This is the heartland. This is where the heart lies. Ganga gushes by as Jahnavi and Mandakini and Deva Ganga. She sure is disdainful at times despite that ancient churning and humiliation in the unending gridlocks of the ultimate masculine. Ganga would have happily been in heaven, had not Indra played his nasty trick with Sagara’s sons. But then, this lady purifies our land, and her father himavan protects us. This is the heartland, this is where Ganga flows.

I keep getting these strange images in the middle of the day. I see two women in distress, pale bloodless faces, hope purged eyes. The first one drags herself through fields of unclaimed corpses, slain warriors, decaying limbs, souls chained to purgatory till eternity. The fallen are her sons who went in search of the meaning of death ,for churning out the potion of life. She searches in vain for a drop of the potion, she argues in vain for vengeance, she cries in pain when her priced foetus is cut in seven inside her womb with a thunderbolt. She is the mother.

The other woman, the ravishing one, is always in a state of suspended surprise. She remembers a man dressed up like her celibate husband, she remembers him entering every pore in her body like a thunderbolt and she, trying in vain to convince herself that she was doing no wrong. She remembers her husband cursing the thunderbolt into a piteous eunuch and condemning her to a moss-filled existence. She is the wife.

I see the man emerging from Diti’s vagina and Ahalya’s body. Vishwamitra says he is the arch-toppler of dynasties and as powerful as Gods. He is the smasher of enclosures, the impeller of streams, the agitator of the waters. The Gods call him their king, Indra, the King of Gods. Vishwamitra says, with my new weapons like Pratihaaratara and Dundunaabha I am more powerful than the Gods themselves. If Indra was anywhere around, I would have definitely killed him.

The men and the sage rescue Ahalya from her moss-filled existence. They continue their journey to Mithila where destiny, and its child awaits them.