Shakti: The Feminine Divine (31 page)

A sufficient number of celestials supported him, including some sages, who sanctioned his planned course of action, saying that it was meant to be. After that Shakti would take rebirth as the more auspicious Parvati, who would domesticate
the Destroyer without losing control of her senses and compelling him to pay heed only to the demands of his male organ. The plan to kill Shakti had Brahma’s approval as well as that of Prajapati Daksha, who was one of her most vociferous opponents.

To this end, Daksha arranged a grand yagna and invited Shakti to participate, saying that it would be hugely beneficial to the three worlds. Shiva did his best to dissuade Shakti, presaged of the disaster that was in the offing. Dread had made him uncharacteristically harsh and forceful, which induced her to a contrariness that was unusual, at least in her relationship with him. Ignoring his misgivings, she insisted on attending, though she usually disdained the social shindigs that kept her apart from her beloved for such an interminable period.

At the ill-fated yagna, the celestials, led by Indra, cornered her, accusing her of harlotry and the performance of lewd and lascivious acts that went against the natural order. They rounded on her en masse, and Shakti read their intentions in their eyes.

She was to be stripped naked and beaten so viciously that there could be little doubt the repeated blows would prove fatal. Seeing how helpless she appeared, the raptors would lose control, coming up with increasingly sadistic measures to violate her further.

Shakti had tried to muster the rage needed to get on top of the situation, but it would not surface. Sorrow over her imminent parting from Shiva threatened to overwhelm her. Just when her suffering reached its zenith, she found the lever that had shut out her darkness and released it to unleash her anger. She tore out the fear, uncertainty and pain from herself and flung it as far as she could. With maniacal fury, her spirit was
disengaged from her body, which remained in the chains they were fastening on her as she moved on from her immediate surroundings and away from Indra’s power.

Long after the events of that day, she would wonder why she had not directed the red-hot flames of her anger towards the lot of them and turned them all to ash. There was no simple answer, but she supposed it was because she took fierce pride in the fact that she would never descend to their level.

Even after she had freed herself, Shakti did not leave at once, but watched as they hung her corporeal form by the wrists to a whipping post and tortured her with hot irons, fire and rawhide whips. She remembered the feel of the chains as they bit into her flesh every time she struggled, the rising panic and an utter sense of helplessness. The pain itself had been unbearable at first, though it was only in her mind, but eventually it hardly mattered. The sorrow was real, though, and it did not subside so easily. For Shakti sensed that she was moving further away from her better half, and the heartache was harder to withstand than the mutilation of her person, which she was witnessing through the clouds of her own maya.

Shakti continued to watch as the celestials danced around her battered corpse in celebration, believing that they had put an end to the unholy union, which might have proved catastrophic to them all, as well as the unlimited power she had wielded so carelessly. Never before had she felt so achingly alone. There was no doubt at all in her mind that she would emerge from the ashes, but she was deeply sorry because it might not be possible to recapture the perfection of the idealistic past or recover entirely from the game she had been forced to play in order to save herself. Aching and hurting more than she could bear, Shakti slowly turned her back on them and
fled from it all, never once looking back.

Shakti watched those traumatic events of a bygone age as the memories the Destroyer had kept from her unspooled and fresh sorrow filled her being. Shiva had been too late to save her. She was already long gone when he arrived, escaped to the remotest reaches of space, far away from those who had loved and hated her to death. She watched as he discovered the remains of the body she had abandoned. His pain over their parting devastated her and she could barely watch as he covered her mouth with his, sucked out the infinitesimal and most resilient part of her that would never die and locked it away in his heart, from whence he would refuse to release it.

His third eye appeared on his forehead as her powers surged through him, filling him with bittersweet longing and an unbearable ache. Opening it, he turned the celestials to ash, starting with Indra, and would have done the same to Vishnu if the Preserver had not embraced him without a care for his own safety, to absorb the worst of his grief and add it to his own.

