in the conventional sense, no dramatic intervention, no sudden erasure of grief. There is simply a presence, a few words, the fire, the child, and a mother finally allowing herself to stand before the truth. If there was a blessing there, perhaps it was precisely because it was so quiet.
And I am deeply touched by your feeling that his words were also a kind of funeral blessing for the child and a cleansing for Kisa Gotami. I think that gives the ending another layer. The monk does not merely teach her about impermanence. He accompanies her through the final act of letting her child go, while also helping her shed the belief that she alone has been singled out by suffering.
Your phrase “wanderer of the dead to the world” is hauntingly beautiful. I can see exactly what you mean. She has crossed a threshold that most people spend their lives trying not to look towards. She has seen death in every house, carried her own child to the pyre, and discovered that the world continues beyond her grief. In that sense, she becomes someone who has died to one way of seeing the world and is ready to enter another.
And I particularly love that you saw her relationship with Buddha not simply as that of a disciple and teacher, but as something almost more intimate: a woman who has found a friend in the strange monk who helped her without ever telling her that he was helping her. Perhaps that is why you felt closer to her through this story. You were not merely watching the moment when Kisa Gotami became a follower of the Buddha. You witnessed the moment when trust began.
Knowing that this retelling allowed you to see her differently, and perhaps even feel that you had stood beside her at the funeral pyre, is an extraordinary gift to me as a writer. Thank you, my friend, for seeing so much beneath the surface of this story and for giving Kisa Gotami another life in your imagination.
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I see little worlds in all stories. But yours have always felt more alive than most. Magical. Transcendent even. That is quite a gift you have yourself.
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Dear MM, thank you so much for showcasing my story in your blog, now so many more people would be able to read it.
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🙏👍
Aum Shanti
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Thank you so much.
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A beautiful, poignant and wise story that I had never heard, but feels like something I always knew. Thank you! Your writing brought a whole village to life, and made the unbearable seem bearable.
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Thank you so much for such a beautiful response. I particularly love what you said about the story feeling like something you had “always known”. Perhaps that is the power of certain stories and truths: even when we encounter them for the first time, something within us recognises them.
I am also deeply touched that the village came alive for you. I wanted the story to exist not merely as an ancient Buddhist teaching, but as a living place filled with sounds, faces, dust, smoke, cattle bells and the quiet grief hidden behind ordinary doors. And if the writing made the unbearable seem even a little bearable, then I feel the story has found its purpose. Thank you for walking through that village with me.
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Halfway through the story, I gathered what looking for mustard seeds would actually mean. Grief needs time to come to terms with. I love what you said about acceptance not being the opposite of love. It’s difficult sometimes to let go, because we are left confused about where to put all that love.
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Thank you so much for this deeply thoughtful response. I think you have touched upon something at the very heart of Kisa Gotami’s journey. The mustard seeds are almost a doorway into understanding that grief cannot be hurried. She begins by desperately looking for a way to reverse her loss, but slowly, house by house, she begins to understand what every grieving heart eventually has to learn.
And what you said about being left confused about where to put all that love after letting go is especially moving. Perhaps that is why acceptance is so difficult. We imagine that letting go means having to let go of the love as well. But perhaps the love does not need to disappear or even find another destination. It simply changes its form. We can no longer give it to the person who is gone, so we carry it within us. For me, that is what makes acceptance not the opposite of love, but one of the ways love learns to live with loss.
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Exactly! And entering each house maybe offered a comforting hand to her grief so she knows she doesn’t have to be in it alone.
Well said, love changes its form. That doesn’t make it go away. I think it can be both – carrying love within us, and still giving it to our passed loved one by keeping them in our memories and honoring them.
Beautiful piece! Thank you for giving Kisa Gotami another place to let down her grief.
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Thank you so much once again for this beautiful reading of the story. I love your thought that each house she enters offers a comforting hand to her grief. I had not quite thought of it in those words, but I think you are absolutely right. At the beginning, Kisa Gotami believes she is going from house to house searching for something that will save her child. Gradually, without her realising it, every house gives her something else: the knowledge that she is not alone in suffering.
And I completely agree with you that love does not have to choose between being carried within us and being expressed through memory. Perhaps that is one of the gentler truths about loss. We cannot continue to give love in the same ways to someone who has gone, but we can keep speaking their names, remembering their laughter, honouring the life they lived and allowing what they gave us to remain part of who we are.
