Chapter 32: Acid
It had started drizzling by the time they left. Pallavi and Kashi had both taken umbrellas. They shared one and gave the other to him. They walked in relative silence, the both of them ahead and he behind.
The drizzle slowly gained force and five minutes into the walk, the edge of his 'mundu' was wet and his open-toed Batas were plowing through mud and leaves… there was a tinge of annoyance that emerged out of habit.
But it seemed pointless.
Nature didn't give a shit one way or the other if he was inconvenienced.
And if he really thought about it, it wasn't so bad.
The green around him was much more vivid that two days ago, it seemed. The perpetual rain helped…
He listened, as his ears always did intrinsically when noise was absent.
Noise was absent, but there was no silence either, he noticed. There were sounds everywhere, starting with their footfalls falling and rising from the wet ground to the pitter-patter of the light rain to the swaying of the branches of everything green around him… Nature evidently had its own chatter that was always going on… next time he encountered what he thought was silence and started to feel that claustrophobic panic that he always did, he would just have to remind himself of this discovery.
"It's over there." He heard and lifted his umbrella farther up so that he could see what she was pointing to. All he saw was more green, a lot of dense green in fact.
"Are we walking through the snake pit to get to the snake worship? I didn't know reptiles were so vain that extolling them like this would stop them from attacking their natural enemies."
"We are not their natural enemies!" Kashi replied now and he saw that she was angry again. Nothing new there, so he continued.
"Yes, we are."
"Raizada, you think everything that lives in the forest is our natural enemy when it's the truth that 99% of those beings will never attack unprovoked. We are the only living beings on the planet that hunt and take life merely for the fun of it."
"Don't call me Dick Cheney." He said and saw Pallavi smile surreptitiously.
"I never said you were stupid enough to mistake a man for an animal, merely that you and most of your kind fear what you don't know. And the only way you know how to deal with that fear is to destroy what you think is the cause of it."
"It's called self-preservation, Kashi." He said in annoyance that she was gearing for her regular dose of proselytizing.
As she fumed and prepared to give him an earful, Pallavi spoke.
"Do you know the history of Serpent worship, Arnav?"
He shook his head.
"It's closely tied to the legends of how this land came to be. And by this land, I mean Kerala. Legend has it that the ancient sage, Parasurama, the sixth incarnation of Lord Maha Vishnu, to absolve himself of his sin of killing all the Kshatriyas in the world, sat in meditation in Gokarnam. He was blessed by Varuna, the Lord of the Oceans, and Bhumi devi, the Earth Goddess. They asked him to throw his axe as far as he could reach from Kanyakumari. He did and the land that rose from the ocean from there to where the axe landed came to be known as Kerala. Well, at least, according to the legends. That's the broader context. Here, the Pulluvar community believes that Parasurama gave them the right to settle in these lands. But this was all forest and full of poisonous snakes. To co-exist in peace, likely, the legend has it that Parasurama asked the people to worship the serpents as they protected the land. And so they did… and they still do… to them, their land, their home, is protected by the serpents. At some point, those that provide security and safety do become Gods in some sense, don't they?"
She looked at him for a brief moment then. There were times like this when he got the sense that both of them spoke in riddles... That the things that they said inevitably had a hidden meaning…
"Has it worked? Co-existing in peace, I mean?" he asked, stifling his confusion.
"Nature takes and nature gives. If you accept that as the cycle of life, harmony can be achieved more easily than you think." Kashi replied.
"And here we are." Pallavi said now as they stepped through a long line of bushes into a hamlet with a small house that had its front-yard filled with a good crowd.
Those gathered recognized Pallavi and Kashi right away and he noticed some level of deference as they parted so that the three of them could move up to the porch.
He could hear some sort of chanting and a sort of repetitive "drm drm" that sounded a lot like the steady vibration that a taut string made when tugged on repeatedly.
When they walked up the steps, he could see a large elaborate drawing on the floor, just as Kashi had told him before. Inside an ostentatious circle drawn with red, yellow, and black powder, there was a large hooded King Cobra's likeness drawn, with its body looping around on either side. As irrational as it was, he felt the hair at the back of his neck stand up as a film of ice wrapped itself around his spine.
The images from his nightmare returned in a flash… he felt as if he was back inside that forest again, looking at the twin puncture marks on his sister's ankles and her lifeless face with its eyes rolled back. He thought he saw something slithering away from the corner of his eye and looked up startled.
All he saw were people though… people dressed in almost all white standing all around him… they all seemed to be chanting the same thing. There were stalks of what looked like coconut tree leaves handing from a rope all around the periphery, vines of some sort interspersing them. One of them rubbed his shoulder and in a sudden moment of panic he pulled on it, almost violently. The vine broke off from the rope and he looked at it in surprise.
"What's wrong?" he heard Kashi whisper next to him and saw her lightly extricate his hands from its death grip on the vine and tie it back up on the rope. His heart was beating rapidly and he looked up to see that the people standing around him staring at him. The chanting and the reverberating music continued without break and he felt an overwhelming urge to bolt.
"Saramilla. Pettannu Pedichu poyi. Parichayamillatha aala. Delhi-iyil ninnu vannatha." (No worries. He just got scared. He is not familiar with all this. He came from Delhi). He heard Pallavi say to the people and they gave him one last look before turning back to face the center.
"Are you alright?" Pallavi asked and he nodded, feeling foolish… like he was four and still thought there were demons under his bed. There were times when he had insisted on falling asleep holding onto his sister's hair, which had been long even back then.
He turned to Kashi and said under his breath. "What the f**k is this place? I don't want to be here."
He felt her slip her hands into his, the pads of her fingers and her palm warm and soft against his rough cold one.
"Relax." She whispered softly. "Sit down here. I will be right next to you." Her hand in his gestured to the stone railing around the porch, just like the railing that he liked sitting on at her house.
"I don't need to relax! I am not afraid!" He bit out in a harsh whisper even as he did as she asked and sat down.
She didn't answer him but turned to look at him and smiled as she said, "Just focus on how beautiful I look today. It will distract you."
"Are you humoring me?" he asked in anger as he squeezed her hand in his, rather painfully.
"Have you ever tried drugs?" she suddenly asked, her tone changing to serious.
He was taken aback and narrowed his eyes as he asked, "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"
"What type?" she asked instead, taking his irritation as affirmative.
He stared at her for a moment before lifting an eyebrow and answering, "Acid."
She looked surprised for a moment and asked, "Do you still…"
He cut her off. "Of course not!"
She looked relieved. It was another moment before she said, "There are experiences that can make you…" she stopped as if searching for the right word.
"Feel like you are tripping on acid?" he asked, recalling his experience with Pallavi's veena.
"Well, I was going to say, give you a high or put you into a trance like drugs can, but okay, tripping on acid would work too." She said rather objectively.
"This is not going to do it, Kashi!" he told her, looking at the drawing on the floor again, fighting both fear and revulsion.
"Drugs are not always pleasant, Arnav." She said in a quiet voice and he looked up at her.
"How do you know? Don't tell me Ms. Pious has experimented with Acid!"
He couldn't read the expression that came over her face, but she stared at the snake's drawing for a long moment before she looked back at him and said, "I haven't."
"Then how the hell…" he started, but she cut him off as she said, "My brother did."
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Edited by -publicenemy- - 12 years ago
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
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