Tiny Ayudia, God and the Star

/ With my gratitude to the women of Bali: your names and traditions of the Indonesian people, the responses to my questions carefully transmitted from you , inspired me to write this metaphor of being. The characters created in it do not relate to anyone personally, and the names when I pronounce them sound beautiful and sonorous to me /

 Having refreshed herself with the nectar of a flower that laid in a chanang* and had been chosen with a big love, Ayudia flew from it to the flat surface of a stone. She sat there, folded her round transparent wings and gazed with interest at the huge world around her. Babe Ayudia was very small. With two funny bulging eyes, she was so light that flying past you, you would barely feel her with tiny hairs of your body. Ayudia did not have a developed brain and could not think complexly, but God transferred the living soul into her, which ( looking at the huge, shining and colorful world) desired to do something special for it. That’s why cutie Ayudia was not in a hurry, she just looked at the world, and if her reactions could be expressed verbally, they would sound like this: “What? What can I do for all of you? I would really like to give you a lot from myself, I would like to give you something special.”
 Vaiya was looking down at Ayudia. She was so harmful, grumpy, unyielding and evil that God placed her soul in a stone, and a sculptor carved a statue of a goddess with a serious face from it. The goddess was pouring water from a jug into a pool. Ayudia sat on the pool`s edge.
 “How pathetic and funny you are!” Vaiya mocked at tiny Ayudia, “You are so stupid that you sat on the most dangerous place and you don’t even see it. Nothing can fix creatures like you. In my time I have seen many like you-  stupid and not long living . Hey, do you hear what I’m telling to you?”
 But Ayudia did not hear her at all. God made it so that none of the living creatures heard Vaya, he also made it so that she did not feel time, she simply stood on the edge of the pool for many, many years.
“Yes, I see that you are not capable for the dialogue,” Vaya arrogantly concluded  , “If you were capable, you would... However, to whom am I telling my wisdom? Beings like you are off no use to anyone and turn into trash floating on a surface of the water after death.”
 Ayudia crawled onto a dry and sun-warmed area of the stone, so that from there she could better see the shining water in the huge sea - this is how the pool seemed to her. And at the moment a man emerged from under the water and put his hand where tiny Ayudia was sitting. When the man removed his hand, all that was left of Ayudia was a wet spot with wings. She ceased to exist and God moved her soul again.
“Ah-ha-ha-ha!” Vaya loudly laughed out , “I told you, you won’t live even a minute.”
 For a long time Vaiya made fun on everyone who darted or crawled past her and even on her surface as snails did. She kept pouring water from the fake jug into the pool day by day until she was completely old with moss and mold, and a piece of stone broke off from her. Then the children of the children of those people who used the statue threw it out of the garden, and it became overgrown with grass, and after many centuries it was completely covered with a layer of earth. But even being underground  the obnoxious Vaiya did not stop. She always wanted attention to her. She used to the fact that standing by the pool everyone was looking at her, but now only blind worms and beetle larvae lived underground. However Vaiya also managed to reproach them for their stupidity and simplicity: “How insignificant you are,” she said, “Blind, no one looks at you, they won’t even notice whether you lived or not!” And the incessant Vaiya grumbled, mocked, and sarcastically spoke for so long that she even got lived until life on Earth ceased and the Sun almost went out in the Universe. No one was flowing, fussing or rustling around Vaiya’s nose anymore. But with nothing else to do she scolded herself: “Nasty, old ugly thing, eaten right through, no one looks at you, no one listens, no one needs you.”
 Then having heard like this Puspa turned to God: “I had been carrying oceans, seas and countless trillions of living beings on my surface for so long. They have all disappeared, and it seems I have fulfilled my task. I'm tired of listening to the unbearable Vaya, I have no more power for this. I beg you, make her shut up!"
“For that I have to destroy both of you” - God responded to her since he was responding directly only to a few souls who were awarded great responsibility. God also knew who she was even earlier - Puspa cooked well and welcomed guests, she smiled a lot and was hard-working. Even without all that stuff God liked her because her soul was harmonious and beautiful.
“I beg you, do what you have to”- said Puspa who was once a living planet.
God made this world collapse and then expand, and such process was repeating for several times. God realized that Vaiya had learned nothing, but he gave her one more chance, he wondered, if she would say differently. God freed Puspa from a series of incarnations and took her to himself. “Let her smiles for me ”-  he has decided. God placed the soul of tiny Ayudia in the center of a star and it lit up. Its luminosity turned out to be equal to 3.828 * 10 to the 26th power of Watt *, and every second 4 million tons of matter were converted into energy, and this was enough for life to arise on one of the planets nearby the star. The star Ayudia  was so huge that it barely felt the gravitational waves of its planets, probably,  at the level of human sensations it would be perceived as a flight of a lightest insect with wings past you. But Ayudia’s soul was interested in something else. She knew now she was doing something special and great for many, many souls.
 As for the soul of Vaiya, God scattered it into small parts, and all of them were enclosed in minerals and soil on an inhabited planet. These minerals were absorbed by the roots of plants, and people made wood from them and then paper, cardboard and paints. When all the parts of Vaiya's soul united in one object, she was able to speak and see, but people did not hear her.
“Oh, how wonderful it is!” - exclaimed Vaiya, “Finally, you appreciated me! It's great that everyone is happy to see me, right! I need to be carried in the arms of the whole town and the whole village! After all, it’s better when I’m taller than you, bigger than you, and you look at me with admiration and this funny joy, from bottom to top.”
She did not loudly say out that she saw them as backward and well-dressed hillbillies, simpletons, just so as not to be removed from the bamboo stretcher. Then Vaya was placed in the town square, it began to get dark outside and people continued to celebrate something. Torches lit up and music sounded. Vaya looked around her and was horrified: “Ugh, what an abomination these statues are with hanging out bellies, protruding tongues, wild overgrown nails and disheveled hair! They also have terrible bruises under their eyes. The horror is terrible. I realized: the more disgusting they are, the better for them.” She was disgusted by the statues her own size collected everywhere. Vaiya didn’t have time to figure it out:  why she was placed here among the others? She was absorbed in the delight of the way she was carried and worshiped, and the fact that she considered herself very different from all those ugly creatures who piled up next to her exited her much. Then, very quickly, people began to scream, laugh and set fire to the monster figures. They burned easily and brightly since they were all made of paper and cardboard. Vaiya almost burst out laughing and looking at this. But when people rushed towards her with fire, she protested: “I’m different! You are making a mistake! This can't happen to me! Stupid, arrogant, scoundrels, getting involved with you is to my own detriment, a-a-a-ah!” Vaya screamed but she flared up like a big candle and burned to the ground along with others Ogoh-Ogoh. People had fun watching at this, because they wanted to get bad things gone away and the positive things to come into their lives.
At night the wind scattered the ashes left from Vaiya across the square, threw it into the streets, and in the morning warm monsoon rain washed away all the particles in an unknown direction. God made sure that Vaiya did not say differently, although she had such an opportunity any time: after all, he could always hear her even when she remained silent to others. God was now no longer interested in moving her back in a patong* or something similar. He no longer resorted to collecting the pieces of her broken soul. They disseminated throughout all over the world, penetrated water, plants, food, animals and birds, people, and therefore some of us can grumble and get angry, hate ourselves and others to this day.

