Vasu and the Matsya Temple

Rajiv Tanwar

~~~

Smashwords Edition

Blue Whale Publishers

India

E-Book published by

Blue Whale Publishers in 2014

BLUE WHALE PUBLISHERS

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Copyright © Rajiv Tanwar 2014

Rajiv Tanwar asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers and Author.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedicated To

My wife Dr. Manish for being the granite pillar against which I could lean and write this book, and to my dear sons Avdhesh and Akash for being the source of all joy in my life.

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction written purely for entertainment and does not purport to endorse any religious ideology. All the underwater stunts are purely imagined and the readers are advised not to try any such thing. In case somebody attempts any such underwater adventure the Author and The Write India Publishers or anybody else connected with the book will not be responsible for the consequences.

Acknowledgements

The day was 2nd December 2011 when the idea of this story first struck me and I sat down to write down a few paragraphs about its outline. Ever since it has been a relentless mission to complete the story and let people read it.

It gives me immense pleasure and satisfaction to present this story, my maiden novel, into the hands of esteemed readers. This book is the first part of a proposed Trilogy and the remaining two books would soon follow.

It would not have been possible to write a work of this magnitude along with my regular practice of an Orthopaedic Surgeon without the help of many well-meaning and dear friends. I thank all of them.

I would like to make a special mention of my editor Ms. Ahalya Momaya Naidu of Literary Angels and her able team for having dipped their heart and soul into this work to make it a readable book out of all that I could manage to scribble. It gave me a tremendous opportunity to learn the craft of story writing during the process.

For the attractive cover I am really thankful to Mr. Sunill Kaushik.

I would also thank my friend Dr. Vivek Gupta for having spared enough time out of his busy practice and dared to read the initial drafts of the book and give his valuable suggestions.

I finally would also thank my wife Manish and sons Avdhesh and Akash for having supported this madness of mine called writing.

I sincerely hope my readers will enjoy reading this story and I would appreciate their honest reviews on the social media network sites and on the sites selling the book.

With warm regards

Rajiv Tanwar

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedicated To

Disclaimer

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Eleven Years Later…Part 2

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 1

It wasn’t the langurs and their unnatural stillness that bothered the men; or the vultures which were getting closer every minute, even though the men were constantly moving. Some men thought the air was too still, and some thought that the sky kept changing colours a little too often. But all the men agreed on one thing, there were too many shadows around them; shadows cast by nothing.

‘I want to go home. I want to go home,’ the youngest man in the group of diggers whimpered anxiously.

‘Shamu, shut up! A few more hours and we will go home with more money than we’ve ever seen in a whole year,’ pointed out Gamboo, their leader, and Shamu’s uncle’s friend.

The six men got on with their digging, and that’s when it happened.

Gamboo’s axe had hit something metallic and the sound resounded in the quiet forest. The sound kept echoing strangely, and didn’t fade away. In fact, it seemed to get louder.

Within a second, the sky turned red, a wild breeze hurtled through the forest, setting the langurs off on a screaming riot, and the vultures took off. The shadows around the men vanished.

Shamu gulped audibly. His hands were shaking so badly, it seemed he was dancing.

‘Call Sahebji now,’ Gamboo’s uncle’s friend’s brother Kandoo said softly. Shamu didn’t need to be told that again, any reason to get away from the spot. The very ground was turning blue. Blue!

Sridhar Dev, an archaeologist, was swatting away mosquitoes. He was getting nowhere with his reports. The Bandhavgarh Fort Excavation Project was drawing to a close. He had found many ancient statues and coins there. And all the coins and statues seemed to show some kind of palace made of snow and some palace made of water. There were also strange symbols — a lotus, some kind of knot, some fishes, it was all very strange. The local men who worked there called it the ‘Ashtamangala’ and said that these symbols kept the whole world together. Sridhar did not believe in any of that, but he was happy that at least there was enough evidence to prove that about two thousand years ago, there had definitely been some kind of prosperous kingdom there. Where had the people gone? Nobody knew? What happened to the snow and the water palace? Nobody knew. But Sridhar felt that with his report, he could get more funds to get experts to study the site and find out what had happened here!

His wife, Gita was sleeping under the only mosquito net they had in the camp. Sridhar smiled at the paper in front of him. Very soon Gita would give birth to their first child. The midwife in the village had told them that the happy day was just two weeks away! Sridhar wanted to finish this report, so he could leave the jungles. Not that he did not like it here, inside this mysterious dark forest, even Gita loved how peaceful and beautiful it was. But their child would get all the best comforts in life. They could leave tomorrow when the monthly supply truck would come to the camp and everything would be wonderful.

