Maya's New Husband

by Neil D'Silva

  The rat became his fill for the day, though it wasn’t quite the same thing as the tough, red, human flesh. He sat solemnly as he stripped out the skin of the rat with his teeth, and then placed it on the fire so that it would reach a consistency that would please him. When it was done, he nibbled at it to taste its flesh and, when he found that he liked it but not as much as the human flesh, he bit large shreds of its meat with his canines.

  From a frugal eater who did not mind if he got a square meal a day or not, he had been transformed into a raving cannibal, who had developed a craving for a particular food. He began to need meat of some sort to fill his day, and it was best if he could lay his hands on the human sort. He realized what he had been missing so far.

  ***

  Then one day the old man fell ill. It was a severe sickness that could not be tamed by the herbal concoctions he prescribed to himself. Bhaskar sat next to him for three whole days, tending to him and performing any task he ordered. When things did not improve, the old man told his son of a mystic penance, a sadhana, that he could perform to appease the gods. He said that, as his blood heir, the gods would listen to his devotion and spare his father’s life if they deemed it worthy.

  So, Bhaskar, in just a loincloth to cover his genitals, entered into a yogic pose intended to save his father’s life. He took physical suffering upon himself. He stood on his head at first, not allowing his feet to touch the ground for an excruciatingly long period of time. Then, when this did not seem to work, he sat cross-legged and pulled his body upwards, supported only by the palms of his hands. This was the most unimaginable pain he had felt so far, his wrists threatened to tear apart and his blood rushed into his eyes till they became red and swollen. He even found breathing difficult when he was supported like this, and opened his mouth in bursts to inhale fitfully. This was his tapasya and he intended to carry it out till the end. And then, when he could really bear it no more, he collapsed in a heap on the ground, his body a mass of sweat and tears and shame.

  His devotion wasn’t enough. His tapasya had begun as a trial to put his father out of his ailment, but now it had converted into a test of his own devotion. He felt himself inadequate for not being able to appease the divine powers like he had heard ascetics could do; including his own father who had once pulled a senior aghori out of his ailment by the power of his sheer penance. Now, it was Bhaskar’s turn to do something to bring his father out of his agony.

  Most of all, he felt it was his rite of passage to enter the hallowed world of the occult.

  His father was now almost in a vegetative state, unable to speak or hear. He was incapable of giving instructions. Bhaskar knew it depended on him to save his father’s life.

  He thought of giving the ultimate test.

  No one told him to do that. He hadn’t even heard from anyone that this kind of test could serve any purpose. But, in his own mind, he felt this would be the right thing to do. He had to endure pain and sacrifice in order to relieve his father.

  So he took the sharpest instrument that was in his house and put his foot on the rim of the fire pit that his father had erected.

  Then, closing his eyes, his veins popping out of his forehead, and chanting out “Bam Bholenath” almost like a war-cry, he brought the cleaver down on his littlest toe.

  He never thought there would be so much blood. How could such a tiny organ have so much fluid in it? And, why was there so much pain? The toe—the most useless part of the human body—why did it cause him such agony? He thought he would pass out, but he was a strong man. He took a handkerchief and tied his foot securely. It was still of no use, the stub bled profusely. Then, he took an herbal paste from his father’s collection, applied it on the handkerchief, and then tied it around the wound. Immediately, a convulsion shot through him as the wound began to burn like damnation, but he bore it. At least, it stopped the bleeding.

  Then he took the severed toe, which was shriveling up fast, and observed it. He knew what he had to do with it.

  The fire was still burning. He placed the toe on one of the burning sticks. He saw the toe changing its form in the fire, and expanding slightly. The little nail on it came off, and melted into nothingness. Then, he pulled the stick out, and the toe cooled down to a red-black mass.

  He lifted the still-hot thing and, closing his eyes and chanting something reverently, placed it right on the tip of his tongue. He was now in some kind of trance, which removed him from all realization of his consciousness; and, in that state, he closed his mouth and began to chew.

  And, when he spat the broken phalanx out of his mouth, he heard the feeble groan.

  “Son,” his aghori father said weakly, “for how many days was I asleep?”

  ~ 18 ~

  The Path of Evil

  “Can I be an aghori like you, father?” Bhaskar asked the old man one day.

  “That is not an easy task,” said the father with unexpected forcefulness. “Even I threw myself out of this great faith when I sinned with a woman, your mother. I cannot call myself an aghori anymore, then what are you? You are nothing—the dust of my dust.”

  “If I fulfil all your commands, if I perform all the rituals…” There was hope in what the son asked, but his hope was once again shot down.

  “It is not just about following commands. Aghoris are not a herd that will blindly follow their leader. We have a divine understanding of things, and you cannot fathom that sitting here, in the midst of all this worldliness. No, you can never become half a great being as I was once. Renunciation is something you will never be able to do.”