Your phrase, “another place to let down her grief”, touched me deeply. That is perhaps what I wanted this retelling to become. Not another version of a familiar Buddhist parable, but a small, quiet place where Kisa Gotami could put down the unbearable weight she had been carrying, even if only for a moment.
Thank you for walking beside her through all those houses and for seeing that journey with such tenderness.
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Of course! I was speaking from a place of knowing grief intimately, which gave me a perspective to read this story through the lens of, perhaps, one of those houses. Someone who already found that grief transforms into something lighter when you can lean on others.
Thank you again for this story, and I’m looking forward to others to come!
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Thank you for sharing that with me. Knowing that you were reading the story through the lens of someone who has known grief intimately makes your earlier observation about the houses even more meaningful to me. Perhaps you were, in a sense, one of those people behind the doors Kisa Gotami entered, someone who already understood that grief does not necessarily disappear, but can become lighter when we allow others to share its weight.
I think that is one of the quiet truths I wanted the story to hold. We cannot always take another person’s grief away, just as the villagers could not take Kisa Gotami’s grief away. But sometimes simply saying, “You are not alone. I have been here too,” can be an extraordinary act of kindness. Perhaps that is why her journey from house to house becomes something more than a search. Each doorway gives her a little companionship in her sorrow.
And your reading has added another layer to the story for me. It is one of the great privileges of writing that, once a story leaves the writer, readers bring their own lives and experiences to it and discover meanings that the writer may never have consciously placed there.
Thank you for walking through those doors with Kisa Gotami, and for sharing a little of what you found there with me. And yes, there will certainly be more stories to come. I hope some of them will give you another door to walk through. This was my 184th short story. If yoou find the time, peace and frame of mind do read some of my older stories, I am sure that you woyld love many of them.
Some of my novels, and collection of short stories are also available for purchase in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover versions. You may check them out as well: https://storynookonline.com/buy-my-books/
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Another wonderful story, thank you ❤️
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Thank you. You are most welcome.
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Thank you for sharing my story with a wider audience.
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SIR—-I am not familiar with the stories you are but more the treasure for me to find in them! I am told that the Buddha appears often in these stories or someone who acts like him on his behalf.
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Your story appears coincidentally—but what ever is-?—on a morning when a particular close friend appears to have expired, to have died….having just visited her two days ago. Mine also is a house where death and love both inhabit—my wife’s ashes are in a blue marble urn with a place for my ashes when that time comes and arrangements are already in place.
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Your dramatization is very skillful I forget what jasmine smells like, but all the other scents and sounds brought things to life for me, although not from memory necessarily.
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Thank you Sir, for your visit to my blog and the gracious way you treat all your guests!
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Jonathan Caswell
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Dear Jonathan,
Thank you for sharing something so deeply personal with me. I am especially moved that you encountered “The Last Breath” on a morning when someone close to you may have just died, particularly after having seen her only two days earlier. Sometimes stories arrive at our doors at strange and inexplicable moments, and perhaps that is what you meant when you said, “whatever is.” I would not presume to give that coincidence any meaning, but I can understand why the story would have touched you differently that morning.
What you have written about your home, where death and love both inhabit the same space, is profoundly moving. The blue marble urn holding your wife’s ashes, with a place already waiting for yours, carries an extraordinary quietness about it. There is something deeply human in such an arrangement. It acknowledges mortality without allowing death to erase the love that came before it. Perhaps, in its own way, that is very close to what Kisa Gotami learns.
I am also touched that the scents and sounds of the village reached you, even though they may not have come from memory. When I write these stories, I try to make the past tangible through such small things: dust beneath the feet, smoke from a hearth, cattle bells in the distance, the smell of jasmine, the voices behind ordinary doors. If those things became real enough for you to inhabit the village for a little while, then I feel the writing has done what I hoped it would.
And yes, the Buddha does occasionally appear in my stories, sometimes as himself and sometimes, as you beautifully put it, through someone who acts on his behalf. But I am perhaps less interested in presenting him as a figure who simply delivers wisdom than in exploring the moment when an ordinary human being becomes ready to hear it.