Sridhar remembered he had to finish his report, before he left the site. He was stuck at the last page. Should he add that yesterday two labourers had disappeared or that a big boulder had rolled off its age-old perch and grazed past a labourer today morning; and the mysterious appearance of vultures — more than the locals had ever seen in the entire region; and those crazy shadows all the men had seen? And Gita had seen them too. Shadows cast by nothing.

No! That would just worry the Minister who was against archaeology anyway. He did think that he must mention something about the weird change in the weather they were experiencing. It was too cold sometimes, and sometimes the rain fell like a huge never-ending waterfall had just been set up above their archaeological site. Completely unnatural weather!

He was just about to sign his name at the end of the report when he heard heavy footsteps come running towards his tent.

‘Sahib! Sahib!’

Sridhar recognised Shamu’s voice and stepped outside the tent.

‘What is it?’

‘Sahib, they are calling you to the site right now. Right now,’ he said, his eyes were open so wide Sridhar had to try hard to not say something funny.

‘Urgent!’

Sridhar turned around, lifted the flap of the tent and checked on Gita. Still asleep. He was about to leave, but something caught the corner of his eye.

Was there a shadow inside the tent? Sridhar blinked. Gita turned to the other side and snored in her sleep. The cook, Ramdhari was away, buying fruits and vegetables in the market down the hill. But, he would be back soon.

Sridhar left for the site a short way uphill.

‘Saheb, this way! Never seen anything like it! Never! Saheb, quickly Saheb!’

Gamboo led Sridhar to a newly dug up grave. Inside it was a very strange skeleton.

‘Oh my God!’

Sridhar squatted at the edge of the grave and began examining the bones. It looked like a human skeleton. But, it was five times the size of the biggest human being and the bones were not white, they were black.

‘Saheb,’ Gamboo said as he pointed to a bone, ‘it is very heavy and look how it glows. Look at the ground Saheb. The mud only has turned blue!’

‘Never seen such a thing before,’ said Sridhar softly…

‘And the bones are warm! In all my experience, I’ve never seen a human this large. It seems to belong to some other species… an alien maybe.’

Sridhar started making notes in the record book while a torch lay beside them. He filled some of the soil in an evidence pouch and made notes about the location and the time of the day.

No one saw the huge army of scorpions rushing towards them. They did not even hear the whirring wings of the thousands of white winged ants that were gathering in a cloud over the unsuspecting men. And suddenly, it started raining.

‘Quick! Get the sheets! Cover this! Cover this now!’ Sridhar’s orders were falling on deaf ears. The men had seen the scorpions and the ants and had realised that the rain that was falling down like stones was doing nothing to the strange creatures surrounding them. Within a second, Gamboo and his men had run away screaming.

Sridhar looked around desperately for the huge tarpaulin sheet that they used to cover the site at night. He started dragging it over this strange discovery when he noticed something red and glowing beside the skeleton. The red object looked like a silk pouch. There were some strange golden hieroglyphics embroidered on it. For a moment, it seemed the symbols moved, but Sridhar blinked and it looked like any other old purse again. He felt something heavy and metallic inside it and opened the purse. He was about to look inside it, when he had a very strange feeling. His skin was crawling with a sudden fear. He looked around him and there on a dead tree not too far away he saw two beady eyes watching him; then two more; and two more. The vultures were there.

He pulled the pouch out, and jumped back in shock as lightning hit the ground just a few inches away from him. He threw the sheet over the skeleton, shoved the red pouch into his pocket and waited under a tree.

On the ground, shadows moved; bodiless shadows. They moved towards Sridhar’s tent. And some of them flew away, merging into the night’s starless sky.

‘Saheeb….saheeb…’ a shrill voiced called out. Ramdhari, Sridhar’s cook was running towards him. Ramdhari stumbled along the narrow path. He was a portly, short adivasi wearing only a mud-smeared dhoti wrapped around his waist. His large protruding belly and the volcanic crater-like belly button danced up and down as he ran up the hill barefoot. He was quite out of breath by the time he managed to reach the spot where Sridhar was standing under a tree.

‘What’s it Ramdhari?’ asked Sridhar, worrying because only something really urgent would make the lazy Ramdhari even move out of the campsite.

‘Bi…bi…ji… is… calling you,’ Ramdhari managed to say as he panted.

‘What happened…is everything alright?’

