Shakti: The Feminine Divine (18 page)

The place appeared deserted, but Mahisha knew that he was not alone. He whipped around and she was standing behind him, sans the excessive limbs, heavy ornamentation, impressive paraphernalia and her ferocious lion. Her ethereal beauty—highlighted by a flawless complexion, exquisitely proportioned body of satiny smoothness and flowing tresses of midnight black—was entirely lost on him. It did nothing to blunt his anger or his impulse to wrap his hands around her slender neck and snap it in two. But even he could not remain impervious to the fathomless depths of her perfectly rounded eyes that beckoned to him, offering him a glimpse into the dark secrets of the three worlds.

Mahisha refused to meet her gaze; instead, his restless eyes fastened on her garments. Her simple red sari reminded him of his earlier fantasy where a woman in red lay dead under his feet and he desperately hoped that his vision had been indicative of the future. He looked away into the distance, wishing that he
did not feel so claustrophobic.

The walls of stone had locked him out of his world, where he had wielded unlimited power. He wanted to discard the body which had been his father’s gift and glide into the armoured hide of his mother’s form. He knew it would protect him from his enemies. But in that blasted place, with his killer standing so close, there was no room for him to breathe, let alone go on a rampage.

Unable to bear the helplessness he suddenly felt, Mahisha snarled at the woman, who stood so placidly before him, ‘What do you want from me? If you have come to lecture me on my sinful ways, then you can just save it, as there is no one less qualified than you to talk on the subject. You used base witchcraft to kill my best men and spared none, not even when they threw themselves at your feet and begged for mercy. In fact, by comparison, I am far more compassionate even at my worst. At least, I fight like a man, unlike some who resort to fiendish games of the mind!

‘If you really fancy yourself as a doyen of grace, take my advice and hunt down that slippery son-of-a-bitch, Indra, who escaped the death he deserved at my hand by resorting to his usual cowardly tricks that are almost on par with yours. But if you have come to kill me at his behest, please feel free to take your best shot!

‘Unlike Indra, I will not run away and hide. Thanks to the boon which my father won for me, no one in possession of a male organ can harm me. From what I can see, you don’t seem to have one, which explains your obsession with me as well as all things pointy! After all, from what I know of your sex, all their battles are fought in bed! Let us do this thing and get it over with!’

Durga looked at him for a long moment as the sound of his raucous laughter echoed off the rim of the bowl of stone that encased them. Mahisha felt his humour dissipate as agitation gripped him, making him feel like thousands of bugs were crawling up his body and infecting it with their slimy touch. Just when he thought he could bear it no more, she finally responded, ‘I am not surprised that you are behaving like a lout. It is in keeping with your notorious reputation. What does make me curious, though, is when you will grow tired of your endless capacity for nonsense and finally acknowledge that you are glutted with bloodletting. You inflict pain on others to assuage your own. However, when you find that you hurt worse than ever, you stubbornly stick to the same unproductive pattern. It is still simpler than acknowledging that you are wrong, which would mean tearing down everything you have ever built to start afresh.’

Mahisha snorted rudely in response and kicked at a few stones beneath his feet to indicate the contempt in which he held her. Durga continued speaking, giving absolutely no indication that she had noted his belligerence.

‘Of course, given your background, it is understandable that you feel anger and more than a little pain, but surely after killing so many over something as paltry as vengeance and power, you could have gotten over it by now? Sob stories are touching but they get tiresome when the protagonist lets his emotions run amuck like a pack of maddened wolves. Nobody is going to feel too sorry when he is killed off to end his never-ending misery, which can never be controlled long enough to stop it from afflicting others.’

‘Don’t you dare mock me!’ he bellowed at her, shocked that Durga would dare to bring up something that nobody had had
the courage to before.

‘What do you know about losing someone you may have loved more than anything else, but never had the opportunity to do so? Do you know what it feels to be stuck with no option but to hate everything and everyone? You mock me for grieving over the loss of my parents, but what would you have done if Indra had screwed over the father and mother you never had many times over?

