Shakti: The Feminine Divine (3 page)

Vishnu had walked away then, as had Brahma, neither feeling particularly great at that point. The duo had not succeeded nor failed in their respective purposes. The import of their words alone remained and for better or worse, the non-neutralized parts of both their utterances were fated to come true and cast their pall over the three worlds.

Perhaps the problem was that Brahma lacked faith, unlike Vishnu. The Goddess was too kind to allow anybody to wallow in the quicksand of unrequited love. Indulging his need for her, she would emerge from his tongue as Vac, having sharpened his mind with the ultimate reality distilled within the spoken word, and bestow upon him the gift of knowledge. Later, Shakti would part with a portion of herself and take birth as Brahma’s consort, Saraswati. She had done something similar for Vishnu as a mark of her favour, bestowing upon him the goddess of prosperity, Lakshmi, without whom his task as the Preserver would have been so much harder.

Brahma’s ignorance of such universal truths despite his profound intelligence never ceased to amaze Vishnu. It was his last thought as the guardian of the sacred and profane shut his eyes and ears to the coitus of Shiva and Shakti, sinking into restful slumber.

While Vishnu slumbered, the Goddess was in the arms of her lover. Shiva and Shakti’s lovemaking alternated between frenetic passion and sleepy affection. When their protracted foreplay reached even greater heights of intensity and their coupling neared its climax, the three energy strands or gunas— black tamas of sluggish torpor, red rajas that pulsates with frenetic activity and white sattvic that renders all beatific with its purity—would be fully activated and released, in order that they might work in tandem with Brahma. The gunas would ensure that the physical universe became fully manifest through the infinite permutations they were capable of. This would imbue their essence in all of creation, from the humblest rock to the mightiest monarch, as well as all the extant fauna and flora.

Shakti smoothed Shiva’s magnificent eyebrows gently, loving the look of him as he slept like a baby, completely oblivious to all else.

‘I could burst into flames and sleepyhead here would probably manage a snore in response!’ she thought, unable to resist kissing the very tip of his nose.

Closing her eyes, she willed sleep to rescue her from wayward thoughts, but it was not to be. They closed in about her, tendrils of unease and apprehension snaking their way into her consciousness.

Brahma’s love for her was bothersome in a manner that was alien to her nature, but had a maddeningly familiar quality
to it. He loved her, it was true, albeit in his own inimitably irksome way. But his response to her rejection had unnerved her, when the love he proclaimed did a volte-face, with wrenching suddenness. There had been so much resentment and bitterness that it had bordered on hardened hate and it felt like a blow to the gut. Vishnu had been reliable as ever, stepping in to do the damage control that was needed.

‘Most envy me for the love borne me by the Supreme Trinity, but most wouldn’t know that it makes me feel like a piece of meat being pulled in three different directions by starving dogs!’ Shakti groused, wishing her uneasiness would vanish. ‘I wish it were possible for me to keep harsh realities at bay like Shiva, by refusing to care or even acknowledge their presence. It is too bad that I am a seeker of unpalatable truths, one of which is that Brahma, who loves me so much it hurts him so, will eventually find a way to hurtle his pain at the three worlds and me. A fine mess that is going to be! How can I not worry about it?’

Pressing herself softly against Shiva so as not to wake him, she tried to absorb his tranquillity through osmosis. It seemed to work. The wheel of time had come full circle and a fresh beginning was in sight, signalling the onset of the cycle of birth, life and death, with the attendant problems it entailed. Anticipation replaced the mild queasiness she had been feeling, that uplifting emotion itself giving way to exhilaration.

‘Why do I worry? The important thing is that I have Shiva by my side and together, we can handle anything, given enough time! If only we could be like this for all of eternity, I would be entirely content. For now, it is enough that we are in each other’s arms.’

Her eyelids closed of their own volition and Shakti felt almost at peace. Sleep had nearly laid claim upon the Goddess, but it was monstrous truth which got to her first, causing her to come awake, shaking with nameless dread as its prophetic message forced itself upon her: nothing lasts forever, not even Shiva and Shakti.

