Ancient Ferocity & Evil

One day in 2012 or 13, while I was visiting Tamil land with the family of an employee of mine — they took me to a hill top shrine of their family god.

It was a neolithic stone temple of Shri Sorimuthu Ayyanar.

It was late afternoon and the stone hills are barren with surrounding structures with ash filled pits and dark old men and women with deep eyes filled me with a sense of the ancient spirit residing here.

I had been told the previous night was great Amavasya and 200 goats were sacrificed here. I did see dried trickles of blood on stone at some places. On one side of the temple, there was a pond. As I approached the pond and stood gazing at it, I was filled with a dread. The pond was silent and still as a sound of a crow cawing in desert — far away. The bush surrounding the still pond had no rustle, no birds. The water of the pond is dark grey and all of a sudden I’d a feeling of thousands of spirits hovering around and inside the water. All the thousands of those goats sacrificed and people who have been reported to have died in the pond.

This was not the first I was recognising fear in a place by mere presence. There had been another instance once on the way to RajPeepala in Gujarat, where before you see the corner of the dead, the fear reaches under your skin.

Some places hold that ancient ferocity.