Pralay- The Great Deluge

by Vineet Bajpai

  Dreaded by enemies as the formidable fighting force they were, the Templars soon became living legends. Spotted from miles due to their white tunics and massive red crosses on their uniforms and battle-shields, the Templars were the first occurrence in world history when a purely religious establishment boasted of a trained, standing army. This heavily weaponised force did not report into any king or queen. Roughly speaking, they actually served the commandments of a high priest!

  Clerics and soldiers had joined forces. Therefore, could religious imperialism be far behind?

  Constantine’s master plan was taking shape.’

  Vidyut nodded and added, ‘you are absolutely right, Baba. The Knights Templar played a decisive role in the Crusades, or as the priests of that time liked to call them – the holy wars! The Crusades today seem inexplicable and bizarre if viewed as singularly religious campaigns. Why a faith of peace and sacrifice, as preached by Christ Himself, turned into a bloodthirsty religious war-machine is hard to understand. Christians, who were themselves at the receiving end of a long period of atrocities and violence from the Roman Empire, turned into even more vicious oppressors!’

  Dwarka Shastri shook his head in disagreement.

  ‘Correct yourself, Vidyut. It was not Christianity or Christians who waged wars. It was a few vile individuals who misled ordinary folk. Priests of all eras have trumpeted about holy wars. Remember one thumb rule Vidyut. Any God-man who talks about violence is not a man of God at all! The real worshippers of the Almighty, irrespective of which religion you consider, are those who spread the word of peace, love and coexistence. They are the real priests.’

  The great matthadheesh’s beliefs and principles continued to inspire his great grandson. Vidyut could not help but remember how many wars this man and his ancestors had fought. And yet here he sat, speaking with intense conviction about love and brotherhood being the only true channels to God. The last devta recounted how all the battles of the matth and its leaders had been fought to defend this sacred monastery, or to resist the forces of divisiveness and tyranny.

  ‘Then what happened, Baba? What was the next chapter in the history of the Templars? And of the New World Order?’ enquired Vidyut, drawing back Dwarka Shastri’s attention to the core subject.

  ‘So we had leaders of a faith now bolstered by the power of the Templar sword. What followed was what always follows such nefarious arrangements – money!’ said the old grandmaster.

  ‘Money?!’ exclaimed Vidyut.

  Dwarka Shastri smiled and continued.

  ‘Would you believe it if I tell you that the Order of Solomon’s Temple or the Knights Templar were the world’s first ever multinational banking corporation?’

  Manhattan, New York City, 2017

  ‘EVEN DEATH IS AFRAID OF THE WHITE MASK’

  He was among the few men who could afford to reserve the Presidential Suite of the iconic Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York for weeks together. Nearly every room of the floor in question was booked for him. The entire corridor, decorated with black and white pictures of historically important guests ranging from American Presidents to Indian revolutionaries, was shadowed by his gunmen.

  The Maschera Bianca stood at the window of his rich suite, staring out at the glorious Manhattan skyline, smoking his favorite Indian cigarette.

  Only today he wasn’t enjoying it.

  ‘He looks like a very benevolent God-man, does he not? But it is from the very chair he occupies that edicts for the worst exterminations of humanity have been passed for nearly one thousand years.’

  Reg Mariani was sipping on his scotch, wondering why the Maschera was preaching to the choir. If anyone knew the reality of the Big Man, it was he. He was first hand witness and in fact accomplice in some of the recent excesses of the current reigning regent.

  ‘So what now, Maschera? He demands to know. And you are aware he will not take failure lightly. Not from me. Not from you.’

  The Maschera’s jaw tightened. He crumpled the lit cigarette in his palm and turned to face Reg. He did not flinch when the burning tip of the tobacco scorched into his skin. This burn was a joke compared to everything that the Maschera had been through during his journey from being a murdered hooker’s abandoned son on the streets of Milan, to becoming the undisputed king of the European Mafia.

  He stabbed the man seventeen times with a long screwdriver. First ten in the stomach and diaphragm, while the remaining seven were in the eyes, temple and groins. He spat on the thrashing body before rolling it with his foot into a gutter.

