Bhairavi

by Shivani Gaura Pant

  His nakedness didn’t worry Chandan. Every once in a while, he would toss the ashes a bit with his tongs and then smile like a child and look down. Chandan could make out he was laughing from the way his back shook. What was this memory that tickled him so? He struck the ashes with his tongs loudly and got up. The force of the tongs made the ashes scatter like fireworks in the entire room and the ash-filled smoke made Chandan gag. She closed her eyes. There was no knowing what this mad hermit would do next. When she opened her eyes, the smoke had pervaded the whole room and was making its way out of the door. From that curtain of smoke emerged Charan, walking towards her with a pooja thali in her hands.

  ‘You are lucky that so many bananas were offered today.’ Charan kept three or four bananas on Chandan’s bed. Then she looked at the scattered ash and got scared, ‘Hai Ram! Did the guru come back early today? It seems nobody came to the shamshan for a smoke today. And this black beast must have complained about me, haven’t you?’ Chandan understood what the girl was referring to.

  ‘Why did you feed me his share of the milk, Charan?’

  Charan put the plate next to Chandan and sat with a thump.

  ‘Ok, so the guru is back and now that he is back, Maya Didi will also return soon. She can sense his comings and goings as if from the air. Then, would she let me sit next to you? Now tell me, did you jump off the train or did someone push you?’

  A lump formed in Chandan’s throat. She felt that she couldn’t lie to this doe-eyed, simple, wild child. Before she could say anything, however, Maya Didi was at the doorstep rattling the beads of the trident.

  ‘I knew it, knew it well.’ Maya Didi’s baritone rang across the entire cave. ‘She’d be sitting with you and gossiping. Today is a Tuesday, the temple will be crowded. Did you go there or not?’

  Charan kept sitting there unhappy and helpless. She didn’t respond that she had returned from the temple a while ago.

  ‘I have returned hungry and thirsty after having walked two miles,’ Maya Didi started saying, ‘but with this nincompoop around, I don’t even have the pleasure of being asked whether I have had anything to eat or not. Which is why my sister gave me some snacks to eat when I was leaving. I said to her, “Didi, that black woman will not even ask me for water, it will be enough if she doesn’t draw out all that I have eaten at your home”.’

  Then Maya Didi put the saffron bundle on her thick hips and took out thick chickpea rotis. Licking off the pickle kept between them, she wolfed down all the rotis one after another making Chandan feel like she was a merciless enemy sitting on her chest. She wanted to snatch the rotis from her. Perhaps the sanyasini too read the appeal in her eyes.

  ‘What are you looking at? Do you want some? You seem very awake today.’ Then, roaring with laughter, she handed a roti to Chandan almost as if she were reluctantly handing out alms. Chandan was so hungry that her self-esteem seemed to have disappeared like a cowardly friend. She leapt to snatch the roti.

  ‘Looks like that greedy Charan didn’t feed you.’ Maya started saying, ‘She will keep munching on something or the other given half a chance and if she is still hungry, she’ll merrily run off to that Gopal’s shop.’

  After finishing all the rotis, Maya shook the cloth they had been wrapped in to collect the crumbs and ate them as well. Then, after emitting two long, powerful burp-notes, she called for Charan.

  ‘Ai Charan, come here, can’t you sit for a moment? Always running around. What are you chewing on now?’

  Charan stood still like a statue, blowing her cheeks out. ‘Listen,’ saying so, Maya Didi stood up. On seeing her manly stature and structure, Chandan was a little surprised. Was she the same Vaishnavi she had found ugly in the dark of the night in her practically unconscious state? Had broad daylight worked some kind of magic on her? Calm and sharp eyes, a dusky but pretty face, like a rusty brass tumbler kept in a temple that had been scrubbed very thoroughly. Pouty, glistening paan-stained lips, a sharp chin adorned with a tattoo of three dots and a long bindi in a matching blue on her forehead that almost touched the parting of her hair and seemed to divide her glowing face into two halves. Right under it was the sandalwood teeka. Her voluptuous form had started sagging a little in places due to the ravages of age but the radiance of her face seemed to have rendered unheard the footsteps of time.

