Aigiri Nandini
With accelerated breathing, gasping for breath, Bhavana a 14 years old girl is running with fear. Its quite a windy day and dark clouds filled the sky. The psithurism, which otherwise seemed pleasant now sounds scary. She is so petrified and is drenched in her own sweat.
“Shh…shh,” she hushed herself and hid behind the big banyan tree behind the temple.
Wondering what these many small cairns were doing there behind the temple she continued running.
She can hear him stealthily moving towards her. The dry leaves susurrated under his foot. It was may be 4pm in the evening but the light hardly penetrated with all big banyan trees around. The goddess Durga temple in their village is quite a desolate place with no reasons. Tears rolled down her cheeks, “The temple will be closed at 5pm Bhavana and its almost an abandoned place. You are not going,” her mother’s voice echoed in her mind.
“I promised Uttara and I have to go,” she said adamantly and at 3.30pm while her mother was preparing tea she sneaked out of the house. On reaching the temple she didn’t find Uttara there but found this devil, a young man may be of 24 years old in rugged jeans and ruffled hair, smoking.
“Goddess punishes girls who disobey their parents,” she hit herself hard on the bark of the tree.
“Uttara is stupid! Why didn’t she keep up her promise?” Pulling out the twigs that are caught in her long hair she moved very cautiously. Appalled by the sound of the footsteps nearing her, “Run, Bhavana run,” she said unto herself choking and tumbled upon a cairn and fell down.
“Save me from this bastard, Durgamaa” saying so she recited “Aigiri Nandini, Nandita Medhini…….” in her mind. Mustering courage she remembered her grandmother’s words,” You are a brave girl Bhavana. Every girl is a Durga maa herself. She has the courage to fight the evil!”.
Jus then from nowhere the beast appeared in front of her and held her by her long hair. She stumbled upon an enough big cairn and picked up one sharp rock piece and gave a big blow on his neck with it. He moaned in pain and let her go off but was confident enough to get hold of her in no time.
The devil slowly pulled himself up and continued the chase. Meanwhile she went round another big banyan tree and holding its strong long roots made a circle in the air and dropped down with a thud and ran towards the temple. The devil too followed the same but missed and fell down on a boulder smashing his nose into it. He almost became unconscious. Just then with a hissing sound a venomous snake appeared from under the boulder and opened its venomous fangs and hit him hard in his forehead and disappeared into nowhere.
Bhavana, panic stricken, took to her feet and with no looking back returned home, hugged her mother and fainted.
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