A Soothsayer’S Prophesy and Other Stories

By Mahesh Kulkarni and Nikhil Dambal

A man curious about his future goes to an astrologer. The astrologer prophesies that his wife will meet with an accident. Destiny decides to test whether the astrologer will remain true to his craft even though it entails ruin. Will the astrologer pass the test?

A sculptor creates a very beautiful statue. The statue is infected with the praise hurled upon it. Is beauty a source of inspiration or cause of destruction? Or are creation and destruction the two great imposters?

There is theft in the house of a businessman. An engineering student confesses to the police, yet the investigation starts.

There is a dilapidated medieval fort where poltergeist phenomena are reported. Six friends visit the fort, some out of curiosity and some out of compulsion. What happens inside the fort will haunt the ghosts for eternity.

Stories that are uninhibited by the constraints of grammar, by the considerations of syntactic propriety, by the rigidities of morals and messages, is a dream destination. We believe that a story belongs more to a reader than its writer. We have tried our best to refrain ourselves from force-feeding the reader with matters that are too peripheral to matter, in spite of the many temptations to do so and have made naive attempts to act as facilitators and allow the reader to paint his own environs and at times, draw his own conclusions . This book is more a sincere than a scholarly attempt to do this.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: May 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482868739

Mahesh Kulkarni

• Nikhil Dambal: Nikhil completed his engineering in Industrial Production and is pursuing MBA in Mumbai. An avid reader and movie buff, he has an unparalleled proclivity for reading oriental literature. He is also an accomplished tabla artist. • Mahesh Kulkarni: Mahesh is a software engineer working in Mumbai. He says he is currently pursuing his masters in "Unraveling the mysteries of human mind, macrocosm and other irrelevant things" from a self-declared and peer affiliated university. An avid reader, he prefers to talk less and convey more. He has a penchant for classics and abhors philistinism in all walks of life. His soul would not rest in peace; rather, it would be seen ambling around contours of book shelves.

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© 2016 by Mahesh Kulkarni; Nikhil Dambal.

ISBN:          Softcover           978-1-4828-6874-6

                    eBook               978-1-4828-6873-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Partridge India

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Contents

Acknowledgment

The Tale of Prasoonavarthi

A Pointless Pandemonium

Eponymess

Parable of Justice

A Cave of Bad Appetites

A Sordid Sobriquet

A Soothsayer’s Prophesy

Three Strangers

The Inadvertence

A Wicked Irony

"Fortune, that lays in sport the mighty low,

Age, that to penance turns the joys of youth,

Shall leave untouched the gifts which I bestow,

The sense of beauty and the thirst of truth."

Thomas Babbington Macaulay

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Mallikarjun Bhogavi for designing such a splendid and thoughtful cover page which attempts to capture the common thread underlying all our stories.

We would like to thank Pavan Karguppikar, Parag Karguppikar, Imran Nadaf, Pavan Jartarghar, Naveen Belgavi, Kashinath Mirajkar, Raghu Dhonti for their support.

We would like to thank our parents for encouraging us in our endeavor and keeping patience with us.

And last but not the least we are deeply conscious of the honor that has befallen on each of us for receiving great many gifts by the abstract spirit of literature.

The Tale of Prasoonavarthi

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:

Oliver goldsmith

In the southern part of India, popularly known as Deccan, there was a small kingdom named Prasoonavarthi. Prasoonavarthi was ruled by a courageous and benevolent king named Ambadhwaja. The kingdom was surrounded by hills from all sides. In the summer it appeared as if the hills were wearing a black robe and in the monsoons they wore lush green attire. Ambadhwaja’s council of ministers was headed by a Brahmin named Shaktaar. The administration was managed by able men who discharged their duty meticulously. The land was fertile and the irrigation schemes undertaken by the king had started to pay positive results. On an average three paddy crops were harvested in a year. All households would pay one sixth part of their produce as tax to the king. Prasoonavarthi was a prosperous kingdom and its inhabitants had nothing to complain about.

Shaktaar had a concubine named Nagaratna. She was well versed in all the sixty four arts. Out of there union a son was born. They named him Vajrahasta because his hands were as solid as a diamond. Three days after its birth, Shaktaar summoned the royal astrologer Narsimha Shastry to his mansion. Narsimha Shastry was known for his straightforwardness and immaculate predictions. He told Shaktaar without reserving any qualms that the child was born on a very inauspicious moment. He told Shaktaar that the stars indicate that the child will cause events that will eventually vanquish the entire kingdom.

Shaktaar did not have the heart to kill the child. He was more interested in the welfare of the kingdom so he did not want to keep the child in Prasoonavarthi. Narsimha Shastry suggested that they leave the child on the hills surrounding Prasoonavarthi; given the difficult condition on the hills the small child would not survive and they would be saved of the sin of killing the child directly. The plan was duly executed.

The child was left on the top of the hill to die a natural death. Nagaratna could not bear the grief of parting with the child. She could not confront Shaktaar directly but prayed to lord Shiva to protect her child. Shiva was moved with her prayers and came down to the hills in the form of lioness. He nourished the child and protected it till it attained the age of three. He later appeared before the child in his original form, blessed the child and gave it a chisel. He told the child that its name was Mridulkara and Vajrahasta. This was because, the child’s right hand was as solid as a diamond and the left hand was so soft that it could give birth to feelings.

After thus blessing the child Shiva disappeared.

The child would eat the fruits on the trees when it was hungry, it would drink pristine clear water from the river when it was thirsty and wandered about the hills. Vajrahasta thus spent the next four years wandering about the forest and hills.

While drinking water from the river Vajrahasta saw his reflection in the water and tried to touch it. He was fascinated with the phenomenon of images. He spent the next few months wondering about the images formed in water and pondered why reflections could not be formed on other things. Engrossed in thinking about images, Vajrahasta was sitting with his chisel on the bank of the river gazing at his own image. His hands started to move without his knowledge. And on the rock he was sitting he carved his own sculpture seeing at his own reflection in the river water.

The sculpture was flawless and was so nuanced that if clay was used instead of the rock one could have easily mistaken it for a human being. There was no one to appreciate his work in the forest. He too did not know what appreciation meant. In his free time, Vajrahasta carved out trees, monkeys, snake and other things on the rocks. Eight years elapsed.

Shiva felt like seeing this child once and came down to the hill along with his consort Uma.

Vajrahasta was overwhelmed with joy to see his foster mother Shiva. He did not know who the other person with him was. This was the first time he had seen a feminine being. He was so enchanted with her beauty that he could not think of anything else. Shiva and Parvathy after blessing him disappeared.

Image of Uma was so impressed in his mind that he could reproduce it on any medium effortlessly. He went to the river bank and started contemplating on her. He took his chisel and working with both the hands produced an exact replica of the goddess. The sculpture was so beautiful that it could put to shame the most beautiful woman in all the three worlds.

It was the closest thing to woman Vajrahasta had. After sometime, he started harboring sexual feelings. This earned him the wrath of the God who came down in the form of a lion this time and killed Vajrahasta. He later threw the sculpture into the river.

The sculpture, though that of a goddess, was created out of human hands; hands