Shakti: The Feminine Divine (27 page)

Sweet triumph had been his to savour when he had vanquished the indestructible Vritrasura and established a new social order that had won him plaudits. Yet, the taste had turned bitter in his mouth all too soon. How was it even possible for the greatest warrior of all time to go from such a high to the bottom of the barrel, where he had been subjected to the power of a motley crew composed of the ugliest hags and crones you ever saw?

Was anybody aware of the indignity he had suffered? Indra fervently hoped not. It was far more palatable to have them believe that the terrible sin he had incurred in killing Vritra, who had been a Brahmin, had caught up with him in the form of Brahmahatya. No doubt he would be lauded for the supreme sacrifice he had made for the good of the three worlds. Anything would be better than the humiliating truth about his current predicament.

Brihaspati, Sachi and the devas would knock themselves
out searching for him, but even though he wanted to be delivered from this coven of witches, a part of him wished never to be found. Indra could handle all forms of torture and pain sufficient to kill him many times over; pity mingled with contempt would, however, be too hard to bear. Death was a far better alternative.

A handful of his jailers looked in on him, pointing and muttering amongst themselves. They were even more hideous to look upon than he remembered. Their arms and bare bums were covered with thick hair that matched the tangled locks that spilled out of their heads, like puddles of mud. As for their ugly, squat bodies, they were enough to put a man off sex for good! Indra wondered if their mothers had mated with gorillas.

Shockingly, though, his revulsion was mirrored in their eyes as well. His beautiful countenance and perfect form were looked upon with a loathing that matched his own. Their protuberant eyeballs almost exploded, unable to withstand the venom that they were forced to contain within themselves. Indra was puzzled. If anybody had the right to be revolted, it was he, not they who were fortunate to get this close to the apotheosis of masculine splendour.

The thought of beauty filled him with sudden guilt. Amaravathi had been filled to overflowing with the irresistible pulchritude of the apsaras, those ethereal creatures of air and water, skilled in the sixty-four arts and purveyors of pleasure. Partnering them were their male counterparts, the gandharvas, the lords of music and dance. In the great purge, they had been killed in large numbers because of their notoriously ambiguous morality, which had seen them consorting freely with Vritra, becoming willing participants in his sybaritic pursuits. Naturally, most of them were on the kill list of the lokapalas.

Urvashi, Menaka, Tilotamma, Girtachi, Kumbhayoni, Varuthini, Mitrakeshi, Padmayoni, Chitralekha…their names tumbled over themselves in his mind. Along with graphic memories, a terrible reminder of happier times when they had danced so beautifully that just looking at them had been sufficient to forget all the problems that had plagued him. Or when they joined him in bed, together or individually, with their smooth bodies smothering the ever-present unhappiness and giving him blessed release from his troubles. They were all gone now; proof that pleasure was ephemeral and by consuming it ravenously without moderation, you merely set yourself up for endless pain.

A painful memory Indra had banished from his consciousness stirred to life in that hellhole, which allowed him no room to hide. Or perhaps Mahadevi was siphoning away every thought that was remotely heartening, leaving nothing but soul-crushing bleakness behind. It was of Rambha, whom he had last seen when the lokapalas were scouring the heavens of its noxious elements and Indra was heading towards his fateful encounter with Vritra.

The sound of slaughter was the only music being played endlessly during the course of the ritual cleansing Amaravathi was undergoing. Indra had paused, hypnotized by its cadence. Just then a female had thrown herself at his feet, wrapping her arms around his knees, causing him to awkwardly right himself before he took a spill and landed unceremoniously on the rough ground.

Indra had wished that hysterical damsels in distress would not be so wrapped up in their personal shit that they would throw themselves at him without the remotest consideration that he was a man on a mission. Needy females were the worst!
And then he had seen the face and cloaked form of one whom in the past he had been addicted to. Her name was Rambha and every time they had made furious love, he had whispered in her ears, ‘My addiction to you is potent and all-consuming, and I hope that there is no cure for it!’

Rambha was weeping up a storm and her shrieks drowned the soaring strains of slaughter, much to Indra’s annoyance.

