A small section from a larger piece I am writing...

The Deadly Embrace – A Buddhist Thanka or nightmare of a Wild Goddess? 

A dark deity, much bigger than me – the goddess with black radiance - embraces me with her arms, her lips red and her enormous tongue jutting out ready to eat me up. My naked body she holds in a deadly embrace and it is akin to a timeless, tight embrace - a volcano of energy I feel is being transmitted on to me. Dark matter or the goddess with glowing eyes, a bluish black tinge of colour on her glistening dark bare skin, primal energy Shakti - personification of the force. I am as if riveted to her, my head falling back, my yellow body in contrast to the black contours of her form - her bosom crushing my ribs with several kilo-tonnes of cosmic power – I am truly terrified.

Red and yellow flags all around in the background and several little elfs and demons, surround me baring all their jagged teeth as if ready to dig into the leftovers of me, if anything was left after the goddess devoured me herself. Her long grey nails dig deep into my back and squash all my pain at the same time I feel numb and a strange free-floating feeling as if attaining a state of perfect calm, I can see a blurry scene as blood oozes out of her mouth, the very state of the mother in her most terrible form. I close my eyes and let it be, the ringing of bells continue and the surrounding atmosphere turns red and crimson from the diffusing blood. I vividly view the scene as if I were not the victim or the exhalted – I am a third person. As I remain in this state – rapidly losing consciousness I am about to collapse – but the goddess holds on to me as if I were a corpse or a dear son!

Third person – then was it not me? I was able to see from one end and as if the image were rotating in front of me. Was I just seeing a nightmare? Or was this some special signal – it could not have been, I wake up and there I am lying at the feet of the image of the goddess – it is a temple, well decorated. As I go out to find I am in the Durga Mata Mandir which I had visited that evening – decked with red and black sculptures now barely decipherable under the crescent moon. I am bleeding profusely from my shoulders and my body is bare, naked, now I feel the chill of the night air as I try to cover myself with my hands. It was then that I woke up to realize that I was dreaming within a dream – I had been peacefully sleeping at the Hotel Ulka’s non-AC room, and the fan was making a loud noise as it rotating in endless cycles. This nightmare was about a Buddhist thanka painting that had seen at the Ramnagar Palace – a beautiful artwork of the Goddess Kali embracing Shiva or I don’t know someone else – a body in yellow. Great colour and detail in the artwork.