Part – II

Ire of gods and sorrow of souls

Section 1: Punishments of goddesses

Welcome home

Welcome home warrior!

In the evening of January 5, ’08, I recounted my entry in Hotel Taj of Jodhpur on December 21 ’05 and garlanding by Chamunda.  I had set out for a war for Chamunda the day next. Evening of January 5 marked the conclusion of the long drama in Dehradun after two years when the deity communicated “Welcome home warrior!”

Even Chamunda had lived moments of despair and anxiety like a common woman charged with negative feeling between the years of her betrothal and the date of her welcoming me as her warrior. She was fighting her rival Swati parsina and her followers of past; and, she was aware that my mind was possessed by her alien. Chamunda’s  state of mind  was like every dignified and courageous Rajput wife in Rajasthan  after she sent her husband to a battle   giving a piece of jaggery;  and, living thereafter  through a projected trauma of fiery fate  of sati when her warrior fell on the ground, not to get up again.

 Chamunda was just like a woman of Rajasthan in the moments of her welcoming on January 5, no more a goddess. A realization dawned upon me after the event: she was tracking me ever since I visited her shrine at Osiyan fourteen years ago; and, the goddess was caring for my survival till she declared “Welcome home warrior!”  These were years when her rival Swati had occupied my mind and commanded me at will like her dog. It was natural that Chamunda lived as a worried wife for these many years, seeing her tiger fighting and surviving the onslaught of the aliens luring him with the position of a post and power of money.

Besides the above, there was also a tyranny of a marauding Swati parsina. The goddess was  hell bent for disrupting my success in the battlefield through her lethal fireworks. Her killing my daughter-in-law was aimed at shaking my nerves when I was just inching towards success. Goddess Chamunda demonstrated to the goddess of distant land that her leopards, howsoever cunning, are no match in their nerves to lone tiger.