  He had avenged his mother when he was only eleven.

  By age sixteen the boy with the cold gaze and nearly feminine features was already ruling several neighborhoods in Milan, under the terror of his infamous weapon of choice. Although he liked to fight alone in the face of even the worst odds, this mindless valour won him several followers. His band grew. His name became more dreaded.

  And then one cold night, to the shock and disbelief of the whole of Milan, two policemen were impudently slaughtered in their beat vehicle. One of them had a long screwdriver pierced through his mouth and out from the back of his skull, pinning him to the headrest of the car seat. This horrific twin-murder sent shivers down the spine of the city and its administration.

  The green-eyed boy had to leave Milan. But not before he was spotted by the only organization that mattered in that shadowy world of wealth, blood and control.

  He was being watched by the Cosa Nostra - the fearsome syndicate of the Sicilian Mafia.

  Three Mafiosi brothers hired him to run their cocaine network out of Geneva. They made a big mistake. In fifteen years time, the green-eyed boy had become a man - a very dangerous man. He systematically superseded all three of his recruiters, whose bodies were never found from the depths of the Lake Geneva. By age 35, he became the undisputed boss of not only the Sicilian Mafia, but of all organized crime across Europe.

  While no one doubted his ruthless talent, there were whispers about his spectacular, meteoric rise. Someone extremely powerful was backing him from behind the shadows. Someone more powerful than governments, more formidable than the CIA and the MI6 taken together. Similarly, there were numerous legends about how and why he came to be known as the Maschera Bianca, or the White Mask. Some attributed his strange and feared title to the colour of his cocaine trade. Others said it was because of the calm paleness on his face when he remorselessly murdered one adversary after another.

  Only a few suspected something far more sinister. He was truly a mask, a front hiding somebody who was trying to establish a global order of racial superiority. He was the white mask for the blackest organization to have ever lurked the Earth.

  The Maschera Bianca’s green eyes were glowering with fearlessness as he walked towards Reg and sat down on a plush sofa.

  ‘Do you know how many times I have faced assassination attempts, Reg?’

  Reg shrugged. He knew the domain in which the Maschera ran his illicit empire, he was ruling through the power of a gun barrel.

  ‘One hundred and four times,’ continued Maschera in his sophisticated tone, his supremely self-assured smile back on his face. But his eyes were piercing through Reg’s soul, who was himself no stranger to death and violence.

  ‘Do you know how many times I have been stabbed, received a bullet wound or strangled to near-death?’

  ‘Why are we talking about all this, Maschera?’ said Reg. The Maschera made him nervous no doubt, but Reg Mariani had learnt to conquer anxiety a long time ago.

  ‘Fifty seven times,’ continued the Maschera coolly. ‘So don’t think there is any force on Earth that can scare me.’

  He paused for a second or two before leaning forward and speaking again, this time in a terrifying whisper.

  ‘Even death is afraid of the White Mask, Reg.’

  Harappa, 1700 BCE

  RITE OF THE BLUE FIRE

  Vivasvan Pujari noticed a frightening change in the faces and bodies of the Saptarishi. They
suddenly seemed to appear much older than what they had ever looked. As Sura’s vile and bloodthirsty savages stepped closer to the divine sages, the seven of them began to age at an unnerving pace. Their foreheads and cheeks started to wrinkle, their normally calm and serene faces were now distorting into a grotesque expression. With their hair turning grey almost instantly, the seven sages suddenly seemed to have aged by a hundred years!

  Is this really happening or am I hallucinating?

  For all his cruelty and bravado, Sura too broke into a cold sweat as he saw this macabre transformation in the sages.

  His barbaric soldiers also noticed the crumpling flesh of the Saptarishi and gawked to a halt. Prachanda looked at his master with enquiring eyes. Did he want the assault to stop?

  Sura felt a lump develop in his throat. He had long forgotten what fear was. In an instant he rebuked himself and barked orders with renewed madness. His ambition of becoming the ruler of the entire known world was gnawing at him from within. Nothing could come in his way now. Nothing!

