‘And here we are — end of the tunnel’ the drunk declared victoriously a few feet ahead of the still crawling Vedpursad and grunted slightly as he pushed on what sounded like a trapdoor overhead. The door made a clinking noise similar to that of a manhole cover being dislodged from its position. This was followed by a grinding noise of a stone slab sliding against a stone floor, revealing a rectangular opening, the other side of which, was a space which seemed to glow a bluish hue from the dim light of the full moon reflected from some surface out of their sight. Vedpursad’s could feel the chill of the dry air which entered his nostrils The drunk grabbed on to the edge of the opening, and pulled himself out of the hole. Vedpursad followed shortly after.
The room was dark but the astringent odor of rotten desserts, wilted flowers, stale vermillion, and remnants of dried blood from the thousands of sacrificed ducks, chicken, goats and buffaloes placed it as a shrine room of one of the hundreds of wrathful goddess temples which peppered the medieval parts of Kathmandu. The drunk proceeded to slide the sizable slab of flooring rock in order to close off the manhole which was located behind the main shrine of the temple. The slab fell into its place with a clink making it completely indiscernible from all the other slabs which neatly tiled the entire floor of the shrine. Shrine rooms like these were places of hope where people came and promised the Tantric goddesses a blood sacrifice in exchange for the life of their sick kin. When the goddess delivered, the promised animal would be dragged into the temple, given food, water, and worshipped with flowers and vermillion. An oil lamp would be lit and circumambulated around the animal three times before being placed at the foot of the shrine in a ritual invocation of the goddess. The animal would then be summarily beheaded with one swift falling arc of a large sacrificial Kora sword and the blood which gurgled out of the animal’s carotid would be sprayed all over the thirsty goddess’ idol. The price for life having been paid to the goddess in life, and the price for the ritual having been paid to the priest in the meat of the head, the rejoicing family of the saved kin would take the body of the sacrificed animal home and feed it to the whole clan with rice flakes and rice beer. Vedpursad had seen such a sacrifice of a buffalo calf once as a child. It was an image he would probably take to his next birth.
The drunk interrupted Vedpursad’s thought stream with a loud and obvious clearing of the throat and said “I brought you out of the situation”, snapped his finger twice and continued “now where is the smoke you promised me?” The drunk’s palms sounded rough like a dog’s paw as he rubbed them together in anticipation of the smoke he had put in a lot of work for.
“Not inside the temple. Let’s go outside”
“Where I smoke is none of your damn business, Mr. Vedpursad. You owe me a debt and now I demand here in this place of settlement that you repay it immediately.”
Vedpursad reached into his cigarette box, pulled out a cigarette and handed it out to the drunk.
“Now make the fire. Quickly.”
“I really don’t have any intentions of lighting a cigarette inside of a sacrificial temple. I don’t believe in all this, but there are some things you don’t mess with. Here, you take the lighter”
“No, you make the fire.”
“I don’t want to share the sin of lighting a cigarette here”
“Do you even hear the stuff you are saying? You make less sense than the nagas (snake-beings) of Taudaha lake.” The drunk was annoyed.
Vedpursad really did not feel like trying his luck today. “Lets just head outside. The door is right there. I’ll light it as soon as we are outside.”
“Nuh-uh mister. I don’t want you running off without giving me the fire. Now light it”
“Here you can have the lighter. That way you can light whenever you want.”
The drunk considered for a second. “Nevermind. You’re right, let’s head outside. Just turn on the fire so you can see where you’re going.”
He flicked the lighter which promptly produced the promised warm orange glow of instant fire.
Vedpursad’s sight, which had very comfortably adjusted to darkness over the past hour or so, took a brief moment to get adjusted to the sudden brightness of the lighter flame.
He heard a faint sound of deep inhalation coming from about an inch to the side of his lighter hand. Once Vedpursad’s vision adjusted, he noticed that the drunk, who now had a patronizing smile pasted on his punchable little face, had already placed his cigarette over the lighter in anticipation of the flame and had proceeded to take a deep inhale igniting the cigarette the instant the fire was produced.
