Bhrigu Mahesh, Phd

by Nisha Singh

  ‘It’s so hard to believe that Savita would…’

  ‘She was somehow trying to get over her tragedy. This haunting was a part of it. She was a great woman, Sutte, and there is no doubt about that but she was broken at a very early age. Her parents distrust in her destroyed her and the terrible decisions that she made like marrying a deeply insecure man for a husband was the unfortunate result for which she dearly paid. The people who had adopted her and loved her were her foundation; her strength, and once it shook, she could not help but topple over. I have named it in my assays- “The root-rot effect.” Once the root becomes weak, there is no option for the plant but to rot and eventually perish.’ He sighed and then began glumly. ‘I so wish that she had got broad minded guardians who understood and supported her and who did not try so hard to conform with society that in the process their own child is destroyed whom they no doubt, loved.’

  ‘But…but how did she carry it out? The…shriek of Damyanti, the moving of the utensils, the placement of the comb….’

  ‘It was easy for her than anyone else, wasn’t it? Of all the people in the house, the only person who was very close to Damyanti was Savita. She was the only one in the Bhakti household that the elderly woman conversed with intimately and so no doubt remains that she must have shared all the colorful details of her life. The two women had become very good friends and confidantes and so Savita was cognizant of all the little habits of Damyanti, including her cherished comb and the way she loved to set it in the holder. She was also well aware that Damyanti was a stickler for the cleaning of the dust which always accumulates in the obscure corners of the kitchen. So, she would go in the there when no one was around and fling the utensils carelessly about the room so as to expose the dusty corners as her late sister-in-law would. She also knew that Damyanti loved the smell of lilies and hence Savita would spray the perfume with the fragrance of lilies in her room. That’s why we did not find any flowers in the room but the faint smell of lilies still lingered on, adding another eerie but convincing element to the elaborate plot of her return from the grave.’

  ‘But did you not, even for a moment, believe that Damyanti had actually returned?’

  ‘No ghost works as methodically as the one at Bhakti Niwas. Not even the troublemaker poltergeist’ replied my friend. ‘Nataraj Bhakti told us how it had carried the haunting in “phases” hadn’t he? Such an order as the phantom observed is reserved only for the mortal world. That order leads to discipline; discipline which is necessary for a stable, peaceful world. Why would a ghost, who has passed on from this world, still care for such discipline is beyond me. Such a systematic way of spooking our dear friend hinted at the fact that the one who was behind it had a very organized mind. You cannot say that for Chiranjeev or Premkala. Who is left then? You do the math.’

  ‘There were some very solid points that made me almost convinced that Savita was behind everything.’ my friend went on, before I could interject. ‘First, as I told you before, that she was well-aware of Damyanti’s peculiarities. Second, that she was the only person intelligent enough to plan so sophisticated and organized a haunting and third that there was no motive for Chiranjeev and Premkala for scaring the wits out of Nataraj Bhakti. They could scarcely hope to get anything out of it. If Bhakti went mad, at the most they would lay claim to his little room. Hardly worth the trouble, right? Thirdly, you remember I asked Nataraj Bhakti to go to his wife’s room and make as much noise as possible about the condition of the comb. I wanted to make sure that we could safely cancel the couple. Nataraj Bhakti reported that everything remained normal even after his little drama and the two of them had betrayed nothing to support that they had any knowledge about the supernatural affair. The fourth proof that connected all the dots and firmly pointed the finger in Savita’s direction came after I found out about her connection with the Pundit. What else was needed to know what had happened and how?’

  ‘But…but the name mentioned in the entry was “Pratigya.” Why are you so sure that she was Savita and no one else?’

  ‘I did my research, Sutte.’ he replied with a smile. ‘I went to Bulla Ram Prakash, the head man, and asked him if this village had any other literate woman other than Savita. He replied in the negative. She was the only graduate among the women of this village who were at the most metric pass. The entry in Parichay Mishra’s papers, clearly tells me that “Pratigya” was a smart woman just like Savita. But if there was only one Savita in the village, there was no doubt that this woman who so resembled her, was Savita herself. The chain of logic is thus complete.’

  ‘But I…wait a minute.’ I was struggling with the questions that kept forming in my head. ‘What about the shriek of Damyanti? You have not clarified that. Also, why did you look around the room of Bhakti and scrutinized carefully, the route to the lavatory? You also looked over the boundary wall to the fields beyond. What were you searching?’