Then Shiva wandered around, demented with grief, carrying Shakti’s dead body in his arms and repeatedly making love to it until Vishnu dismembered her corpse with his discus and strew it all over the three worlds. Using the active force that still swirled from her body parts, the Preserver restored the dead celestials to life and made them throw themselves at Shiva’s mercy and beg his forgiveness. The gods obliged him, but it would give Indra and his coterie another reason to hate Shakti, for whose sake Shiva had been willing to destroy them all.

The dizzying images slowed and Shakti had the time to note that she was weeping harder than she ever had before, if only for their immeasurably precious love that had been
carelessly torn apart by spite and pettiness. It was how they had come to be broken and nothing would ever be the same again. She recalled her determination and resolve to regroup, and how she had applied herself towards the painstaking task of finding and putting together the lost pieces.

Shakti took birh as Parvati, destined to be the consort of the Destroyer. Kama died to bring them together. Durga emerged as the warrior goddess and Kali was, well…Kali. They all had their moments, together and separately, but the magic was gone with the separation of Shiva and Shakti, who had been one and the same. The fragmented remains were a mockery of what once was.

Yet, their separation could and would be played to the advantage of the Goddess and the three worlds, which she had brought into being. Determined not to be such an easy mark for her relentless enemies, she had built her fortress and locked herself within. Her powers were divided and apportioned to perform the various tasks demanded of her with concentrated vigour and thus they would remain, effective as ever, but plagued with the knowledge that they had been shaped into something else by external forces beyond her control.

The Goddess was no longer crying when she stepped away from the power of the third eye, which had been hers but was no more. It was gone, along with key memories, as well as a piece of her heart and soul, clinically removed so that she could go on functioning in the larger scheme of things. After all, without Shakti there would be nothing. It was easy to understand Shiva’s motives in all of this—they were entirely altruistic. And yet, that did not stop her from hating him for his role in her tragedy, which in the long run had hurt her far worse than anything Indra could have come up with.

Shiva could keep pace with her thoughts as a billion of them raced across her head faster than anything else in existence and sense the direction they were taking. It was obvious that it was not her intention to hate him or get into an ugly spat, but she could nevertheless not stop the mounting rage or her profound sense of betrayal.

In between the surge of memories his lover had got up and walked away. She now stood standing with her back to him; it felt as if she was being wrenched away from him all over again. He couldn’t bear it. He willed her to ignore the predominant impulse to walk away from him, applying every fibre of his being to sway her into acceding to his need.

Long moments passed thus, while their relationship and everything it represented stood poised on a precipice. A yawning abyss had opened up between them and they stood on either side. The proud Goddess wanted to leave the lover who had wronged her, never to return. But he held her fast across the distance, braving the pain inflicted by her disdain and contempt, refusing to let her go even when he tasted the hatred that scalded him with its very presence. He merged his thoughts with her own, stubbornly holding on even as she severed the bonds between them, repeatedly mending and reinforcing them with the ropes of his love.

Over and over the Goddess tried to escape him, but he frustrated her every attempt, willing to take everything she dished out to him in her bitterness, just so long as she no longer entertained any thoughts of leaving him. Frustrated by his mastery, which she still adored, Shakti rounded on him, and Shiva was relieved that she was finally going to vent her stormy passions, rather than bottle them up and shut him out. There was hope for them now and he was ready to take the beating
she thought he deserved.

‘Indra is not the real villain here,’ she began, spitting out every word like a missile. ‘He never knew the smallest thing about me, busy as he was gawking at the ripe treasures of my body, which would always be beyond his reach. There was no way for him to know that I would choose death over imprisonment, every single time. But you don’t have that excuse! You saw fit to lock me inside a tiny, airless cell, leaving me there to suffocate, just because you didn’t want to take the risk of anybody playing with your toy and breaking it!

‘You betrayed my trust and took away my power and memories so that it would be easier to chain me to your will and plus-sized ego, not caring that I would be lost to myself. Even as I endlessly performed roles delineated by the lot of you—mother, warrior and slave—nobody gave a damn about what I really wanted, which was to be truly free and left alone!’