“Ah shit. Now I have to deal with this guilt too.”
“Don’t be a sheep” the drunk said mockingly as he walked around the shrine towards the bluish glow of the moonlight coming in from the open doorway of the shrine room. Vedpursad followed him closely. The drunk paused his sentence and took a long drag of the cigarette, held it in for a moment, then let out a deep satisfied exhale. He continued “you know what happens to sheep around here” and let out a quick chuckle. Vedpursad’s shoulders jerked imperceptibly and he shuffled towards the exit door taking utmost care to not look at the idol whose expression he did not want to see in his current state of anxiety.
The moon was bright. It was the first night after the full moon of December — the only day of the year when crowds of pretty women of prime marriageable age gathered at the Shiva temple, which shared the same parking lot as his office, hoping to score a husband as virtuous as the eternally stoned Kailash mountain dweller himself. This in itself would not have been an annoyance had it not been for all the parking spaces taken up by their fancy new scooters which had come as a blessing from the modern gods of globalization and empowerment. Vedpursad had been of a prime marriageable age himself, which is to say, he had completed his undergraduate studies and had secured a fairly well paying position at a multi-national firm. Had he been born about 30 years before, this would have yielded him a light skinned, well fed and adequately educated bride of a prime age born to a proper brahmin lineage and ‘well-to-do’ family. Had he been born about 15 years ago, he would have needed a permanent residence in some western country. Now there was the internet and the faraway gods of online dating allowed him to meet women of prime marriageable age for the purpose of doing the kinds of things women of prime marriageable age had wanted to do with a Shiva-like husband. Now was the golden age when people could again partake in the kinds of sex which seemed to have disappeared from practice since the centuries when its evidence was etched in the pillars and walls of the Tantric temples. Just a few weeks prior, Vedpursad had met a woman who professed to prefer being with more than one lover at the same time, a perversion which would have been claimed to be unimaginable had it not been for the undeniable evidence of such supposedly extraordinary acts etched in the pillars and wall of the Tantric temples located in this medieval part of the city. Since the explicitly graphic images of massive multiplayer genre-breaking divine raunchy bestial sex were etched all around the temples, they had to be explained somehow. So, they were explained as having been certain practices of the most eccentric tantric initiates performed for the goal of enlightenment akin to the consumption of unburnt human flesh in cremation grounds which they had also been known to partake in from time to time. Good times were back, and such types of sex were not only practiced, but neatly choreographed and placed on the internet for eager fans around the world to emulate the way they had emulated the gyrations of Jennifer Lopez or had ripped their jeans to look like a little more Kurt Cobain not too long ago. Gangbang — that was one thing the Tantrics had been right about all along, although Vedpursad wasn’t exactly sure how the goats fit into the equation.
Vedpursad trailed the rapidly smoking drunk by a few feet towards the doorway and looked out hoping to find out where he actually was. Yonder in distance, past the herringbone patterned brick lane and through the narrow gorge between tile roofed decrepit brick townhouses was the half destroyed famed wooden structure of Kashtamandap, the eponym of Kathmandu valley itself. This placed Vedpursad squarely on Gunakamdev Marga a few hundred feet away from the right turn he’d would have taken to get into Jhonchhe more famously known as the Freak Street- a name which had gained international notoriety in the hippie era of the 60s. 1960s had been the first time regular folks from the west had been able to experience the magic of this ancient town which had been constant and ever evolving. The wooden Kashtamandap had been destroyed in many of the earthquakes which frequented these areas once every generation and had been rebuilt just as many times. Ramesh, who sometimes consulted for the Government’s archaeology depart, had mentioned that according to the evidence gathered after the most recent earthquake, they were certain that the structure had existed since at least the 7th century. It was interesting, but there were too many old things to keep track of. Vedpursad followed the drunk out into the street hoping to thank him and be on his way to finding a warm plate of steamed white rice with a dollop of thick buffalo ghee, garlic fried daal, and sauteed mustard greens. If he was lucky, he may still be able to find warm millet beer which always relaxed him on such cold dry Kathmandu winter nights.
