Avan, Aval, Adhu 366
Righteous indignation, also called righteous anger, in some Christian doctrines, is considered the only form of anger which is not sinful, e.g., when Jesus drove the moneylenders out of the temple (Matthew 21).
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of the shadow of death, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
I was sans consciousness and conscience until maybe two or three. Sans here means I was not aware of what I was, who I was, or how I was. All I knew was that I was The word "conscious" means being aware of one's surroundings, while "conscience" means having a moral understanding of what's wrong and right. I felt my conscience uncoil deep inside my soul and my mind much before I became fully aware of my surroundings and my immediate family.
I remember the dog and its whines and cries, but I don't remember the cause of its sorrow. What I do remember from that earliest recollection of my childhood is that I went to it and hugged and kissed it and laid down beside it, and both of us fell asleep.
Several times over the decades, I have revisited that ancient memory and returned to the present with a realisation and understanding of why or what made that dog stop crying. It felt like love. It felt my arms, and it felt the emotion, my empathy, that flowed out seeing it suffer, and it calmed down even though the cause of the pain, be it hunger, injury, or maybe just plain old depression, was never attended to or investigated. But calm down it did, and silently it fell for it felt love and it felt companionship through my arms.
In the end, my fellow souls and fellow travellers, that is all love is really about. (At least, that is my theory.) There is only so much love and attention we can give to another, and only so much time we can spend on others. That will do. Honestly, that will do for the end; each and everyone has a moral right and an unwritten memorandum of understanding with life and with their creator, and they have to heal, calm, and go their own way. not go away but travel in the ways that they desire.
Azhagan went to his room and, after a quick shower, was just exiting the bathroom when he felt the disturbance all around him. He quickly wiped himself and slipped into a casual cotton shirt and cotton pants and was about to remove his favourite Hawaiian chappals when he heard the voices coming to him from the reception area.
"Dei manager, get the keys for all the rooms and follow us."
"Sir, only five rooms are booked, sir." in that one room, lady. Doctor lady. Please don't disturb the guests.
Azhagan heard Sivaraman, the hotel's owner, say this, and then there was a noise that could not be mistaken for anything else. Flesh on flesh Hand on cheek. Then he heard the voice of Kutty pleading with the men.
"Please, sir, Anna, don't hit him." He is not well. He has a heart problem. Please don't hit him.
Azhagan closed his eyes and whispered, "I don't want to, and yet you persist in placing me in these kinds of situations and continue to test me as you have been doing over the past 800 years." My answer is the same as it was back then when I was a kid.'
Closing his eyes, he went back to the time when he had been seven years old and recalled that particular moment of his first fight. It was not just a fight but, as always, a battle between the forces of good and bad and a duel between strong and weak. In his mind, a fight, a duel, or a contest was one in which the participants were equal, eager, and ready to pit themselves against their enemies. Anything else, he saw as evil and an act of brutality. In his opinion, the worst cases and the worst people were those who preyed on the weak, innocent, and young.
When that happened, all bets were off, and Azhagan was consumed by fire. The raging fire of angels and demons In that fire, he was both heaven and hell.
Azhagan's pristine memory took him back to the time when he and Appanar Iyya had left home and were travelling to "Sairandhrivanam."
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Flashback to Chapter 38 of the Story: The Boy Who Went into the Dark and Came Back with Light
After nearly ten days of walking, both of them stopped at a small stream that gurgled quietly deep in the belly of the forest, and since it was getting late in the afternoon, Appanar decided that they would halt for the day and spend the night there. Appanar Iyya waded into the stream, which was about three feet deep, and bathed his tired body. Coming back to the bank, he soon drifted away into a deep sleep.
Azhagan left the old man to sleep and decided to explore the surrounding forest and also gather fruits for their dinner. He gathered fallen ripe figs, sweet mangos, and ripe bananas and, removing the cloth that covered his upper torso, bundled them and hoisted them over his shoulder. He was about to turn back when his senses alerted him to the presence of human beings, and dropping the bundle near a bush, he stood ready to face the strangers who were stealthily moving towards him.
