The Crooked Lands (Part 1)

25. The Tiger

Omkara

Agni had several years ago made a report of a fire that he couldn't have ever started. There are two kinds of fire. One, which is controlled by Agni. Two, the kind of fire that emerges from one of the Trideva or the Tridevi. Those kinds of fires were out of Agni's control. Even though he can feel it and withstand it to a certain degree, he didn't have the kind of power to start those fires. It was the first earth assignment I had been given. Agni and I had gone to investigate the fire that didn't seem to be caused by Agni. Agni never misses a report of fire accidents. He has a note of every single one of them. Downright to effective details, his reports wouldn't miss any crucial details.

13 years ago, in a small town next to Varanasi, an old mansion reported a fire outbreak. Divine fire without a doubt. Agni and I had gone to investigate it. When we reached there, nothing was present there. An old burnt-down bungalow and people whispered around the place that it was haunted. A few days later, several Aghoris had taken their place in the building. They stayed there. When I inquired, they said that they felt the emergence of Kali there. This was quite surprising because Devi Parvati had denied going down to earth in form of Mahakali and breaking out in a fit of rage. As such, if it was Mahakali's rage, the entire of 14 worlds would have known.

That was the first time in 4 years that Goddess Parvati felt such hope. When I told her that there was an outburst of divine fire, she quickly realized that the only one who can do this should be her daughter. After all, the child was the very blood and flesh of the Goddess. It wouldn't be put behind the child to have exploded in a fit of tantrums.

5 humans died in the fire. 5 of them were child kidnapper who was wanted by the Uttar Pradesh Police with a bounty of 2,00,000 rupees. The gang had been known to kidnap several children and get involved in child trafficking. All the local people gave off the believe that Shiva and Kali had killed the 5 men. Even the official reports said that. I was surprised because the Indian Penal Code doesn't accept some supernatural reason as the cause of death. Swarga's Judicial Code accepts several reasons except for superstitious ones. Chitragupta's accounts had received the notice of the death of those five men. They were sent to be tortured in the bowels of Naraka for the next 300 years. 

Well, that's the law. They had done several crimes and nature returns the favour. This was an example of such. Every time one of them was captured, they bribed the police and escaped. No one had done their final rites for them to be allowed to return to the land of the living. No one to get them from pitraloka. Generally, the descendants of a person do final rites and every year do pitrapuja for the sake of their parents. This allows them to return to the land of living again. After the next child is born in the family, they are set free from pitraloka to return to the land of living. Very few souls get to be born again in the same family. They are souls who have such merit to put such requests with the Department of Life and Reincarnation. They receive around 50,00,000 applications every year requesting to be born in their previous incarnation's family but most of them are rejected. Though a glowing recommendation from the Trideva would ease the entire process.

Goddess Parvati kept meeting up with me and Agni to ask if we found any leads about the case. But unfortunately, it was cleaned up perfectly. Not even a single piece of evidence could lead us to the location of the one who started it. We were sure by that time about the reasoning that it has to be Kali's daughter who had done it because in any other case it would impossible. Only the Trideva and Tridevi are capable of starting such fires. Yet, there was no specific proof to back that. Indra wanted to use this incident to show everyone that it wasn't safe to let the children Trideva and Tridevi be alive like that. It had met with a lot of backlash from Nagas, Shivgana and Goddess Saraswati. The lack of proof hadn't allowed him to make a profound statement.