  ‘What stops you, O valiant Asuras? Burn them! Burn these mayaavi beings now and please your emperor Sura!’

  Bolstered by the aggressive commandment of their demon-king, the soldiers of Sura swallowed their fear and charged at the rishis.

  A gigantic wood-fire was now stoked-up. The Saptarishi were going to be summarily roasted to ashes.

  Or so the fools believed.

  ‘Stop this madness, Sura!’ urged Vivasvan Pujari. ‘Something is not right here. These are not the Saptarishi. I cannot sense their holy presence anymore. The divine seven have already taken samaadhi, and their souls have departed to some place else. Don’t you see why their bodies are decomposing rapidly and preparing for their final union with the soil of Prithvi? Without the spiritual presence of the divine seven, these mortal bodies are nothing more than empty vessels!’

  ‘Haarrgh!’ growled Sura, with a dismissive gesture from his massive sword. ‘They are here in front of me! And I am not going to miss this golden chance to wipe them out from the face of these lands I am about to rule. They shall burn alive in this fire of Sura’s wrath!’

  The commander of Prachanda’s elite regiment grabbed hold of the hair of one of the sages. As soon as his hands closed in on the locks of the decaying rishi, a distant crash was heard. A chilly gust of wind swept the area and nearly froze the Asura contingent.

  To the horror of everyone present, the sages all opened their eyes at once. But what lay behind their eyelids were not human eyes. They were just dully glowing stones of white. Either the eyeballs of the rishis had rolled-up into their heads, or some deathly force was peeping out from these ghastly slits on now the thousand year old faces of the seven hermits.

  Sura’s soldiers were now like statues made of stone. None of them dared to make a move. In the darkness of the night, the only crooked figures visible were those of the Saptarishi, now looking like they were five thousand years old, shriveled lumps of wrinkled, folding skin, but with eyes shining white as a grave shroud.

  At the behest of his General Prachanda, the regiment commander summoned all his courage and dragged the first sage to the mammoth blaze. He pulled the hair of the rishi, went around him and kicked him into the burning fire. As soon as the ascetic got engulfed in the flames, something that no one could predict occurred.

  The unrelenting yellow fire erupted into a spectacular, dazzling blue, with the condemned sage barely visible.

  The distant rumble now seemed to be edging closer.

  ‘Bewaaaaaare…O devta of Harappaaaaa…’ said a prophesying, haunting voice from the heart of the raging blue inferno. But it echoed like the mountains were talking with pained melancholy.

  ‘Beware Vivasvan Pujari…beware you whose pious soul has lost its path in the murky quagmire of hate and vengeance. Bewaaare… ’

  The devta of Harappa stood dumbfounded, crippled with sorrow, as he heard the last words of the first Saptarishi and watched his blurred figure turn into dust.

  Even before he could react, the regiment-commander had kicked in the next of the sages into the blue flames.

  ‘Vivasvaaaan…I weep for you, you unfortunate devta. Look at what you have become! We scorch andyou do nothing. So be it…your calamitous destiny awaits you…’

  With these terrifying words the now completely withered, unrecognizable body of the second Saptarishi also burned to ashes in the raging blue fire.

  In a matter of moments a catastrophic blizzard tore open the skies, spitting eerie lightning and deafening thunder on all of Aryavarta. It was as if the Mother, the Saraswati, protested and lamented furiously at the slaughtering of her loving sons.

  The blood river was now preparing to unleash the cruelest curse on all of Harappa, and all of mankind.

  Vivasvan Pujari pulled at the hide armour of Prachanda’s regiment leader and threw the bulky commander on the pebbled ground. He was not going to let this brutal depravity continue.

  ‘Stop this outrageous blood-thirst, O demon king!’ yelled the devta.

  ‘Get out of the way a-devta,’ replied Sura, his eyes transfixed on the surreal glow of the brilliant blue fire. He was now consumed with savagery and ambition. The now nearing rumble in the high mountains, the outlandish chilly winds, the unnatural sky and the punishing cloudburst…nothing could hold back the vile king of the Asuras. It was his day, and he was prepared to wage war - even against the heavens, should they come in his way.

