Bhayrav

8/7/2019 Bhayrav

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Bhayrav – The Lord of Fear

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8/7/2019 Bhayrav


The guy walking towards him in the corridor was wearing a T-shirt with a message: “Fight

Terrorism – Smoke Home-grown”. By homegrown he meant of course, home-grown pot.

S. had never smoked pot, though he had seen some of his friends do so.

S. wished to try it. But for different reasons. He practised transcendental meditation. He haddelved deep into the chasms and crevices of his psyche, or so he thought.

S. was not a party animal looking to get high nor a flower child seeking the higher plane.

No.

S. was a mad scientist turned witch doctor, in search of forbidden knowledge, which was to be

tested in an experiment involving the invocation of occult powers.

Frankenstein realized his monster in another being. S. was about to realize his – in himself.

He had heard tales of ascetics who haunted cremation grounds and endeavoured to realize

Shiva, their God, through stoned madness. S. was about to embark on a similar venture,

although the callow youth was not yet aware of the ordeal that awaited.

Pot smokers were ecstatic and blissful in their doped state. Some even spoke of the

“consciousness expanding” power of the herb. Many revered it as the food of the Divine, as

Shiva himself was fond of cannabis and often had his wife Parvati prepare it for him.

S. wanted the key. He wanted to unlock what could not be perceived through the five senses.

What he did not yet understand was that to go beyond the five senses, one had to go beyond

the five elements and attain Nirvana – the complete extinction.

Pancham Gachchatam. Parinirvanam Pariyaptam.

The trial was about to begin.

On the way to college the next day, S. passed by the Shiv Mandir. He looked up at the 10-foot

tall statue of the God, meditating in the lotus position. His face bore a benevolent expression.

S. closed his eyes and recited a mantra. When he opened his eyes, his sight was fixed on a

cigarette vendor’s booth, which had stencilled in red letters on its side, one word: “BHANG”.

Bhang is an Indian preparation of cannabis, as S. knew well. Taking this is a divine sign that

he was to explore knowledge of the Divine, with Divine’s blessings, he resolved to visit the

self-same cigarette vendor on his way home.

At dusk, he stopped at the cigarette vendor’s and coyly asked for Bhang.

--“How do you know we sell Bhang here ?” retorted the lackadaisical man within.

When S. told him it was clearly written on the side of the booth, the man walked out and

looked.

-- “So it does, so come here then.”

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He went back in and pulled out a long strip of packaged lozenges, remarkably similar in

appearance to cough drops.

--“How many”, he asked.

S., who had never seen Bhang in his life, wondered if the man was trying to sell him someersatz rubbish instead. Nonetheless, it was cheap and S. bought ten “munakka” lozenges.

Next, S. went to the Shiv Mandir, took off his shoes and went in. He joined his palms in

supplication before the idol and asked Him to aid him in his night journey. Then he left.

That night, S. retired to his room after his dinner. He opened his cupboard and took out two

lozenges. He read the ingredients. Indeed, it did contain Bhang after all, though in a

minuscule amount.

He put one lozenge in his mouth, and bit down hard on it. It tasted like earth and pepper

corns.

Nothing happened.

S. did not know what to expect, but this was certainly not his money’s worth !

He got up and walked up to his cupboard and popped one more, and then some more.

S. ate all ten lozenges.

He lay down in his bed and read a bit. He began to feel drowsy. He put down his book and

closed his eyes.

He began to see fantastic, colourful patterns and hear sweet, tingly music.

“Very Morrisonesque”, thought S.

Perhaps an attempt by his sub-conscious mind to convince him that the purchase was not a

swindle ?

At length, S. fell asleep, and did not dream.

Hours passed.

And then:

S. awoke, in a cold sweat, panting as if he had just sprinted a mile. His mouth dry, throat

parched with an unquenchable thirst, his mind racing with a nameless, aimless anxiety.

He shut his eyes. The fearsome dread engulfed him. He felt he had been swallowed whole by

angst.

His heart was pounding furiously, like horrible hammer blows on his chest. He turned to takea few deep breaths, open his eyes, and calm down, fearing he would go into arrest.

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In a frenzy, he cast the covering bed sheet aside and switched on the light. This feeling was

horrible, unspeakable.