‘We have all seen what you are like when angered… It was touching to see how my men brought out the maternal and loving side you are revered for. So many who ought to know better worship you as a beloved mother who would die before letting her children know want or pain. The way you severed off heads and limbs with such unseemly gusto, while your lion feasted on live asuras who pleaded with you for mercy, was a particularly heart-warming sight!

‘What could an evil monster like you possibly know of pain and loss? Don’t think I know nothing of your ugly secrets. You accused me of craving revenge, but seeing that you have often been the avenging fury, who has taken the personal responsibility of inflicting suitable punishment for the ones you deem unworthy, I am surprised at you for insisting that my shit stinks worse than yours.’

Durga smiled at that. It was a strange smile, tinged with sadness, and it wrung the buffalo demon’s heart. Alarmed that she could get to him so easily, he mowed ahead, the words spilling out in a rush.

‘It is your belief that I ought to be condemned for chasing after power. But everybody knows that it is you who has always monopolized the said priceless commodity and guarded it jealously. When the asuras led by me rose in rebellion against
the tyrant Indra, emerging as a threat to your complete and utter dominance over the three worlds and whatever the hell lies beyond, you roused yourself from your beauty sleep to cut us all down to size. You used the superior weapons at your disposal in what could hardly be called an even contest of strength. How are you different from the meanest of bullies who don’t have the courage or moral fibre to pick on someone their own size?

‘As you acknowledged yourself, at least I have a reason for being angry. How do you explain your abominable conduct? If my eyes are to be believed, you got drunk on blood and danced on the corpses like one possessed. Witnesses saw you performing unspeakably vile acts on the dead bodies of the fallen. The atrocities you committed on the battlefield are yet to be equalled! I dare you to deny that you brought about the deaths of so many in such a sadistic fashion!’

Durga twinkled with amusement when she heard his passionate outburst, noting with satisfaction that her merriment only made him angrier. ‘Don’t believe all the things you see, Mahisha! Or the things you hear, smell, taste or feel either. They are always deceptive and mask so much more than they reveal.

‘As for your men, touching though your belated concern is, there is nothing more you can do for them, especially since they did not suffer quite as much as you were led to believe. You don’t seem to have a clear idea about their fate, and I don’t blame you, because some things can be understood only when experienced.

‘Suffice to say that there is a difference between the death of a man from snakebite and another who dies of a heart attack brought on by the sight of a rope he mistook for a snake. Both
are equally dead, but there is a clear difference in their passing, as well as the apportioning of blame, wouldn’t you agree? Despite what you think, I don’t like violence; the whole sadomasochism thing holds little appeal for me. Violence is ugly! I have never understood men’s strange fascination with it and have never felt the need to beat them at their own game.’

Mahisha’s head was spinning as he tried to make sense of her rapid-fire utterances. His voice sounded a little less controlled than he would have liked as he snapped at her, his uneasiness not helping one bit, ‘I believe in action, and not in the senseless bandying of useless words. If it is my life you have come to claim, then you are welcome to it, provided you do the honourable thing and earn it by fighting like a man! Let us give every poet, bard and storyteller something that is truly epic—a fight to the death between the valiant Mahishasura and his adversary, Goddess Durga, who has more tricks up her sleeve than the canniest shyster in the three worlds!’

‘I can save you the time and tell you exactly what they will sing about,’ replied an amused Durga. ‘The mighty buffalo demon held his own against the invincible devi, who had already broken the backbone of the asura army by vanquishing them almost down to the last man. And yes, those with a kinkier twist of mind will speak about macabre dances and all kinds of hanky-panky performed on corpses by the said goddess.

‘After rhapsodizing at length about what a fantastic antagonist you make, they will cut to the scene of your death, which will see me pin you down by the neck with my foot and pierce your heart with my spear. And when your true form attempts to escape from the gaping jaw of the buffalo that you favour so much, I’ll cut off your head with my sword. The
devas will shower flowers on my head and beautiful hymns will be composed, proclaiming my greatness to the three worlds. Sculptures and paintings will do justice to this definitive moment. What do you think? That is quite a story, is it not?’