The First Blush of Dawn

A
MONG THE NAMES
of power bestowed on the Goddess, Usas was one of the oldest. She was dearly beloved and had been present at the very beginning—a time when evil had yet to gain a proper foothold, though it was as old as she was.

Usas was considered the most beauteous and charming maiden in all of heaven. The poets never got tired of composing songs in her honour, praising her remarkable good looks and heaping encomiums on her for the noble service she performed, to improve the lot of god and man alike. The obsession with her was so complete that every other goddess in the mix was almost completely ignored. For a brief luminescent period in history, she was the most venerated of them all, as the Rig Veda would eventually bear testament to.

It was the wont of Usas to ride ahead of Surya, the sun god, either bareback on her beautiful mare with the honey-gold mane so like her own, or in a little chariot of white-gold drawn by pretty cream-coloured ponies. She rose from the clouds,
looking picture perfect even as she stretched and yawned, heralding the beginning of a new day. She would playfully push them aside and spill out across the heavens, cloaking them with a delicate palette of hues ranging from her favourite pink to lighter shades of gold, orange and yellow, which she knew the sun favoured.

Uninhibited as a precocious infant, Usas would perform her ablutions in full view of anyone who cared to watch and the morning dew would taste delicious forever after for having touched her person. Quickly, but with infinite care, the goddess would perform her toilette aided by nymphs who made their home in the gossamer clouds and worshipped the very air she floated in.

Surya never tired of watching such a delectable creature and was content to follow Usas wherever she chose to lead him. The rest of the celestials were not far behind in their admiration and Varuna, the lord of the waterbodies; fiery Agni; and Soma, the moon god, were absolutely besotted with her. They all wished to marry and own her completely, but she always danced away from their reach, giving just enough of herself to keep them satisfied for the moment.

The mortals praised the goddess of dawn for driving away the asuras, daityas and other assorted acolytes of evil before ushering in a brand new day, filled with the hope of peace and prosperity. Nobody knew how exactly such a beautiful little thing, who was clearly made for love, had managed to acquire such fearsome skills. Some opined that her bewitching smiles were not only her best accessory but her most effective weapon as well. Even the most loathsome asura who feasted on the flesh of newborns could not help but be enslaved by her charms. Those with a more jaded world view believed that she
alone could convince her twin, Ratri, the goddess of dusk, to swallow up those creatures to whom light was anathema.

Usas watched over her charges all day, affording them a comfortable security blanket under which they might go about their business without the fear of being assaulted by calamity. Every day the mortals dreaded the moment she would leave, wondering if she would ever return.

The gods loved and also hated her because she would not give herself entirely to any one of them, her capacity for love diminished by her hatred of imprisonment. Her fellow goddesses loathed her for being the most beautiful and accomplished of them all. They were tethered to their male halves, whereas she roamed the three worlds wild and free as the wind. They were trapped within a cage of rigid structure and expectations which seemed to grow smaller and ever more constricting whenever she waltzed past them, flaunting her freedom in their faces.

According to them, though she did precious little beyond primping, preening and baring those breasts of hers, Usas was exalted as if she had taken on and performed to perfection a task of earth-shattering importance and consequently treated with the reverence reserved solely for the gods. The goddesses prayed for her downfall, just so they may be rid of the blinding envy that was driving them to madness.

It was rumoured that she had lovers more numerous than anyone could keep track of—Indra, Agni, Surya, Vayu, Kubera, amongst others in the numerological nightmare that was the divine pantheon, were all believed to have partaken of her charms. ‘If half the gossip about her is true, she will still be twice the whore we all suspect her of being!’ the celestial women would murmur with catty delight.

Usas herself had no inkling of the gaping maw that waited with predatory intent for her until its jaws snapped shut, sealing off all avenues of escape. The Divine Progenitor, appointed by fate as its blunt instrument, had long had his eye on his loveliest offspring, but had resisted his feelings, powerful though they were. The father’s desire for his daughter was unlike anything he had ever experienced and yet he shrank from it, knowing that he must eventually submit to its inescapable lure.

