MAAVELI, LAST KING OF RAKSHAKAS

 DREAM OF MAAVAZHI.

After an interminable pause, he  raised his hand and pointed a bony finger .…. “there,… there, among the stones , you’ll find a man who can help you.  Find him and he’ll answer your questions”. He will tell you what  is and what will be ......maya”

The place was farther than my eyes told me, so far that many years passed before I finally reached the land of stones. These were not mere stones but mountains, massive  boulders that lay ranged east to west, making sheer walls between deep gorges and they drew me to the center and made me think what I was now. Dead or was I ? Yes, the most powerful man on earth, dead, seeking a force more potent and powerful than me,  the manifestation of the enlightened supreme being, Purusha, within which everything resided and controlled  every action in the universe. 

But  I was dead, lying under a pile of wood and my grieving family was lighting the pyre. Or was I? Then I saw him, sitting cross legged and deep in thought, his breath  suspended and it seemed  like he lived  within an envelope of pure life-giving air . Stillness hung and then I heard an intone.... 'Aum'......Deep and sonorous,  it sent   frissons along every nerve in my body.

I stared at his inert form. Nothing moved, nor lips nor muscle. I watched him and without it registering , he had grown and now he was a giant.

“Please,  I feel like my mind is about to blow,  please teach me everything . I'm so unsure“…“Please,  you have left me confused ,what is prakrti, kaivalya,??”.  
 
 “What is  everything,...mahabali..?" Was it sarcasm in his voice, was I being mocked here?

 
“Everything is”... I said and stopped mid sentence.

“Everything…….. is not nothing and nothing is not everything"  "Shunya ....nothing... and nothing is nothing" . 

I didn't understand. I wasn't even sure that was what he said and I groped for words, when  I was met with a forceful  kick on my head, nearly killing me. Fear gripped  as the giant leg moved again, retracting and flexing at the knees and the bruising pain of earlier assault peaked.  I felt  a massive wave and the floor and the sheer walls around me, went into a spasm and then moved sinuously. Rocks   flew past me and I hurtled along disappearing pathways into a vortex that kept receding. Then movements ceased and I fell to the floor.

  
I wanted to leave, get away and I stood up ran along the narrow gorge and it  opened into another and another and another , all so stark and similar that escape from the prison of stones was impossible. In desperation,  I tried to climb out of the labyrinth but the menacing stones loomed above me to the clouds. I was trapped and panic built up again. I ran, calling out narayana…narayana jaye.., those words, once I had ignored, didn't care for,  thundered back from the lifeless walls in a thousand voices and I clamped my hands around my head to shut out the chant.
 
I felt sapped of will, weary .It dulled me, making me incapable of thinking. I stood up one last time and ran at  the stones and they moved away from me, creating a fathomless void.
 
I fell into the void . Sheep wool clouds gathered around me . The clouds were always in my head, now they were outside. 'Prahriti', 'kaivalya' ... massive signs took shape and I floated among the whorls. More signs rose from it’s dying bosom, billowing up to lose its shape as another massive form emerged to fill the effervescent space and the drifting and fading clouds cleared me of the fluff that had clogged my mind ever since I was born . White light flashed inside my head and I felt a lightness .

I opened my eyes and looked.  I still lay at the foot of the giant.The rest of him towered above the stone walls to the sky, beyond my vision.  The place quietened down. I was scared.The silence and the menacing feet by me embodied  further assault . 


“vamana ...why me, why my life?  Anguish and pain of a life not lived engulfed me ."I have no quarrel with you, vamana.....go away” ..I cried in utter helplessness . 

"I am sridhara,vyuha, everything, before,now and will be, your bad and good....substance.

Monsters and beautiful women lined up, one behind  another, all the way  to the center of the universe and from its depth a voice ,

idaṃ viṣṇurvi cakrame tredhā ni dadhe padam |
samūḷhamasya pāṃsure ||
trīṇi padā vi cakrame viṣṇurghopā adābhyaḥ |
ato dharmāṇi dhārayan || 

I woke up and looked around . Except for a gnawing thirst, I was alright. I  felt different. There were no bruises or wounds and I felt no pain. Instead I felt fresh, a new awareness , a feeling of being which I was not able to fathom.  Soon the memory of the attack faded and I felt as some heavy liquid had drained out of my skull, making the inside much more brighter and lighter. I felt comfortable among the stones.
 
