Maya's New Husband

by Neil D'Silva

  “What is the biggest sin in this world according to you, baba?” he asked.

  “That’s a very difficult question you ask,” said the aghori, “and there is no clear answer to that. But, my limited knowledge tells me that one of the greatest sins in this world—if not the greatest sin—is to take away the life of someone who has given you life. Killing one’s parents is the biggest sin without a doubt. Some people debate on that though; they say a few people may give birth without design or intent; and if that is the case, is patricide or matricide such a big sin? But, one must know this—even if you have been brought into the world by unfair means or by some cruel incidence, you are still the flesh of their flesh and the blood of their blood. They have given you their seeds and that is one of the biggest gifts there is.”

  Bhaskar kept quiet at that. It was always uncanny how the old man always delved into his mind and spoke exactly about what he was thinking.

  “What is the atonement for such a sin, father?” he asked.

  The old man looked at him long and hard. There was something in his austere head that Bhaskar could not figure out; his eyes looked at him with some kind of mystic brilliance.

  “There is no atonement for such sin,” he said at length. “Killing one’s own parents is the worst thing that can be done.”

  “You sinned in giving me birth,” alleged Bhaskar. “What was your penance?”

  “It was a long and arduous route,” the old man said. “One that cannot be taken by ordinary mortals. I sat in tapasya in the wild forest visited by animals of every kind, who sniffed at me and left me, perhaps because they smelled some divinity in me. But I could only feel the shame of my deed. Then one day I felt a divine presence. I bowed down to it, surrendering completely. Then I suddenly thought of the answer—it was so prominent, like a ray of light illuminating a dark room.”

  “What was the penance?” asked Bhaskar.

  “To consume eight dead human hearts.”

  Bhaskar flinched.

  “But, I could not go about looking for them,” the old man continued. “I had to wait till people died of their own accord. Some died of snakebites, some came to the forest to die; and one day I came upon a place where a young bridal couple had been murdered by bandits. Without getting a proper cremation, their bodies were wasting away; and I took it upon myself to prevent their precious flesh from decay. It was their hearts, the centers of their being, that needed to be protected the most. I took them within me, saved them from becoming dust. When I ate the eighth heart, I felt something inside—like something that had been holding me captive until then had lifted, like I was a free man once again. And I could hold my head high again, and I walked out of the jungle into this civilized world.”

  ***

  That night, when his old father slept, Bhaskar tiptoed to him with a heavy stone in his hands. The plan was to kill him. Bhaskar had debated long and hard about it, and had arrived at the conclusion that there was no other way. His decision was fueled by the fact that he had always hated his unknown father who had abandoned his mother. Also, there was the irrefutable fact that the old man exerted a great deal of influence on him. It wouldn’t be easy to tell him to leave. He wouldn’t.

  But the most important argument that Bhaskar made with himself was that if he wanted to claim Maya for himself, he would have to first remove this interfering ascetic out of the way. His talks of conscience stung Bhaskar. Without this man, there would be no conscience to prick him. As long as his shadow remained in the house, he had no chance with Maya.

  It would be easy to take him out, for no one had ever seen this old man in his house. No one came to his house anyway. What he was only afraid of were his occult powers. He was afraid the man would realize his intentions and stop him by using some supernatural strength of his.

  The aghori slept fitfully. His eyes twitched as he slept and he snored in fits and bursts. Bhaskar stood still for a moment to ascertain whether the man was indeed asleep, and when he didn’t show any signs of being conscious, he raised the stone right above his sleeping head.

  For a fleeting instant, he remembered the conversation he had had with his father. Killing one’s parents is the biggest sin. It was ominous the way he had said that, as though the old man knew what was coming, as though he had accepted his fate. Maybe by killing his father he was doing him a service, sending him to a plane of higher divinity.

  Screw that thought, he told himself. Yet, it wasn’t that simple. Though he was determined to bring the stone down on his father’s interfering head and smash it, the very thought made him tremble.

  Thrice he lifted the stone and thrice he lowered it. He didn’t know what was right or what was wrong, but he saw the gains he stood to achieve. He thought of his mother, whom he had always seen as a morose woman hidden in her palloo, all because this man had abandoned her. He remembered Maya and her electric laughter on that first day he saw her, and he would not get her if this man stayed alive. These two visions were enough; he steeled his resolution.

  With one swift blow, he brought the stone down on his father’s head once.

  The snoring stopped abruptly.

  He lifted the stone. The skull was smashed in two and the brain was spilled out onto the wooden bed that he had been sleeping on. His eyes popped out with the impact, one of them smashed, a gooey yellow mass oozing out of it. The impact retracted the skin of the head, and his mandibles now jutted out, a sickly sight of white bone protruding out of his wizened wrinkled cheeks.

  The deed was done. Now there was no going back.

  He sat next to his father’s dead body to ensure he was really dead. He lifted his wrist and checked it for any signs of life, but it was already as cold as a brass lota on a wintry night. Then he checked the heartbeat. All he was greeted with was silence.