  Bhaskar hated the old man for saying that. He wanted to be a great somebody, and having seen his father in action, a thought had entered his mind that he could become a great ascetic. But he had underestimated asceticism. In his naiveté, he believed that asceticism was ritualism; however, his father had put him down. He hated his father for being so blunt.

  Since more than a month, Bhaskar hadn’t worked at his pavement studio. But, when the reserves of saved money began running out, he took his satchel and stuffed it with his pad, pencils and paintbrushes and made another trip to Kala Ghoda. Someone else had already occupied his place, but after a bitter altercation and some assistance from a few of the old loyalists, Bhaskar got his place back.

  None of his faithful patrons turned up that day. His friends informed him that a few of his regular clients had come for him, but when they had found him missing, they had gone back, disappointed. Bhaskar sat there twiddling his thumbs until midmorning, waiting patiently, and then slowly the college students began to trickle in.

  By evening, he was painting furiously once more, the crowds gathered around him, all of them waiting to get their faces transferred onto his canvas, hoping to freeze it in that moment in time. His pencil strokes moved masterfully, capturing their images just as they wanted them to be done.

  It was around evening when he was just about to pack up and turn homewards that he was arrested by the attentions of one more patron. She was a woman, dressed in a brightly shining red saree, with long hair that did justice to her slender face and narrow chin. She was certainly a newly-wed, for she bore telltale signs on her body. A brilliant gold mangalsutra dangled around her neck and her hair was adorned by the vermillion powder of sindoor. Her husband stood just behind her, dressed in a formal shirt and trousers and squeaky-clean leather shoes, as though on his way to some job interview.

  She came, her saree swishing, and sat on the chair in the roadside studio, and Bhaskar smelled the whiff of the fresh mogra flowers in her hair.

  “It will take just a moment, Samar,” said the woman. “This will be a souvenir for life. Why don’t you come?”

  Samar retreated to the fence that separated the pavement from the main road. “You do it, Maya,” he said. “Get your solo picture. I am not interested.”

  “Oh please,” said Maya, beckoning to him from the chair.

  “Look,” Samar said suddenly, pointing ahead. “Isn’t that the
principal of the school you teach in?”

  Maya looked. “Oh yes, that’s Principal Purohit. Funny to see him here.”

  Maya gave a cursory look at the painter, without really seeing his face. “Sorry,” she said with a dazzling smile that lit up her entire face. It was just a glimpse, just a little rising of her eyebrows, and then she left the spot. But in that one moment, something happened within Bhaskar.

  The vacant chair still had the whiff of her mogra perfume. Bhaskar sat on it, sniffing hard, trying to breathe in as many pleasures as he could.

  There was one thing about Bhaskar Sadachari—he was impulsive. He had been created in a strange way; he often took an irrational liking to things, and then went to great lengths to procure them. His sudden object of desire was this immensely beautiful woman who had barely stepped out of her wedding gear.

  He kept looking at her standing in the distance as she spoke to her Principal Purohit. He noticed her every move. He saw how she laughed a lot during the conversation, and how her laugh crinkled up her face each time. And every time she laughed, she brought her mehendi-adorned hand close to her lips and covered her mouth, as if to hide her laughter, almost bending over in her mirth each time.

  ***

  When the old aghori brought human entrails that night, he shared the meal with Bhaskar, but the young man’s mind kept switching back to the woman in red. He didn’t even notice when the fire in the spit had begun to dwindle.

  “You are distracted,” said the old man.

  “I’m sorry, father,” said Bhaskar.

  “I can sense your distraction, and I can sense that there is nothing holy about it. You are filled with lust, vasna, and that shows in your eyes. My boy, vasna can be the end of a sane mind. It can make you feel worse than this dead fellow we are consuming.”

  “She keeps coming back to my mind, father,” he said.

  “Then it’s time you found a wife.”

  “I cannot do that,” said Bhaskar.

  “Why? Is it because of you think you are ugly?”

  Bhaskar had always been conscious of his unflattering looks. Apart from his illicit birth, his penury and his near-illiteracy, it was his appearance that had made him an introvert. His complexes had kept him away from people, had made him retract into a shell. But, living with his father had given him a new lease of life. He had come to know of new achievements, new pursuits. And now, hearing about his debasement from the mouth of the same person who had made him forget about it, caused him great agony.

  In his anger, he snatched the skull from the old man’s hands and dumped its contents over the fire. The fire, smothered by the sudden envelope created around it, began dwindling away.

  The old man sat upright, so much so that his rib cage began to show under his skin. “What is this you have done?” he bellowed. “You have insulted the divine offering.”

  Bhaskar stood looking at the fire and then at his father’s angry form, and feelings of remorse and fear welled up inside him. “I am sorry, father,” he said, tears beginning to run down his cheeks.

  “Gods once slighted are not appeased easily,” his father said in a quavering voice. “You need to do the penance.”

  “What penance?”

  Bhaskar did not step out of the house for three days after that. His father had shown him a particular chant, and had dwelled upon him to say that on loop, while performing a handstand for long hours at a stretch. The old man sat with him and monitored his penance, and tried to ignite the fire once again. But the fire would flicker and go out, and this continued for three days.

