Life's Simple Pleasures

As Kulika turned, she felt the scroll arrive in her pocket. Mid-swish, the fabric of her robe took on a new bulk. She stopped her exercise and reached into the folds of soft linen to retrieve it.
A judgement, she thought, seeing the red ribbon holding the tube of papyrus closed. But on who? Thought became action as she tugged the thread of scarlet silk and smoothed the curve from the rough paper. Her eyes, richly dark and glistening like melted chocolate, took in the information as her lips formed a pleased smile. Kulika was surprised to find herself nodding in agreement with the missive.
‘Something juicy?’ asked Jalpa. She had a sixth sense for anything out of the ordinary, Kulika was in no way surprised to find she had company.
‘Juicy? No, not really. It’s the verdict on Gill.’
‘Oh? Is that the one you took to appeal?’
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
‘And?’
‘The Dandanayaka agreed to my proposal.’
‘Well, well, well!’ Jalpa smiled, smoothing a few stray hairs back into the mass of black straightness that framed her face. ‘I imagine they were surprised, a known Intentionist like yourself asking for Consequential punishment.’
Kulika scanned the document again, breathing in to buy herself time to compose a polite answer to her colleague. ‘I have no idea, but it appears they agreed with me at least.’
‘And you don’t fear judgement in your turn, for hypocrisy?’
Kulika let the comment hang in the air a moment, then emphasised her lack of a response with a clearing of her throat. ‘Excuse me,’ she murmured, closing her eyes as she envisioned Gill and focused on her charge’s essence. Savouring the familiar sense of a shift of reality as she moved from the Devic realm to the mortal. Gill was sleeping, she realised, and settled to wait for the woman to return to consciousness.
Jalpa’s barb had hit home, Kulika realised. Her hands were trembling, and the certainty that had come the moment she had received the scroll had deserted her.
Kulika was, and always had been an Intentionist. When she rebalanced, she did it to the weight of a person’s heart when they made the key decision. Kulika remembered the seemingly endless debates with Jalpa when they were training, how their teacher had eventually called a halt. They were two ends of a spectrum, he had said, most balancers would use both techniques, over the course of their careers.
Kulika had never called for a Consequential Judgement before today, though. In all her years, she had clung to the belief that a person could only be responsible for the things they actually held sway over; themselves. If someone sent flowers, intending them to be a pleasant surprise, but the recipient was allergic and ended up in hospital how could that have been foreseen? If a person gave money, out of charity, and the recipient used it to buy drugs and died, how could that be judged as manslaughter or murder? No, for Kulika the answer had always lain in the heart: Until Gill.
It was, Kulika reflected, as though Gill also believed passionately in Intentionism. No, not just that Gill knew about it, but that she wanted to use it, to avoid her own karma. Gill’s intention were always, apparently, good. She befriended the lonely, she offered an ear to the desperate, she was always the first to offer what she had to those who needed it.
The truth, Kulika had come to realise, was something different. Gill befriended the lonely because she fed on their vulnerability, their desperation for human connection allowed Gill to take advantage of their good natures. She offered an ear to the desperate because her own self-esteem was so low, she needed to know she was better than others. The secrets they whispered to her were not kept, but used as currency to gain sway with other groups. The debts she collected with her apparent generosity were not proportionate, somehow these situations all came out to Gill’s advantage and she took more than she gave.
Yet, when Kulika had come to judge her, she had felt that the woman’s heart was pure. Although her actions felt cold and calculating, there was no darkness in her core. If others turned against her, Gill was genuinely confused and hurt. Kulika had engineered minor setbacks and inconveniences for her charge time after time, before realising that they were achieving nothing. Gill’s actions left Kulika with a bad taste in her mouth, her Intentionism told her that she must judge kindly but her inate sense of justice screamed for a punishment that would be an awakening.
The Dandanayaka had agreed. Unrolling the scroll again, Kulika read the judgement in full. Until Gill showed some sense of awareness of her true motivations, Kulika was to withold all of life’s simple pleasures. As ever, the judges had come to a fitting decision; Gill made the life of those around her miserable, until she saw that, her life would be the same.
Starting small, Kulika flexed her intention and extinguished the flame in the boiler; Gill wouldn’t awaken to a warm house, there would be no hot water for her shower. Spotting a cat, curled up on the end of the bed, Kulika persuaded it to use Gill’s slippers for a litter tray. Moving through the house, the bread became mouldy, the milk sour. The coffee jar shifted on the shelf, ready to fall and spill its contents to the floor when the cupboard door was opened.
Gill’s newly washed clothes would now irritate her skin, her shoes would cause blisters. Her office chair would develop a squeak, and the good-looking guy from accounts? He was taking the day off with a headache. When Gill decided enough was enough, she needed to self-medicate this bad day with chocolate she would discover that she had run out of change, or the vending machine was empty. From the moment she awoke until she slept, or until she had a realisation, there would be none of the small things that make life comfortable, no consolations to the days many frustrations.
Inclining her head in satisfaction, Kulika watched Gill as she slept. It was a remarkable day, handing down her first Consequential judgement. Kulika hoped she would not have to deliver many more, but her intention remained what it always was; helping her charges grow as people and make the world a better place.