Shakti: The Feminine Divine (9 page)

‘That may be so, but we all love happy endings, don’t we? Brahma has learned his lesson and he was truly repentant. Honestly, I can’t ask for more. In all seriousness, though, nothing would have been gained by allowing Madhu and Kaitabha to actually maul him to death, wouldn’t you agree? Vengeance is overrated and it certainly doesn’t taste good, cold or otherwise, not unless you have a palate that thrives on bitterness. Mostly it just leaves you feeling hollow and empty inside. A battle which sees hate emerge triumphant ensures nothing more than an abundance of victims on all sides.’

‘A beautiful thought!’ Vishnu retorted dryly. ‘Allow me to return to my poor embattled Sesha, so that I can love those bloodthirsty demons to death!’

‘There is no need for that!’ Durga informed him loftily. ‘We can take care of the asura brothers together! They cannot be killed unless it is by their own choice. It is their gift from me for being a part of my plan. And before you lecture me on the evils of granting boons to demonic brutes, allow me to stress that the blessing makes room for them to be killed using deception.
It is not fated that they enjoy a normal lifespan because they have already outlived the purpose for which they came into being. Even so, they have served me well and it is my wish that you grant them a boon at your discretion.

‘Finally, I want you to promise that you will not resent me over the little game I played with you, even if I feel disposed to do the same in future!’ It was a command, but made with familial affection.

Vishnu nodded in response, softening towards her. ‘I am not angry at you or Shakti! One cannot help but feel a little cranky when toyed with… In fact, I am grateful for your warning about the many times I can expect to be taken for a ride.’

Having received further instructions from Durga, Vishnu returned to the scene of the battle, his head and heart full of the goddess.

Meanwhile, Madhu and Kaitabha were looking thoroughly flummoxed. To the best of their knowledge, they had choked the life out of Vishnu and then pounded his lifeless body to pulp. Their bodies had been sprayed with his blood and covered with his insides. It had been a heady sensation. They had been on the verge of turning their attention to Brahma again. But to their surprise and horror, Vishnu was approaching them, looking as though he had never been in a fight to the death and certainly not on the wrong side of one.

They could only gape at him in stupefaction as the god they had slaughtered mere moments earlier sauntered towards them with a vaguely thoughtful expression on his face. Surely some vile witchcraft was at play here! Madhu whispered as much to Kaitabha and took a step back despite himself, filled with superstitious dread.

Kaitabha responded with belligerence and prepared to charge at Vishnu, determined to kill him over and over again, until he remained dead. He would have followed through on his intent as well, but he was distracted by the appearance of a maiden who was so dazzlingly beautiful that no male, regardless of the species he belonged to, would be able to pass her by. Her skin was creamy with just a touch of strawberry pink in her cheeks, which incidentally were the exact colour of her luscious lips that begged to be kissed. The contours of her exquisite body were clearly made for loving and her crowning glory cascaded all the way down to her perfectly formed toes in waves of glossy black. Madhu noticed her at the exact same time as his brother and was drawn towards her with a magnetic pull he would have dared any man or asura to resist.

Vishnu took in the scene with a knowing smile. ‘Was there ever a weapon quite as deadly as beauty?’ he thought, looking at the Sudharshana chakra that spun lazily on the tip of his finger. Despite himself, he was not immune to her charm, which was a good thing, because Durga would have taken it as a personal affront otherwise. She winked at him to intimate that she was paying tribute to his own Mohini avatar and he acknowledged it with a smile.

Following her cue, Vishnu addressed the demons, fully aware that they were so immersed in her charms they barely knew each other’s names. But their egos would not be so easily won over and it was to these that he spoke his words. ‘Your valour is unmatched, for there are few who would challenge the Protector of the universe in combat, let alone slug it out for as long as you have, and live to brag about it. I am so pleased that it behoves me to grant a boon to the two of you.’

The demons were shaken from their reverie. They took
instant umbrage at Vishnu for presuming to be their superior and conferring favours on them, when it ought to have been the other way round. After all, it was they who had vanquished him fair and square, and he had had to resort to his black arts to elude death. How dare he try to undermine them in front of the beauteous maiden who stood beside them and who was destined to rule by their side for all of eternity? The thoughts of anger that swirled around viciously in their heads effectively submerged a canny instinct that struggled to make itself heard. If Madhu and Kaitabha had paid heed, they would have been warned that nothing was as it seemed to them.