"Sukracharya.Won’t I ..won't we go back and undo all that ,undo our entire lives, start again with this great knowledge that I had acquired?There is so much more to learn, here, in Pathalam."

When he finished , I knew he had lost it, completely and irrevocably and I said what I really felt. Evidently that didn't register and he continued.

"Sukra chaaarya.... please understand, Vamana means well..you know what it means..... and ..we... we have to accept the reality of a supreme being beyond me "

"Maavazhi..please, I hate being called that name". I was and am pulama" 

'sukra charya'...Ever since that worm  addressed me so, it had stuck. TThe despicable bastard sounded as if he were addressing a worm. Fornicating dwarf, he was a worm,not me. we had called that snivelling sonofabitch,  'Vaimanam', poison breath. I had warned , plead, fought,lost an eye trying to drive him out, but Mavazhi was so smitten with his nonsense ,  let him stay.

The result, the bastard was lording it out side, while we were incarcerated in prison we had built just for the likes of him.
. 

MAAVELI, LAST KING OF RAKSHAKAS

 DREAM OF MAAVAZHI.

After an interminable pause, he  raised his hand and pointed a bony finger .…. “there,… there, among the stones , you’ll find a man who can help you.  Find him and he’ll answer your questions”. He will tell you what  is and what will be ......always”

The place was farther than my eyes told me, so far, many years passed before I finally reached the land of stones. These were not mere stones but mountains, massive  boulders and lay ranged east to west, making sheer walls between deep gorges and they drew me to the center and made me think what I was now. Dead or was I ? Yes, the most powerful man on earth, dead, seeking a force more potent and powerful than me,  the manifestation of the enlightened supreme being, Purusha, within which everything resided and controlled  every action in the universe. 

But  I was dead, lying under a pile of wood and my grieving family was lighting the pyre. Or was I? Then I saw him, sitting cross legged and deep in thought, his breath  suspended and it seemed  like he lived  within an envelope of pure life-giving air . Stillness hung and then I heard an intone.... 'Aum'......Deep and sonorous,  it sent   frissons along every nerve in my body.

I stared at his inert form. Nothing moved, nor lips nor muscle. I watched him and without it registering , he had grown and now he was a giant.

“Please,  I feel like my mind is about to blow,  please teach me everything . I'm so unsure“…“Please,  you have left me confused ,what is prakrti, kaivalya,??”.  
 
 “What is  everything,...mahabali..?" Was it sarcasm in his voice, was I being mocked here?

 
“Everything is”... I said and stopped mid sentence.

“Everything…….. is not nothing and nothing is not everything"  "Shunya ....nothing... and nothing is nothing" . 

I didn't understand. I wasn't even sure that was what he said and I groped for words, when  I was met with a forceful  kick on my head, nearly killing me. Fear gripped  as the giant leg moved again, retracting and flexing at the knees and the bruising pain of earlier assault peaked.  I felt  a massive wave and the floor and the sheer walls around me, went into a spasm and then moved sinuously. Rocks   flew past me and I hurtled along disappearing pathways into a vortex that kept receding. Then movements ceased and I fell to the floor.

  
I wanted to leave, get away and I stood up ran along the narrow gorge and it  opened into another and another and another , all so stark and similar that escape from the prison of stones was impossible. In desperation,  I tried to climb out of the labyrinth but the menacing stones loomed above me to the clouds. I was trapped and panic built up again. I ran, calling out narayana…narayana jaye.., those words, once I had ignored, didn't care for,  thundered back from the lifeless walls in a thousand voices and I clamped my hands around my head to shut out the chant.
 
