Part – I

Survival

Section 3: Volcano goddess on rampage

Killing saps and evading deaths

Car accident

Ajanta caves are famous for their Buddhist paintings and sculptures. Buddhist monks have dug these majestic caves between the first and tenth century AD and their interiors are decorated by paintings covering the life of Buddha. They are at a distance of about fifty kilometers from the township of Jalgaon in Maharashtra and easily approachable by road.

I was working at Vadodara those days, which is less than five hundred kilometers from Jalgoan. Idea of visiting the caves of Ajanta struck me in April 1985 because I was shifting my residence to Dehradun. Soon, I was driving my car from Vadodara to Jalgaon for visiting the caves with four passengers – my wife, two sons and myself. The town was barely thirty kilometers away when my mind went awry, and it struck to me that my elder son could cover the remaining distance. My wife protested and vehemently opposed because he had never driven on a highway. Her arguments fell on deaf ears. I handed over the steering of the vehicle to son and sat on the rear seat along with the other two passengers. It was an extremely foolish decision, I analyzed only a few minutes later. Now the picture is clear; my mind fell under the possession of a powerful Buddhist thought in the area and   Swati had several reasons to kill me.

The new driver started the car, and within minutes the car was at seventy. I felt nervous at the way my son was driving but could not do any thing from the rear seat. I only cursed myself to come to the rear seat. If I were in front I would have held the steering for control.  I cried and tried to control the steering from behind when the car was passing through rows of trucks on either side of the road.

An accident alone could stop the car to my luck without any major damage. The windscreen was gone and the right front door was a casualty. Passengers were safe, however.

 Had I not intervened, a fatal accident would have brought all the passengers to an end, including myself.  My decision to give the steering of the car to the young man was as much under possession as my son’s driving the vehicle. Very strange and most illogical was the decision to take the back seat. It could have killed us all had the car not stopped after making a less serous accident.

I have narrated elsewhere that I was an unwelcome and alien guest for the Buddhist cave of Ajanta where I tried to chant a Brahmin’s prayer in one of the caves.  A mob of the dead Buddhist monks of past did not let me or my wife chant a Brahmin’s prayer  in the highly echoing cave even a thousand years after the last monk died there. I could not feel the angry mob of Buddhists of past in Ajanta caves as I perceived the psyches of Mecca in 1999.

In 1985 I was a Brahm – a step lower than a dead Brahm, Abraham or Braahman god who registers easily the mobs of psyches. In Brahm state I could, on certain festive occasions alone, perceive the excitement of the psyches of the past around me. I also did not know in 1985 that I was Mandan Mishra of Gujarat once upon a time, living on the banks of River Mahi near Vadodara and was a hated man of Buddhists those days.

 Mandan had undertaken the journey in his life to demolish Buddhist cult at Ajanta; and, in the   present life the agitated psyches responded with an action expected from them when I planned to go to the Buddhist land of past. They saw it just as a reminder for them to feel how their glory ended due to a villain called Mandan. In their opinion I did deserve my death for my sins towards Buddhism. Psyches of the monks around Ajanta prevailed and possessed me fully, and forced me to make most foolish decision of my life – giving steering of the car to an inexperienced driver. 

A plaque of Vishnu on the dashboard of my car was our savior in a self-invited calamity of mine under self-inflicting auto-suggestive possession syndrome. Swati was for killing me. I too acted in a way she wanted. But who can change destiny when Vishnu was there to protect?