  ‘Oh that.’ he replied, non-chalantly. ‘I was just making sure that some old enemy of our client had not tried to frighten him by playing the ghoul by coming through the fields and crossing the brick boundary into his compound. I observed that the mud-field lining the boundary wall was overgrown with bush and brambles but they were not at all trampled in any way. There was no mud on the wall too. I traced the path to the lavatory to look for traces of mud from the fields beyond or anything that could belong to the intruder. I found none. I was just covering every detail of the investigation, that’s all. I knew even before the careful scrutiny that this haunting could not have been perpetrated without inside help. One of the relatives was in on this, of that I was sure. I was just making certain that he or she did not have any accomplices. I was relieved to find that they did not.’

  ‘That’s all right but the shriek?’ I asked again.

  ‘It was Savita’s alright.’ replied my friend. ‘She had mimicked it to resemble Damyanti’s. Not very difficult given the fact that, and as Bhakti told us, that his wife had a very high-pitched voice. When a person with such a pitch shrieks, it sounds little more than a thin and shrill voice devoid of all character. Hence, he became pretty convinced that the shriek was that of his dead wife. Also, he was so frightened that he was in no frame of mind to distinguish the finer details.’

  ‘So Savita was there somewhere when Bhakti heard the scream behind the latched door of the lavatory?’

  ‘Yes and was careful enough to not get seen. I am ready to wager that she must have seen her brother from the kitchen, going to the lavatory. She quietly followed him and hid behind the lavatory. She was a smart woman and knew how to play hide and seek and win.’

  ‘I still can’t see a dignified woman like her behaving like a naughty truant.’ I remarked. ‘But all that you just said fits perfectly.’

  ‘No person is either black or white, Sutte.’ he said soothingly. ‘They are a combination of many different colors. Its circumstances which determine which color shows itself and which is kept concealed. Savita was undoubtedly a good woman but even goodness has many shades; some darker than the others. It’s a mind-boggling maze, the human nature. If you have to understand it logically and like a true scientist, you will have to device controls for every little peculiarity that goes into the making a personality and then experiment on it repeatedly till you derive a firm, unbiased conclusion. Soon, you will see that all that looks very subjective is just an illusion; a myth. And one day, when we have completed such experiments following the true scientific methods, we will find that we can…’

  ‘Run a human psyche like one does a physical sample. I know.’ I said in an impatient voice. ‘And I don’t seem to care much about it.’

  ‘You will.’ he said with a smile. ‘When you once realize how human happiness will depend on it. Any other question?’

  ‘Questions.’ I corrected dully. ‘How did pundit Parichay Mishra’s “understanding” of women improve after he solved the arcane riddle with Savita as her to
ol? I don’t see it helping him much in his mad research. Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’ he said. ‘And for that, I will have to read to you what he has scribbled along the margins of the poem. I have collected enough material to know exactly what the priest was after and let me tell you, his inspiration is as old as our culture.’

