Blessing In Disguise.

By Abhijeet Madhusudan Ghule

Ritesh, Prajakta, Vihang, Viraat and Swapnaja are friends from college, decide to go on a picnic to a remote location, a village, which is known to be mysterious. When they reach there, they are told that they are welcome to stay in that village for as long as they want. However, they are told by the local guide to follow the rules and respect the time boundaries of the village. It was a rule there that nobody will step out of their huts, after sunset, no matter what. But the city youngsters don’t take it seriously. All the villagers worship an old tree, which was supposed to be the home of the powers protecting the village from the evil spirits. The modern young blood finds it strange.

It so happens that Viraat and Swapnaja, who are in a relationship, refuse to accept the existence of any such super human entities and walk out of their huts for a walk and a romantic talk. Prajakta notices that Swapnaja had left their hut and walks out to look for her.

Soon Viraat and Swapnaja reach closer to the old tree, worshiped by the villagers, they observe an evil and demonic entity and are scared to death. Looking at her frozen friends, Prajakta reaches out to them and shakes them before she could see that evil entity herself. Viraat shouts, “RUN”, and runs away holding Swapnaja’s hand. Prajakta looks behind confused and is so terrified to see that evil entity, that she falls unconscious.

The following morning, she finds herself in a Shiv Mandir and is confused, as to, how did she get there. The local Pujarijee of that temple is also suspicious of her and is worried about something unknown. He rushes to the Sarpanch and tells him everything. As instructed by the Sarpanch, all the friends are detained and are forbidden to leave the village. To ensure that they don’t escape, the villagers puncture all the wheels of their vehicle, assuming that since the village is so deep in the jungles, they would not dare to run, under the fear of getting lost and being killed by a wild animal.

Prajakta feels guilty for her actions, but she only has the realization that she had committed some mistake and fails to recollect the incidents from the earlier night. Viraat on the other hand, finds a scratch on the face of Ritesh. Upon asked Ritesh answers that he fell from his bed and the scratch was caused by the corner of the metallic container of water that he had under his bed. Since it was nothing much to worry about, Viraat keeps his cool. He behaves as normally as he would. Because, neither he, nor Swapnaja have any recollection of the night earlier. However, after some time, Ritesh and Vihang get into a fight over a petty issue. Since Ritesh is found guilty, he is kept in a different hut in solitude.

Prajakta is uneasy that night, due to the fact that she remembered nothing about what happened to her that got her to the Shiv temple. The only thing she could remember is that she had gone out to check on Swapnaja. But beyond that, she fails to remember anything. Out of desperation, she decides and walks out of her hut and walks on the same path as the night before. As she reaches the old tree, she faces the same entity, she encounters the same entity, but instead of falling unconscious, this time she finds herself sane enough to decide to run. The cursed entity however catches up to her and as that entity is about to kill her, a half burnt hand appears from her back and prevents that demonic entity from doing so. There, Prajakta watches two instead of one demonic entity, fighting with each other. She fears that those two must be fighting over the prey. Her fear intensifies and she falls unconscious again.

The following morning, the Pujari of the Shiv Mandir finds Prajakta again at the Shiv Mandir and the same sequence follows again as the previous day. But this time, Prajakta is the only one who is detained, as she is the only one suspected to be associated with the evil entities. All others are declared not guilty. But when one of the villagers notices that Ritesh is still missing. They are all detained once again. The villagers are sent to the nearest possible places, from where the dead body of Ritesh could be recovered. But they villagers return unsuccessfully, with some belongings of the deceased. All the friends are devastated.

As the night falls, the door of Prajakta’s hut opens automatically and she walks out as a zombie, as if she was hypnotized. The Pujari who lives inside the Shiv Mandir happens to notice the same through the window of his room. He rushes out to the entrance to the Shiv Mandir and witnesses everything that was happening, but soon, Prajakta gets out of his sight and he gets back to his bed, worried. Prajakta reaches the same old tree again, where the demonic entity is awaiting its prey. But again, soon as the demon comes closer to Prajakta, the other demonic entity attacks it again and Prajakta gets out of the effect of the dark powers of the demonic entity. This time she feels more confident to face the demon, which was strange for her. Soon one demonic entity defeats the other entity and the later flees. When the victorious demon tries to approach Prajakta, she gets scared and falls unconscious again as the entity tries to say something to her.

The victor, with some difficulties due to its physical constrains, lifts Prajakta and takes her to the Shiv Mandir, but feels a tremendous surge of pain throughout the body as he steps on the first step of the sacred temple. But enduring the same, he tries to enter the temple. As he enters the temple, dark vapors come out of its body and wonder aggressively near the entrance of the temple and with every part of that entity’s body entering the Shiv Mandir, the body transforms into a healthy Ritesh. Once inside, Ritesh gently holds Prajakta in his arms and carries her to the inner sanctum, where the Shiv Lingum is situated. He gently kisses Prajakta’s forehead and expresses his true feelings for her. Being hungry for the day, he begs for the forgiveness of Lord Shiv and eats some of the fruits, kept there as an offering to Lord Shiv and once done, he walks out again only to transform into that demonic entity once again, as the dark vapors enter his body once again. But while transforming, he keeps looking at the love of his life and vanishes.

The following morning, when the Pujari finds Prajakta at the Shiv Mandir, he considers it to be a divine cause and his opinion about Prajakta and the others changes. He summons everyone from the village and shares his views that the girl went missing every night but was the first one who was ever found safe and sound, that too in the Shiv Mandir and that had to be a divine indication. All the villagers agree to it and asks Prajakta if she had something to say. Prajakta on the other hand, remembered everything that happened last night and she shares everything with the villagers. All the villagers unanimously decide to get out of that night to see what happens. The team of the remaining friends also joins them.