Mahisha stared at her, wondering why Durga was toying with him in this manner.

‘I am not playing with you,’ she told him, abandoning her irreverent tone, ‘nor do I wish to pervert the beautiful friendship that is blossoming between us, despite all your resistance. Your king-sized ego and endless bravado notwithstanding, you cannot help but realize that killing you would be the easiest thing to do for me, and yet I have stayed my hand…’

‘Tell me why?’ Mahisha interrupted her. ‘What is the point of all this? Why are we wasting our time with all this chitchat? Indra must be beside himself with impatience. He must be tearing off entire chunks of his hair, cussing you out even more roundly than I am, because you seem to be taking an interminable length of time to do what they sent you to.’

‘Simply put, it is because I tend to get impatient with people who armour themselves so thoroughly with self-deception that they lose sight of who they are,’ Durga replied. ‘Instead, they assume avatars that are the real monsters, born of darkness, hate and anger, and open up for themselves endless vistas filled with such poisonous potential that it does not bear describing.

‘Mahisha, you have always been a great one for excuses. You allowed your flawed understanding of the tragedy that overtook you at birth to shape every one of your subsequent actions, which, though you don’t see it that way, became increasingly ruthless and self-serving. In your eyes, the quest to
avenge the death of your parents was a noble one. You refused to change your diseased viewpoint even when it became increasingly apparent to all that the chosen path was leading you so far astray that there was little hope of you ever finding your way back.

‘All who got in the way were exterminated because you were so obsessed with your target. Soon you were standing neck-deep in the blood of the innocent and still you ploughed ahead with single-minded determination.

‘There is guilt nestled deep within you, lodged alongside the shame bred on the worst of your actions. How do I know all this? It is because the fearless Mahishasura, who is dying for the chance to cross swords with one he cannot hope to prevail over, is too much of a coward to look inside himself without running away like a little boy.’

With a start of angry denial, Mahisha finally looked into those dreadful eyes from which there was no hiding. They were the colour of burning coal and he was drawn inexorably into the hypnotic fire that blazed with potent energy at their epicentre. Unbearable heat threatened to scorch him as he drew even closer, but he refused to waver and plunged in headlong.

The burning sensation gave way to cool darkness when he allowed himself to be fully submerged in the safest place that had ever welcomed him. Within moments he was swept away on the current of the swirling tides in their depths, the goddess a distant presence on the odyssey she had urged him to take. Leaving behind his corporeal form, he became lighter than air as he floated away, guided by her hand to whatever it was that lay waiting to confront him.

When he surfaced, Mahisha had no idea where he was. Time, that most stern of captors, seemed to have relaxed its
hold on him just a little and rolled back on itself to afford him a rare and precious opportunity. It took him a while to get acclimatized to the sensations that gripped him, triggered by the images that danced around him in a dizzying array, demanding that he register every detail before they crumbled into the mist. He felt as if he were looking at himself from somewhere distant, as though he were nothing more than a curious observer.

Feverish images danced drunkenly around him, faster and faster, forcing Mahisha’s attention on them before they spun away forever. The floodgates of his subconscious were thrown open and images spilled forth in a torrential outpouring, allowing him no time to absorb their import or sift through them and come to terms with them.

He saw himself in so many lifetimes that he could no longer keep track as they stumbled over each other in their urgency to catch his attention. An ugly toad squashed by a creature bigger and uglier than him. A bird that had died trying to protect its hatchlings from a predator.

The buffalo demon saw the unwanted girl child he had once been, born into an impoverished household. His next avatar, a heavily muscled man, who seemed to be a lowly soldier, forced the little girl away from his mind. He was a loner with no friends or family. He enjoyed the feeling of power it gave him to kick a dog so hard that it collapsed in a heap. The definitive moment of that existence came one night when he saw a pair of lovers sneak away to a secluded spot where they might enjoy some privacy. He killed the young man while he was still inside the girl. But much to his dismay, the second victim of that night escaped from his clutches before he had taken his pleasure with her.