It was Kaitabha who spoke first, lashing out as a retaliatory measure demanded by his wounded pride. ‘Who the hell do you think you are? Presumptuous buffoon! Imagine the nerve of you deigning to offer us boons, when we have already proved ourselves your superiors! Such effrontery should not go unpunished. Madhu and I are going to teach you a lesson, which will be the last you will ever learn!’

‘Must you do that?’ the beauteous female asked him plaintively. ‘I find all kinds of violence very frightening. Surely there is a better way for you to settle your differences without bones getting splintered, bodies getting dismembered or unseemly spilling of noxious body fluids?’ She shuddered delicately, wrinkling her nose.

‘Of course there is a better way!’ Madhu said reassuringly, while Kaitabha stared at her, looking extremely unsure of himself. ‘Kaitabha was right! Why should a creature we have vanquished in fair combat presume to offer us a boon? We are the ones who should do the conferring here! YOU get down on your knees and ask of us what you will and we will bestow our favour upon you!’

‘You are very kind!’ Vishnu replied politely, but without missing a beat. ‘All I ask is that you allow me to kill the two of you without any more of the long-drawn-out fighting bouts that usually precede these epic killings, which the goddess finds so irksome!’

The brothers stared at him in stupefaction and then laughed awkwardly, determined to pass off the whole thing as a joke. But the forced mirth sounded hollow to their ears and suddenly the duo realized that something about everything that had happened to them thus far did not ring true. The entire thing felt surreal.

Madhu and Kaitabha had come into being from nebulous feelings lurking in a shadowy wasteland, ruled by forces that were entirely beyond their comprehension. A cesspool of negative energy had birthed them and it had not been expended in the way it had been meant to. Both knew nothing of this. They had emerged from Vishnu’s ear and were the lords of all they surveyed. Predators born to rule, it had been their prerogative to hunt and kill as they saw fit, and to take their pleasures wherever their instincts led them. This was what had induced them to make a sport out of killing Brahma and later Vishnu, before attempting to sample the charms of the only female they had known.

Yet, they had been thwarted every step of the way. Killing Brahma should have been easy, but they had not been able to manage it. They had fought Vishnu for long years and by rights, he should have been dead too, but instead he stood in front of them, cool as he could be. The beautiful maiden who had come to them could have been their shared wife and the trio ought to have ruled the three worlds together. But ripe potential and endless possibilities had frittered away, amounting to nothing.
Now Vishnu had asked for a boon, but it was actually a demand that he be allowed to kill them. It was preposterous! Death had come calling far too soon. If their imminent death was not bad enough, there was the sobering thought that perhaps it had been their very raison d’être.

Stripped of their arrogance, the brothers stood forlornly, knowing now that they were but the playthings of fate, wondering what was to become of them. Taking pity on them, Durga spoke consoling words, ‘I know that the two of you feel cheated out of everything you had been born for. From where you stand, death will seem final to you. Believe me when I say that it is not, and you have much further to journey before it will be time for you to rest.’

With the same confounded air, Madhu and Kaitabha nodded their heads trustingly. All was lost to them and it did not seem like the worst idea to embrace hope. Vishnu also spoke kind words to them in response to their morose expressions, ‘Do not worry, as the grand journey you were born to undertake has only just begun. It is fated that the boon I asked of you be granted. As to the fact that your ingrained need and passion for extreme violence has not been fully assuaged, I will personally ensure that you are born again on earth, as Khara and Atikaya, in the Treta Yuga. Once your bloodlust has been abated and the negative energies within you are fully culled by the indulgence of all your base as well as fine instincts, I myself will slay Khara in my avatar as Rama and Sesha here, who will be reborn as Lakshmana, will put an end to Atikaya. And then the two of you will achieve salvation and your journey would have come full circle.’

The demon brothers were as content as they were likely to be under the circumstances. Madhu fell to his knees when
Vishnu raised his chakra, but he followed Kaitabha’s example and locked his gaze on the goddess to bolster his courage. Their fears fell away just by looking at her and they knew that while she looked out for them, they would always be blessed. And so they went to their ends, clinging to a promise and a prayer.

