"Where did you park your bicycle?" Raju's friend asked.
Raju had always dreamt of riding a Harley Davidson, or at least a Royal Enfield. But all poor Raju, a second year undergrad student in a sleepy little village in Kerala, South India, could afford on his father's school teacher salary was a run of the mill bicycle.
"By the little shack outside your gate…" he said.
"The shack…" the friend said. ‘By the pond?’
"Yeah. Is that a problem?"
"First off, it’s not a shack. It’s the dwelling of Maayi"
He had heard about Maayi. In fact, every child in that village grew up listening to the gruesome story of Maayi, the blood-thirsty Yakshi. Few men could resist the deadly charms of Yakshis--those seductive vampiresses.
In the spirit of the night, the friend narrated the story, "Maayi, the Yakshi, was once a beautiful young maiden who was convinced by her lover to run away with him. The night they planned to elope, he asked her to bring along all the gold jewelry she had. ‘It’ll help us begin a new life,’ he said. The innocent girl suspected nothing. At night, they ran away and while sleeping in that makeshift shack, the man crushed her head with a big granite rock and ran away with her jewelry."
"No wonder she turned blood-thirsty," Raju said empathetically.
The friend continued, "Maayi wandered the deserted streets at night looking for lone male wayfarers who would fall for her the way she fell for her man. And men who fell for her did not survive to tell the tale. One day, a young man came by, and Maayi approached him. He was, no doubt, moved by her beauty but not intoxicated like the other less fortunate ones. Maayi invited him to spend the night at the shack, which she had magically transformed into a mansion. At first the young man refused. But Maayi convinced him to stay as there were no inns nearby. He agreed to spend the night. They feasted on delicacies. But the young man refused to drink the alcohol that she served in tall crystal glasses."
"Alcohol...very bad," Raju said, all judgy.
“At night, as she led him to his sleeping quarters, she suggested he leave his knapsack by the door. He refused, ‘I read the scriptures before I go to bed.’ Saying that he took out the Holy book written on dried palm leaves. She leapt back in revulsion and horror. ‘I knew it…’ the young man said, shaking a finger at her. ‘I knew you were a yakshi.’
The friend went on, “Chanting the scriptures, the young man beckoned her to sit on a mat. Mesmerized by the scriptures, she sat there swaying to his recital of the Lord’s words that promised the ultimate, infinite, pure bliss that lies beyond the senses, mind, and ego. He beseeched her to stay rooted in that spot and meditate on the lines. She relented on one condition, ‘I’ll roam these grounds during the hours between midnight and 3 o'clock and feast on weak men. He implored her to relinquish anger, hatred, and thirst for revenge. ‘Give me some time to work out my latent tendencies…,’ she urged him.”
“Does she still roam the grounds during those unholy hours?” Raju asked in a voice laced with forced courage.
“People have seen her,” the friend said.
Tucking his mundu firmly around his waist, Raju countered in a quivering voice, "I’m not weak."
His friend just shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Raju.
Raju walked towards the shack with strong strides.
As he got closer to the shack, he heard the church clock strike two. He felt scared and breathless but a force egged him on towards his bicycle leaned against the shack. In the faint moonlight, he saw the stainless steel handle bar of the bicycle gleaming.
The air was still. Crickets were quiet. An eerie silence blanketed the grounds around the shack. He felt a sudden chill descend on him that made Raju button the top button on his white shirt. As he reached for the bike, he heard the light rustling of leaves and twigs breaking. He jumped on his bike and turned it around to face a tall figure with flowing silvery hair. The figure screamed on his face. Raju wanted to call for help but no voice escaped his lungs.
He froze for a few seconds, and then a chant of the Goddess Varahi--the commander of the army of bhutas, spirits and ghosts--gurgled to the top of his conscious mind. Suddenly, the willowy figure melted into the ground. He peddled as fast as he could into the night.
The next morning, Raju’s friends came by to check up on him because they had learned from their neighbors that Yakshi had struck again last night. Raju was still reeling from his close encounter with the vampiress. He didn’t tell them anything because he didn’t have the guts to relive the previous night.
His friend said, "We are glad that you are okay. The old woman--we call her muthassi--that lives next door to us saw the Yakshi last night. Muthassi is 89 years old, frail-looking but deceptively healthy. She got the time wrong last night and headed out at 2 in the morning to the pond near the shack to take a bath."
The friend took a deep breath in and out before he delivered the climax of the story, "As the church bell struck 2, the yakshi dressed in all white floated in front of her and darted into the night. She screamed and fainted. It was her son who found her in the morning lying by the shack. She broke her arm and has a fever."
Raju sat up straight. He asked, "This muthassi that you speak of, how’s her physical appearance?"
"Tall. 5 foot 8. Thin. Willowy. Long white hair that reaches to the back of her knee."
That’s when Raju realized that the Maayi he ran into yesterday was the frail old muthassi.
"Why do you ask?" His friend wanted to know.
"No reason," he said emphatically. Raju was afraid that if she died from fear or fear-induced fever, he would be blamed for it.
A few days later, Raju's friend told him that the muthassi had pulled through. "The will to live in her is strong."
"Ummm…" Raju said, suppressing a smile that threatened to appear on his lips. Raju learned a lesson that day: sometimes floating Yakshis are just scared Rajus on bicycles.
No comments:
Post a Comment