Shakti: The Feminine Divine (8 page)

They were Madhu and Kaitabha, demon brothers spawned from the residue of his terrible sin. The misdeed from a former age had been so heinous that it left septic wounds, which wept pus in copious amounts. They were meant to infect the perpetrator and bring him down to his knees, leaving him to writhe in pain worse than that which he had inflicted on another. The brothers rose from the ooze that had gathered in Vishnu’s ears and solidified, shaped on the sticky cerumen. Armed with the malice of retribution, they stood tall on the broad expanse of Vishnu’s chest and surveyed their surroundings with grim purpose.

Madhu was a coal-black giant with a wildly matted mane, whose chest and shoulders were hard and unyielding
like the anthracite they resembled. To Brahma, who could do nothing but watch helplessly, he looked impossibly big and strong. There was a mean glint in his dull eyes and he had the arrogant swagger of an unthinking brute. Kaitabha was ruddy-complexioned, reflective of the taboo passions run amok which had birthed him, and his cheeks were flushed. His curly bush of hair bristled with vigour. He was not as huge as his brother, but of the two he was by far the more menacing.

Spurred by murderous intent, they zeroed in on Brahma, cowering within the confines of the lotus. Unhurriedly they made their way towards him, smugly complacent in the knowledge that the venerable being was theirs to do with as they pleased. Madhu grabbed his own neck with a single vicious movement of his arm of granite and pretended to choke himself to death. Then he mimed tearing open his chest and quaffing the blood as it spurted out. Just in case he had not made himself clear, he called out to Brahma, ‘Pathetic old fool! I am coming for you! Look around, there is no escaping us! First, I am going to rip out your limbs and toss them into the waters surrounding us until they turn red and mucky with your severed appendages. Then I will pluck out your head, bathe in your blood and when my ablutions are completed, I’ll pull out your heart and Kaitabha and I will feast on it.’ Kaitabha chortled at his brother’s theatrics. It was a juvenile display of aggression but it unnerved Brahma, who saw death approaching him.

Trying to contain his terror before it drowned him in a tidal wave of despair, Brahma shut his eyes and tried to recite the thousand names of the Divine Protector, hoping to wake him from his heavy slumber. But something was wrong. Try as he might, he could not for the life of him remember a single one
of the names he had formerly been able to reel off with nary a pause.

Abandoning his search for prayers that resisted his memory, he tried screaming his urgent need to Vishnu. But that did not work either. In fact, every time he opened his mouth, nothing but garbled sounds emerged. Madhu and Kaitabha roared with laughter.

Brahma tried shaking the lotus he was sitting on to get Vishnu’s attention, but there was no getting through to him. Hysterically, he wondered if the Protector was dead. He began to weep unashamedly. In the relative silence of his mind, he called out in a futile attempt to awaken Vishnu. Still there was no response.

It was simply incomprehensible that Vishnu had failed him in this time of dire need. He had always been there for those who loved and trusted him; even for those who didn’t. The Vedic way of life had never faced a threat of this magnitude and yet he slept peacefully, even as Brahma was bawling his eyes out like a baby. How could this be happening? Brahma opened his eyes and saw his killers approaching the rim of the lotus, their laughter replaced with a mien more suitable to the violent death they stood poised to mete out. They paused meaningfully to revel in his cowardly terror.

When his fear reached its zenith, he finally found his courage. The blindness that had beset him for so long was lifted and his innate clarity of thought was restored. He remembered Shakti, even as white-hot anguish seared his insides, turning them pulpy with pure terror, but this time he did not flinch. Rather, he welcomed the hurt, knowing that it would help him see better. She was the Goddess he had loved so much and who had broken his heart by rejecting him. The pain of
heartache had driven him to despair and, with moronic obduracy, he had wanted to wound her and make her hurt the way he was hurting. Vishnu had been right; it was not love that drove him towards such a calamitous path, but hubris at its most unadulterated. In that respect, he was worthier of the attentions of Madhu and Kaitabha rather than the affections of the Divine Mother.

