Part – I

Survival

Section 3: Volcano goddess on rampage

Killing saps and evading deaths

Fall fails the grip of death 

Neither had I known possessions of spirits nor the control of gods over the minds of men when I was 13. It was a realization in 2006, 54 years later, that I was moving along the railway track in possessed state, and spirit of a past Buddhist monk of Sarnath wanted to kill me. I had argued with him and slighted him through logic when I had carved a model girl Devashramana in fifth century AD seated as Buddha delivering sermons to his first five disciples(10).

In October ’52 I was going from Varanasi to my village by train. To reach the railways station quickly I left my rikshaw after stopping it at a level railway crossing and walked fast along the railway track. In another seven minutes I would have been on the railway platform.   I did not hear the whistles of a speeding train behind me till I was barely forty feet away.

 Strange are the forces of possession. I heard and responded to the whistle of the railway engine when it was about forty feet behind. I was on the right side of the railway track then. After looking at the engine, I did not move just a little to the right for a position of safety. I turned and moved to the left instead, rushing to cross the track. There was certainly no chance of my survival due to the mistake. A rushing engine was going to hit me surely within another second or two before I moved to safety. But, to my luck, my foot got stuck   suddenly in the wires of the signal line running by the side of the railway track. I fell and catapulted to some distance away from the railway line while falling.

 The steam gushing out of the engine hit my feet as the train passed by. My legs were trembling when I got up. I had survived unscratched.

A miraculous fall on the ground away from railway track saved me from falling into the jaws of  death.