  CHAPTER 49

  A Lyrical Devotion

  ‘The problem with women like Sheela is that they are never very assertive but they are homely and comely. “Homely and comely” I am making poetry of my own. Well, they have been taught from childhood upwards that their sole motto in life is to look after their husbands as a slave does his master and bear him children; preferably sons and keep the home in a nice, healthy order. For women like her, such a teaching is comparable to a rigid doctrine that they have to follow or else they will not be fulfilling their…what’s the word…ah…Dharma. These are mostly devout women who worship their gods and husbands as “Pati Parmeshwar” and consider it their holy duty to look after their needs and obey them without question. From that they will derive a lot of virtue and thus hope to ascend to heaven after death. Sheela belonged to that devout group of women. She had an invariegated, simple mind that accepts without question and hence such a doctrine can be easily etched in such a brain. Sheela also tended to her husband as a dutiful wife. I must also add that a woman like her should not be confused with the likes of Neelu. It is a very dangerous practice. Neelu was taught much the same things as Sheela but in a day and age when much of that arcane lesson had been reduced to just a formality and both the teacher and the student knew that the lesson was just a disguise for the real objective. In Neelu’s case, it was the education of her brothers on the sacrifice that she and her sisters gave. Her father could not afford her education and hence, instead of providing her with the bitter truth, they steeped it in lies; lies that were easily told in the guise of that arcane lesson. Neelu did not buy it as she knew the real reason for the discontinuation of her education but she had to bear it in silence because years of control, squashes any will for dissent and so she quietly accepted her fate. Therefore, she reacted so terribly when she met a woman who was everything that she could only dream of and also that her husband desired such a woman over the likes of her. Sheela, on the other hand, was under no such deception. The teacher and the student were both in the earnest when they swore on the merits of the lesson as they sincerely had as much faith in it as a devotee has in his God. So Sheela went about her duties guided by the valuable lesson that she held so dear to her heart and thus she readily ignored any little acts of neglects that she must have suffered at the hands of her husband thinking that it was but her duty to do so. So she had no complains for the most part of her life and the lesson; the doctrine was holding well. So the natural question that arises is that what changed so suddenly that a woman like her started having serious doubts about that lesson? It must have been a remarkable change similar to a man of faith, suddenly losing the same in his God. Why the change? The bitterness? The answer is simple only if we try to asses her condition come old age. The woman was suffering from arthritis and her whole body was quacking with pain from morning till dusk. She cried in her sleep and greeted morning with a long wail. My source says that the pain would sometimes reach such a crescendo that all remembrance of herself would vanish. She would sit for hours and groan, rubbing her joints with mustard oil which gave her a little respite but not for long. It was a time in her life when the strength of the lesson she had followed all her life was tested. She could not be at the beck and call of her husband all the time and he dutifully took her to the nice doctor who prescribed her medicines, a lot of messaging, a little walk and ample…well…rest. Her husband looked alright with the new arrangement and would now take care of his needs by himself. He no longer asked his wife to do this and that for him and it was in those solitary moments of rest, that she started to realize dimly at first and then with increasing strength that all that she had done for her husband for all these years was merely a time-pass; a way to occupy herself and nothing else. Her husband never needed her and he could have well looked after himself even without her. She could bear him no child and in that duty she had lacked which she tried to make up with her always being at the heels of her husband but…but now she is sick to her heart and a pain much worse than arthritis terrorizes her that she had always been but a burden that her husband had to endure. He never conversed with her much but she had always assured herself that she was still valuable to him because of the way she slogged for him and she was happy in the thought that he respected her for being the ideal wife who rigidly followed the lesson but…but…the way he now goes about his work, with not a care in the world is a sign, a horrible sign that she has had no impact on him all these years! That she has been just a burden. The realization at first hurts her and then as days pass by and the step of her husband continues to grow light, the hurt quickly changes into a deep resentment, almost close to hate. It’s funny that the man whom she once looked on as a deity was now reduced to a deceitful man who deserved nothing but her hate. As the devout falls out of faith when he suffers an unbearable loss or pain that God should have prevented, she too, lost all faith in the one virtuous lesson she grew up with. Hence the unrelenting abuses she would now hurl towards her husband before dying of a heart break. Yes, I sincerely believe that Sheela died of a heart break and not arthritis. My source tells me much the same.

  Now the question arises whether Sheela meant anything to her husband or, as she painfully deduced that she was only an attachment he was forced to retain. For that, I have devised a plan with my source that would gauge his feelings and thus provide a correct answer to the question “How would the old man receive his wife”

  ‘Here the entry ends.’ said my friend with a long sigh. ‘So, you can see that Damyanti, whose name was also concealed by Savita as Sheela, has provided material to study another kind of woman. The dutiful one.’

  ‘Did he get the answer?’

  ‘Nothing is mentioned here.’ he said. ‘So we will have to contend with silence.’

  ‘So these poems set our deranged pundit in the direction of understanding women.’ I said, confused. ‘But I still can’t fathom his line of thought. Why did he accord so much importance to this ancient lyricism? It looks like a light entertainment to me and nothing else.’

  ‘Because.’ said my friend with a tired smile. ‘We can accord much of the culture that we boast of, to such lyrics.’

  ‘No!’ I cried.

  ‘Yes Sutte.’ said my friend. ‘They are called Vedic hymns and remain the pivot around which our culture continues to rotate.’

  CHAPTER 50

  A Brahman

  Decoded

  ‘You are now plain gibbering.’ I said, annoyed.

  ‘No, I am not.’ he replied calmly. ‘These poems that I read to you are not in their original form. They were composed in Sanskrit which was ancient India’s elitist language and all important works of art and literature were composed in it. These poems too, were in the same prestigious language but they had been translated in English by no doubt, Parichay Mishra. I don’t know when these poems were originally written. Seeing that they are archaic, they could have been composed on old parchment papers or even palm leaves. I don’t know much about that but I am confident that the obsession of the Pundit with these poems proves that they were a priceless heirloom in his family with which they refused to part. He tried to work the puzzles by copying those verses from the original source, whatever it might have been, simplifying their obsolete formatting and syntax and then getting obsessed over their true meaning.’

