Vaikuntapaali

He climbed up the rocks , with his heart still trembling. He hadn’t regained his breath completely, after the encounter that he had with the giant 2 headed serpent.

The fall he took during the attack had  wounded  him but there was no way that he was giving up. He knew he could make it , he could achieve the impossible.

The fates of so many people rested in his hands. He was like their messiah who had to take this journey , tackling all the beasts and the ruthless terrain to go up the near vertical cliffs of the Vaikunta mountains.He was nearly there, as he could see in a distance high above him,  the one thing that he came for, but there  stood in between him and glory , a ruthless creature , who would devour him if he made a single wrong move.

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Once up on a time , located on either sides of  the great Vaikunta mountains were the villages of Moksha and Patamu. Every 100 years,  on the peak of Vaikunta,  blossomed the most beautiful flower in all of the lands. It was called  the flower of prosperity , because since time immemorial, the 2 villages depended on  the flower’s unimaginable powers to survive.

As there blossomed only one flower, one man was sent from each village to retrieve the flower from the top. He who plucks the flower,  will bring it to his village and there in its center,  in the little pond,  the flower will float for the next 100 years , bringing prosperity ,  good health and  immense riches to its people , while on the other side of the mountain  famine, diseases and unhappiness would prevail.

The Gods had made it this way , as they wanted it to be fair and impartial.  They made the people equal in both the village. It was left to the sheer courage and determination of whom the village selected. It was left to him, “the chosen one”. He would determine the fate of his people.

Moksha was on the receiving end for the last hundred years , it faced the worst of its droughts and lived through many epidemics. But their spirits were kept alive by the hope that , a time would come when their chosen one will go up to the peak and get the flower. At the same time the village of Patamu was afraid , of giving up everything they had if they lost.

Prophecy has that , there will be times when people will live in misery for many centuries together, but it also  says, there are always equal chances and its never unfair. The deserving always triumphs.

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The flower in the pond in Patamu had withered away. The wait was on  to see who comes down falling from the mountain and who would come down with  the flower.  The chosen ones had left already, with the prayers of their villagers behind them. They would walk for days to reach the bottom of the mountain and then they would begin their climb up the rocky cliffs of the great Vaikunta.

Vaikunta Mountains were known for its horrendously steep cliffs. To make things harder a group or ruthless monsters lived in caves in these mountains. They never liked the company of humans and during the climb if you would come in front of one, it would strike you down, with its tail spitting venom and  sending you on a free fall to the bottom.

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Brihistan was the chosen one for Moksha this time around. He had grown up seeing his parents and sisters suffer among others in his village. He lived through the years bearing witness to the suffering that his village had to go through. He grew up , thinking only about how to go up to the mountain and get the  flower when the time came.

When he grew up to be a young man ,  his thoughts had evolved enough to give him enough determination and strength to take up the feat, which very few dared to take. He could no longer see his loved ones suffer , even if he had to give up his own life for it. He trained himself to become the warrior he is now, who will stop at nothing , till he gets his hand on the flower. He proved to the people of Moksha that he is the chosen one, who would bring back glory to his village.

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Brihistan was standing there , without making a noise, as he was trying to make his way towards the flower , before the creature saw him. He was very careful , as he couldn’t afford another fight , as this creature was many times bigger than the previous one and a single blow from it would kill him.

As he was waiting there  for the right moment , on a small clearing on the rock cliff,  wide enough to keep his feet, he heard a scream from below. It was of the one from Patamu,  who might have got in the way of one of the serpents. He thought,  now is the time, the right moment to make his move.

Brihistan rolled his dice. It was a 3.  He could move closer to the flower , but this was not the end . He had to move another 3 more spaces to go clear.  The serpent standing right in front of him in the column just before the flower, waiting for him to make one false move. But now he could wait , it was time for the one from Patamu to make his move after he had fallen down in his last move.

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Brishtan kept his cool. He knew that the game of “Moksha Patamu”, the ancient Indian game, was not always fair as the Gods say they are. The dice you roll with your own hands determines your fate , but what number comes , Gods decide. They have the edge, not us.

He kept thinking as he waited for his next move, “What’s life without some ups and down’s like in snakes and ladders, where it looks like you are making the moves but the outcome is left to chance ”.