He was repeatedly chased off his forbidden passion by a nameless fear that reminded him of a long buried past, where he had similarly desired, reaping nothing but punishment for his sin. Though his memory refused to give away its painful secrets, he knew that he had brushed awfully close to death and worse on its account. And so he resisted futilely till he could no longer do so.

On the day of the tragedy, Usas rose from her bed of clouds as usual. The mortals sung their hymns to her, trying to awaken her so that she may, in turn, awaken them. She responded with less than her usual exuberance and more out of habit. She performed her ablutions with a strange reluctance. Morosely, she wished that she could kiss her duties and her demanding children goodbye and really be as free and wild as the wind, the way everyone thought she was. The first light bathed her in its radiance and her naked body rose to meet it, her cloud nymphs scurrying to keep up. Uncharacteristically, Usas felt chilled to the bone and shivered. Brahma saw her quivering nipples and lost control.

Later, Usas herself would never understand why she responded the way she did. She could have fought off the venerable patriarch, for in her heart she knew that she was more powerful than the likes of him. But the maddened lust in
his eyes unnerved her and she fled from it, knowing at once that she had made a fatal mistake. By adopting the age-old response of a victim, she had become one, and there was no turning back. So she ran, but the sickening knowledge and subsequent shame slowed her down, and Brahma grabbed her hair, yanking it back with such strength that she thought her neck would snap in two. He made a grab for her breasts and she gasped in pain as he broke the skin and forced her down between his legs.

The goddess of dawn urged herself to fight back, but she was paralysed with fear. At the time, she loathed herself even more than the foul fiend who was rutting away at her, tearing off her diaphanous garments and discarding them like chunks of flesh. She thought of dying, but her spirit flared back to life, and she swore that she would make a fight of it. She clenched her fists and steeled herself for Brahmahatya, but at the very moment a bowstring snapped and an arrow interjected itself between father and daughter, burying itself in the father’s thigh, just a whisper away from his groin. Usas clenched her fists again, but this time in frustration, lying still and trembling as Brahma was torn off her, screaming in agony.

The archer was Rudra. Even the gods were scared of him and with good cause, for he was terror incarnate. His origins were uncertain but it had been surmised that he was the sum total of the worst fears of the gods, and an embodiment of the deadliest portion of the Destroyer. They had known panic when Brahma had created death and knew that to give in to it was to hasten the end. With tremendous care, they had siphoned away every miniscule atom of the fear that gripped them and scooped them up to shape Rudra. It was the only way they knew to ensure that going forth, the only thing they would ever fear was fear itself. And fear him they did. Spawned in the
primeval ooze of a desperate need to survive, there was no one in the three worlds to match him in terms of sheer, vicious savagery.

Nobody knew why he had helped the damsel in distress, or maybe he hadn’t, really. There was no gratitude in her eyes when they were raised to her deliverer. He met her gaze squarely and her defiance died when she saw the cold contempt there, not realizing then that it was her self-loathing she saw reflected there. She told herself it was contempt, for had it been pity she had seen reflected in that terrible stare, he would have no need for an arrow to kill her. With a sardonic smile, he turned away from her and abruptly dissolved into the shadows from whence he had come.

Usas rose to her feet, trembling, but the sharks were not done with her. Bolder, now that Rudra had left the scene and disappointed that he had not hurt her in any way, they converged on her en masse. In one voice, they accused her of seducing her own father, bringing him to harm and jeopardizing the safety of the three worlds, all because she could not keep her legs closed or put a lid on her incestuous passion.

‘It is bad enough that the bitch has been climbing into bed with all our husbands. But she is still not content and her unbridled lust demands that she scales further heights of perversity with her wanton behaviour…’ her fellow goddesses buzzed around her, like angry wasps, while their husbands gazed spellbound at her.

‘She paints herself like a harlot, parades around like one, shamelessly pursues the opposite sex and she has the unmitigated gall to play the wronged virgin now that she has been caught in flagrante delicto! Death is too good for the likes
of her…’ the angry feminine voices continued their buzzing, effectively dampening the sexual arousal of their excitable spouses, cleverly fanning the flames of their latent aggression, which came boiling to the surface. They had correctly sensed that those of the male persuasion derived the same pleasure from both spilled blood and semen.