  Then the remorse struck him. A flood of emotions arose within him. This was his father after all. He had no proof to the contrary, and at least he had begun to unreservedly believe that this man was indeed the one whose seed had given him birth. And now, he had snuffed him out to coddle his own passions.

  Could there be a sin deadlier than this?

  He sat like that for a minute, pondering over the justifiability of his actions, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that scared him to bits.

  It was the foot of the dead man.

  He looked again, more guardedly this time, to make sure.

  And yes, there it was—the foot was moving. It moved in a slow, twirling motion, so that the thumb traced out a circle in the air. Then the second foot began to move in the same fashion. Then, when both feet had traced circles, the heels moved in the direction of the knees, so that the corpse’s legs rose in the air.

  Horrified, Bhaskar tried to move as far away from the body as he could. He tried to get up to his feet, but then he suddenly felt a tight vice-like grip.

  It was the cold dead hand of his father, the same one that he had just checked for signs of life. The hand rose and gripped his ankle so tightly that he felt the blood choke within his veins. He struggled to move away from the corpse, but death seemed to have made the spirit of the aghori stronger and, try as he could, he could not pull himself away.

  Then there was a blinding flash of light, and the ghastly movements of the dead body stopped as abruptly as they had begun. It became motionless once again but the grip remained. Bhaskar felt the coldness of the inanimate fingers around his ankles, and he tried to remove them one after the other. They were stiff and clammy and it was a difficult process. Eventually, he bent them backwards so hard that he heard the snap of the breaking bone.

  This indicated the finality of his act, and it was this finality that brought tears to his hardened face.

  He cried loud and hard deep into the night; and he realized he had committed the mortal sin of patricide. A thought of committing a sin is much different than actually committing it. Now, there was no reversal. The reality that he had committed a mortal sin seared his soul.


  When morning approached, he was still sitting on the floor. The corpse was now long dead, but even in its death it seemed so animate, so alive. Did he live on even after his death? Did his soul not leave his body yet? A glimmer of hope shone in Bhaskar’s mind. If his father was still there in the dead body somehow, he would tell him what he should do to repent.

  The words of his dead father echoed in his mind: “Unless you pay penance for your karma, there is no salvation, no mukti. Your soul, and mine, will be trapped on this earth. I will suffer too, because I did not stop you as a father. We will be here, without deliverance, and become ghosts and suffer unmentionable agonies. Every sin needs its atonement; that’s what brings it its mukti.”

  But what was the penance?

  He thought he knew what to do.

  So he brought out the cleaver again, and keeping it next to him, entered into a difficult asana where he lifted his body, limb by limb, by only the strength of his hands. He kept all instincts at bay and focused on his suffering. The smell of the fresh corpse permeated through the room. He perspired through his entire body and that loosened his grip on the ground, but he held firm.

  It was only when the sun rose to its zenith that he extricated himself from the punishing position. He placed his tired, sweaty foot on the same bed where his father now lay. And, closing his eyes as he had done not so long ago in this same room, he brought the cleaver down on his foot with all the might he had.

  Two toes separated from his body this time, and he tumbled down into an unconscious heap.

  ***

  A full day had passed, and the corpse still lay there. Bhaskar, his foot bleeding from the loss of two additional toes, stayed by its side, waiting for guidance. Murder isn’t something that can be erased. It shrieks from every corner, haunting the perpetrator till it causes adequate remorse. He began to feel those pangs and they gave him no peace.

  Then he thought of something that put his mind to rest. He had killed his father, after all, and he needed to do something in order to honor his dead form. So, on the second day of his death, he gave the body a cleansing bath. He applied vermillion and turmeric on the smashed head. He used it generously till all the gaping wounds were covered with the red and orange powder. Then he placed the body in a large cloth bag he had made by sewing two bed sheets together, and carried it in the dead of the night to a place he had found nearby.

  It was an abandoned garage, hidden behind a wreckage of cars. He had never seen anyone moving about in this area, and it was so desolate that it seemed to be abandoned by everyone, including its owner. Amid curious dogs, he walked in the dim streetlight through a side alley at three in the morning, and brought the body to the place.

  When he reached there, he found that the door of the place had been sealed shut and there were skeletons of cars heaped high in front of it. After some probing in the moonlight, he discovered an entrance. It was a hole in the roof. Despite its precarious edges, it was enough for a man to crawl through.

  The sealed—not merely locked—door made this place a great proposition. No one would ever come here, no hobos or junkies. He would be undisturbed with his dear departed father in this place, which he would build it as a temple to him, the Fallen Saint.

  In the dead of the moonless night, it took him the better part of an hour to hoist the body atop the car junk pile, taking care that it didn’t get mutilated any further. When he reached the top, he heaved the body near the opening and let it fall. Even for a living man, the fall would have been grievous. The body made a sickening crunch as it hit the ground, but there was no life left in it to care about the crunch.

  Then, Bhaskar let himself down and landed on his feet like a cat. He gathered the body in his arms and took it to an inner chamber. He found a rickety chair in an inside room, on which he propped the body in a sitting position.