  ‘But how…how did women…’

  ‘I know that there are many questions floating in your mind that need the anchorage of correct answers and I will provide them. Just have patience.’ he said. ‘These poems must have passed on to his family through many generations, from the time they were first composed. His forefathers d
id not sell them to an antiquarian or a museum to reap a rich reward. This fact alone proves that the Brahman family of Parichay Mishra revered their heirloom and was also afraid that if it left them, some kind of misfortune would surely follow. Such kind of sentiment is very common especially in pure-blood Pundit families who have their roots in the first Brahmans who were born as a need to propitiate the deities by conducting rituals of sacrifice exactly as mentioned in the Vedas. Our caste system was then constructed around the Brahmans, with Kshatriya-warriors taking the role of a king; merchants, that of Vaisyas and the rest were called untouchables or Sudras who, by the way of their dubious profession, were not deemed pure enough to preside over such ceremonies. That was the genesis of our culture as we see it today.’

  ‘But why are you giving me a lecture on our culture? I just wanted to understand the madness of the Pundit.’

  ‘I will give you the answer, Sutte, but you will only understand it fully when you know why these poems had gotten the Pundit all worked up. Why he was attaching so much importance to them. The import of my “lecture” is to deeply understand his programming, I mean, in layman language, Psychology.’

  ‘Alright, alright.’ I said, defeated. ‘Continue.’

  ‘As I was saying.’ he began quickly. ‘We owe our culture, our great tradition to these esoteric verses written in beautiful Sanskrit by the glorious Aryans that make up the Vedas. These verses generally dealt with the elaborate detailing of the performance of sacrificial rituals that would go into propitiating the gods and were supposed to be performed as meticulously as if it were an exact science and that a little lapse would produce a wrong result, in this case, incurring the wrath of the deities these rituals were supposed to please. So important was the exactness of these rituals that the Rajas or the beloved of Gods as they were called by the sycophantic Brahman, would bestow on him various gifts and largesse to ensure that the rituals were performed perfectly so that the gods would be pleased, granting the Raja, the legitimacy of his rule. That’s the only reason why, with the passage of time, the people who possessed the correct ideals to perform these religious sacrifices were elevated to the status of Brahmans or the voice of Brahma and the intermediaries between the divine union of man and god. Now, let’s see what happens when a young, intelligent and logical boy of around twelve, happens to get hold of the poems. He is intrigued, no doubt, less because of the poems and more by the respect and awe that they command over his family. He does not understand why these seemingly worthless pieces of trash, old and rotten, could be feared. Confused, he asks his mind to someone he respects and who has authority over him. I am willing to wager, his father, who is securely in the grip of the general awe for the ancient poetry. So, naturally, he shuns the idea of looking at them deeply, scolds his son for playing with fire and then at last resorts to gently appeasing his curiosity by saying that they were nothing more than a means to light entertainment or past-time and that the boy should leave them alone. But this intelligent and perceptive young boy’s obsession grows as he observes the deep effect this antiquity has had on his father. He understands; the way children do when adults are not being totally honest with them that he is hiding the true significance of these poems. That was the beginning of his obsession. At first, it was fuelled by curiosity and later as he developed and matured, his passion only grew stronger and the resolve to understand them took the forefront of his mind. I know such programming. The highly logical mind, working on the overdrive, always looks for something worthy enough for them to mull over, bordering on obsession. Without that, they feel ridiculously incomplete and unsatiated. I call it ‘The Lock-key effect’ Now don’t ask me why the name. Think it over and you will understand too. Well, when he was at the threshold of youth, he had already gained a great awareness of his roots and had already decided that he would plan his career around the object of his obsession. Every little thing that provided an insight into the poems was a thrilling discovery for him; a rush of adrenaline that he thoroughly enjoyed. He was soon educated enough to know that his intuition regarding the poems had been correct. And that he had the means of immense knowledge at his disposal. If just the literal following of the Vedic hymns could give his lot so much power and authority, imagine, so he must have reasoned, what would happen if he correctly deciphered the elusive meaning hiding in the lines of the intriguing poetry and thus locate the treasure trove of knowledge that was thus far denied him. With the revolution that would surely follow this new knowledge, he would stand to profit alone and like his lot, he alone would be exalted to divine heights. History would repeat itself but this time in his favor alone.’