As Vedpursad stepped out of the doorway into the moonlight, he noticed a short middle aged man walking down the street carrying two pots balanced at the edges of a bamboo plank which was rested across his shoulder. When Vedpursad was a kid, people of Kathmandu carried all kinds of stuff in this manner — balanced on two edges of a balanced bamboo plank, which would be supported- like a fulcrum- on one or both of the shoulders. He hadn’t seen this mode of transportation in a long time but then again there were a lot of things he didn’t notice these days. It was very peculiar that the man was transporting pots of stuff this late after dark. Then Vedpursad noticed other people, on the side of the road and in the alleyways and inside the doors of the houses which lined the street, just busily going about their lives, illuminated in the faded blue light of the moon. Vedpursad stood still and looked around at the myriad people in dazed amazement. “The moon looks quite exquisite tonight, doesn’t it old man?” a sonorously nasal voice spoke from about a foot to the right of his knee. Vedpursad looked down to see a billy-goat looking up at him and grinning charmingly, his goat teeth gleaming in the moonlight over his oversized goateed chin. The eyes of the goat had certain emptiness to them — deep, dark, bottomless, but the gaze was enchanting, entrancing, and finally, immobilizing. Vedpursad stood motionless as the grinning goat glided upwards towards to Vedpursad’s face, its mouth opening wider as it got closer. Vedpursad knew exactly what was happening but was utterly incapable of doing absolutely anything about it. When the goat’s eyes were only a few inches from Vedpursad’s, its mouth started opening, first as wide as Vedpursad’s nose, then as wide as his face, the darkness of its foul smelling mouth taking up ever increasing share of Vedpursad’s vision and his consciousness. Vedpursad screamed with all his might but no sound was produced. The demon goat was about to ingest Vedpursad head first and Vedpursad was about to witness the end of his life in slow motion. Just then, Vedpursad heard a loud thwak, and snapped back to reality. The goat flew off from his face, hit the ground a few feet in front of him and snapped right back into its prior more normal looking billy-goat-like form. The drunk, who was now standing right in front of the petrified Ved seemed to have slapped the goat back into shape. The drunk made an exaggerated mean face, the kind one makes at a child to communicate a non-existent annoyance, pointed the forefinger of his right hand at the goat’s nose and barked “you mind your own business, goat!” On hearing the admonishment, the goat’s cheeks drooped in an exaggerated expression of sadness before returning back to a sly smile. The goat looked over at the still petrified Vedpursad and melodically said “Sowwy. I shall be going then,” before letting out two standard bleets and trotting into the darkness of the closest alley. The drunk then turned his mean face towards Vedpursad’s, looked directly in his eyes, pointed the same index finger at Vedpursad’s nose and spoke firmly. “And you! Don’t be engaging with beings you have no business engaging with. Now walk with me. And hand me another smoke.”
- Drunk asks Vedpursad why they’re chasing him.
- Vedpursad says his friend stole something and handed it to him
- Drunk asks what it could be that would make them chase him this badly
- Vedpursad pulls out the Bhairav bone from his pocket. It glows. All the ghosts turn around and look at it greedily. Drunk asks Ved to put it away, says they’ll be after them now, but ghosts has short memory so they’ll forget shortly after they escape. Drunk does magic to disctract them. The two break into a run.
- Drunk leads the two up the platform of a temple where the ghosts cant see. From the platform they see the assailants emerge from the temple from which they had escaped. The assailants are completely oblivious to the ghosts etc. Then behind the assailants is a shaman looking guy, who seems to notice all the supernatural beings around. He asks one of them something, and the thing points directly in Vedpursad’s direction. The shaman points his staff in Vedpursad’s direction. They know where they’re at.
- The two run again. Drunk takes them to the buingel of one of the houses, where there’s an old lady by the fire.