The tall green grass parted, and he saw a young woman with a little girl next to her come towards him. She was bleeding from a head wound and was on the verge of collapsing, yet she held on to her life and to her child. Azhagan recognised the bond between the two as being the same as the sacred one between him and Avini.
He went towards them and realised that they were tribal people who lived in the forest, and the woman spoke a strange dialect, but Azhagan understood that she was scared, thirsty, and most importantly, that she feared for the safety of her child.
Azhagan smiled and tried to convey that there was nothing to fear and that he would take them to safety. Asking the little girl to follow him, he helped the woman slowly walk back to where Appanar Iyya was sleeping and shook him awake. Appanar Iyya and Azhagan slowly laid the woman on the grass and calmed her. Then he left and came back with some herbs, making a pulp of them and slowly rubbing it on the wounds of the woman, who thanked them both for their help. She tried to stand up and signalled that she must leave, for there were men searching for her and her child who would soon track them here and kill them all.
Azhagan calmed her and told her it was going to be all right and that they would protect her and her daughter, telling Appanar to remain by their side, and he walked back in the direction and to the place where he had rescued the woman and her child.
Though just seven years old, Azhagan was tall for his age and stood nearly five feet, and most people would mistake him to be in his early teens. And add to that the muscles that rippled on his slender body and the fearlessness that he projected, and most adults would slow down, think, or even stop before they confronted him.
Azhagan surprised himself, for it was the first time his mind did something weird, in that it threw its perception and senses in all directions and gathered information. Azhagan knew that this had something to do with the spirits and the time he had spent with them, but it was working because he sensed and saw all that was unfolding before him. He sensed a group of ten people coming towards him, and they were on a rampage and thirsting for blood.
Azhagan's body responded to all of these stimuli by slowing down its heartbeat rather than quickening itself, and then everything happened in slow motion. From the dense forest came running wild-looking men, armed to the teeth with wicked-looking swords and spears, and they came rushing towards Azhagan. He raised his hand and asked them to stop, signalling them to return in that direction. The men laughed loudly, and two charged at him. What happened next would pass into the history of the tribes and seed the birth of the legend called Kavin.
The one man who survived the attack and limped back to his tribe with a broken shoulder and a broken knee said that he saw the boy's eyes shine with a strange light, and then in a split second he jumped on them and it was all over. Nine out of the ten men lay on the ground with broken skulls, ribs, and legs. They would live out their lives as cripples, dependent on scraps thrown at them by their tribe members.
Azhagan came back, and since it had been just ten to fifteen minutes since he had left and come back, Appanar Iyya asked him if they had to run and hide. Azhagan shook his head and said it was okay and that the problem had been solved, and Appanar Iyya knew better than to ask him any further questions about the matter and left it for some other time when they were alone.
The next day, Azhagan rose early and went up a small mountain nearby, where he sat in quiet meditation as the morning sun rose to greet him. The sun's rays played on him as if a mother would fondle and caress her newborn child, and the spirits moved in the forest, and Azhagan felt the source and was one with it. Hearing noises from the mountain below, he opened his eyes and stood up with this stick in his left hand and looked below and saw Appanar Iyya coming up with the woman and child that they had rescued the previous day. And with them came thirty to forty tribals armed with fruits and flowers, and just as they neared Azhagan, the sun, which had laid hidden behind some dark clouds, came out roaring with its brilliant light and shone brightly on Azhagan, and the people gathered around him.
For the people, it was a magnificent sight to see a boy with his wild curly hair being blown in the wind, just with a stick in his left hand, a white cloth around his slender waist, and a gentle, serene smile playing on his lips.
Huge roars of "Vetri vel, Veera vel, Palani Muruga" filled the air for Azhagan, who looked like the god of Palani whom the tribals worshipped. Just out of his meditation, and after having been one with the spirits and the source, a strange halo and light enveloped Azhagan, and this only reaffirmed the tribals' sudden belief that the young god had come down from the mountain to rescue them from the evil men.