When Ayudia was shining and releasing prominences from her surface, she ( if put it in a starry way of saying) “have closely looked ” at one of the nearest planets. The planet “seemed” special to her, with a tempting wavelength of 490 nanometers*. Then Ayudia asked God:
- Let me visit it.
- What would you like to get from there?
- I’m too big and I can’t discern this little thing. I desire to gain experience for myself - if I am small, can I  love them even when I simply exist without doing anything for them?
- So be it, - God told her. He moved the soul of Ayudia and took himself a place inside the star causing a great flash on it.
As soon as it hatched, the smallest insect with the soul of cutie Ayudia followed the scent to a banten* that laid next to a gorgeous chanang. On the way from it having had a good meal she sat down on the edge of a pool and experienced everything she asked God for. Having returned in the star after death Ayudia perceived the experience as “magical”, “unforgettable”, although by the standards of a star she stayed on the blue planet for a billionth of a second or maybe even less. God gladly gave her his place since it is always too hot for him to be inside a star.

Ubud, Bali. Morning of 03/14/2024

/ Not all Ogoh-Ogoh are burned at Nyepi celebrations. The special ones and the winners of a competition are left  and they stand on display. Also an artist named Nyoman told me that such Ogoh-Ogoh can be taken to a museum/

* chanang - a small offering to spirits and deities in the form of a small basket with flowers, cookies and fragrant herbs
* banten - large fruit offering
* patong - a stone sculpture in front of an entrance to a dwelling in the form of a deity, animal or human
* 450-510 nanometers is the dark blue and light blue visible color wavelength
* 3.828*10 to the 26th power Watt - luminosity of the Sun


 Translated into English by Stepan Lebedev 05.07.2024, Moscow