Shame coursed through him as he recoiled from the naked truth he was finally ready to confront—Usas had been the victim of his lust-fuelled lunacy, and even if the approaching monsters chewed up his heart, it would be a kindness he did not deserve. Brahma forced himself to acknowledge that his vicious crime justified whatever pain Madhu and Kaitabha meted out to him a hundredfold, if not more. For the first time, he was almost convinced that forfeiting his life to these creatures would be a good thing.

He wished to do only one thing before willingly giving himself over to death. He wanted to do something, anything, to convey to the Goddess the full extent of his regret and remorse. The magnitude of his crime filled him with such profound shame that he longed for the pain his aggressors were about to inflict on him, just to drown it out.

Before he went off-kilter again, Brahma steeled himself. His last moments should not be spent futilely in flagellating himself, even if he deserved it. Instead, he would use his gift with words to extol Shakti’s magnificence, her generous spirit which saw her mother the great multitudes of men and gods, birds and beasts alike and, above all, her supremacy over all else. Those who came after him would never forget the words he would utter on that day.

Durga’s Power Play

B
RAHMA SHUT HIS
eyes, marvelling at his new-found sense of peace. The terrible guilt and endless fear, which had left him a wretched wreck, was finally drained, and he could not have asked for more. Focusing his entire being on Shakti, he addressed her directly, palms joined together in prayer, ‘Incomparable Devi, creator, protector and dissolver of the universe, I bow before thee! You are Vac, the goddess of speech embodied in Om, which encompasses the beginning, middle and end of all in creation; the supreme consciousness, the pure source from which all emerge, through whose bounty all receive nourishment, and to whom all must eventually return.

‘It is the precious knowledge you bestow that cuts through illusory falsehoods masquerading as the truth and liberates one from the bondage of deception and attachment. You are Mahamaya, the enchantress who shrouds the truth in layers of illusion, and you are Mahamoha, toying with us and deluding us into mistaking the unreal for the real. Truth and falsehood,
virtue and vice, good and evil exist only relative to each other and all are variables under the control of the Great Goddess and Demoness, indistinguishable from each other in that they all originate from you. Thus you use the power of maya to ensure that the bitter and better are imbibed in balanced doses, so that one never overpowers the other and neither detracts from the unchanging neutrality that is their true state of being.

‘You are Prakriti, Mother Nature, the sacred vessel that holds the three gunas, whose essence constitutes the composition of all in existence. It is through your grace that they are activated and bring all else into being. As the Goddess Ratri, you watch over us all when I rest my eyes at the end of a day, while the great flood draws creation into its womb, to be released when you authorize it. Under your protection we remain, while you usher in the dark night that swallows up the light. At the end of a hundred years, when my eyes close for the final time, never to open for the ensuing period of a hundred nights, you will be the guardian of the universe and it is only through your enterprise that the cycle of creation will begin anew.

‘Beautiful one! You are the light that dispels the darkness. It is through your omnipotence that our ignorance is alleviated, leaving us with the light of understanding, reborn on the fire of experience. The power you wield with such wisdom is unparalleled. Even Vishnu, the Protector of the universe, whose supremacy is incomparable, has no weapons with which to resist you. Even now he lies dead to the universe and its need, trapped within the cobwebby strands of your maya!

‘Words are insufficient to do justice to your beauty, power and magnificence. My life, which I freely consecrate to you, is not worthy of your divine person, but it is the most precious
thing I own and it is yours to take as you see fit.’

Brahma concluded his hymn to the Goddess and felt a billion years lighter. His entire being was miraculously rejuvenated and he was free of the toxic elements that had reduced his body to a glorified sewer. Madhu and Kaitabha were still lurking out there somewhere, but they hardly seemed relevant to him and he watched them with detachment. He sensed intuitively that he had slipped through their fingers and reached a high ground where they would have trouble getting to him.

On the other hand, if he was only fooling himself and they were poised to rend his flesh and pick their teeth with his bones, they were welcome to do so. A wrong would have been righted and he would finally be free of the guilt. Either way, he was ready to meet his fate.