  Before Vivasvan could say another word, he felt the hand of Prachanda on his shoulder.

  ‘You gave us your word, O great a-devta,’ said Prachanda. ‘You gave us your word!’

  By now the commander had swiftly got up and dragged two of the sages towards the fire. The remaining Saptarishi had now crumpled and aged so horrendously, that these two sages weighed nothing more than infants. Laughing like a psychotic villain, the commander lifted the sages by their respective necks and tossed them effortlessly into the incredible sapphire blaze.

  The raging fire now erupted into even higher flames leaping towards the sky, as if it were a rapidly growing blue monster preparing to devour everything in its wake. Like the freezing exhalation of an invisible djinn, a mighty hailstorm began sweeping the abode of the seven sages, compelling everyone, including the demon-king and the fallen devta, to cover their eyes. Vivasvan Pujari could sense that this abnormal thunderstorm was emanating from the weeping depths of the Saraswati. The ferocity of the pounding gales was making it hard for the unfortunate mortals to even remain standing on their feet. Sheltering his face behind his forearm and elbow, the Surya of Harappa struggled to peek into the fire.

  The two smoldering figures from the core of the blue furnace did not express angst anymore. The proverbial vessel of sins and evil was now full and brimming over.

  It was time.

  Time for the curse that would change the fate of humanity forever.

  It was time.

  Pralay was upon all Creation.

  Banaras, 2017

  VIDYUT

  Vidyut decided to take a walk around the sprawling lawns of the matth. The cool morning breeze sprinkled with holy fragrances of marigold flowers, ritual incense sticks, the chant of sacred shlokas and the lyrical chiming of distant temple bells, all made a short walk in the Dev-Raakshasa matth an incomparably delightful experience. Every now and then he stopped to touch the feet of matth elders, to kiss the old nannies, to smile shyly at the swooning young girls or to bowl a whizzing delivery to the boys playing cricket with a tennis ball. Vidyut seemed to have dissipated his boundless praanvaayu or life-energy into every pebble of the matth.

  By now, it was common knowledge that he smoked. He was the only one permitted to do so in full public view. He wore a simple, black sleeveless vest and grey track pants. Even in these plain clothes he looked magnetic. His unusually radiant skin accentuated his chiseled features and piercing almond-colored eyes. The breeze blew his long brown hair across his face every now and then, which he threw back with
all five fingers of his right hand.

  Was Vidyut annoyingly perfect? Perhaps. Or did he have flaws? He probably did. Just that those were hard to spot, and never stayed with the devta longer than a few moments.

  Vidyut always faced extreme emotional and social reactions from people around him. Those who understood him, loved him. And loved him dearly, unquestioningly. Even those who did not know him closely admired his honest charisma and boyish charm. He did invite envy by those who observed him only from a distance. Not because Vidyut had ever harmed them. He was too productively consumed in himself to ever have to worry about them. But they sometimes disliked him because he was so visibly different. He did not conform. He was not crafted from the standard mold. He was extraordinarily talented, and sometimes infuriatingly independent. He was a gentleman, but never one to back away from taking on a bully. He was wealthy and self-made, but behaved like a university lad with hundred rupees in his pocket. He spent equal time in pumping iron as he did in perfecting Carnatic music. But what gave intense heartburn to his rare detractors was that despite his magnificent appearance, his success, his riches, his talents and his charisma, he was humility personified. That was what most people could not come to terms with.

  Vidyut did have his share of grey. Was it wrong that he enjoyed smoking, even though he could outperform athletes and martial artists? Was it wrong that he sometimes succumbed to anger? Or to suspicion? Was it all wrong for the last devta?

  Was it all so wrong for someone who was, after all, half-human?

  As he sipped into his hot earthen cup or purva of spiced tea to soothe the dryness caused by his last few drags of tobacco, his ears caught a rhythmic sound of jingling paayal, the percussion of an expertly played tabla and a golden male voice singing shaastriya music. A guitarist and a trained vocalist himself, Vidyut was delighted to hear these beautiful notes. He decided to follow the captivating melody.