Part – III

Rise of luminous gods

Section 1: Probe into past

Breakthrough

Suffering for addiction

One addiction alone is noble and others are vile remained with me since my childhood till I returned from a pre-historical excavation of Turkey named Catal Hoyuk. Addiction of learning is something where a man may indulge without limits, my elders told me. My mind thought of nothing except enjoying serious reading, learning and gathering knowledge. Years ago, when I was young and new in service, I placed my views before a knowledgeable boss of mine in ONGC along with my desire to learn something more and extra than the scope of scientific investigations I was asked to pursue in  the organization.  His instruction was “You do what I say; I don’t ask what you do.”

I followed the orders of the officer till my retirement. I did what my office wanted me to do; but  I  also enjoyed my addiction of learning something extra in  everyday work and in spheres related  or unrelated to my work-environment.

Turkey is cradle of human civilization, and Anatolian Plateau of the country has a site displaying earliest city-building acumen of men between 6500 and 5800 BC. A locality containing a forked mound or Catal Hoyuk, near Konya, shows earliest complex of conjunct houses suggesting the beginning of primitive township (24, 25). The mound contains 13 layers of town building activity in 1300 years – each layer lasting for nearly 100 years on an average. Best known period of urbanized settlement of Catal Hoyuk is between II and VII strata. Their period covers a span of 500 years approximately between 8700 and 8200 years ago considering average time-span.

 To read about Catal Hoyuk and judge its contribution in human history is intellect stirring and enjoyable experience. But   to be at on the mound, see the excavations and feel something extra from each artifact on the site brings an altogether different perception, vibrating the mind and filling it with excitement. Temptation of being physically present at the sight hit me when I read about the place in early eighties but lay buried in me due to absence of a program for visiting the Middle East.

I burnt and charred my fingers during November 1995 due to my craving for learning more and more when I was in Turkey. I already had read about Catal Hoyuk and was keen to visit the oldest human township in my mania of learning.  A new temptation to see the forked mound – literal meaning of Catal Hoyuk – forced me to express my desire for its visit before the national Turkish Petroleum Corporation TPAO after my official visit to the company was over in November 95.  My hosts sent me to Catal Hoyuk with an English speaking geologist – Vedat Arslan – for showing me the excavation and giving me a video tape of excavation. I was a happy man while coming back to India after examining the cultural fabric of Turkish people 8500 years ago. My visit to Catal Hoyuk was very helpful in blasting the Aryan theory of migration from Turkey to India about 3500 year ago as propounded by the Western pundits.

 Manusmriti instructs – don’t do useless acts and shun weaknesses of all types. My visit to Catal Hoyuk was driven by a temptation of eighties to be at the site when I read about it for the fist time; and, my  lure to visit the place as a free trip  through the courtesy of my hosts was not at all justified morally according to the rules for Brahmins in scriptures. I had violated the model code of conduct laid down for me; and, I learnt very soon that I was paying the price through my nose for my addiction of learning, availing a free trip.

All types of addiction are vile, including the one for learning, I realized. My realization was too late, however, and of little use.

Suffering fell upon me soon after I visited Catal Hoyuk. I had brought home once an active spirit of Malun from Guwahati. It was in January ’89. Her followers were fewer, however. Now, there was another active spirit from Catal Hoyuk; and, with her was a whole mob of cursing men and women against me.  Their morbid curses came home along with the active spirit of a deified human goddess who had jumped in the community fire to kill herself blaming me for her death. The spirit came to India cleaving with me like Malun from Khasi Hills.

We live in a trivial era of scientific knowledge, which believes and forces us to acts as if nothing exists on earth except matter – spirits, psyches or souls are figments of imagination. Situation was not so in India fifty years ago. I heard someone from a distant town of Bihar talking and  pestering my father in 1958  for going  to his village for setting the orientation of his house.

My father told him plainly “I do not cross the borders of Kashi (Varanasi) in my travel.”

After the person was gone an inquisitive me asked “Why it is so.”

“You don’t know, unknown spirits may cleave with you and come home after you have moved out of your kshetra (land-segment),” my father had replied. He was an extra-ordinary psychic entity.

We were no chatterboxes those days. He replied and I heard it. I did not ask him “What happens when a spirit cleaves with a man?”

I only discovered the truth of his conviction later when things went wrong with my dentist friend during mid-eighties when he was visiting Philippines and with me in 1989 when Urvashi Hotel sent a Malun with me.

I had added another object on my head from Catal Hoyuk; and it was a stark fact perceptible to me. However, if science does not recognize spirits as objects worth caring, it is not wrong. Spirit induced sufferings fall under illnesses amenable to treatment in most cases, and normal people live with their problems without feeling them as psychic, enduring and living through them as physical ailments. Cases of my dentist friend Indrajit and boss V. R. are examples. These people did not feel any object like spirit; nor could they feel their suffering due to their possession. So are most people of the day; suffering and dying out of depression without feeling or knowing that parasitic spirits are  scavenging upon them and  vile spirits are responsible for  the suffering  of victims. 

Godly ire and human curses were upon me after I returned from visiting the ancient mound of Turkey. This was my price for temptation to avail a free visit to Catal Hoyuk and my mania for  learning more about anything and everything. I could never imagine that an excavation of a township dead above eight thousand years ago will hang upon my head to harass me for no less than twelve years.

  People die, resettle, and may even abandon a habitation like Catal Hoyuk for ever. But their gods and active spirits neither die nor disappear from the spot, I learnt after returning from the forked mound near Village Kucukkoy in Turkey. They live with all their menace to avenge their long forgotten past thousands of years ago.