Shakti: The Feminine Divine (30 page)

Aloud she said, ‘Indra has been borne away by the riptides of his own actions from former lives, the currents having grown stronger by a confluence of misdeeds brought on by depleted morality. It has dragged him into the vastness beyond and returning to the shore will be no mean feat for him. In fact, he cannot do it without help. What he needs is for me to serve as a conduit between his former life as Indra, the tyrant and male chauvinist extraordinaire, and subsequent lives on Mother Earth, where he is straddling the sacred and the profane with wildly veering passions and their resulting consequences.

‘As Smrti, I will serve as his memory when the time is right and help him join the dots, so that he may learn from the vast body of his experiences and relate it to his past. When he manages to accomplish this, Indra will be ready to reclaim his future and return as the rightful king of the heavens. It is the same with the others; they will need to expend all their resources, as well as require my personal intervention, to dig themselves out of the holes of their own making.

‘For all of them, I am a haven where they can return from the meandering journey their misdeeds sent them on, in order to reclaim the best part of themselves. Once they have done so, they will truly be free of the karmic luggage that has been weighing them down, free to soar past their weakness to wherever they want to be.’

‘That sounds about right,’ Vishnu replied thoughtfully. His eyes seemed to bore holes into her skull and she turned away from their intensity. Again, she was reminded of how Indra had refused to look Kali in the eye.

‘This is never going to end unless you slay your personal demons, is it?’ he asked her gently. ‘Indra threw everything in his arsenal at you to cause you harm, but I thought that you were shielded from it by your detachment. Yet, I seem to be wrong, for he has drawn blood and left deep wounds that still have the potential to erupt. However, he could not have hurt you to the extent I am sensing…there is something else at play here.

‘Whatever it is that has been broken inside you needs to be fixed, and pretending that everything is fine and you are on top of things, even when you are on the verge of falling apart, is not going to work. In order to secure the future of the three worlds, you need to make your peace with your own haunted past. It is time for you to get to the bottom of all this.’

Shakti shuddered at the thought. Vishnu was alarmed, but he knew that she needed his help, whether she acknowledged it or not. So he pressed on.

‘If allowed inside your dreary fortress of self-imposed solitude, perhaps I could help, but you would not like that. But somebody needs to be let in and I think you know who that has to be. He is the best among the men and the gods, a worthy claimant to your heart. Go to him and let him help you. Both of you need to go back to the way you once were, when your love for each other was so complete that the three worlds benefited from its perfect beauty and radiance. He has always loved you best of them all. Durga, Kali and even Parvati will always take second place to Shiva’s Shakti. Things have not been the same since Shiva lost Shakti. But don’t forget that she lost him as well and maybe never got over it, though she has always pretended that it was harder on him.’

Vishnu drew her close to him and held her in his embrace,
because she was weeping as if her heart would break. Her unhappiness stole over him as well and he lost his famed composure, which she had envied such a short while ago, and added his tears to hers.

The Preserver had loved Shiva and Shakti immensely and envied them just a little too. He wondered if friendship was really enough. Perhaps he had wanted just a little bit more. And being denied that and left longing, had he not grown to resent the object of his affection just a little?

It would explain something he had never understood or forgiven about himself. He had been obeying orders, but it was more than that. And in the end he had been the treacherous insider who had betrayed her trust and been party to the terrible hurt inflicted on her. Later, he had done everything divinely possible to make it up to her and he would continue to do so for however long it took to make her whole again. It was why he had prodded her to take the first step on the long road to healing.

Recovery was a long way off, though. Meanwhile, there was more pain to be endured. He should have been there to hold her hand, except that it was a journey she had to make on her own. There was nothing he could do to help, except wish her well, having nudged her in the right direction. But there were a few precious moments left and he spent it holding her in his arms as she sobbed it all out.

Shiva and Shakti

S
HAKTI NEEDED TO
calm down. She had to sort things out in her head before she was ready for her long-overdue meeting with the Destroyer. It would never do to attempt to tackle him right in the middle of an emotional meltdown. It was not like they were the typical estranged couple who had hurt each other so badly that the very sight of the other was sufficient to provoke homicidal rage. Or had they? How could she have forgotten something of that magnitude? It was hard to know these things, given exactly how complicated things had always been between them. Shiva and Shakti were lovers and it was from their union that the world and all its creatures had come into existence. Everybody knew that.

Durga was an integral part of Shakti and as such, she and Shiva respected each other, though they were both content to give the other a wide berth. Kali was another story. The Destroyer and she were very passionate about each other. They were quite the scandalous couple, as they would have wild,
animalistic sex out in the open. Or dance together with such uninhibited and feral intensity that they threatened to shake the very cosmos off its foundation. Their fights were legendary because Kali would not hesitate to meet his formidable rage head-on. They would provoke each other to such heights of aggressive frenzy that the very universe would heat up and threaten to explode.

According to legend, only Shiva could stop Kali when she gave her anger its head and allowed it to run amuck. He would lie supine at her feet in total submission, willing to run the risk of having his ribcage smashed. But Kali always stopped just short of murdering him thus. Or he would curl up at her feet like a baby, awakening her maternal instincts.

Needless to say, Parvati, his consort, who had won his hand in marriage after years of performing penances, was not delighted with his interactions with either Shakti or the dark goddess, which hardly made sense, because they were all a part of each other, in addition to being manifestations of Shakti. It was an endless love-hate relationship with the self, spilling over into all their subsequent relationships

Shakti herself was not particularly fond of Parvati. She had often caught herself lovingly dwelling on the time Shiva had rejected Parvati outright and burnt Kama to cinders for trying to convince him otherwise with his flowery arrows. Musing thus helped calm her down and she waited with a measure of anticipation for her tryst with Shiva.