Thank you, Jonathan, for receiving this story with such openness, and for trusting me with something so intimate. And thank you as well for your generous words about my visits to your blog. The pleasure is very much mine. I have always believed that when we share our writing, we are also opening a small door into ourselves. Your comment has opened one for me too.
Trishikh Dasgupta
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Thank you Sir. Blessings on you and yours! Jonathan Caswell
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Thank you Jonathan, love and blessings of the almighty to you and your family too.
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😀
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Such a heartwarming story and it has always been a part of our lives. It does not age. Thank you.
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Dear Lakshmi, Thank you so much. I think that is what makes certain stories so precious. They may belong to another age, another place and another way of seeing the world, yet the truth within them remains untouched by time. Grief, love, loss and the struggle to accept what we cannot change are as much a part of our lives today as they were thousands of years ago.
Perhaps that is why Kisa Gotami’s story does not age. We keep returning to it because, at different moments in our own lives, we discover something new within it. Thank you for reading this retelling with such warmth and for reminding me of that timelessness.
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You told it well, Trishikh. I always feel as though I’m visiting your lands in your stories, and they are always beautiful. This story I will forward to my wife to read. She is struggling with the death of her mother, and it will help her.
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What a poignant, heartfelt story, and you told it beautifully!
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Thank you so much Dawn for liking the story. I always treasure your comments and appreciation. It really makes my day.
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Greetings of a serene day, Trishikh,
Thanks for sharing such a poignant story that is heartbreaking.
Detachment works to some extent but requires great practice. Some losses can never be filled and is a permanent void.
Grief requires self healing and patience for the magnitude of the pain reduces slowly but in many cases can never be forgotten, especially a mother losing her child.
Prayers and acceptance help majorly.
Stay blessed. Your storytelling is exemplary. Please keep sharing your priceless pearls of wisdom.
Kind regards, healing, hope, and flawless faith. 🏞
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Greetings, and thank you for such a thoughtful and compassionate response.
You have expressed something that lies very close to the heart of “The Last Breath”. Detachment is often spoken of as though it means simply letting go, but real detachment can be extraordinarily difficult, especially when the loss involves someone we have loved deeply. Some absences do not get filled. They become part of the landscape of our lives, and we learn, slowly and imperfectly, to live around them.
I particularly agree with what you have said about grief requiring patience and self-healing. There is no prescribed duration for grief, and certainly no obligation to forget. Perhaps acceptance is not about forgetting at all. It is about learning to carry the memory without allowing the pain to consume every remaining part of life. And when the loss is that of a child, I can only imagine how profound that journey must be.
I strongly believe in the power of prayer. Being a practicing Christian myself, I personally, constantly look to the Father, Sin, and The Holy Spirit for guidance and complete reliance. Saying that, I have great reverence and try to undrstand all any other religions as well.
Thank you also for your generous words about my storytelling. If my stories can offer even a moment of reflection, comfort or quiet companionship to someone, then I consider that a privilege. Your wishes of healing, hope and faith are received with equal warmth. Thank you for reading, feeling and sharing your thoughts so generously.
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Greetings of a serene day, Trishik.
Thanks a lot for sharing this poignant story that is heartbreaking.
A doting mother losing her child is very painful as is any grief. Self healing works but one has to be patient and trust the ways of our benevolent karma.
Many practice detachment as an antidote but that too requires emotional maturity.
Your storytelling is exemplary. Please keep sharing your pearls of wisdom. Truly appreciated.
Health. Hope. Healing. 🕊🌿🌿🕊
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Greetings of a serene day to you too, and thank you once again for your thoughtful words.
First, please be assured that your previous comment did come through. Since I have to personally approve comments on the website, there can sometimes be a delay of a day or more before I get to see and approve them. But once you post a comment, it will ultimately appear on the site, and I will 100% reply to it. So please never worry that your words have disappeared into the ether.
And thank you for sharing this second reflection on “The Last Breath”. You have beautifully touched upon the difficult relationship between grief and detachment. Detachment may offer a path towards healing, but as you rightly say, it requires emotional maturity and cannot simply be adopted as a remedy for profound loss. Some wounds demand time, patience and the courage to sit with the pain before we can begin to carry it differently.
