Section 1: Days of peril
Charmed dinner
Skai hits matrimony
I stepped into in Urvashi Hotel once again in the evening of November 21, ’88 when it was dark. I was availing a night halt at the hotel on my way to Upper Assam.
Atmosphere at Urvashi was different this time. A feminine spirit was waiting for me in emotional configuration of a wife when I entered the room. I recounted a similar situation of past in Hotel Normandie of Bordeaux, France. I was living in the hotel room with a feminine spirit when I left France for Spain for a few days in November 1983, retaining my room. The ethereal lady left behind in the room while departing welcomed me perceptibly while entering the room on returning from Spain.
Spirits are perceptible objects in Yogi and Brahm states (1), and presence of a spirit in the room of Urvashi was no surprise to me.
Perception of the spirit in Urvashi differed from French apparition. The latter was a delicate one – human type. The Khasi spirit in my room was far more powerful in radiation, matching a goddess.
The spirit urged me to have a non-vegetarian meal around 9 in the vein of an Indian wife. There was a psychic forcing upon me to convey the message. I have been living on a strictly vegetarian mid-day-meal since 1974, missing dinner routinely. Her request was unacceptable to me. But force in her suggestion was unusual and power of her command prevailed over my willpower. Resisting force within me succumbed soon under her overpowering suggestion. I ordered a chicken-mushroom soup as the first course with an otherwise vegetarian dinner.
Khasi word Skai means to corrupt a food by mantras. I not only broke my meal-a-day routine of fourteen long years but also added a non-vegetarian soup to my dinner reluctantly when pressed by the commanding goddess parching on the active spirit. I was blissfully unaware about the consequences of eating a Skai-meal. Goddess anchoring over the spirit and forcing me to eat Skai was Khasi goddess of matrimony – Lonkha. Affection of a wife shown by Khasi queen Malun was not out of love. It was only to settle a score of our acrid past by the queen of Kamrup.
I took to bed after my dinner unaware about some thing named as Skai in Khasi vocabulary and about its manifestations upon the one who eats it.
I was in Upper Assam on the next day for attending a meeting in a small township of Nazira. Famous ancient Siva temple of Sibsagar town overlooking a historical pond was not far away. I was an infrequent visitor of the temple during 1966 to ’72. I visited the shrine after the meeting was over on November 23. A full moon was rising in east when I stepped in the temple.
An elderly and frail priest, possibly in seventies, was sitting there in loneliness. He looked on my face intently for some time when I requested him to perform worship and rituals for me.
“I am performing a Tantra-ritual for well being of your children, wife and you” said the priest. Possibly he had smelt a rat while looking at my face.
The priest gave me four Emblica fruits after the worship was over – one each for the two children, one for my wife and one for me. The old man had possibly inferred without asking me that a trouble in Tantra was hovering over my head; and, the deity of the temple visited by me in past inspired him to give me the needed protection. Siva is supreme deity in Hindu Tantra. I was lucky to be with a priest qualified in Tantra to conduct the ritual for my protection in the evening of an auspicious full moon on November 23, ‘88.
I was stuck at Urvashi Hotel for four more days, between November 24 and 27, on my return journey to Dehradun due to a strike in Indian Airlines. My ethereal wife was quite strongly perceptible now during my evening walks on the road around the hotel. She added a few more items in the menu of her Skai. Betel leaves and areca nuts were a taboo for me for years. I chewed them every evening under the command of Lonkha to turn my excited head afloat.
Ominous experiences relating to my marital life commenced soon after homecoming from Assam. My wife and I experienced something unusual about our matrimonial interaction within a month since my returning from Sibsagar. I did not turn impotent; nor, there was a lack of desire for physical communion in her. Conjugation had turned totally unattractive, rather repelling, due to unexplainable reasons, however. No libido, no orgasm, and no reciprocal satisfaction were available to us after intercourse. Suddenly altered situation had no solution except to say a goodbye to conjugation. We accepted the withdrawal from sex in our life without much fuss after twenty-five years of matrimony.
It never struck me in 1988 that perplexing conditions withering our conjugal relationship and matrimony were due to Skai of Lonkha. Cause of malady in our sex-life could be due to a spirit or goddess in hotel Urvashi lay beyond the imagination of a scientist mind.