As the night falls, all the villagers gather outside their huts near the old tree they all worshiped for many years. There they find one demonic entity hanging to a branch of the tree, scared running from one branch to the other. Soon the other demonic entity appears there and the fight between the two begins. Watching them fight, all the villagers get terrified. Soon one of the entity gets a hold of the other’s throat and tries to choke it, speaking some language, no human being there was aware of.

Suddenly, Prajakta grabs a torch from one of the villagers and throws it at the tree. Watching the same, the demonic entity gets scared and prevents it from reaching the tree. Prajakta and her friends convince the villagers to throw their torches at that tree, which they do. As a result, the entire tree starts burning and similar is the experience of both the demonic entities. Their burning bodies make Prajakta confused if she did the right thing. The tree burns throughout the night and so do the demonic entities. Everyone looks at Prajakta and her friends if they had any idea about what was happening. The day goes by and when the night falls, the fire is finally extinguished. A hand rises from the ashes. It was Ritesh. Prajakta is excited to see him. Upon being asked, Ritesh tells everyone what exactly had happened.

On that fateful first night, when Viraat and Swapnaja went out for a walk, Prajakta had noticed Swapnaja sneaking out of her hut and Prajakta was noticed by Ritesh walking out of the hut, worried. Since he had feelings for Prajakta, Ritesh followed her. He was out there to relieve his bladders. But instead, he prioritizes following Prajakta. While following her, Ritesh saw Viraat and Swapnaja running to their huts, scared and out of worry for Prajakta, he rushed to find her, who was lying unconscious on the ground and a demon was approaching her. Without thinking about anything, Ritesh jumps in and punches that demon hard, but gets a scratch on his face. The cursed entity laughs and vanishes. Ritesh on the other hand, feels terrified, he releases himself in his cloths. Agonizing in pain, he gradually transforms into a similar demonic entity. Despite many attempts he fails to bend his arms to lift Prajakta, but manages to do it with huge efforts. It was time for the sun to rise and the villagers to get up. Ritesh lifts Prajakta up and carries her to the Shiv Mandir, which was the closes to where they both were. Ritesh leaves Prajakta there and starts walking towards the jungles. By the time he reaches the tree again, the sky had started to change its colors, which made him feel a lot uneasy. He rushed to his hut and soon as he entered the hut, his overall appearance changed back to normal.

As the night falls, Ritesh feels uneasy. He tries to control and tolerate his condition, which worsens by every moment passing. 

Following night, gradually, his entire body starts transforming into the same evil entity that Viraat, Swapnaja and Prajakta had witnessed a night before. The door of his hut opens automatically and Ritesh walks out, as a cursed entity. When Prajakta again went to the same place, Ritesh couldn’t help himself from rushing to save the girl he liked the most. But again, by the time he stepped out of his hut, his body had already transformed into the same demonic entity once again. That night, after Ritesh left Prajakta at the Temple, he had too little time to reach out to his hut. So he took shelter in the darkness of the inner part of the great tree, where, he heard some voice that instructed him to meditate. Soon he closed his eyes for meditation, but when he opened them, he was sitting with a sage, sitting next to a Yagya kund with fire within. The sage told Ritesh about the entire truth of the tree and the village.

The fact was that the entire village was once a prosperous Kingdome. The last king grew greedy and lustful. He took assistance of dark magic to be invincible and immortal. Thus the dark practitioner associated his life to this tree, until the tree leaves, the village could never prosper. That last king was the real demonic entity. The dark magic he craved for, became his curse. Since the dark powers had bound his life to the tree, he declared in his Kingdome that he had a dream about the old tree being sacred and divine and must be worshiped, instead of Lord Shiv. That made it a part of the village tradition for centuries. The king preyed on many villagers including men women and even children. Since that moment Ritesh stayed at the tree to know more about its center of life and destroy it for good.

But Prajakta was confused, as to, how she was able to understand the language of the demonic entities, to which, Ritesh answered that the body of the demon had a characteristic of emitting his powers to the nearby living species, similar to the king himself, the human beings to be specific. The same was told to him by the sage, Ritesh talked to when he was meditating. The sage told him that some of the powers of that demon are always absorbed by the other human beings and that was the reason, why Prajakta felt unconscious on her first encounter with the demon, and not on the second and their encounter with him. Any power that the demon uses on one human being, if he or she lives, then the demon can never use the same power on the same individual. Its effect would be nullified. Thus on the first encounter, Prajakta got immune to the terrible appearance of the demon, on the second encounter, she got immune to his hypnotic powers and in the third instance, she was able to understand the language of the demon for during the second encounter, during the fight of Ritesh in his cursed form and the demon, he said some things which Prajakta couldn’t understand, but Ritesh could, for he was one like that demon. Thus when the demon said that his life is linked to the tree, which the villagers were worshiping for centuries and that nobody can know this because, the villagers couldn’t understand his language, so he thought, and Ritesh was unable to tell that to anyone in his current form. But Prajakta understood it correctly and took necessary actions to get rid of the problem, for good, once and for all.

Finally, all the friends were respectfully treated and a grand feast was organized to the best of the abilities of the villagers and the group of five friends left the village for their home. Prajakta came close to Ritesh, who asked her, as to, how she was able to know his feelings about her, to which she replied that she was partially awake when Ritesh carried her to the Shiv Mandir for the first time and confessed his feelings to her, thinking she was not conscious. The continued their journey back to their home, starting a new chapter in their lives.

By Abhijeet Madhusudan Ghule