Brahma was jolted from his thoughts as the smooth plain under him vibrated with life. Vishnu had finally bestirred himself from his slumber. For just a second, the Creator also caught a glimpse of Shakti, who was garbed in black and whose countenance was suffused with the darkness of night. Their eyes met and to Brahma’s delight, they were sparkling with the light of a billion stars. He was gratified by the realization that he had lit them up with the long-overdue quest of redemption he had undertaken and successfully carried out. Bestowing a beatific smile upon him whom she had won over, body, heart and soul, she vanished quicker than thought.

The demons turned their attention to the new danger that confronted them. Vishnu stood poised to do battle, eyes blazing with uncharacteristic rage. The brothers had effectively destroyed the peace and the Preserver was none too happy with the trespass. Infuriated that they had dared to encroach upon
his turf, he lunged towards them, determined to get rid of them for good.

Sesha, whose endless coils provided a resting place for Vishnu, had to see its undulating form reduced to a battlefield, where the enraged god took on the vermin who had sprung forth from the effluent of his ear. The brothers fought him together, hell-bent on vanquishing him. They would then usurp his powers for themselves and rule over the three worlds. But it was not going to be easy, so they took turns to fight him.

The fight raged on for five thousand years, locked in a stalemate that saw none of them gain the upper hand. His exhaustion and the inexplicable unwillingness to continue took the indefatigable Vishnu by surprise. The source of the demons’ inexhaustible reserves of strength confounded him and he found himself pondering on it while his face was jammed into Madhu’s armpit, the odour of which was clearly a weapon unto itself, as the demon struggled to get him into a chokehold. And then it hit him.

With incongruence that ill befit the situation, he burst out laughing even as Kaitabha, angered by the jangling sound, joined his brother and began raining blows on their enemy’s unprotected face and head. From a distance, Vishnu saw his nose explode in a geyser of blood and the asura brothers, sensing victory within reach, moved in for the kill.

‘Shakti! It is unfortunate that you seem to harbour a secret fantasy to break my nose and pummel me to within an inch of my life! You have set these two abominations upon me with the express purpose of fulfilling your kinky desire and here you are feasting on the sight. Seeing as you treat your friends this way, it is small wonder that you have so few!’ Vishnu called out.

As he had expected, the illusion shattered and he was lifted
clear of her handiwork, so that they could take in the somewhat surreal sight of Madhu and Kaitabha tearing apart an apparition who was a dead ringer for Vishnu himself.

Vishnu now found himself face-to-face with the Goddess. But something was different about her. It could have been the way she held herself, or a certain aloof quality that kept him at arm’s length. He felt more disoriented than ever. This wasn’t his best friend Shakti—or was it?

‘You do know me,’ she said with the slightest of smiles, ‘as I know you!’

Understanding dawned on him and a single name of power resounded deep within his being—
Durga
. Awestruck, he whispered, ‘You have emerged from the core of Shakti. A rebirth brought about by the deep need Usas felt to reinvent herself as a talisman that would never bow to wickedness, whatever form it might take!’

Durga did not bother to confirm or deny it. Instead she said, ‘I take it you are not entirely happy with the harmless charade that was just played out?’

‘It was a unique way to make an entrance!’ Vishnu replied. ‘I willingly concede that your tricks proved too clever for me to see through, especially since you also saw fit to drug me into a stupor. What happens next? I am hoping you have a plan to get rid of that odious twosome. Am I to compose a long-winded boring paean in your praise like Brahma did with such heartbreakingly lofty purpose? Or should I cut off my head and offer it to you along with my blood for your dining pleasure?’

Vishnu was clearly teasing and more than a little confused; nevertheless Durga took his hand in her own in the familiar gesture he knew so well and squeezed it consolingly before framing a reply, ‘Shattering that prepossessing air you always
seem to possess was a satisfying experience. That was all there was to it. I don’t see why you had to poke fun at that beautiful hymn Brahma composed! It was really charming of him and thanks to the purity of purpose he imbued it with, the Brahmastuti will always endure. Although, I will admit, he is boring when earnest.’

‘Purity of purpose indeed!’ Vishnu scoffed. ‘All Brahma did was to exercise his ingenuity to extricate his sorry behind from a situation, which was about to culminate with his limbs being severed off so that Madhu and Kaitabha could club him to death with them! If you ask me, he got off far too easily for his crime!’