Shiva reeled from the brutality of her vicious attack as her words stung him like a swarm of bees and her withering scorn flayed his body like a rawhide whip. But he would not give ground before her. ‘The real truth is that you cannot bring yourself to forgive me for not protecting you from the beasts that had long hunted the two of us. I was not there when you needed me the most. Nobody took your part and you were all alone. If it makes you feel any better, I cannot forgive myself either, and never will.’

‘Don’t you dare make this about yourself!’ Shakti shot back. ‘I have never looked to anybody to take care of me! As you know all too well, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. So what if my body was stripped naked, tortured and beaten? Those excruciating moments had to be the longest I ever endured, but I’ll be damned if I allow that brief period to
define everything else I ever do. That was me at my weakest, but even then, they could not touch my spirit. No matter what happens to me, I have always known that it is not my nature to roll over and die, for I am a survivor! But apparently that is not enough… Self-confidence amounts to nothing when your so-called better half does not have confidence in your ability and will presume to take your destiny in his hands.

‘Thanks to your abject stupidity, the worst parts of my experiences have come to define the whole sum of my existence. Indra and his dogs tore me to pieces because they hated my guts. They could not deal with the fact that while they could drool lasciviously over me in their passion-stoked fantasies, they could never have me. In their rabid jealousy, they overpowered me that one time. Again I ask you…what of it? I have come a long way since then and it is not so easy to make a victim of me now, is it?

‘It is through my labours that the cycle of birth, life and death is set in motion. It is my job to oversee the intricate mechanism that governs the universe, and I happen to be great at what I do. There have been other mad dogs and I dealt with them all without ever picking up weapons of destruction. My legacy will be that I was the best of mothers, a courageous warrior, a compassionate victor, one hell of a friend and the most giving lover. I will never allow myself to be reduced to a tragedy queen who was overpowered by her enemies and never got over it. How could you bring yourself to have me stripped of all my accomplishments and burdened with nothing but shame and defeat?

‘I would have found my way back to you a long time ago, if only you had left me whole and not taken matters into your hands, attempting a hostile takeover of my very person.
Willingly had I lost myself in you, but that was not enough and you had to have more than I wished to give. By scattering my essence across the four winds, you ensured that I was lost to myself; how then can I not be lost to you?’

‘My faith in you is unwavering, although you refuse to see it,’ Shiva told her simply as the tears pooled in his magnificent eyes, filling her with the urge to kiss them away. ‘But I do not, cannot and will not trust the malevolent forces and baleful influences that are forever circling you and led to the two of us being torn apart. There was a time when I was foolishly complacent about my abilities to take care of my own. But not anymore, since it was made abundantly clear that even tiny rats can take down the mighty mountain if they apply themselves to it.

‘I cannot presume to have an inkling about what you went through, but I do know what it was like to see my lover’s face smashed past all recognition or realize that the power of maya which she wields to cure so many turned on its owner, leaving her scarred. I will never allow myself to take risks with your safety again. My judgement is sound and it is something you would admit to if you had the confidence in me that you accuse me of not having in you!

‘By salvaging the parts of you that had not been destroyed, I managed to preserve the best of your being for when you were finally ready to reclaim them, after slaying the personal demons you have long insisted on entertaining. I took your memories to build the bridge between the many identities you have created that have not always been able to reconcile themselves to each other’s presence. How is it that you see fit to treat me like a thief for borrowing an art that you yourself had perfected, as an alternative to the violent methods preferred by bloody males?’

‘The clear rationale and cool logic of the male mind is something to be marvelled at. Something we overly instinctive and emotional females have to strive to imbibe, I suppose,’ Shakti mocked him. ‘How do you think a woman is supposed to feel, knowing that she who was born to soar freely with the elements has been chained in perpetuity because her “superiors” have decreed that her safety is paramount and takes precedence over personal freedom? Death is preferable to a lifetime of being controlled like a puppet on strings!’