Section 1: Days of peril

Charmed dinner

Momentary stupor

I had a program of visiting Cherrapunji during February ’87 to show a centimeter thick red layer of a rock discovered by me in 1969 to the geologists and scientists of India.  Geologists of Geological Survey of India and academicians from universities were to visit the red layer on February 20 and 21. Thin iridium-bearing layer of rock formed within a few thousand years when a large meteorite hit earth 65 million years ago. Life on our planet witnessed its worst catastrophe during these couple of thousand years. Beastly dinosaurs of Cretaceous period died after the tragedy, leaving behind only small animals not above ten kilograms.  

 My program was to reach Shillong on February 19 via Guwahati and to depart for Kolkata on 22 after the scientists had visited my discovery.

A co-passenger in the evening flight to Guwahati on February 18 was explaining me about a newly made Urvashi hotel a little before my flight landed at the airport. The hotel, named after a beautiful demigoddess of Hindu mythology, is some 300 meters to the east of the airport. 

I was in my hotel room soon after landing at Guwahati. Night was sleep laden, and next morning I was leaving the hotel for my flight to Shillong from Guwahati.  I smiled at the fascinating and attractive name of small, simple and centrally air-conditioned hotel while standing at its counter. I saw nothing in the hotel to match flashy demigoddess of Kalidas. ‘Her creator was possibly god Moon – the lord of emotion –  or the god of love Kamdev; and, never an oldie  learned Brahma – our creator –  who neither  has emotions nor passions’ imagined famous poet while describing Urvashi in his drama.

I left Shillong for Kolkata on February 22 when the fieldwork for the iridium rock was over. The flight landed there in the evening, and I was in Hotel Airport Asoka soon. My field diary was incomplete from February 18 to 22. I lost no time in completing the entries in the notebook while relaxing in the hotel.

My pen dried before the last entry of the diary was over; and, after a little while I picked up the pen in room to complete the job. There was a bit of surprise at this moment. All the six entries of the dates between 18th and 22nd were erroneous. I had written 20.1.86, 18.1.87, 19.6.87, 20.6.86, 21.1.8 and 22.1.86 before I thought of picking up the pen in the hotel room. The second entry was rectified earlier, however, with my own pen as 18.2.87 before using the pen in the room of the hotel. Pen of the hotel corrected the remaining entries in the field note book as its ink indicates.

I forgot completely that something had gone wrong with my brain momentarily when I wrote the diary. The subject matter surfaced a decade later when the entries of my field-diary turned relevant for analyzing my likely possession in Kamrup during 1987.

I dug through the pages of the field diary in summer 2004 after struggling against the possession of mind for fifteen years, commencing perceptively in January 1989. Dust in the storm of my possession by Khasi spirit from Urvashi Hotel was now settling, and even if her persecutions were continuing I was sanguine innately about my survival.

I wanted to check in 2004, if my field diary contained some indications about the activity of an alien spirit when I visited Hotel Urvashi in 1987. I discovered that my brain remained in a whirlpool of stupefaction for fifteen minutes hit by a bout of dulled mind while writing the diary in Hotel Asoka. It was a positive indication that the goddess of Hotel Urvashi did not let me go alone while I was thinking fancifully about the heroine of Kalidas’ drama standing at its counter.  She accompanied me and was with me since February ’87, though imperceptible.

Spirit accompanying me was not Urvashi of Vedic cult. She was a spirit combining three elements. First, there was an active spirit of Buddhist queen Malun of Kamrup killed by me 1200 years ago. She anchored two non-Vedic goddesses to make a triad working against me together. First of them was Khasi goddess of matrimony named Lonkha. The other was basic deity of Buddhist Tantra till the religion lived in India up to eleventh century AD. They were supporting the queen to kill me at the earliest. Our battle was overt since January ’89; but, the killer team was still far from success when I looked into my diary during a hot month of 2004.