As was promised to them, the brothers did take rebirth. Khara was the son of Visravas and the giantess Raka. He was the mighty demon lord Ravana’s half-brother, and Surpanaka was his twin sister. The giant towered over his contemporaries and his skill in weapons was legendary. He was devoted to Ravana and lovingly attended to his needs when the lord of Lanka performed penances with his brother Kumbhakarna and half-brother Vibhishana. Later, he made himself indispensable when Ravana chased after glory and brought the three worlds under his yoke.

Never too far from his brother, Kaitabha had taken rebirth as the son of Ravana, following an affair the ten-headed king had had with Chitrangi, the wife of the lord of the gandharvas, Chitrangada. Proud of his incredibly strong son, Ravana had entrusted the baby he named Atikaya, on account of his prodigious strength, to his wife, Dhanyamala, who had no children of her own. Thanks to his former life and the performance of hard tapas, Atikaya won the favour of Brahma, who granted him three gifts. The first was his own mighty missile, the brahmastra, which none could withstand. The second was impenetrable armour forged by the celestials. The final gift was freedom from hunger, thirst and other bodily desires that incapacitated mortals.

Atikaya became a disciple of Shiva and personally received instruction from him in the sciences and arts. In the terrible battle against Rama and his army of monkeys, Atikaya
fought at his father’s side and won great renown for himself. Eventually he was killed by Lakshmana and rejoined his brother in a better place.

The story of Madhu and Kaitabha entered the hallowed realm of legend. It would be told and retold long after they were no more, with varying degrees of accuracy or veracity. Future storytellers would display a penchant for endless embellishment, with the result that the events of long ago would forever be shrouded in uncertainty, leaving room for elements of fancy and conjecture.

However, what did survive intact was the spirit of the glorious saga and Brahma’s impassioned hymn in praise of the Goddess. And no matter how many versions were circulated, the tale of Madhu and Kaitabha would forever glorify the Protector and Goddess Durga.

An Unclean Kill

S
ACHI WAS FUMING.
How could so much change within so short a while? It seemed as if mere seconds had elapsed since she had so joyfully celebrated the Dawn’s fall from grace, but her happiness had proved short-lived. One would think that Brahma could at least go to sleep and wake up without getting himself into hair-raising situations, which involved rescue operations being carried out by Vishnu and a ravishing goddess, but no! In light of recent events, it was becoming increasingly apparent that her new rival was far more irksome than the old one had ever been. She almost wished that Usas was still around.

The strange tale of Madhu and Kaitabha was all anybody wished to talk about. It was annoying to keep hearing the convoluted story about the beings who emerged out of earwax, of all things, not to mention past sins, and attempted to kill Brahma and Vishnu before they were stopped by the sorceress whom all the fools out there had confused with a goddess
possessed of great power, going by the name of Durga.

Suddenly this new goddess, who was supposedly a manifestation of Shakti, had a legion of fervent admirers, who claimed that her power surpassed that of the Holy Trinity. Even Shiva was subordinate to her. Sachi gasped aloud at the blasphemy.

She fervently wished that someday the odious goddess worshippers would be rounded up en masse and have their sacrilegious tongues ripped out, before being burnt alive, to silence their immoral proselytizing and prayers to the false goddess. In reality this goddess had done nothing but cheer from the sidelines, flaunting her overly ripe body in provocative clothing, while Vishnu had made short work out of the troublesome demons with his customary efficiency.

As for Brahma, the last time Sachi had seen him, he had been slinking away in disgrace, following the incident with Rudra, but he seemed to have bounced back quite strongly. In her eyes, he was the main culprit guilty of laying the keystone for this creepy cult, with his excessive panegyrics in praise of the Goddess. Unlike Usas, who had been a visible presence, this new enemy was elusive and there were few among even the gods who were properly acquainted with her. Even Vishnu, who was one of Indra’s closest friends, tended to become more obfuscating than was his usual wont where the warrior goddess was concerned. All he would do was praise her to the high heavens and Sachi would be forced to tune out in sheer boredom and irritation.