I felt sapped of will, weary .It dulled me, making me incapable of thinking. I stood up one last time and ran at  the stones and they moved away from me, creating a fathomless void.
 
I fell into the void . Sheep wool clouds gathered around me . The clouds were always in my head, now they were outside. 'Prahriti', 'kaivalya' ... massive signs took shape and I floated among the whorls. More signs rose from it’s dying bosom, billowing up to lose its shape as another massive form emerged to fill the effervescent space and the drifting and fading clouds cleared me of the fluff that had clogged my mind ever since I was born . White light flashed inside my head and I felt a lightness .

I opened my eyes and looked.  I still lay at the foot of the giant.The rest of him towered above the stone walls to the sky, beyond my vision.  The place quietened down. I was scared.The silence and the menacing feet by me embodied  further assault . 


“vamana ...why me, why my life?  Anguish and pain of a life not lived engulfed me ."I have no quarrel with you, vamana.....go away” ..I cried in utter helplessness . 

"I am sridhara,vyuha, everything, before,now and will be, your bad and good....substance.

Monsters and beautiful women lined up, one behind  another, all the way  to the center of the universe and from its depth a voice ,

idaṃ viṣṇurvi cakrame tredhā ni dadhe padam |
samūḷhamasya pāṃsure ||
trīṇi padā vi cakrame viṣṇurghopā adābhyaḥ |
ato dharmāṇi dhārayan || 

I woke up and looked around . Except for a gnawing thirst, I was alright. I  felt different. There were no bruises or wounds and I felt no pain. Instead I felt fresh, a new awareness , a feeling of being which I was not able to fathom.  Soon the memory of the attack faded and I felt as some heavy liquid had drained out of my skull, making the inside much more brighter and lighter. I felt comfortable among the stones.
 
"Sukracharya.Won’t I ..won't we go back and undo all that ,undo our entire lives, start again with this great knowledge that I had acquired?There is so much more to learn, here, in Pathalam."

Bhargava knew I had lost my authority, completely and irrevocably and he said what he really felt. Evidently that didn't register and he continued.

"Sukra chaaarya.... please understand, Vamana means well..you know what it means..... and ..we... we have to accept the reality of a supreme being beyond me "

"Maavazhi..please, I hate being called that name". I was and am bhargava" 

Bhargava


'sukra charyaaa'...phew.That despicable bastard sounded as if he were addressing a worm and ever since, it had stuck.  Fornicating dwarf, he was the worm, not me. We had called that snivelling sonofabitch,  'Vaimanam', poison breath. I had warned , plead, fought, lost an eye trying to drive him out, but Mavazhi was so smitten with his nonsense ,  let him stay.

The result, the conniving dwarf was lording it out side, while we were incarcerated in prison we had built just for the likes of him.
. 

dubai

She had kept it a secret and I  didn't know until she was packing for the trip.She was going to Dubai and her tickets were booked.!

What about me? She made a face that asked me to fuck off. I told her without me she was gonna pay a heavy price for her misadventure, that all sheiks carried two scimitars and one was used for a more deadly purpose. She made a second face , one of glee and absolute pleasure. I fucked off.

When I came back home there was an another big case. It was mine, packed with old underwear and socks and ready to go. I asked her whether she was taking me along as a slave, because no decent human being would ever like to be caught in those clothes she had packed for me. I dumped most of it and went with an almost empty case.She didn't care; presumably she needed that space as she planned to buy Dubai out. Shopping!

Once at the airport, the baggage handler fell over  when she heaved my bag up to tag it . She was totally unprepared for its  lack of weight  and she fell . She got up and gave me a look of absolute incomprehension, while all behind me in the queue tried to stifle their laughter.

Once inside the lounge , we realised that we were booked on a flight that was never going to fly and that we will have to go hungry. There was stuff to eat at the airport, but to eat those you need gold teeth, so we waited for the plane to arrive, board and then eat, by which time it was already tomorrow. The flight was uneventful, rather boring, unbelievably boring because I had asked for a window seat and was assigned 919 Z, right on the wing.

