Charred Swastika

I married my first son again after three years. His bride was daughter of my friend working in my organization. The couple had a daughter and a son by year 2000. They were happily living, settled at Mumbai. Some irregularity of turgidity and turbidity in the behavior of the daughter-in-law was apparent in 2002 during the visit of the family to my home at Dehradun.  The trend accelerated and came to the notice of their acquaintances a year later. In 2005 she was obsessed with her untimely death; more so after mid-2005 when a fire in her place of worship burnt the scarf of goddess Kali given by us to her. It belonged to the same shrine and temple of the goddess that blessed our marriage in 1963.

I had a vision of a burnt Swastika made by the pieces of charcoal in Mid-January ’06. Swastika remained a signifier of Mumbai for me after retirement from Mumbai. I wondered if there was a massive fire on an oil-processing platform or a drill-ship of ONGC in near future. My vision of a burnt Swastika did not bring any harm to my past organization. But, there was a message for me on telephone from my son on January 23. His wife was in hospital after being burnt badly in an accidental fire. He himself was hospitalized due to burnt hands in effort to saving his wife. On January 30, my daughter-in-law expired. Since my son could not move out of the bed in hospital, I carried out her last rites joined by my five year old grandson.

Swastika was for me an insignia of Vedic cult between India and Turkey. I had drawn cultural connection of the Vedic people between the two countries in an article written shortly before the death of the daughter-in-law (9). I also had pointed about a hieroglyphic expression associated with a goddess statuette of Catal Hoyuk in Turkey (3). On the body pf the headless goddess is a symbol of human body without a head. Remarkable is the association of the headless goddess and headless human body (of a child). The latter symbol transforms unmistakably to Swastika.  I wrote once, “Catal Hoyuk shows a beginning of hieroglyphic expression, and identification of some of its characters is possible”. Swastika literally is swas (breath) + ti-ka (daughter, female). The headless goddess is accordingly is the goddess of breath or life

Scene of my vision about two weeks before the death of my daughter-in-law meant end of goddess Swati or ‘life’ through burning or charring. End of a feminine life due to activity of fire was the message of my vision. Swati did not get a matchbox to set on fire the first wife of my son. Her hatred towards Swastika, signifier of Vedic cult, was too intense. My daughter-in-law followed the destiny projected in my vision. My adversary got a matchbox this time to complete her revenge.

I was a failure second time. I married my son after his first wife left him, not to return again from her maternal home. His second wife also departed annulling his married life on the pattern of the first – charred by the flames of goddess volcano. My first daughter-in-law escaped from the death dealing fiery hands of Swati luckily; the other succumbed to the heat from raging fires of volcano.