  Her eyes were lined with a thick streak of kohl. The aroma of chewing tobacco wafted from her full mouth. Colourful beads in her rudraksha mala. Hair tied in a neat bun with a jimsonweed flower nestling in it. All these features were like oases cultivated with great care in the desert of her detachment. That face must have ensnared many men in its youth. Her large, shining eyes were the most prominent attraction. Anyone who gazed at them would find it difficult to look away.

  ‘Careful!’ Charan had later cautioned Chandan. ‘Don’t ever look into Maya Didi’s eyes and agree to do anything. She has powers and can spear anyone just with her eyes.’

  Honestly, Maya’s personality was such. As if the spirit of the temples of sixty-four yoginis had come alive in her. Be it tantric powers, knowledge, science, religion or philosophy, she seemed to keep them all in her fists and attack Chandan with them every moment. Sometimes, those simple eyes would be filled with mirth, sometimes compassion, but the next moment, the calm face would turn stern. She would point her trident at Charan and stand like an angel of justice. Her eyes would fire such volleys that it seemed that poor Charan would turn to ash.

  At such moments, her fire would only be quenched with the sudden appearance of the Swami. Like a magician, he would turn her into a lassie so quickly that Chandan would find it difficult to believe her eyes. Was she dreaming? Where had that old hag brimming with anger gone? This was the yogini’s true appearance. Sometimes, a beautiful heroine and sometimes a mother-like Parvati. This must be the accomplished yogini’s tantric victory. A true, simple, compassionate, sweet smile. She studied neither philosophy nor science. Worldliness was a mirage for her. The sky, virgin-worship, jagran, meditation, chakra-meditation—she had conquered them all but the greatest grief of her life lay like a stone on her chest making her sink a little more into the ground every day. The guru was a follower of the path of Siddha-amrit. The thirsty yogini could only admire that glass of golden nectar from a distance. Were she to even come close let alone touch, the Swami’s aura would have burnt her. Chandan learnt this after a long time.

  After ordering Charan to get a fresh chillum, Maya Didi sat down with her back resting against the wall. ‘Wah! You have a remarkable face,’ she said. ‘But look, I like talking straight. This is the ashram of an Aghori sadhu. There are all sorts of followers coming here. Can we afford to pour ghee into such a raging fire?’ Then Maya Didi’s eyes glazed over as she was lost in thought.

  ‘How can we keep such a beautiful Bhairavi here? I had been thinking of sending Charan to another akhada and now another problem has arrived.’ Her voice suddenly rang out with annoyance. She was quiet for a moment and then started masticating the tobacco dregs in her mouth and said, ‘Both of us keep wandering around the cremation grounds for knowledge.’ Her face changed as soon as she mentioned the cremation grounds. The annoyed tone turned into soft, dulcet notes.

  ‘I’ll send you to my guru behen’s akhada once you can start walking. If you want to get a letter or telegram sent somewhere that can be arranged too.’

  Who would she call and how?

  She had been thinking that she has been reborn in this narrow, dark cave. That she would start a brave new life as a hermit away from her relatives and acquaintances. But Maya Didi’s instructions were clear. She had gained entry into the cave but she could not hope to live there. Will her mother who had run after her, wailing, the day she got married be able to embrace her if she found her alive? And like her mother, would she be able to contain her bubbling youth with self-control and be able to become part of genteel society? Suddenly, in that silent cave that was being swallowed by darkness, the shadows of three demons started roaming a
round her. The memory of poisonous kisses seemed to sting her like scorpion bites. She could not open that box of memories; she could not go back to her father’s house or to her in-laws’. Be it an Aghori’s akhada or any other akhada, the rudraksha mala that had landed around her neck was the only string she would hold on to and the guru’s ash was now her vermillion.