‘Ji saheeb… Bibiji is calling out your name, she sounds like she is in pain,’ huffed Ramdhari. ‘I had to run a lot… so I ran, Saheb, through the shortcut on the hillside to call you.’

Sridhar had already forgotten everything about shadows without bodies and black skeletons and mysterious silk purses. He hoped his wife was all right. It would not be easy to find a good doctor close by. The baby was ahead of schedule and Sridhar hoped everything they required was at hand.

A storm was unleashed and rain spattered on the ground. In a few minutes it was very difficult to walk, let alone run in the slush with twigs and leaves falling from the trees that were lashing about in the wind.

Sridhar hurried back towards his tent, calling out to Ramdhari to cover the site with the tarpaulin sheets. Tomorrow, after everything was taken care of at home, he would come back with new helpers, Sridhar thought.

A soulless castle of ice, shrouded in eerie darkness, jutted from a mountain of ice into the horizon of a frozen continent. Steep cliffs of ice surrounded it, making it nearly impossible to enter. Icy cold gales that could freeze the blood in one’s veins and suck the soul out of the body blew noisily, warning trespassers to keep away. None of the windows in the castle appeared open, nor did any light emerge from them, except for an occasional reddish glow in the central spire of the castle.

Elongated shadows emerged from the sky and seemed to knock on the main door. After a long time, with a loud, eardrum shattering creak, the door opened wide to reveal a hunchbacked man with a parrot beak like nose, and ratty eyes. He wore a long kurta and over his head was a really bulky moth-eaten turban. He held a long thick wooden staff, longer than him, at the end of which was carved a very menacing looking vulture’s head.

‘What brings you here at this hour?’ his husky voice was louder than the storm.

‘To serve the Samraat,’ whispered a shadow.

‘Leave! The great Samraat is in no mood to listen to anyone today. Come back after a few hundred years.’

‘Do not act in haste Aurang!’ whispered the second shadow, ‘we bring him that which he has been waiting for.’

‘The Endless Knot has been found,’ whispered the third shadow.

‘A Bhoomivasi has dug it out from a grave.’

‘WHAT!’ screamed Aurang. The anger in his eyes was so frightening the shadows moved back. They knew that Aurang was known to his victims as Dusht (another word for evil). Secretly, Aurang loved the name, he felt proud of the fear he could incite in everyone.

‘Where? What? Oh ho, why am I asking such useless questions! Come on give it to me.’

‘We don’t have it. It’s been taken away by the Bhoomivasi, he calls himself Sridhar Dev. He has it.’

‘SRIDHAR? WHO’S HE?’ Aurang spat out the words. ‘FOOLS!

You come running to tell this? Get lost, before I reduce you to nothing! I’ll deal with this.’

An icy gale swirled and the shadows vanished into the very darkness from where they had come. Aurang Dusht pushed the doors close and trudged through the atrium up the staircase.

‘If only Samraat had searched Rajneesh’s body that day, this could’ve been avoided,’ he muttered.

Around him, the Ice Castle glowed in different colours depending upon the thoughts and moods of its creator. As Aurang climbed the long flight of stairs, the colour of the Castle changed from orange to red to inky blue and finally to red again as he reached the top.

Aurang suddenly realised that everything around him was red. Deep red. Aurang hesitated before he entered the private chambers of the Samraat. He hesitated to knock and pushed the doors in. He stopped and looked around. And when he saw the silhouette of his master glowing red like burning charcoal, shivers ran down his bent spine. ‘He is very angry again,’ thought Aurang, ‘never before has this mood meant anything except bloodshed. I better avoid meeting him now. I’ll fetch the Endless Knot. How difficult could it be?’

By the time Sridhar reached his tent, the rains lashed down like the world was ending and the incessant thunder and lightning seemed to shake the very ground. The midwife who used to come to the camp every evening to check on Gita had already arrived. She peeked out from under the tent flap and beamed at him, it was obvious she was expecting a huge tip. She held out an umbrella, although Sridhar was already soaked to the bone.

‘It’s a boy! You’re a father now. Saheb, congachoolachun!’

Sridhar forgot about the rain, and everything else. He reached out for his wallet and took out almost all the notes in them and thrust them into her hands. ‘For sweets! How’s Gita?’

‘Memsahib is good,’ replied the midwife quickly pushing the money into a small cloth purse tucked inside her sari. ‘Sahib, I want a sari… a baby boy from God.’ She stood in the way, waiting for Sridhar to agree.

Sridhar smiled, nodded and gently nudged her aside. She nodded happily and said she would be back in the night with some nourishing food for the new mother and happy father.