Dubai was  a happy place  to arrive at, many many happy faces from different places, size and colour, though I felt a special dread.I had heard horror stories of sheikdoms' arbitrary ways and the imagined ignominy of not being allowed to face up to meddling authority  made me  nervous and I had lost it by the time I reached the counter . So, when the native kid manning the immigration motioned me with his head to look into a face scanner, I blinked!

Bah! he slapped my passport down, looked at me and said something I didn't understand and I made a gesture, flapping my hand behind my ears. I choked and looked like a blubbering  idiot just asking him 'what?'

ahh...Nam kya hai , he asked again , his mouth opening up fully and I croaked my name.

Once in Dubai, we had a splash and that's when I dropped my cellphone in a waste bin, by the metro. Everybody around froze. Never in  history of Dubai had anyone dropped a cellphone in a waste bin, intentionally or unintentionally! Who but the extremely demented did that? I was in a bind. Do I leave the cell behind and walk? Do I rummage the bin and get the cell back? There were no policemen around, that meant there were plenty of cameras right there, peering at me, recording my every move. My god! My god! My God! There I was, waste bin and me, the rest of the world had quietly melted into the side walls of the station.

So what do I do?. I enact the entire scene looking up to the unseen cameras, miming with my face. I go, hands and arms flaying, on what went before, playing out my intentions, my plans for retrieval,  while people stood and watched a berserk man tearing into a waste bin.

Holiday went by, happy happy days to really remember. Friends, friend's friends. Relatives. Their hospitality and happiness of having us was overwhelming. Grand  lunches and dinners popped up every time and there was little time for anything else. I lived on borrowed clothes. It was a blast.

We were sad when it was over.On the way back to airport, my cousin wickedly reminded me the airport security at the exit gate may have a footage of me rummaging the waste bin and maybe they would hold me back and  send me to  prison for littering.

"Hey blah blah, you can't be serious" I said and laughed it off. But the next two hours were the most unsure moments I ever spend anytime as my life of freedom, the system that allowed me to explain, the system  that allowed one to face up and challenge unbridled authority,  flashed and faded in my mind against a system that may or may not offer recourse to fight back legally and win. I wanted to out.I wanted run. I was a wreck.

Friends, liberty is there and much over there and much more evident than I expected, but I have to say I felt an imminence, of menace from an unseen hand.

More than all that, I now truly respect your courage and purpose of being there, living a life and getting things done against a backdrop of conditions truly alien to us. Thanks.Goodbye.May god bless.

vymanika yantr and vedic science

1.  

 Vymanik yantra. Ancient flying ship

Vedic scientists . I truly like these guys , nothing was beyond their realm.

But again. Who were the vedics ? 

IMO, Vedic Aryans were really ‘ancient aliens' and believe me, it’s not just the Chinese way of saying it . Or they were central asian cowboys who flayed aurochs for a living. Okay okay, I take it back, they were indigenous, famously patriarchal, patrileneal , partilocal, homegrown scientific geniuses.

Indigeniuses.!They invented the aeroplane, Vaimanik yantrr!

That was all so long ago and forgotten. Now people insist we know and one's left mulling how they acquired and processed the vast info compled into mantras.. Like, was it crunched right here or did it arrive  as jumbled words from steppes and morph into manthra, thantra and eventually yanthra?

Purayarn.
One day, an airship made from an amalgam of silver and bengalgram and powered by unadulterated elephant urine landed in a lotus pond  . A hatch opened . A godly figure with a flowing silver beard emerged  from the lotus pond he had landed in .

People -neanderthals, gawked 

 'who  are you'
"...ah..hmmm..blahmasmi…...." … I’m blahmaa".

A bzz rose and faded.“Oooh blahma… THE GREAT INVENTOR ....“blahmaasmi!!!.....”.
“Yeah...'I am, therefore I invent'...yea...yes. something like that ..” and he said he made flying machines too and waved high a copy of vaimanika sutra in hand

Everyone applauded and he liked it.