  Maya Didi didn’t come back for a while and when she did, she took Charan with her. Chandan was now used to being alone. The day was at an end but they hadn’t yet returned. Darkness had almost swallowed the cave but the smoke from the burning camphor in the room would keep finding its way into her mouth, making her feel as if she were being strangled. The potlis hanging from the beams swayed in the breeze like chandeliers. Breathing in the intoxicating fragrance of Mahua flowers wafting in through the window and listening to the tinkling of temple bells, Chandan forgot all her worries. Such was the joy in immersing the self in that unknown cell of devotion. Nobody here would find out who she was. Was she married or not? Why had she jumped off the train? What adversity had befallen her? As strange as this place might be, her companions were entirely devoid of curiosity and exuded calm. Even that talkative Charan had not repeated her audacious question and Maya Didi…? Mayavini! That strange devotee of Akhand Satchidananda! Could she stand even a sliver of emotion? Was there any place for sentimentalism in her? She did not want to know anything perhaps because she could divine things about people through her spiritual powers. Not just that, she could make the murderer in a cold case confess by cuffing him with her powers.

  ‘A sin committed unknowingly is not a sin, Bhairavi!’ Maya Didi had once said to a daydreaming Chandan, making her jump as if touched by hot iron.

  How had Maya Didi found out about her? ‘Had you sinned knowingly, that you had to jump? You are a fool, Bhairavi! Even a man made of stone would have forgiven all your sins on seeing that face of yours, and he was your lusty husband. He would have treated you like a queen. Anyway, now that the guru has put sacred ash on your forehead, it can never be adorned with vermillion.’ Sighing deeply, Maya Didi left the room. Her voice seemed choked.

  She had heard that the guru had put the sacred ash on her cold forehead when she was unconscious. He had put the rudraksha mala from the Shiv Mandir around her neck and stared at her for a long time.

  ‘What will her name be after diksha, Guruji?’ Maya Didi had asked. ‘Bhairavi,’ Guruji had answered and Maya Didi’s face had turned purple. ‘I really enjoyed it.’ Charan said as she narrated the entire incident to her.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You ask why? Have you ever seen your face in the mirror? Guruji put the mala around your neck with his own hands and gave you the name Bhairavi and then kept staring at you. All this made Maya Didi jealous. Have you not understood yet?’ Now she was laughing. ‘Or would she have left her house, three sons and husband at the age of 40 and chased him around cremation grounds?’

  ‘Sometimes, she follows the guru around the cremation grounds the whole night. Sometimes, she meditates in the temple, sits like a stone, without eating or drinking anything, as if the life force had gone out of her body. I have to take the chillum there at such times. When I hand over the chillum to them, they almost seem like two corpses facing each other. Eyes as red as the embers of the chillum and that glowing face. How she changes! I start shivering and keep shivering even after returning home. Sometimes, they come out of meditation after three or four days.’

  ‘If you feel so scared here, why don’t you run away?’ Chandan asked Charan one day. Charan turned to her like a wounded snake. ‘When you can start walking, I’ll ask you the same question, Bhairavi. We’ll see what you say then.’ And when Charan asked her that question exactly a month later, she did not have an answer.

  TWO

  It had been two months since she had come to this Aghori ashram. Maya Didi had probably forgotten her threat of sending her to another akhada. At night, Maya Didi made her sleep next to herself, with Charan at her feet. Sometimes, she’d wake up in the night to find them both missing from the bed. The first time, she had been so afraid that she couldn’t even call out for them. What if someone attacked her from some dark corner of that dungeon? What would she be able to do? She remembered how once a large Kalpataru tree had been burnt to a stump by lightning, which was the reason she was frightened even of thunder.

  Where could the two have gone? Had they abandoned her knowingly? Maybe they had an arrangement with that naked man? ‘The guru had kept staring at you.’ She had turned red with embarrassment when Charan had said that. He had put the mala around her neck with his own hands. She had only been wearing a sari and the touch of a man on her naked skin, just the thought was revolting. Sometimes, she would spend entire nights worrying. The two returned around dawn and lay down on the bed quietly but Maya Didi kept looking out of the window, god knows at whom. Her face would turn colours like a chameleon. The sun-kissed face with its large eyes, the Dhatura flower held fast in her high bun, her eyes lost in deep thought.

  ‘So Maya Didi, will you get it?’

  Charan spoke with Maya Didi only in Bangla. Anyway, even Maya Didi’s Hindi sounded like it had been derived from Bangla. She was from the Chapra village in Bihar but her guru’s first akhada had been in Burdwan. She would often call out to Bhairavi in that dialect, ‘Latun Bhairavi’, the new Bhairavi.