  Finally, when he could light the fire again, he told his son, who was no more than a breathing carcass by now, “The penance is complete. You may stand down.”

  And Bhaskar collapsed in a heap.

  ***

  When it became difficult for him to sleep at nights, Bhaskar decided he had to do something. Perhaps the attraction was because no beautiful woman had ever spoken to him before, or rather because no beautiful woman had ever apologized to him before. She was the forbidden fruit he was not meant to taste. It was this intrigue that made him restless.

  He suffered all the penances the old aghori put him through, but his mind did not waver from his infatuation.

  He had to get close to her. He had to see her at least one more time. It was then that he decided to look for the card the man—Principal Purohit—had once given him. Being a teacher in the same school—wouldn’t that be the best thing to get close to her? He could become a schoolteacher for her.

  Without telling his father who was engrossed in a deep sadhana, he called up the Principal. The Principal was happy to hear from him. He said how he wished to promote art and how he enjoyed scouting for new talent and giving it what it deserved. The appointment was fixed right away. And, just like that, Bhaskar became an art teacher at the school.

  It was not that difficult to keep his old aghori father in the dark about this. When he was at school, the only thing his mind really worked on was a way to communicate with the woman. As the days passed, she came out of her bridal finery. However, she was still a dedicated wife, as he overheard in the snatches of conversation with her best friend, the fat English teacher. Whenever he overheard her speaking about her husband, his heart missed a beat. He wondered why he couldn’t have been the one she was talking about. He fantasized of her being his wife and catering to his every need. He vowed to himself if that ever happened, he would fulfil every desire of hers.

  Other teachers and even students caught him lurking in the corridors several times, but they never guessed his intentions. He stayed aloof in the institution and never shared his feelings with anyone. He was finally branded as a queer sort, and the rumormongers fueled the fire that not everything was quite right with him.

  Bhaskar did not deny these allegations. They served his purpose well. But, he ensured that he kept an adequate distance from Maya so that no one could connect him with her.

  ***

  One night, when he was a few weeks into his teaching job, his father spoke with him over a meal they shared. Bhaskar was sitting in the pose of the padmasana, the bhasma smeared over his chest. He had been applying the bhasma for several weeks now, and even though it caused an allergic reaction with his skin, his father insisted he smear it. It was a way of communicating with the divine, of getting his wishes fulfilled. The father lay on the floor in the shavasana pose. The old man was now at the end of his tether; he had begun to find it difficult to even keep sitting for a long time at a stretch. The thick fumes of incense permeated throughout the little room.

  “I know what you are up to,” the father said.

  Bhaskar opened his eyes.

  “Do not think you can fool the old man,” he continued “but I have not come here to impose upon you. I have committed sins myself, and I realize that my preaching will mean nothing to you. But it’s not going to work. Do you realize that?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “For the reason that the woman you lust for is someone else’s. The fates have bound her with someone else; you have no claim on her now.”

  Bhaskar opened his eyes wide. It did not surprise him that his father had come to know of this. He had experienced his father’s occult powers by now; there was nothing hidden from the aghori if he put his mind to discovering it.

  “You will be going one step further than my sin if you pursue her,” the father said, “My sin was with maiden, an unmarried woman; she was committed to no one. But, even thinking of a married woman in the way you think is pure sin. It can only lead you to the path of evil.”

  Bhaskar looked at the old man long and hard, not understanding whether he was patronizing him or condemning him.

  “Do not look at me like that,” the man said. “You clearly understand what I wish to tell you. And, if you do not, then you are not fit to follow the right path anyway.”

  It was the way the old sage had said it that hurt Bhaskar. He felt trapped in a place from where there
was no return. He wanted something so badly that he could not hear the voice of reason.

  In that moment, the devil struck his heart.

  Once more, he stood up in a fit of anger, trembling with his hatred of this old man who personified the conscience he must obey. He wanted to do something wicked so that this painful voice of conscience would shut up. He was free before this man had come into his life. He could do whatever he wished. And now, under the omnipresent eyes of this person, he felt bound.

  He walked away from the room and went out of the house.

  ~ 19 ~

  A Mortal Sin

  For several days after that, Bhaskar continued in this mental state of pure agony. In the daytime, he was torn because of his passion for the one thing he could not achieve—he could not dare to achieve—and in the nighttime, he was angered by the brutally honest words of the sage that he had no option but to listen to.

  The more time he spent staring at Maya in the school, the more he began to loathe his father. He began to rue the day when he had allowed him to seek refuge in his house. He began to weigh the options he had—break free from the bondage of this man and pursue his love, or forget his love and continue his devotion towards the man. He realized both could not coexist.

  Then one day, he felt the time had come for him to do what had to be done. He had a whole plan of action ready; but for that, he had to be unfettered. He had to remove all the bondages that shackled him into helplessness.

  He spoke with the old aghori that night when they were dining on some meat of questionable origin.