Sridhar entered his tent and saw his wife looking calm and happy. Their baby son was fast asleep, swaddled in a colourful cotton blanket. His son had a mass of curly hair, and ears rather large like jug handles for his little face. Gita laughed as Sridhar hesitated to come closer and touch the baby.

‘Come on, meet your son,’ she said softly. The baby’s eyes were shut tight. He seemed to be asleep, but when Sridhar touched his son’s cheeks, the tiny baby slowly opened his eyes.

Suddenly, Sridhar felt an urge to gift his son something. Without thinking, Sridhar reached into his pocket and pulled out the old silk purse. Without taking his eyes off his son, he pulled out the metallic object. It was a locket hanging from a simple chain. Sridhar did not even stop to wonder how a locket buried for what seemed like hundreds of years could still shine like it was forged yesterday. He tied the chain around his baby’s neck. Sridhar felt the baby was smiling at him, Gita too smiled, it was their son’s first gift on his very first birthday.

No sooner did the locket touch the body of the boy, than the rain began lashing with increased vigour and the clouds thundered like the trumpets of a huge pack of mad elephants. ‘The gods too are rejoicing the birth of our son,’ said Gita and Sridhar sat beside her to hug her.

Gita and Sridhar watched their son fall asleep again. They looked at each other and spoke in unison, ‘How about Vasu?’ The fact that they had both chosen the same name, after months and months of arguing about good names for boys and girls, made them laugh out loud.

From the clouds emerged Aurang. Riding Kroor, a Porcugle, a giant eagle with the quills of a porcupine, Aurang the Dusht was followed by quick flashes of lightning that seemed to strike only Sridhar’s tent. Kroor seemed as evil as his master. He was an ancient giant bird with the beak, head, eyes and claws of an eagle, but the wings and tail had quills like that of a porcupine, instead of feathers. When attacked, or generally angered, Kroor could shoot his sharp bamboo-like stippled quills that regenerated instantly. Kroor was cruel, true to his name, and had a tremendous appetite. Very often, he satisfied his hunger by preying on innocent elephants.

Aurang got off Kroor and leaning heavily on his staff, lurched into the tent. Now the hot, heavy, humid winds suddenly changed. The icy bone-numbing winds from the Ice Castle swept through the forest.

Sridhar was shocked at the sudden drop in the temperature. He got up to secure the flap of the tent. And that was the last thing he remembered. He suddenly hit the ground and fell into a deep sleep.

Gita looked up when she heard her husband fall, and suddenly she too fell into a sudden deep sleep, while her son fought energetically with the soft blankets that tied him in securely.

‘Ha! What’s this!’ Aurang Dusht’s husky voice filled the tent with bad vibes. ‘Celebrating the birth of a mere child? With stolen gifts?’ He looked at the locket hanging around the neck of the newborn. The Endless Knot glowed gently.

Aurang simply lifted his finger and pointed it at the baby, a big bolt of lightning emerged from his fingertip and hit the air around the baby. The baby was looking fixedly at its mother.

‘What! What’s going on here?’ Aurang tried to remove the locket from around the neck of the unfazed baby who was now watching him without blinking. Aurang tugged at the locket and instantly a huge wave of electricity shot through the locket and threw Aurang to the ground.

The baby kept gazing at Aurang without any expression, unfazed by the huge bolts of lightning in the room.

‘Oh… so… you won’t give me the locket, will you?’ Aurang was taken aback. Stopped by a baby? Dusht stopped by a baby? ‘Then I’ll have to carry you with me!’ Saying this, he lifted the newborn child who was merrily sucking his thumb and left the tent. ‘He will be pleased to see you, little mongoose!’

Aurang sat astride Kroor and tied the baby to his back. ‘You don’t mind coming with me, do you? You need to deliver something to its rightful owner,’ he sneered.

Chapter 2

Mountains of black clouds tumbled and flew across the sky; lightning and thunder crashed constantly. Icy cold winds whistled and blew this way and that; but it was in the oceans, deeper than the highest mountains that the storm was really raging.

The King of the Oceans was angrier than he had ever been in fifty thousand years. Something evil had just happened, he could feel it! The balance of power had suddenly shifted, and Maharaja Siddhivarun felt it before he knew what had happened. He may have become weaker than a small child, but his instincts were stronger than ever before. The problem, however was, he did not know whom to trust. Who could he send out into the oceans, to find out what was happening? Before this mysterious illness started taking over his body, he was stronger than all the blue whales together. Now, he couldn’t