Part 3 in Devansh Series
Standing before each other are Sonakshi and Alaknanda. Torn between duty and emotion, will Alaknanda overturn the series of events before them? Or would Alaknanda and Sonakshi have to fight each other?
The Final Installment...
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For the past 20 minutes, we had been hiking up the large mountains of Himalayas. The regions almost inaccessible by regular humans. I noticed several sages there. Utter silence prevailing.
Guru Atri walked ahead and I followed. There were several caves in the region. The caves which didn't see the daylight.
"The time for playing around is gone, Sonakshi. You have to understand that we're nearing the edge of our battle. Alaknanda and you are here back in Gurukul. While you have poured up ahead into your upasana, you still haven't reached the stage where I can say that you can take on Virat. 200 years of tapasya he has performed. All of it was stored together and kept inside him. Not to mention Diti's own tapasya siddhi is present. Life will not always sit on the same path. Alaknanda and you sure have a wish to walk on the same path but frankly, it is not possible. Neither do you have the kind of mastery over battle skills that he has nor do we have mantra siddhi of that level? Lagging behind isn't going to help us. So, from now on, I think you should focus on tapa."
I nodded not arguing that I wasn't sure I could reach that level of control over myself.
"Your mantra siddhi has to allow your inner kali to be in tune with Mahakali herself. Such that you can channel her strength and power. I'll give you the Mahakali beeja mantra. Be very careful with it. If you get disturbed in between, it might as well cause more mess than you can gather. People who have been foolish enough to use it the wrong way have had their skulls burst out or violently feasted on by pisachas and yakshinis. You deal with a lot of tantra vidya. It comes with a responsibility to use it maturely."
He led me to sit inside one of the caves. The cave had a small water pond. Ice cold water.
"Remember, Sonakshi. You will not attain perfection until you manage to empty everything else from inside you. Every budding emotion. Every present emotion and put it down. Kama is known to play well with emotions. But the moment he deters you from this, you'll fall down several steps beneath. All the upasana you've done for so long will go waste. To retain the control of the senses is extremely important. None of your sense organs should cause you to be distracted. Not the skin, not the eyes, not the ears, not the tongue, not the nose."
I nodded a yes.
We returned back to Gurukul.
"I want you to start from today. Leave behind all the things you have. Any gold, any jewellery, any form of luxury. I'll be giving you a set of clothes. That is the only clothing you will have. At first, it is one time of food per day. Then once in two days. Then one in three days. Then once in five days. The penance should only go ahead. You would need to stay in one place for a long time."
I nodded a yes. He gave me plain white clothes with a border. All of the jewellery was left behind and I wore the rudraksha beads that Guruwar gave me. When I returned to him, he gave me a mat made of grass, a kamandala, and japamala.