Happy on earth, he married Sarasa and drew plans to make in India. He set shop and dived in using techniques yet unknown - remote seeding, serial impregnation, batch production- the works and before you knew it there were many creations . specially maharishis , men of vedic science, who invented yantras for every imagined use out of virtually....nothing! They failed to file patents though, which wasn’t so bad after all as they had it down in verse and sang it out loud, preserving it for posterity. ( O, as a pastime , they caught and fucked everything on the horizon, transferring their sanskrit gene, ra-ek-a-ek-aaaa for later researchers to find and unravel long unanswered questions about aryans)

Blahma had no competition here and loved the life he was living. But not for long. Two intractable nuts, one bent on destroying everything he created and the other trying to preserve what was left of it, were stomping their feet and demanding top billing in the business of making it here. They were hard to handle . Fights broke out and stories were built around these and reported . They called it 'Purayarn' and that got some great press.

Over the time, the crazies took over and blahma felt sidelined.
Happened so he was a serial seeder ,implanting several women with his own seed, a ra-ek-a-ek-aaaa replay, and that got him into fights with others who were not so thrilled, him showing his stuff. So, the fights didn't end there and he was shown in poor light, a wizard who created mindlessly and downgraded . He, l'inventeur avant tout, aviator the great, fought back asserting he was everything, but nobody really cared. Insulted and greatly disillusioned, he dusted his vimana, stopped by an elephant pump and flew out.

High above, gyro yantra malfunctioned, mantras failed and he crashed. In Ur. Mesopotamia.

This was a better place, nuts here believed in even bigger myths. So he jumbled his name, became Levi Ablahm, remarried Sarah and then heard from THE MAKER, who he had himself imagined to be not so long ago. Now he was not so sure. He was scared and hid behind a biggish rock, obeyed god, converted, changed his ways and deleted false accounts, got some respect, sold his inventions, rights and soul, traded in his thong and slouched in a longish frock and was promised land . Ablahm proceeded forth, made some juice and created history and Palestine .

Back home too, changes had happened . His clan had multiplied and were spreading like wildfire across steppes, plains, deserts , taming horses and singing thousand page scientific songs in verse the neanderthals – really indo europeans, couldn't understand, its import even less. They were ignorant louts, marauders who spoke in grunts, snorts and Oh, P.I.E.. They babbled and tried to build impossible towers and the effort collapsed. It was all very annoying , though it didn't stop the firingees from staking claim to everything ever created, invented or imagined including the ability to speak and write sanskrit.

Thanks to Ablahams, the centre of gravity shifted and shifted and shifted to Europe, Germany in particular, and they were now a crew . They congregated wearing frocks and took over the world and read vedic texts backwards, trashed it as meaningless yellow pulp and believed it so much, to force it down the throats of those who don’t like it so much.
Wrong claims feirengees, rotten tooth running dogs of war. We, vedic scientists were on interstellar cruise on biodegradable flying ships when you were crapping in the grass!! Take that, and that and this.
We are at this point in history and no more: we are about to reclaim our invented past

ancient technology - harappan seal

There are times you try simple stuff and get badly stuck. Like once, bitten by a Harappan 

bug, I got down to make a replica of an ancient  seal I had seen at the museum. 

Everything about  Indus Valley Culture fascinate me. Enigmatic, yet to be understood,  they left behind traces of an urban culture, leaving behind traces of their existence through relics, especially exquisite seals with unknown inscriptions for some purpose we are yet to decipher 

I decided to make a seal.

Copying them would take me closer to understanding them . Making a seal  should not be daunting, I thought...After all it’s some kind of clay...ha ha.The seal I had seen at the museum was small and well detailed and made from clay , faience really, Faience! I learnt there ( it was written  in letters big enough ).  

Now this faience! where the fuck was faience?. I was desperate to find some and trawled the web and it turned out after the long dead harappans, nobody on earth  had ever seen the material. Luckily, there was a substitute. A roadside potter's wife had some clay , a sticky brown goo , which I took home.