I also appreciate your thought about self-healing and trusting the ways of karma. Perhaps healing is not about filling the void left by someone we have lost. Some voids remain, especially when a mother loses a child. What changes, slowly, is our relationship with that emptiness. The memory remains, the love remains, and eventually we learn to carry both without allowing the grief to extinguish everything else that life still offers.
Thank you for your generous appreciation of my storytelling. If these stories can become little moments of reflection, healing or companionship for those who read them, then they have served a purpose beyond simply being stories. Your words encourage me to keep sharing them. Wishing you health, hope, healing and, above all, a serene heart.
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Trishikh, your telling of the story touches the heart. For me it is timely and deeply resonant …
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Dear Kajoli, thank you for saying that. Knowing that the story has reached you at a time when its meaning feels particularly close to your heart makes your words especially meaningful to me. Sometimes a story arrives in our lives not merely as something to read, but as something that seems to understand a little of what we are carrying within us.
Perhaps that is why the old story of Kisa Gotami continues to speak across centuries. Grief, love, acceptance and the difficulty of letting go do not really belong to any particular time. We encounter them in different forms, at different moments, but the emotions remain remarkably unchanged.
I am deeply touched that my telling of the story has resonated with you in this way. Thank you for sharing that with me, and for allowing the story to meet you where you are.
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Make me cry, Trishikh. Surrender and acceptance are important leaps of faith for all humans. I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to a muster seed of faith. To accept some painful things, mountain moving is required…
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Thank you so much for this beautiful response. And I personally, from my own religious point of view, strongly believe in the assurance of Jesus’ support to those who believe in Him and have faith in Him, even if it is as little as a mustard seed. Kisa Gotami sets out believing that somewhere there must be a house untouched by death. What she eventually discovers is that the real leap of faith is not believing that life can be made to give us back what it has taken, but believing that we can somehow continue when it does not.
And yes, sometimes acceptance requires nothing less than moving a mountain. It is easy to speak of surrender when we are standing outside someone else’s grief. But when the mountain is our own loss, our own unbearable truth, surrender can feel almost impossible. Perhaps that is why acceptance is not weakness. It can be one of the greatest acts of courage we are capable of.
Thank you for allowing the story to make you cry, and then finding your own “mustard seed of faith” within it. That connection means a great deal to me.
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Bless you, your work and kind spirit bless me.
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I was moved by this story. It captured my attention and opened my heart. It’s so easy to get lost in our own suffering and forget that we are not the only one to endure such struggle. Struggle and pain is part of life and what we resist persists. Thanks for writing and sharing this.🥹🩷🙏
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Thank you so much for this deeply thoughtful response. I am especially touched by your words that the story “opened my heart”. That is perhaps one of the greatest gifts a reader can give a writer.
You have captured one of the quiet truths at the heart of Kisa Gotami’s journey. When we are in the midst of our own suffering, it can feel as though the world has singled us out for a pain that nobody else could possibly understand. It is only when she enters one house after another and hears the stories of those who have lost someone that she begins to see that grief is not hers alone. Her pain does not become smaller, but she no longer has to carry it as though she is the only person who has ever suffered.
And I particularly appreciate what you said about resistance. Sometimes the very thing we spend all our strength resisting is the truth we eventually have to learn to live with. Acceptance does not mean that the pain was insignificant or that we stop loving what we have lost. It simply means that we stop fighting what cannot be changed and begin finding a way forward.
Thank you for reading the story with such openness and for sharing your own reflection with me. I am grateful that it found its way into your heart.
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Keep helping to open hearts and minds. Best wishes.🙏🩷
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Thank you so much. I really treasure your comment.
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My pleasure and you’re most welcome.😊
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This piece holds a quiet gravity — the way you explore the threshold of a final breath feels deeply contemplative and beautifully restrained.
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Thank you so much for this beautifully expressed response. “Quiet gravity” is a phrase I will treasure, because that is very much what I hoped the story would carry. I did not want the final breath to become merely a moment of death, but a threshold between holding on and finally understanding that some things cannot be held forever.
I am particularly glad that the story felt contemplative and restrained to you. Kisa Gotami’s transformation is not a dramatic one. Nothing is magically taken away from her. Her grief remains, but something within her changes as she begins to see her own suffering in the countless stories of loss around her.
Thank you for reading it with such sensitivity and for finding that quiet space within the story. It means a great deal to me.
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