He paced up and down the room. The room was the same. He was alone. Yet now alone with

this phobos which had seized a hold on him and was bringing him to the brink of insanity as it

turned his psyche inside out, unleashing what he had repressed, regressing to what tormentedand haunted him.

“I must get this poison out of me !”, thought S.

He rushed to the bathroom, and stuck a finger down his throat, bending over the water closet.

It was no use.

It was in.

He was in.

And there was no exit.

He lay on his bed, with the lights on. He closed his eyes again.

And them came the nightmare vision.

The vision of his love, on all fours.

Taking it, from behind.

And moaning in sweet agony.

Moaning.

Like a whore.

The vision multiplied, so it was everywhere his mind’s eye could be.

And thus everywhere, unto infinity.

And then a voice asked: “Is this what is bothering you ?”

Breathless, speechless, and perched on the brink of insanity and suicide, S. let his hand slip

into the trousers of his night suit and held his limp nothing in it.

He began to rub it furiously, as if he were in the hope that it might throw up some healthful

anodyne that would ease the pain.

It didn’t.

He opened his eyes and got up again.

No !

He would not tell anyone of his predicament.

No ! NO ! NO !!

He would survive this, and do it alone. That was what he always did best.

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He rushed out to the veranda for fresh air, the video of November Rain by Guns N’ Roses

racing through his mind now.

Axl popping pills, falling asleep alone in his bed, the rustling of the sad silken curtains by the

spirits of the ether, the numbing emptiness of the room, the shattering of glasses, the wilting

of roses, and the separation from certainty and union with eternity.

Back in bed, sweating, thirsty, and shivering with cold. Drinking like a camel and pissing like

a horse.

“Yet, O, I am so dry !”

The voice returned from deep within, urging S. to kill, to kill, kill, KILL, KILL, KILL,

KILL.

Telling him to take the kitchen knife and despatch his whole family to nameless, shapeless

hell.

S. rushed to lock his bedroom door and hid the key somewhere where he wouldn’t find it, if

and when he finally lost himself completely.

He switched off the light, and calming himself, as he had seemingly gotten accustomed to his

own self-created, self-induced hell, tried to sleep, although he felt as if an elephant was sitting

on his back and smothering him.

The prelude is over. The judgement begins.

There is someone here !

S. cannot look back, will not look back, dare not look back.

There seemed to be two people standing behind him !

One said: “calm down, calm down”.

Is it a man, or what is it ?

S. did not want to know.

The other person was a woman. S. knew so because she came and lay down on the bed beside

him. No woman had ever lain by him before. She was beautiful. Had he seen her before ? He

was not sure. It was difficult to clearly make out her features in the dark.

She smiled and put her hand on his arm. It was scalding hot ! Was she on fire ? Was she

a being of fire ?

S. was clearly getting scared senseless, so they left him, of their own sweet accord.

S. fell into a restless, disturbed sleep.

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He woke up again. He looked at his watch. 3:30 a.m. It won’t be long before daylight, even

now he could see the phantom of morn in the heavens above.

Yet it kept recurring. On and on and on. The nightmare vision. Of stabbing a woman again

and again and again and again and again. On and on and on.

S. held his hands to himself.

“Will hold on. Been through worse.”

Morning came. The hunter of the east chased away the night’s ghouls and ghastly beasts.

S., too weak to even stand, crawled to the toilet and defecated, his stools resembling those of a

goat’s, a dumb look of satisfaction on his face as the poison left his body.

He unlocked the door and checked the house. Yes, everyone was alive and accounted for, and

no blood anywhere.

S. had triumphed ! The purification by pain was over.

He slumped back into bed, too weak to even stand. He closed his eyes. His mind had never

been so clear, so lucid, so empty, so naturally.

S. conveyed his sentiments of gratitude to the ether, through the meditation of his heart,

in this blissful moment of peace, after the torture of the night gone by.

Suddenly, storm clouds appeared in the sky out of nowhere and a burst of thunder announced

torrential downpour.

The trial was over: S. had been exonerated.

On the way to college, S. looked at the idol. It seemed to have a stern smile on its face !

It was different from yesterday ! Yes, He was most pleased.

The word “Bhang” had disappeared from the cigarette vendor’s shop.

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God is an experience.

-- Rumi.

Knocking on the door of extinction,He became existent.

-- Saadi.

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Bhayrav