Shakti: The Feminine Divine (4 page)

The buzzing was driving her to despair and Usas could stand it no longer. For the first time, she was acutely conscious of her nudity and felt shame. It infuriated her, knowing as she did that nobody deserved it less. Drawing on her fierce pride, she refused to cover herself and with eyes shooting sparks of defiance, she spun on her heels, magnificent buttocks bouncing jauntily as she did so, and walked purposefully towards her little chariot, head held high and gait haughty.

The goddess of dawn climbed into her chariot with cold purpose and despite himself, the sun made ready to follow. Tension mounted as a victim defied time-tested truth and stood poised on the verge of converting disaster into triumph. But she was not there yet. The ponies broke into a hesitant trot, sensing the knife’s edge they were on, to carry out their mistress’s bidding that just might see her salvage something from the unholy mess she found herself in.

Sachidevi, the consort of Indra, the king of the gods, and flag-bearer of the hate brigade against Usas, whispered softly into her husband’s ear. The little white chariot was just picking up speed and he watched it carefully as it made its way across the familiar path. He waited until it was almost out of sight and a carefully controlled breath was being released before he hurled his thunderbolt at the unwary maiden in the chariot, complacent in the knowledge that there was nothing in her possession to match the power of his vajra.

Given the things that had happened on that day, Usas had not been optimistic about her chances of getting away in one piece. This saved her life. She had been expecting to be stabbed in the back and no sooner had Indra released his missile than Usas leaped clear of the chariot, even as the vajra made short work of its fragile beauty, blasting it to tiny pieces. The manes of her pretty ponies caught on fire and they neighed piteously for mercy. Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks as she saw them burn, unable to help. Burning fragments tore into her back, urging her to run without looking back and she paid heed, knowing that if she did not, all would be lost.

The gods collectively lauded the iniquitous conduct of Indra with raucous cheers, like a pack of hyenas that had chanced upon a fresh kill, not caring that the goddess had been ill used. Surya alone did not join them. He remained dry-eyed, but he could have wept. Usas ran from them all, blinded by her tears as she stumbled across the heavens. On and on she ran, searching for cover where there was none. She ran from their jeers and taunts, the judgement and the censure, the cruelty and the violence, but mostly she ran from herself, her cowardice, shame and failure to fend for herself.

As she ran, Usas could not forgive herself. She felt guilty of a transgression too great to be forgiven, a betrayal for which many others would pay the price for millennia after. The sounds of her sobbing echoed in her ears as she ran faster and faster from everything that was out to get her. The guilt was not misplaced, she knew.

Her shame had set a precedent. There would always be others like her—victims of petty jealousy and senseless rancour—and like her, they would search in vain for help and succour that would not be forthcoming. Her tragedy would
be theirs as well and it would be played out repeatedly for the rest of time, plaguing the female of the species. She in turn would feel their mortification and humiliation and it would be a re-enactment of her shame and abject failure. They would be persecuted for all of time, for no better reason than that the mean and brutal could and would get away with it, even be applauded for it. It was all her fault and she would be damned if she allowed them to get away with it.

Usas wanted to run until time had come full circle and the same scene could be played out all over again. She would have gone on running if she had not remembered that that was what they all wanted. ‘Why on earth should I oblige those cruel gods?’ she said aloud and began moving at a more sedate pace. Her modified gait helped her get a grip on her runaway emotions and she slowed down further, hugging herself.

‘It was damnably stupid of me to run from all of them. The least I could have done was take the fight to the so-called Creator and pluck out his eyes or at least break his nose!’

Usas dismissed Brahma and his sickening behaviour from her mind. Until then she had never even spared a thought for him or the hopeless infatuation he had been nursing. There was no reason for her to change the status quo and give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had finally wormed his way into her head or managed to find crawling space under her skin. Besides, he had been punished enough when Rudra had punctured his inner thigh with his well-placed arrow.