‘You have to save me!’ she had babbled incoherently, her formerly mellifluous voice grating on his ear at the shrill pitch usually employed by cats that were being strangulated. ‘You have to put a stop to this madness. So many of us… We did nothing wrong… There was nothing left of Menaka’s face… I tried to help, but those ungrateful bastards to whom we gave so generously of our love have no mercy, now that they have had their fill of us! I had to flee!’ She kept on with her incessant blubbering, but Indra was no longer listening.

The face had all his attention. How could he have ever thought it beautiful? Incessant crying had made her eyes ugly and puffy. A blow had left a bad bruise on one cheek. Her luscious lips were oozing blood. The gossamer robes she favoured to proudly display her curves in all their magnificence were in tatters and the contours of her body looked obscene. Indra was disgusted. Shorn of the entire panoply of the regalia that constituted her beauty, she looked exactly like the wretched whore she was at the core. The thought that he had been inside a nasty piece of goods like her, more often than he cared to remember, made him want to vomit.

With a savage kick aimed to the face, he had forced her out of his way and walked on without a backward glance. But he remembered the look in her eyes that had opened wide in shock and hurt when the unexpected blow landed on her face,
knocking out her teeth. She had looked dazed, and it had made him want to laugh. The sounds of killing had resumed in his ears and he knew that karma had caught up with the odious creature, whose muffled sobs continued to assail his senses.

The exquisite Rambha had been his favourite, and not just because she worshipped the ground he walked on. He had considered her a good friend and confidant. They had had some glorious times in the company of Kama and Rati, drinking too much, trading stories and laughing. He remembered the sensuous way she would sidle up to him, and Kama’s pleasant demeanour that had always soothed him. What had happened to the good times?

Indra squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself not to feel bad, and it worked. Everything that had come to pass— the killing of Vritra, the hunt for his followers and their persecution, the endless witch hunt in the three words, the obliteration of false goddess worship and the establishment as well as implementation of fresh rules regarding the governance and upkeep of character—was part of the divine design, orchestrated by fate. And it was all for the best.

The crystal palace that had been his gift to Kama had been torched. Seeing the almighty conflagration Indra had experienced a pang, despite himself. His former friend would be devastated, wherever he was. All the research his wife and he had painstakingly gathered on love, desire and sex, preserved in lengthy scrolls, would have been eaten up by the flames, never to be returned to living memory in its original state. Once again Indra closed his eyes. He insisted that it had to be done, until he made himself believe it.

When he drew back the eyelids, Kali was squatting in front of him, poised, it seemed, to take a dump. The chains that had
been holding him in place snapped off and Indra was able to move again. Compared to Kali, the harpy attendants looked like veritable apsaras.

The fearsome goddess was a big woman with the grossest appearance he had ever seen. Large and thickset, her face looked like somebody had sat on it and squished her features together. He could see the rolls of fat that even her massive paunch seemed to have trouble accommodating as they spilled over onto her trunk-like thighs. The dense jungle that made up her hair touched the ground, gathering the filth of the universe lovingly into its tresses, in order to perfume it with a a stench that pervaded the room. It launched a vicious attack on his sensitive olfactory system, which was already in shock, having been subjected to the foul bodily odours of her attendants. Indra was careful to mask his derision, though. Kali radiated power and his instincts warned him that under the formidable exterior lurked something far more terrifying.

Kali observed his reactions with exceedingly good humour. When she smiled, he saw her jagged, uneven teeth that had undoubtedly been sharpened on the bones of her victims and stained with their blood. She motioned for him to be seated. To his surprise he obeyed at once, sitting cross-legged in front of her, but avoided looking into her close-set, bloodshot eyes that seemed to beckon him inside.

‘I find beauty to be an overrated and burdensome commodity…’ she informed him, her voice slicing into his eardrums with the force of thrown daggers. ‘All it is good for is to capture the unwanted attention of lascivious males, who will then devise a means to secure it for their blue-veined pumping poles till they have a hankering for something even more beautiful.