The Destroyer did not keep her waiting and Shakti was so ridiculously pleased to see him that she had to hug him. He lifted her up and placing her on his lap, held her as close as he dared, placing her head on his chest. She welcomed the feeling of peace that stole over her and wished that they could
stay like that forever. Shiva kissed the top of her head and she could not have been more blissful. Tempestuous thoughts were pushed to the background, where they lurked impatiently, while she basked in the feeling that after ages, existential tides had brought her home to roost.

It was just too bad that she could not keep silent too long, ‘I don’t like not knowing things…’ she began, tracing patterns on his chest. ‘For better or worse, I need answers that I can live with, even if the answer is that there can be no answers to some questions. There is no shaking the feeling that I am missing something crucial. Vritra’s fate and its aftermath were things beyond my control, and yet I feel responsible. It is not only that… Indra and Sachi have shown me that there will always be those who hate my guts. That in itself does not bother me, but the hatred they both evinced for me seemed a little excessive. What was puzzling was that it felt so familiar, as if I had been at the receiving end of it before. But how is that possible? If we had indeed clashed in former lives, how come I, who am Smriti, know nothing about it?’

Shiva did not answer her immediately. She knew that he was mulling over whether he should not abandon this conversation and return to his preferred state of detachment. ‘You are welcome to all the answers you want,’ he finally said, kissing her head again encouragingly. ‘It’s just that you and I seldom see eye to eye on matters of import. We both value truth, but you set too much store by it, whereas I have always felt that as everything else, even truth needs to be taken only in moderation and in some situations, when it can cause harm, not at all…’

Shakti sat up then. ‘If you know something I don’t, it is better for both of us if you spit it out!’

‘I was afraid of that…’ he said seriously. ‘But I want you to remember that when all this is done with and you have an inexplicable urge to kill me, it was your idea and I did what I could to head you off at the pass.’

Shiva paused to collect his thoughts and Shakti felt her pulse quicken as she waited for him to speak. He did not say a word, though. Gently, he cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face towards his. There was sorrow in his eyes and regret, but there was something hard in there as well and it made her cold. Shiva sensed it and kissed both her eyelids to reassure her. Then he opened his third eye. It did not burn her and she realized that was because it would never harm her to whom it had originally belonged.

Without warning, the naked truth lay exposed for her sampling and she plunged in, unwilling to stop herself. Within moments she was flooded with memories and images of a past that had been lost to her. It was a halcyon time, when her happiness had been complete. She was Shiva’s Shakti and they were two halves of the same heart and soul. Before they had discovered each other, there was nothing but a gaping void, and it was only when they melted into each other’s arms that the genesis of everything else was set in motion. Having withdrawn to the remote heights of Mount Kailash, they sported together and lost themselves in each other. Perfection had no longer been the impossible ideal, but the very nature of their shared reality.

What the divine couple had was so powerful that none could remain untouched by it. Their love had endured long after entire worlds were sucked back into the vortex from which they had sprung, and released again. It was a romance that defied the odds. He did not bind her to his will and she did not try to keep him chained to her affection. They knew
how to give each other space, and were never in each other’s face. Fights and arguments, though fleeting, were fun and a challenge, not a minefield to be negotiated. They drew comfort from each other and were content. And the sex was phenomenal. Shiva and Shakti had it all.

Fate was also on their side, or at least, it seemed that way. They were sufficient unto themselves. Caught in the throes of their all-encompassing passion, they found everything in each other’s arms and needed nothing more. Their completeness made everyone else feel redundant and unwanted. The love they shared had spawned life, and the living demanded a portion of it for themselves, with the selfishness and petulance unique to feckless children.

Some among the celestials envied them a little, others envied them a lot, a few thought they were adorable and prayed for them to be kept safe from the evil eye of those who yearned to have a little of what they had. But most resented their happiness, coveting it for themselves and hoping that they got into a big fight and killed each other.

Indra hated them in general and her in particular. Women who were so unabashed about their sexuality turned him on and got his goat at the exact same time. Very early in the day, he had seized power for himself and he knew that it was too potent a commodity to be shared. Shakti’s position in the divine hierarchy and the respect she enjoyed galled him. It had always bothered him that mothers seemed to think themselves the equals of the gods, merely because they dropped babies at regular intervals. Such a feat hardly distinguished them from the animals, which made no unnecessary fuss about it, but merely accepted it as a natural function, akin to expelling wastes.

Sachi felt the same way, since it was inconceivable that she was not the chosen lover of the biggest fish in their waters. It was disgraceful how passionate Shiva and Shakti’s sex life was, though not surprising, given Shakti’s raging nymphomania. And it was insupportable that Sachi did not have one like it.

Just like that, a noxious net of negative emotion was cast over the lovers, gradually tightening its hold and inching them towards the tragedy, the inevitable price they were expected to pay in return for such complete happiness as was theirs.

The king of the heavens insisted that the three worlds were headed for trouble if the amorous couple kept up with their incessant lovemaking, selfishly disregarding their obligations. Shakti was distracting Shiva from his ascetic pursuits, without the protective power of which there would be no stability in their lives and they would be subjected to the hot flux brought on by desire driven wild.

Their conduct was simply insupportable and they had become poor role models, with their ceaseless canoodling and tendency to prance about in the nude, as if the three worlds were nothing but a mattress to soak up the fluids of their sexual shenanigans. Something had to be done before the heat generated by their incessant lovemaking incinerated them all. Indra insisted that their predicament was entirely Shakti’s fault and she had seduced the Destroyer into forgetting his duties. It was clear that she exercised an unholy influence over Shiva and it was in the interest of creation to forcibly slice her off Shiva’s person, which she had taken over like a cancerous growth.