Part – I

Survival

Section 3: Volcano goddess on rampage

Killing saps and evading deaths

Fire in the Verandah

 In April ’06, I ‘saw’ raging flames over the shining black marble floor of my Verandah. Vision was an indication that wrath of goddess Volcano or Swati was not yet over. I had pushed one of her mediums to death once, and she will not take rest till she has finished my life. Fire in my vision indicated more disasters for driving me to death in near future.

Prof. Pande, a well-known figure in Himalayan Geology, expired in August ’06 and his last rites were at Hardwar in the last week of the month. I planned to join the rituals by driving my car to Hardwar, 50 kilometers away from Dehradun. My wife was reluctant to go, telling that we have already visited the family at Delhi at the time of death and need not go again.

“We visited the family from humanitarian angle; the last rights are for the spirit; we must go,” I had said.

An unwilling wife accompanied me for the last ritual of the man. Ritual was over a little after the midday, and I started my journey back home in the afternoon. 

I was driving for quite some time on empty road behind a truck not ready to give me pass.  Slightly agitated at the situation I accelerated the car for overtaking the speeding truck.  Suddenly the truck veered to the right and I was forcibly on the edge of the pavement to save my car while overtaking. There was no option except to press the throttle to its maximum because breaking at a speed of 80 Km/hr was a sure fatality in a small car on the edge of rough pavement. It worked. I overtook the truck just a few inches apart and two or three seconds before its collision with my little green car.

 Face of my wife was pale and I was shaken. The gap between our life and death was barely two inches and two seconds when I was successful in overtaking.

When the wheels stabilized,  my wife told that she had seen the same scene in her visions except the end; and, that is why she was forcing me not to undertake the journey. In the visions the car had hit the truck, flew in the air, and then fell on the road in front of the truck.

“Why did you not tell me about your visions earlier, before coming to Hardwar?” I asked, adding “I would have discontinued the idea of joining the last rites of my teacher.”

“There was some compelling force upon me, and my tongue would stick to my palate as if, I felt,” said my wife.

It was a case of multiple possessions and a projected future, which did not materialize. Goddess volcano was in possession of the mind of my wife and showed her even the accident in advance; but, she did not allow her to tell me about the tragedy to let the program of my journey remain unchanged. She commanded my mind to overtake the truck at an opportune moment of her planned accident. She possessed the mind of the truck driver and commanded him to turn his truck just in front of my car.  Every thing was going as per her designs to kill me.

She could control, however,   only human minds. The goddess had no control on the response of my car’s accelerator. The little green car sped to save itself along with its two passengers. The car did not fly in air as my wife had seen in her visions.

 Did the car escape and save it because the accelerator of the inanimate object defied the command of Swati?

 Swati pushed my mind under her possession to act for my doom and meet our sure death in an inescapable accident.  Death surely was also her forewarning. My grandson had ‘seen’ my death as a black dog entering my garage four months earlier than the event. 

I won over the designs of my beloved killer, any way, to live for a few more years. My car loves living and was not prepared to die, fragmented into pieces. It saved herself and it saved us too.

What is the difference between inanimate and animate? I wonder.