Having been up most of the night in that uncomfortable airport chair, Akool settled himself into the window seat, all prepared for a nap as the flight heads Mumbai. The usual fight liturgy and co-passengers offered nothing of notice as he dozed off in his corner.

He would have arrived back in Mumbai in the most usual manner, had it not been a loud shout with which he suddenly awoke from his sleep, shivering with fear and perspiration. The flight was shocked, and hostesses quickly rushed to his seat. His neighbor got out of his seat in a reaction. Within minutes the scene normalized as the hostesses noted normalness of this event compared to probably their emergency drills anticipating terrorists etc.

As the curious continued their peeping, the sympathetic offered their concern with warm water & a cup of Coffee made just for him hastily. A few folks no doubt noticed the funniness of the situation and chattered away the jokes, a sense of embarrassment settled over Akool. Avoiding all glances he quietly accepted his coffee, gazing outside into the occasional cloud-let and a vast Arabian waters below.

With the first sip of coffee, Akool started stringing together the fragments of his dream. It was definitely his early days of youth he saw. It was the familiar BanaGanga Smashan with its tin-roof-over-the-pyre right next to the sea. It was him between the pyre, bent on his knees, throwing furitive glances as he quickly gathered whatever little ashes remained in the iron girders , collecting just enough to finish 108 recitations of the great Trayambakam Mantra as he would smear these ashes onthe nearby BabulNath Mahadev linga. The ashes had to be picked before anybody notices, because it was prohibited. Prohibited because with these ashes, many ancient rituals could be performed in dark nights somewhere that would trap the souls of the deceased and make them do the askings of the ritualist.

On the 16th day of his Anushtana, 5 days short of deadline, The Great Rudra had granted him what he had asked for. A series of events fell in place, as a sense a fatigued happiness settled over him — it was 16 days since he had been eating only rice & milk. But it was all worth. He had got what he wanted.

So, today when he went to the smashana, with 5 more days to go, a strange wish gripped him along with a new sense of power over events and people. With the ashes he collected little pieces of bones and that night, quietly stringed them with a black thread into a Mala. Later into the night, he took his usual corner & started Japas to the fierce Maha Kaali. It was not very long before he felt himself unusually calm and felt himself drowning into Dhyana. He felt himself entering that middle zone of wakefulness and sleep- lulled into peace. And then suddenly he had felt a great fear. A Presence was gripping him, the heaviness was sinking him into the sleep zone. But he was not yet asleep. He had an another, that alerted him to resist the urge to drown in that sleep. In the gray zone, he knew sleep now would mean being taken over. He dashed out of that state with a great will, unknown to him, also a great shout. The shout that shocked his copassengers. Now the warmth of coffee, in the middle of people in a pocket of comfort thousands of feet above the sea below offered a far more happy feeling than the that presence he had experienced.