War God by Susheela Menon

As the priest hobbled away from the dim-lit sanctum, a glowing dot of light dashed past him with abnormal speed. He squinted at the glow worm and walked towards the temple tank for his morning ablution. He didn’t see it slip into the sanctum, its radiance falling on Murugan – the principal deity of the temple.

The Hindu God of War shifted within the jagged boulder in which his spirit dwelled, and stared at the splendid insect. The glow worm’s heat felt surprisingly menacing. The God tried to silence it with a grim glare, but it flashed wildly — the strange little horns on its head squabbling like little warriors — and flew out into the pounding rain. Murugan knew something was amiss but what?

He settled back into his stone and looked at the sheets of water that cascaded across the forest. A wave of melancholy swept through him as his thoughts stubbornly clung to the past. Murugan sat brooding over a similar night – when the skies had thrashed the earth with rain that swelled the seas – a night that changed his destiny forever.

 ***

Murugan had been an unhappy God. He stood a rung beneath other more prominent Gods of the Hindu pantheon and didn’t agree with this unfair divine hierarchy entrenched in Hinduism. Not many knew about his existence and some even mispronounced his numerous names. Like the elephant-headed Ganesh, he too was a son of the mighty Shiva. Murugan had slain Surapadman, one of the most feared asuras or anti-Gods, by ripping the demon’s body in two — carving out of it a peacock on which he flew and a rooster that became his emblem. He had led Shiva’s celestial army and was an expert in using the Vel or the lance, his weapon of choice. Why then was Ganesh revered across Hindu homes in India while his name was chanted by just a few?

Murugan had complained about this injustice to Paravani — his peacock – as they flew across the skies, her neck stooped low and claws ready to strike. Paravani was a vigilant bird. She knew Surapadman was dead but he was an asura. He could rise again. She had guarded the morose Lord as he moaned about being marginalised by a religion that took pride in being just and kind.

Unbeknownst to him, Murugan’s fate awaited him miles away in a small forest where a few peasants — stranded on a balding hill — had smeared some vermilion on a black boulder and planted it inside a cave. The region was under the spell of a very ferocious monsoon. The men spent many days worshipping the black stone and scrambled down into the dense forest surrounding the hill as soon as the sun reclaimed the sky. Grateful to be alive, they built a temple within the cave that had sheltered them from the heavy monsoon storms.

As word spread, hordes of people climbed the hill with offerings for the nameless hill God. The discovery of a lone peacock in the jungle was reason enough for some to declare that the temple belonged to Murugan, the God of War. It attracted a mammoth following.