Amogh had planned out his Saturday perfectly. He’d woken up with the sun and made his way to Mangal Bazaar. He ritually circumambulated the Manimandap, an arcaded resting platform outside the Manga Hiti, in remembrance of his ancestors. Then he sat on the plinth of the Degutale Temple dedicated to the Taleju goddess and looked at the evil juju, who had started it all, in the eye.
The gilded bronze statue of King Yognarendra Malla, the juju, stood on a tall stone pillar, with his hands joined together in obeisance to the goddess. So technically, Amogh would be staring up at Yognarendra’s chin. But that didn’t matter. One can’t always look evil in the eye, he believed. One had to look them in the chin at times. You could poke a person in the eye, but an uppercut to the chin would knock them out.
Others might have regarded the king as a benevolent one, but not Amogh’s family. Amogh knew by heart the stories his grandmother had told him. He had grown up on the tales of how their entire clan had become expendable in a political tussle between two powerful medieval elites.
It had all begun when the city of Patan became an independent kingdom nearly four hundred years ago.
What was a celebration for many was a disaster for Amogh’s ancestors, who had been the main priests and counsellors to the mahapatra, the ruling elite loyal to the previous juju. Their entire clan was now treated as a liability. No longer was their wisdom sought. The new rulers erected new temples, and brought in their own priests. Amogh’s ancestors fell out of favour, and were barred from officiating at any important shrines.
All the history books that Amogh read to supplement his grandmother’s stories simply said the older system was politely dismantled. This was not so. The juju spoke softly, but employed people with bigger sticks and sharper swords. They ruthlessly and systematically uprooted the previous order, purging anyone and everyone aligned to the mahapatra. They violently shaped the society to their liking.
Amogh’s entire clan, and many others like them, found themselves out of cushy jobs. The stroke of a quill collapsed their social standing like a house of cards.
“But didn’t our ancestors protest?” Amogh would ask his grandmother as a child.
His grandmother would sigh. “Didn’t I tell you what happened when they did?”
“Yes, yes,” said Amogh. “Please tell me again.”
“Why?”
“I want to change that when I’m grown up!”
Amogh’s grandmother would finally relent.
“One of our ancestors got a royal audience with Yognarendra after trying for years,” she began. “The juju sat on his stone throne in the Manimandap, while our ancestor sat on the floor, looking at the juju’s chin move as he ruled against us.”
“Why? We were priests, too. Good ones at that!”
“The juju asked him how many of us were siddhas. But none among us was one. The king then pointed to two siddha priests in his royal court, and told our ancestor to return when one of our clan attained siddhi. He told him to take all the time in the world and laughed in his face, embarrassing him in front of everyone. Our ancestor couldn’t even lift his head in shame. He was humiliated in front of all of Patan.”
“What did we do then, Aji?”
“We were cast down, our reputation in tatters. The juju forbade us from going into exile, and forced us to live in Patan. But our clan was reduced to nothing. We had to officiate in temples of no repute, doing what we could to make ends meet.”
Their fall from grace, and the social ostracism that followed, had forced Amogh’s ancestors to focus their minds on a seemingly impossible goal: to become a siddha, a realised one.
A siddha tantric priest was worth his weight in gold. Back in the day, they were a kingdom’s first line of defence against supernatural elements. A siddha priest’s powers and supremacy rivalled those of a deity. They were trikaldarshi – they could read the past, present, and the future like an open book – nothing was hidden from them. They had mastery over nature, and had complete command over anything and everything. Such was their power that some of them could bind deities to the mortal world itself, like the siddha who bound the wrathful Mahakal deity to the Tundikhel ground. As such, siddhi was coveted by every priest, but few could achieve it. Many members of Amogh’s clan had devoted their entire lives to reaching that elusive destination if only to gain the prestige and social standing they had lost all those years ago. It had been their family’s mission, but no one had been able to taste victory. Until now.
By his mid-twenties, Amogh was already an initiated priest at a shrine, and was allowed to perform regular passage-of-life rituals such as bratabanda, ihi, and bahratayegu. But he knew he had to approach the dream of his ancestors differently. Those before him had approached it by the book and reached nowhere, Amogh reminded himself time and again. They had burned the midnight oil among old manuscripts in search of rituals supposedly practised by other siddha priests. Amogh half-suspected the original texts had been replaced by corrupted ones by the juju to laugh at their clan’s expense. Kings and priests could be as vindictive and petty as the rest. This would explain why so many of his talented ancestors had not succeeded. They had followed the books, but the books themselves were incorrect. But Amogh would no longer fall for any of it.
Amogh had concluded his ancestors did not have it in them to do what was needed to attain their dreams. The greatest of prizes demanded the greatest of sacrifices. But none among his ancestors were willing to pay the price. Amogh, however, was ready to do what it took. And he had a plan. Well, sort of. He was driven towards attaining siddhi because everyone told him it was impossible in this day and age. After all, who needed “a realised one” when technology had all the answers? But that didn’t matter to him. Amogh simply wanted to restore the honour of his clans and prove siddhi was achievable. He had prepared for it his entire life.
All Amogh needed was the perfect moment. As he walked towards Manimandap, he knew today would be his lucky day. He could feel it in his bones.
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Excerpted with permission from Radha: Wrath of the Maeju, Rishi Amatya, Safu Nepal.