‘Despite this predictable pattern, there is something addictive about male attention and once they have enjoyed its peculiar allure, women want more of it. This is why they primp and preen, pretending to themselves that they pluck out their unsightly body hair, slather themselves with muck peddled by shysters and shape their bodies in keeping with the current ideal delineated by fickle males, all for their own satisfaction. I, on the other hand, have always been something of a contrary creature, and this avatar of mine is far more liberating and empowering, don’t you think?’

‘Frankly, at this moment in time, I couldn’t care less about feminine beauty or the lack of it hereabouts,’ Indra replied, unable to keep the rudeness out of his voice. ‘I just want to know why I am being held here against my will. If you release me at once, I’ll promise to give you lot a quick death when the lokapalas track down this last stronghold of divine femininity gone hopelessly astray.’

‘I appreciate the sentiment! Even if you are in no position to threaten…’ Kali purred, fluttering her lashes at him. ‘As to why you are here, I thought it was obvious. I am in love with you and there is no way I can get you to love me back, short of kidnapping you. Men like you refuse to see the beautiful heart that beats beneath this far-from-pleasing exterior.

‘My attendants will get the pleasure of beating you up until you beg for mercy, after which I’ll sashay in with healing potions to apply on that beautiful body. Then we will make love and repeat the procedure day after day. Soon you will learn to crave my touch and the attentions of my dakinis to such an extent that even in the unlikely instance that I decide to set you free, you will come crawling back into my embrace and we will live happily ever after. The poets will compose songs about our
romance and it will all be just peachy.’

Bile rose thickly in his throat, and Indra wondered if he could projectile vomit and make it hit her squarely in the face. She smiled sweetly at him, seeming to dare him to try just that.

‘Where is Durga? Is she too busy screwing wild buffaloes?’ That was quite the insult, he congratulated himself; it was too bad he could not bring himself to say it aloud. Instead, he said with as much sarcasm as he could muster, ‘I am sure you have a beautiful heart, but I doubt it is as fabulous as the package it comes in. Which man in his right mind wouldn’t want a piece of that? But unlike the superficial males out there, I am bowled over by your sweet disposition and your sunny nature!’

Kali cackled and once more Indra thought his eardrums would explode. ‘Your reputation is well deserved. You are the consummate politician indeed, with smarminess to spare and just enough charisma. And you are quite brave to take that tone with me! But enough with the chitchat. Let us talk about the real reason you are here instead.’

‘I am here because Mahadevi thinks that we have put an end to goddess worship and deprived her of the sacrificial oblations. But that is a gross misunderstanding. All we did is to foil Vritra’s attempts to corrupt the Vedic way of life, using her name for his perverted mission to pander to all things deplorable, putting the future of the three worlds at risk. Not only that, we have established procedures to worship the Goddess in a decent, ritualistic manner that does not require females to discard their clothes, untie their hair and frolic like the canine species.’

He paused a little when he noticed Kali’s glaring nudity and unbound hair. If Dadichi, Svayambuha and the others from their illustrious gatherings had beheld her in this state, they
would have been absolutely horrified and insisted that Indra kill her first, leaving Vritra for later. Picturing the expressions on their faces on witnessing Kali’s exposed genitals made him want to laugh out loud.

‘That was mighty noble of you, to take up the chore of protecting the women who had proved themselves worthy by submitting to systematic indoctrination, while mercilessly destroying the rebels! Self-appointed guardians of a woman’s virtue and chastity always warm the cockles of my heart,’ Kali told him.

He could feel her eyes boring into him, even though he had avoided looking at her directly. ‘Tell me… Do you really think that so many lives had to be sacrificed because you were insecure about Vritra and, along with those tight-assed high priests of conventionality, happened to experience a sudden shrinking of your penis, since men such as yourself have always feared powerful women?’

‘It is said in the scriptures that an individual can be sacrificed to save a family, a village to rescue a kingdom and the whole earth to salvage the soul,’ Indra replied, his initial defensiveness retreating while his conviction grew stronger. ‘The admittedly tough course we took was ethically acceptable because we did not sacrifice innocent lives as a means to an end. Rather, we killed only those who had been morally corrupted, to save the rest from the taint..’