  ‘Yes?’ Maya Didi’s reply reverberated like a roar in the cave, filling Chandan, who would be lying in a corner, with fear.

  ‘Have you lost your mind? Do regular women have such eyes?’ And that day Chandan would feel like she had hit the jackpot. Maya Didi would keep smoking chillums the whole day and be lost to this world.

  That is exactly what happened that day, her night-long meditation reflected in her red eyes. Her chignon had come undone and her hair hung about her shoulders. The guru’s camphor had been burning continuously but where was he? He hadn’t even come to stroke his beloved. Charan might argue endlessly but she wouldn’t even swallow a morsel without checking with Maya Didi. However, on seeing the latter deep in meditation, she was happily making garlic paste and polishing off stacks of rotis. She got a plate of rotis for Chandan too.

  Maya Didi had trained her eye on a peepal tree, sitting quietly with an innocent smile on her face. Charan was taking advantage of this state of hers. First she drenched her rough hair with Didi’s aromatic ‘Laxmi Vilas’ hair oil right in front of her and then took out mouth freshener from her saffron potli. Taking out kohl from her silver kohl box, she applied it to her large eyes and with a kohl bindi made her dark-skinned beauty even more luminous. Laughing, she sat next to Chandan.

  ‘Why are you doing all this, Charan? Maya Didi can see everything.’

  ‘So what, do you think she is still of this world? She’ll stay this way till five or six in the evening. It is a lot of fun. Let me show you the temple today? Maya Didi will guard the house today, won’t you Maya Didi?’

  And that brat was on her knees in front of Didi asking. In reply, Maya Didi’s wheat-hued face lit up with a smile.

  Closing the door, she dragged Chandan out. She took her through maze-like, narrow alleys as if they were tied to a strong rope. Forest of gooseberries, greens of myrobalan, groves of tall coconut in places and in some places, calls of birds through hollow bamboo groves. Nature must have worked particularly hard to nurture the spectacle of greenery unfolding in front of Chandan’s eyes. After they passed by a row of young saplings with blood-red buds, they saw bouquets of the Rangoon creeper arranged by Nature’s own hands right in front of a decrepit mazaar. The aroma of the camphor burning at the mausoleum spread through the forest, rejuvenating it. With a lot of devotion, Charan swept the dried leaves off the mazaar with one end of her sari and then bent on her knees to pray.

  ‘This is Chand Baba’s mazaar. Every Friday, people from faraway places come here to tie threads and make wishes. They say that a thread tied here always bears fruit.’

  And there really were innumerable,
faded threads tied to the netted legs of the mausoleum.

  ‘You see that yellow thread there? That’s our Maya Didi’s.’ Charan started saying, ‘I hid and watched her tying it one day. She was bawling her eyes out here. I know what she was wishing for.’ She smiled mischievously, ‘How can tying a thread help? The guru doesn’t even look at her; after all I had tied that other red thread here.’

  Chandan’s head was spinning from having inhaled the aromatic camphor. Would she have to spend the rest of her life with these two women madly in love with their guru? ‘Let’s go, the temple is still far. Don’t know if that Mad Gopal has also gone to the market. In that case, we won’t even get one cup of tea.’

  Chandan was also parched and she was bored of Tulsidas’s Sattvik tea.

  ‘Is he the priest?’ She asked again.

  ‘No.’ Charan laughed and started walking faster, making Chandan huff and puff after her.

  ‘That temple doesn’t have a priest. He is the Chandal at the cremation ground and has a tea stall there. Sells a lot but that idiot can never keep his accounts straight. Had it been anyone else, they would have made thousands by now. I have told him often to keep some cakes or biscuits or some onion pakodas. After burning their dead, the tired gamblers on their way back home will eat some savouries and rest here. But he seems to have dung for a brain. Says, “Who’d eat onions after a cremation, what are you saying?” Now, who’d tell him? I have even seen a big brother uncorking a bottle under a Peepal tree after having cremated his younger brother. Here, everything goes. I have even seen a man who was cremating his wife being consoled with words like “Why are you feeling so sad? You are still so young. I have a beautiful niece of marriageable age.” I wanted to push that uncle of the niece into that very pyre. Arre, at least let that wretched woman burn fully, you bastard! Who says these cremation grounds inspire devotion!’