Kala Bhairav

The rickshaw wallah was an old madman. First he wanted me to buy him a new pair of shoes, then he had various ideas about visiting shops, it was really hard to convince him that I was serious about crossing the whole city just to visit a temple. He entertained me all the way from Assi to Kotwali by doing all kinds of acrobatics on his bike, similar to a fake Hungarian wrangler on his horse on the Hortobagy performing for German tourists. We were on our way to Kal Peron, as he pronounced the name in his Bojhpuri dialect, the temple of Black Bhairav. After an arduous 45-minute ride, we reached a large junction and I thought we must be close. I jumped off the rickshaw, gave the man the money we had agreed on and hurried down a small lane. I was desperate to get away from the crowds, the noise, the traffic, the pollution. After a few steps, I found myself staring at a small shop selling garlands of little red roses, and a man behind the counter signalled the way. The temple of Kala Bhairav was there. At the entrance was a Puranic description: “This is Lord Bhairava of Varanasi, who destroys the terror of samsara. The very sight of him removes the sins of many lifetimes.” Around the shrine, people sold pictures of Bhairav and his cord, which protects against disease and evil spirits. It is made of twisted and braided black thread that can be tied around the wrist or neck. The temple servant offered to beat the ‘devil’ out of me, first by waving his stick in front of him and saying a prayer, then by beating my left shoulder with it. He said it would keep away sickness and physical pain. Kala Bhairav, the ‘Black Terror’, is widely known as the ‘Kotwal’, the police chief of Banaras. Shiva appointed Bhairava as the chief officer of justice in the holy city because Yama, the Lord of Death, was not allowed to enter Kashi, the place of liberation. Bhairava took over Yama’s duties and keeps a record of the deeds of the people of Kashi. Whoever lives in Varanasi and does not worship Bhairava accumulates a heap of sins that grows like the waxing moon. While all who die in Kashi are promised liberation, they must first experience, in an intensified time frame, all the results of their accumulated karma. This is called the punishment of Bhairava. This punishment is said to last a fraction of a second and to be a kind of time machine in which one experiences all the rewards and punishments that might otherwise be lived out over the course of many lifetimes. Pilgrims hope that by visiting Kashi Bhairava they can achieve freedom from sin and the fear of death. It reminds me of a beautiful short story by Jorge Luis Borges. I cannot remember the title, but I read it in a collection of his short stories called Secret Miracle. The story followed the rushing thoughts of a man about to be executed. From the moment the gun was fired until the bullet reached him. It was such a perfect portrayal of how all the events of someone’s life run through their mind in an instant, how those events speed up so much that they blow up our space and time limitations, and everything explodes and expands far beyond our physical limitations and dissolves into a timeless expanse. The experience of purgatory and purification. I wondered what it felt like. What it feels like to see all the joy and sorrow of our lives, and what it feels like to see the results of our actions, all the joy and sorrow of a failed future ‘zipped’ into a sudden impression.