The Sunrise

The kid had been crying the whole night. Almost! Darkness had given way to dawn and its rays. Those rays had an uncanny resemblance to sun-rays; if only they weren’t life taking. The night in this lone, quiet house could have been a better rest if not for the occasional haunts!

Having a gift from the living side of the dark souls and having practiced it for his own gains for just about a lifetime, this was time for some dirty mud from your own boots thrown back at your face. Only he knew it was coming. What you tried on someone else’s life and property do come back to you eventually.

Strange things had been happening all this week. He was frustrated; he felt strangled. Black magic is hard to demystify, especially if it is your own bad karma coming back at you- to get you.

Shradha was unaware of the fact that Gopi practices black art along with his ancestral palm reading business. Even she was not to be spared from the wrath of these pure evil events that had been sparked off from a preceding preaching of the dark forces and the corresponding revenge. She couldn’t make out the reason why Gopi wouldn’t go out of the hut and its premises. He was as if house arrested. She could by no means, link any sense to the fact that there were stains of blood in the backyard of the hut. She didn’t get why and who had stolen a large amount of rice from the granary. Gopi had been asking her to return from the fields before it gets dark. The season being the harvest season, it was a busy time for her. She would find Gopi waiting for her eagerly by the entrance of their hut. This was never the case. She didn’t see any of the villagers coming to him. No palms were read and no future and fate foretold. He was irritable, he had given up on his food, he was feverish and late at midnights he would shout out loud of some possible nightmares.

It struck her hard when he mentioned about visiting her parents for a while. “But it’s the harvest time” she had reacted. “What would we eat if I give up on working?” Shradha was heard grumbling. His business was not doing well. He had somehow managed to get some money or fees in the form of rice and pulses for the “private offerings” he said he would set up for his richer clientele. That had also ceased from a considerable long time.

Never in their married life had he made such a hard hitting proposal. The fact that she couldn’t give him a baby did come up at times but this was uncalled for. Gopi would at times blame her, sometimes himself; but he knew what actually had happened.

It was the end of summer and one of his most priced clients -Guru, the rich landlord in the village, had a very tempting proposal for him. On an earlier meet with him, it was known that Guru’s daughter in law was expecting a baby. The date of delivery was nearing and little did the mother of this would be baby knew that fate had other plans for her!

The night was pitching dark; it had a dead stillness about it. The shrill cry of the new born seemed to break the silence; but alas only for a while! The village nurse had confirmed the inevitable. Guru wished his first born grandson would have been a still one.

Gopi was summoned in a hurry. He knew what was to be done with a new born which was not exactly healthy. ‘A case of the evil forces taking control over the prenatal life’ was what Gopi had told Guru. “This life must be terminated” Guru had ordered. “No questions be raised on our inheritance”. Gopi stood the chance of a handsome reward.

Overnight, without any other person in the village knowing it, the newly arrived life was sacrificed to the ‘fastidious evil forces’. The poor woman was told the baby died soon after delivery. Her pale eyes filled up with tear; she was forbidden even from a final glance at her own baby. As she went unconscious out of the shock, the dead body was wrapped in a mat made out of banana leaves, those extra limbs cleverly concealed!!

Everything was done stealthily, Gopi was capable of this. A five day long offering to the Gods was performed, on Gopi’s advice, for the future health of the mother of the dead child. Gopi had dug gold!

It was the day Shradha left for her house in the neighbouring village when Gopi had to run for his life. The number of chicken in the coop had been decreasing even without Shradha noticing it. This was for the offerings he would make to reverse so many of the wrong doings he had been doing, over the years.

The last of the offerings was rather abrupt!

The moon was as if making the night more ominous. He had just closed all the doors and windows when he felt a chill down his spine. Softly yet distinctly heard was the cry of a kid! It became all the more clear with the blowing wind. He chanted his mantras; sometimes loud, at times soft. The chilly wind did nothing to stop him from the profuse sweat. His mind raced; he went numb by the feet and hands. And then he heard it; the cry of a baby, the constant rattling of some evil grains over the roof-loud and ghastly.

Three days prior to this day, the last of the young chickens to be offered to the dark souls was taken out from the coop at dusk- in a great hurry. He had to be beheaded; blood was required to appease the dark. The fresh blood was to be smeared all over the rice grains. Mantras had to be chanted. These grains would then be used to form a fine boundary all around the hut and its premises. This was the line any dark, un-summoned soul wouldn’t dare to tread - the line of abhorrence! Only fact to be considered was that this was not working any more!!

He went to the peg where Shradha would keep her clothes. He shredded the wrapper she used into tatters. This was one of the things an envious dark soul had to certainly keep of- a loving wife’s security net. He made a line of abhorrence just around his cot. All over the mosquito net. A soft breeze as if hustled him in his ears. And before he could know it was not a whisper, the wind had started to blow inside the hut. The window panes came off their hooks and the wind had blown away every bit of the pieces he had tried to hang to the net. He saw a gust of wind taking up in the air a line of something which seemed like grains of bloodied rice. And before long, it was raining rice grains. Loud and ghastly; as if this was the end of the world. The grains were as if sharp, pointed heaps of killer blades and came down on him, tearing the tin roofs and cutting his cot into pieces. Gopi knew the anticipated end. He closed his eyes …

The villagers found a dead body in a pool of blood. It was beheaded, the limbs were missing and the flesh was shredded into pieces. The corpse had a belly full blown with rice.