It looked workable

Back home I set the clay on the dining table, slappedtge  clay,  added a little water  and it turned into a unmanageable drippy mush. When I tried to mold it the goo ran through my fingers. Bah!. I grabbed some more clay and slapped to the mush and it crumbled in my palm. It was too dry to stick togetjer .

Get into shape, goddamn ,this is supposed to be easy! I set it on a chappati plank and was beating it into a flat cake when my wife looked over my shoulder and asked me if I was reinventing shit.

"next time you enter my kitchen , you're dead, dead, dead"....get out she yelled as she yanked the plank away. The goo flew!

I forgot to tell: please remember to factor in a few elements before you try ancient stuff. One, 'The Wife'. You have to convince her that whatever you are doing costs nothing,  will be of immediate use to her and that she will be famous. 

You'll need electrical devices too. Also, I would like to add a third and a fourth. All said, modern technology will help you zilch . If its a miniature you are trying to replicate, make sure the work piece is big enough , at least two feet by two feet!

Well. Outside, after an hour or so of real kneading and squishing, I got the wet clay into a three inch square and set to work  with a sharp knife. The first impression I made, cleaved the cake into two. I desperately licked it back to shape.

"A thin blunt wedge to make the markings ...oh yes ..that's what I need ,a wedge, a wedge!".

I rummaged the kitchen and found a dinner fork and snapped off three prongs. It was now handy and I made a proper impression, a wedge . A nice and proper incision there and when I tried to maneuver it into a circle, it widened and became an yawning gap, a fucking hole. I tossed the implement aside and used a bottle cap to get the round impression which looked so perfect, it stood out announcing it's mother. Anyway I kept working on it, using any implement that came to hand and soon had a few crude glyphs running across the top.

Next, I had to carve the central figure, an animal, the unicorn. It was a nightmare. How the f..k does one make an micro incision with a macro fork? The rump alone ran the length, the male organ was bigger than the four legs together and the tail ran out of the seal. There was no space for the sacred object.

I had some expert advice coming through the night though. Nuts suggesting various techniques. Tips on sculpting, art, besides late night drunken bastards urgently inquiring whether the goo could be used for something else...."check with your wife, she'll know, ..hahahah.."

"Put the light off .... tone the noise down, you moron..why cant you be normal like everyone else and sleep?". The Wife . The night loudly went by.

Nearly morning , I had a semblance of a seal in place which embarrassed me no end. Whatever, I had it in some form and the gooey effort had to be fired to dry and harden. I filched coal from the istriwallah's cart and tried to set it on fire. It refused to catch. Except for the istriwallah, nobody can ever set coal on fire  and the irony is, if you weren't careful at work place everything caught fire! Well, after several attempts I gave up and set the coal on the gas burner right beside the rice cooker, just as she ducked in for a bath. The coal burned alright and so did the rice cooker!

 


And when she got back , there was lot of blood.

I didn’t give up though and for a moment mulled using the microwave to fire the seal. But I was already dead, so I made a furnace and dumped the burning coal in it.

                              

 The furnace, a broken flower pot with strategic holes, was a total disaster. Once I had a fire going, it lost it's fizz. I tried to breathe life into the fire, but it didn’t sustain . A bellow... a bellows??, that was the answer. I had seen blacksmiths use that contraption to pump air and whip it up and I ripped an umbrella apart to make one when I realised I didn't know how to make one!!

Well, I had to do something and get out before she found out. I hooked her hair dryer up to blow air into the furnace. The lead was short , so I added a length of bare wire and delicately threaded it through a window into a socket in the kitchen. And soon I heard an almighty shriek. I didn't notice my wire was running by the stove and heat had melt the wire and when she went to take the milk down , she got an awful shock almost electrocuting her .

arrrhhh...."I told you... you'll kill us all, you moron,idiot..... what do you have in your silly head..mud?....madman, mahabrandhan!!!".She was livid. I’d never seen her so angry I ran away.

I gave up. Any comment good, bad or ugly about those ancient guys, is taken back. They were geniuses alright. Come to think of it, the Harappans were here for a longer length of time than we have been here and obviously they had a fire going.!!