The Island

[uddhava]

I am back with a story...

The inhabitants of a fortunate city located on a mountain top, live in permanent peace, concord and prosperity. A group of them travel by sea and suffer shipwreck. They are cast ashore on a wretched island of dark caves and wild beasts inhabited by a race of apes. A powerful bird dominates the island and every day carries off some of the apes to eat them. The castaways live a life of hardship and misery on the island. As the apes get accustomed to them, some of the men get attracted to their females, mingle with them and reproduce. Eventually they compete eagerly for the attention of the female apes, hate and fight each other, find enjoyment in this life and desire its perpetuity. Then one of them has a dream in which he returns to his homeland. The people welcome him and he feels happy that God has rescued him from the miserable life of his exile. As he awakes and finds himself among the apes he becomes sad and averse to remaining in that wretched place, and thinks about how to return to his home. He tells his dream to one of his brethren who now also remembers their homeland. They remind others of their brethren who had had come with them of their former abode of happiness, opening their eyes to the sordid state of their present abode, and everyone joins in the task of building a ship...