Feeling her mood lighten, having shed some unwanted baggage, and remembering the priceless look on Brahma’s face when Rudra’s arrow had put paid to his hopes of a happy ending, Usas allowed herself a small smile. Her thoughts veered towards her worst tormentor, who had proved all too adept
in the violent art of dealing mighty blows, and she felt inner turmoil claim her for its own after an all-too-brief respite. She tried to banish him from her afflicted memory with the same ease she had managed with Brahma, but failed miserably.

‘Indra!’ the name echoed off the walls of her skull, making it pound as her hatred for him mounted and surged forth in a diatribe, soaked in acid acrimony. ‘You could go over the three worlds with a fine-toothed comb and still be hard-pressed to find a more mean-spirited churl than the lord of the heavens! What manner of creature must he be to attack someone who was unarmed and had only recently endured unspeakable violations upon her person, which he himself had been a silent and unhelpful witness to? I would be happy to spend the rest of eternity torturing him, devising increasingly sadistic measures to prolong his pain and make him squeal like the pig he is!’

Thinking about Indra made her tearful again and she could not help feeling a little sorry for herself. Even Surya and Soma, whom she had long considered good friends, had turned their backs on her. Despite all that, she had come heartbreakingly close to prevailing against the insurmountable odds stacked against her and rewriting fate. But Indra had stood in her way and rendered the tremendous effort she had called forth moot.

Usas remembered the look in his eyes, which she had caught through the film of her burning pet ponies. They had been entirely devoid of emotion at first. But when he realized that he had broken her once-indomitable spirit, she had caught a glimmer of supreme satisfaction in their inky depths, which lit them up like the flashes of lightning that preceded his terrible thunderbolt. He knew that he had made her submit to him. Sensing it had made her feel violated in a way that Brahma could never have managed.

To the best of her knowledge, she had done nothing to Indra that merited this sort of brutality at his hands. Thinking about his motives made her feel less hysterical with rage and panic, so she kept at it with stoic resolution, determined to make sense of everything that had happened and hopefully find a way to redress the wrongs that had been done her. ‘It had to be jealousy that prompted him to behave in the manner he did, more becoming of a rabid cur,’ she brooded. ‘I wrongly thought that he had no reason to feel insecure, especially since he is an absolute monarch with no dearth of toadies to kiss his pompous backside and concubines aplenty to warm his bed. Moreover, the foolish mortals are forever making sacrifices in his honour, terrified that he will reduce them to kindling otherwise, whereas not a single sacrifice has been performed in my name. It boggles the mind that he resented me so much simply because the singers and poets made me their muse and sang about my breasts instead of his balls!

‘The fact that I have always refrained from swooning over his preening peacock persona probably inflamed him further… Rumour had it that we were sleeping together; as if such a thing were possible! Especially since I would rather lie with a herd of stampeding rhinos than a monster like him! It defies belief that the suzerain of the skies is capable of such hateful behaviour, all because he had a bad case of bruised ego!’

Usas shook her head in disbelief. She supposed that he had not been too thrilled with the love mortals and immortals alike had once showered upon her and the high esteem in which they held her. Brute strength, a low cunning and an insatiable appetite for power were the only traits that raised him above his fellow immortals and cemented his exalted position.

He had painstakingly established that might of arms alone
would be able to maintain order in a chaotic world, but she had sashayed in and proved him wrong. Without ever shedding blood or engaging in unscrupulous political manoeuvres, she had succeeded in discharging duties comparable to Indra’s and had become twice as popular. In fact, as far as she was concerned, she had done a far better job by striking a balance between light and dark, beginnings and endings, never letting one gain ascendance over the other.

While he had successfully laid the bricks for a foundation of unbridled machismo, the truth was that he was nothing but a glorified grunt. When the world was still young, there would be need for the likes of him to lend their muscle, but soon he would have outlived his purpose and like Brahma, there would be no use for him, and he would be relegated to the rubbish heap of history. On the other hand, there would always be the need for a resourceful goddess, who could survive against the odds, learn from her mistakes and evolve with the passing of the ages.