Azhagan asked them to calm down, and Appanar Iyya explained to them that he was just an ordinary mortal, yet he knew that the boy was special and more than just ordinary. But the tribal men insisted that Azhagan was a god and paid their respects to him. They had come with other gifts, but Azhagan told them that he would not be able to accept them for now but would stop on the way back and spend time with them.
The tribal leader, a formidable-looking man, thanked Azhagan for saving his wife and daughter from the villains and proceeded to ask where they were going and if they needed guides to help them.
Appanar Iyya hesitated for a second and then informed him that they both were travelling to a place called "Sairandhrivanam" for meditation and to seek higher knowledge.
The tribal leader, Thinnan, looked at them both as if to ask if they knew about the place and the dangers that lurked there. But he was a simple man and knew that these people were not the usual, common people like him or others, for they glowed and vibrated with a strange but vital energy. For a man who made a living in the forest trusting and using his senses, they told him that the old man and the divine-looking boy would be safe, and the question would be if the world was safe from them.
The crowd of tribals left but for the little girl whom Azhagan had saved. She came up to him and handed him a beautiful yellow flower, signaling that it was her.
Azhagan realised that the girl was handicapped and could neither hear nor talk, yet she made it clear that she was called Malar. She shyly reached out and took Azhagan's right hand, kissed his fingers, and gazed into his eyes, then fled down the mountain.
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Hotel Kailasam had risen from the ground with no proper planning in mind. That is understandable for Madurai back then in the 1980s was not what it was today. That had been the time before the Indian economy had opened its heart and mind to the world and had embraced fully the concept of capitalism.
At the time of construction, Shivaraman had possessed just enough money to lay the foundation and raise a five-bedroom hotel with just about space for a single car to be parked. But, he had the foresight to request the engineer to lay a foundation that was strong enough to hold four or more floors above it.
When the engineer had informed him that it would make things more complicated and expensive, Shivaraman had told him not to worry about it and just go ahead and do it.
Hotel Kailasam had started its life as a single ground-floor lodging place with a small walk-in reception and to the immediate left was a small dimly lit corridor that held five small rooms. The room Madhu was staying in was on the first floor and there were three more floors above it together with the ground floor, the number of rooms in the hotel stood at twenty-five.
Azhagan had deliberately chosen the room on the ground floor for it was the only way anybody could enter the hotel and was also the only way out. He had anticipated trouble and had tried to divert it away from Madhu and the hotel which had in the end resulted in two cars leaving the hotel.
But, Azhagan knew that in case that ploy failed then it would come down to him and to him alone. That is what he feared for he knew that in case if he was pushed then he would not hold back. He remembered Raman and his promise not to kill or maim and draw attention to Madhu and himself. But what was one supposed to do when they were cornered but retaliate and fight back?
The sounds of a door opening and being slammed shut carried to all the five thugs that stood around the small desk of Hotel Kailasam and all of them turned to see the source of the noise.
In the dimly lit corridor, they saw a tall man standing there and then slowly he began to walk towards them and stepped out of the dark and into the light.
It is a widely held belief that humans can sense impending death and its approach. The five men sent by Meenakshi sensed danger but they were dangerous people too and the man who stood boldly before them was on his own.
They had not been informed about the mysterious disappearance of Maruthu and his gang and Meenakshi had conveniently forgotten to tell them that the reason for the disappearance was the very man who stood before them.
Azhagan's eyes first took in the Hotel owner Shivaraman's left cheek and eye that now looked like a puffed-up Idli but red and brown in color. He sighed and whispered to himself, ' I am sorry Raman but I am being left with no choice here.'
Before he could complete his thought the man who stood near Kutty moved. Before the man could move to slap Kutty Azhagan moved. He moved in a blur after hearing the thug yell, ' Shut your whining, you mangy pup ' and he moved just as the thug raised his hand.
Azhagan moved with the speed of thought for he heard and felt the man's brain send an electric signal to slap the crying boy and then things moved and happened by themselves.
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