Ardhakatya was an unassuming man. He wore torn up clothes, had long flowing unkept hair and his feet had big callouses. He had no special traits or talents. He owned no worldly treasures or possessions. He lived his sordid existence on the outskirts of the city, in a shabby quarter next to Sundarbans, the dreaded, infested marshy jungles with eerily floating roots and shadows.
Unknown dangerous, creepy and poisonous snakes, insects and beasts dwelled in there. Ardhakatya knew no fear. He had seen enough misery and pain in his life to feel any fear. He had a strange job. He looked for dead bodies of people who had drowned or were caught in the quicksand or bitten by snakes, lost or half eaten by animals or the unfortunate souls who chose to commit suicide there. He would fish out the dead rotting corpses in the dead of the night, carry them on his back out of the marshes and cremate them.
He did that for most of his adult life. No call of the hyenas, hissing snakes, strange whispers and shadows, nothing scared him ever. But one night as he scavenged for the dead, a glowing apparition of a woman appeared out of nowhere. Dressed in beautiful clothes and precious pearls, she mockingly said to him, ‘wont you take me out, Rajan? Won't you pull me out and cremate me?’
Ardhakatya knew nothing about the terror that he was capable of feeling. He ran for his life completely terrorized. He collapsed on the banks where the forest ended. As his consciousness waned, a memory surfaced from the past when he was a heartless king.
He was hardheaded and unforgiving. Any soldier, spy or an official who was suspected to be disloyal was tied with heavy stones and was thrown into the river as a punishment. He conducted this torture in secret; the kingdom dreaded him. One day one of his favorite head servants saw him giving orders to punish an old accountant on charges of stealing money. The old man begged him for mercy and pleaded innocence. But the heartless king did not hear a word. Aparajita, the head servant saw everything in a horrified state. To her dismay, king saw her. He had no choice but to drown her too to keep his secret. Another innocent life was taken away, mercilessly. Ardhakatya woke up next morning with a strange realization.
His entire life flashed before him as an act of repentance…fishing out the bodies of those he had drowned centuries ago and giving them proper cremation. His lonely, hollow and emotionless existence suddenly made sense to him now. This life was nothing but a painful repayment of his past Karma. He begged to the memory of the apparition for forgiveness and for the first time he felt trapped in his emotionless, strange life.
One night the apparition spoke to him again and said, ‘Nature will have mercy on you. On the next full moon you will die of a snake bite and be released from this imprisoned existence’. And so it happened, he died drowning in heavy muddy waters.
What gruesome painful death but he welcomed it. He saw liberation in the most agonizing moments of his life. The shackles of his past deeds were broken and his soul soared to freedom again.
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