Wrath of a Goddess

I have stood as a silent testimony of the unrelenting fury of a Goddess one day at a forsaken place in Himalayas. For more than 1200 years, I have chosen to accept with outspread arms all the dark incidents of that day, to remain as an objective observer, for therein lies my doom laid on me by the Goddess.

I am a lake situated at an altitude of about 5000 metres in the Himalayas, sacred to Goddess Nanda-Devi. I am, now, ordained to open the secret pages of the history that none knew before...

A large family of more than 500 travellers came along with some natives towards me. I knew not whence they came, and where they were heading to. They camped at my side that day. After a while, I heard a wail from one of the tents and out came two men, and after them, there came out stumbling shape accompanied with heart-wrenching cries . She took the shape of a young native girl...the same girl whom I had noticed for her heavenly appearance when she had come earlier.

The girl went to her elders, but they chose to keep quiet as the travellers belonged to a higher status. Then she went to the head of the travellers to plead for justice. They were enraged at the girl's audacity to talk of such a matter directly to them. They took no notice of the girl and ordered the natives to abandon the girl as she apparently went mad. She was laughed at, cursed, and insulted.

The girl, enraged at not only her violators, but her own people who failed to protect her, cursed herself at her inability to defend herself. She failed to understand why the Goddess she loved had forsaken her. She wiped her tears, went up a hillock and yelled out, so that all can hear, infernal curses laced with such vitrious venom and intoned with such destructive power that no one could endure her ghastly voice at that moment. They could see their doom upon them writ clearly upon their faces. The bravest of men crouched with fear and closed their eyes and women and children huddled together as the monstrous wind of the Himalays mingled with her horrendous voice created a demonic echo that laid bare, for a fleeting moment, a sample of the power that lay hidden the deep vaults of the very Earth eager to reassert itself, and the ground began to shake with the power of her petrifying curses. The wind howled like a hungry warg and dark clouds expedited themselves into a vortex at the summons of the power of her intonations. Could this be the end of this world? Has the destroyer opened his third eye? Nay... to them, it seemed worse than that apocalypse that would engulf everything that exists in all of the infinite universes.

Then, she, laughing and dancing, as in an impassionate trance, went near a deep gorge and with a shriek, unendurable yet everlasting in my memory, offered herself to the Goddess and those that saw her fall then knew she was dear to the Goddess.

It started raining, and they realised it was no ordinary rain. There was a condescending laughter of an infuriated Goddess in the lightning, and the wind brought unutterable curses from forbidden lands into their very lap. The rain, later, revealed itself into its actual gruesome form as a hail-storm from the other world. They were being pelted with hail-stones bigger than any-one had seen before. One by one, people started falling dead on the ground. Women, children, aged... the fury of the Goddess recognised none. In a short while, all the people there became victims of the fury of the Goddess. I bowed my head to the unsurmountable supremacy of the Goddess... once again!

Yet, this incident lived on for centuries... in the folk songs sung by native women who still remember the avenging fury of the Goddess.


Kedar.
P.S.: It has been recently proven that the a group of people travelling near the lake Roopkund up in the Himalayas were killed by a killer hailstorm with giant hail stones.