Usas knew in her heart that she was right and was immeasurably gladdened. Forcing herself to return to unfinished business, she remembered how Sachi had egged on the others to hurt her and had doubtless been behind Indra’s infamous attack, as well as the flurry of feminine voices that had descended on her. She had never quite come to terms with the especial brand of cattiness so characteristic of her sex.

‘If they did not spend so much time obsessing over every other female’s beauty, prosperity, popularity with the bloody males, number of orgasms achieved and their assumed happiness levels, they would be far less neurotically dissatisfied with their lot!’

Usas grinned with childlike glee, secure in the knowledge
that though she had just been harassed and persecuted with unspeakable cruelty, she had survived. She had not allowed herself to be silenced by death or locked in a cage. Time, the greatest healer of all, would be her ally. With its passing her wounds, which had been bleeding and throbbing uncontrollably, would cure, leaving only faint scars and an insignificant memory behind which she would use to spur herself on and fashion an entirely new path for herself, where she would never again be a victim.

Usas swore solemnly to herself that she wouldn’t ever back down from a fight or run away from her troubles, even if she were naked and in mortal fear. Unlike her male counterparts, who simply could not quit their hankering for violence, she would not go looking for trouble. But if anyone at any point had the supreme foolishness to take the fight to her, she would respond with feral ferocity. She would tear her foes apart, limb from limb, gulp down their blood and wear their stupid skulls around her neck, so that all the fools out there would be wary of provoking her wrath.

The surging thoughts that had at once cradled her lovingly or tossed her about unmercifully receded all of a sudden. Usas was deafened by the sudden silence in her head that made it impossible to ignore the profound sorrow, which now held her in thrall. She had been a gift that the gods had flung aside with careless haste and disdain. They had lost her forever and they did not even know about the magnitude of their loss.

Her persecutors may have imagined that they had gotten away with their terrible deeds. And on the surface of it, they would be right, as she had fled from them all in shame and sorrow. But foul deeds such as these would not go unpunished. Every participant in the tragedy that had overtaken her
would be forced to pay the price with blood. There would be demonic spirits like the brahmarakshasas and bhutas, evil ghosts the mortals would name preta and pisacha, creatures of foul deception such as the vetala, terrifying ghouls who would be called yaksas and fearsome witches—sakinis, dakinis and mohini pisachas. And scores and scores more from where they came. They would prey on the mind and soul, growing stronger with the relentless fear they inspired, till they became real and acquired some manner of corporeal form, which made their job of spreading panic, havoc and death that much easier.

The fiends spawned by acts and dastardly thoughts too heinous to be borne would be let loose by Ratri, Usas’s fierce twin, who could no longer be prevailed upon to put a leash on them after the unforgiveable wrongs that had been done to her sister. Nritti, the dreaded goddess of decay and decomposition, would spread her rank inauspicious aura with copious and unwanted generosity. Brahma, Indra, Sachi and the rest of the devas had theirs coming. Aggrandizement was the elixir that kept them immortal and she wondered what would become of them when it was taken away from them and their weaknesses became common knowledge.

Usas would have shed more tears over the wretchedness of it all, but she was all cried out and more than a little numb to endless suffering, since she had had a surfeit of it. She went on with her cathartic musing instead.

She vowed that she would never again allow herself to seek help from outside and would always dig deep to find all the resources she needed from within. The mortals and immortals would come to her on their knees for help. The gods would for evermore be her supplicants and she would make it a point to look out for them and help them to the best of her abilities.

Usas had lanced her wound, and drained out most of the pus and infected blood. The worst was well and truly behind her. She would heal herself first, remake herself in a brand new avatar. When she took possession of the power that had long been hers to wield, the healing process would be complete. And she would truly be ready for anything. Only then would her compassion spill forth into the three worlds to allay the suffering that had become the lot of mortal and immortal alike.