Section 1: Days of peril
Charmed dinner
A legend now forgotten
Guwahati is a famous historical town on river Brahmaputra known for the trade of areca nut since long past. Plains of Assam lie to its east and north, and towards south are Khasi hills of Meghalaya. Ethnic Khasis were ruling the area in the first millennium AD under the kingdom of Kamrup. It was a center of Tantra those days that continued till the forties of the last century.
I heard in my childhood that women of Kamrup-Kamakhya country transform men into rams by their charm; and, I never questioned stupid hearsay “How a biped would change into a four-footed ram?” In the mind of a child, conditioned through fairytales from elderly women, change of a human into sheep was a simple affair.
Anyway, I never imagined of visiting a princess in the fairy land of folklores going away from my little village of Varanasi; also, I had no chance of stepping into the fright-land of Kamakhya to become a ram under the spell of a cute Kamrup dame. I heard the story about Kamrup when I was seven, unaware of metaphoric ram. Elders knew the real meaning of ram – craziness of sex. They were aware of a typical malady of maddening urge of sex and uncontrolled conjugal activity in a returnee of Kamrup. Death swallowed him soon after he returned from the pilgrimage of Kamakhya temple of Guwahati due to his transformation into a ram, as they called him.
Misconceptions about the charms of Kamakhya country melted away during my service when I was in Assam between ’66 and ’72. I visited Guwahati, Shillong, Cherrapunji and areas to the south of Cherrapunji down to Pakistan border (now Bangladesh) several times. I visited even the shrine Kamakhya temple and worshiped the age-old Khasi deity Ka-Mai-Ka (Mother Vulva), transformed into Sanskrit as Kamakhya.
Guwahati is a famous historical town on river Brahmaputra known for the trade of areca nut since long past. Plains of Assam lie to its east and north, and towards south are Khasi hills of Meghalaya. Ethnic Khasis were ruling the area in the first millennium AD under the kingdom of Kamrup. It was a center of Tantra those days that continued till the forties of the last century.
I heard in my childhood that women of Kamrup-Kamakhya country transform men into rams by their charm; and, I never questioned stupid hearsay “How a biped would change into a four-footed ram?” In the mind of a child, conditioned through fairytales from elderly women, change of a human into sheep was a simple affair.
Anyway, I never imagined of visiting a princess in the fairy land of folklores going away from my little village of Varanasi; also, I had no chance of stepping into the fright-land of Kamakhya to become a ram under the spell of a cute Kamrup dame. I heard the story about Kamrup when I was seven, unaware of metaphoric ram. Elders knew the real meaning of ram – craziness of sex. They were aware of a typical malady of maddening urge of sex and uncontrolled conjugal activity in a returnee of Kamrup. Death swallowed him soon after he returned from the pilgrimage of Kamakhya temple of Guwahati due to his transformation into a ram, as they called him.
Misconceptions about the charms of Kamakhya country melted away during my service when I was in Assam between ’66 and ’72. I visited Guwahati, Shillong, Cherrapunji and areas to the south of Cherrapunji down to Pakistan border (now Bangladesh) several times. I visited even the shrine Kamakhya temple and worshiped the age-old Khasi deity Ka-Mai-Ka (Mother Vulva), transformed into Sanskrit as Kamakhya.