  The next day, he brought a few sacred things, such as incense and camphor and sandalwood, and bedecked the place where his father’s body sat to look like something of a shrine. When done, he looked at the lifeless form of his father, seated amid various objects of veneration, finally receiving the center-place of devotion as he had always hoped for.

  It was then that the dead body spoke for the first time.

  “The path to what you seek is not easy.”

  Bhaskar looked sharply at who had spoken. It was his father’s voice; there was no mistaking that. The voice had emanated from the rotting corporal form of the dead ascetic, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it.

  “There is no parallel to your sin; there is no absolution.”

  He sat down at that voice. He saw the mangled face now daubed in bright colors of red and orange, trying to communicate with him. The lips did not move, but he heard every word loud and clear, crystallizing into his memory and becoming permanent.

  “Your sin is driven by your lust. It is temptation that has brought you to these crossroads. And now you do not know which path you take.”

  “Forgive me, father,” Bhaskar said. “I was misled.”

  “Misled by your own twisted thoughts! But it does not matter now. What matters is your sin. The shadow of sin that is upon you cannot be erased easily. And unless that shadow is erased, none of us will find peace.”

  “What am I to do?” he asked.

  “Atone. Do what you must. Atone.”

  And the corpse fell silent.

  ~ 20 ~

  Another Mortal Sin

  One thing he missed sorely was the taste he had acquired in his father’s company. He tried the flesh of other sturdy animals with red muscle—pork, beef, and even venison—but they paled in comparison with what his tongue had grown accustomed to. Without his father to bring him the residual corporal meat of unsuspecting dead souls, it was difficult for him to get what he was in so much torment for.

  He sat at the crematorium for long hours, striking friendships with the workers and sadhus, smoking chillums with them, but it did not help him realize his wish. The bodies were led to the pyre as soon as they were brought in, and that was always in the presence of a slew of mourners and he never got a moment alone with them.

  He should have asked his aghori father how he had procured the meats. But it was too late. Now, his father only issued commands, he did not answer questions.

  Then, one day, he realized that some people bury their dead. It was a sudden thought, and with that a flash sparked in his mind. It would be easy, he felt, to open up a recent grave and smuggle the corpse in it. The earthiness of the corpse would probably give it a better flavor too. So that night he entered the graveyard, taking care that no one noticed him. He got nicked by the barbed wire along the wall, but the blood only fascinated him more. And sitting there atop the wall not much unlike a monkey, he sucked on his own blood in curious amazement.

  He let himself drop into the graveyard. There was the smell of flowers on some of the new graves, and they had burning candles around them too; but most of them lay desolate and neglected, memories of a past long gone by. The smell and the candles guided him to one. He read the inscription on the wooden cross above it. The poor wretch was some Peter Patrick Alvares, 37 years of age, left for his heavenly abode a week ago.

  It sounded perfect.

  Bhaskar thought of how his flesh could still be warm in its wooden coffin, how the earth may not have mangled it into its elements yet, and how the warmth inside might have slowly stewed the fibers of the corporal remains.

  He stalked around for something to ravage the grave, and found an iron rod discarded haphazardly within the sacred enclosure of the cemetery. Equipped with the implement, he moved to the grave and struck.

  It was harder than he had expected. He worked slowly, keeping an eye out for anyone who might intrude upon him. At every pause, he judged how much more he had to dig.

  Then when he had been digging for a good part of two hours, he felt he struck wood. He dug more fervently now that he was close. Eventually, when he broke through the lid of the coffin, he brough
t a graveside candle closer to see his spoils.

  The man was handsome in death, dressed in a black suit with white gloves on his hands. Bhaskar proceeded to try and take a piece of the man. He moved his coat off his chest.

  And then, he fell down backwards in the grave, horrified and disgusted at what he saw.

  Poor Peter Patrick Alvares had already started becoming a meal for the maggots. The little white creatures had worked their way into the wood and now they were present on every inch of the dead man’s body, worming their way through skin and right into flesh.

  The candle fell from Bhaskar’s hands right on the face of the corpse. And Bhaskar saw the maggots surrounding the eyes and entering the nose.

  His sudden intrusion seemed to have set the maggots into a frenzy. They started moving faster but they did not leave the body. They only banded together and piled more densely atop it, as if to tell the tomb raider—This is our piece of meat. Go find your own.

  Horrified by this ghastly demonstration, Bhaskar left the grave and hastened away the same way he had come. He kept brushing his clothes. The sick feeling of maggots creeping over his own body wouldn’t go away so easily.

  ***

  Seven days after killing his aghori father, Bhaskar thought of putting the next part of his plan into action. He did not go into the room where he had placed his father much because he could not bear the spirit talking to him, continuously castigating him for the sins he had committed. He knew what he had to do now. It could be a long wait till he found the right moment, but he was prepared to wait.

  One day he followed Maya home from school. He waited outside the gate at a paan-beedi shop, hiding his face till she passed by. He hated that her meddling friend Padma was with her too, but he had to only follow them from a distance. She took an auto-rickshaw to her house, and he took another, cryptically instructing the driver to follow her. The driver asked for double the fare. Bhaskar readily agreed to that.