Uma, a beautiful but frightened dancing girl, sells a strange bronze statuette of Nataraja, the dancing Siva, to Dr Chris Anderson, while he was visiting a bazaar in Pollachi, Southern India. He travels back to Kerala and puts the statuette on the bedside cabinet in his hotel room. His sleep is tortured by fantastic nightmares in which he seems hosts of ancient Indian gods and demons, in all their splendour and horror.
He wakes in terror to hear a faint voice whispering in the darkness. The bronze statuette is glowing with unearthly light and there is a smell if incense.
Can a human soul be imprisoned in bronze by the power of weird, unearthly dark magic?
Can Dr Chris Anderson release the psychic prisoner? Who is Uma, the mysterious dancing girl?
Release date:
August 28, 2014
Publisher:
Orion Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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The bazaar in Pollachi was like the bazaar of anywhere else in Southern India. It abounded with colour, with noise, with movement and with unmistakable odours. Sellers of fish and sellers of rice vied with one another for custom. The whole place was full of enchanting, sing-song voices; it was a riotous bazaar. Chris Anderson was making his way slowly through the stall holders. His nose was not particularly enamoured of the place, and as a doctor it tended to offend his senses of both hygiene and aestheticism, but over and above that, deep down within him, was a human characteristic that loved bazaars.
Chris Anderson kept on walking through a wilderness of brown legs and colourful costumes. Graceful ladies in saris and jewelled foreheads passed by him with an interested over-the-shoulder look. Chris returned it with equal interest. In his opinion Indian women were among the most beautiful in the world. It was one of the compensations a man had for visiting the bazaar …
The other compensation was the statues, the trinkets that it was possible to buy. Chris Anderson was a great collector of souvenirs. He had travelled round the world more than once, for he was a consultant psychiatrist with an international reputation and he had come to India as the guest of an Indian Medical Federation to give a series of talks on his own interpretations of certain modern aspects of post-Freudian practice and policy. He walked slowly through the bazaar, but he walked with as easy a grace as it was possible to maintain in such circumstances. Indians of both high and low caste passed by him in different directions. A beggar’s bowl was thrust towards him and he dropped in a number of small copper coins. Another bowl appeared from the other side as though by magic, and then another. More small copper coins left his hands, and then he shook his head sadly and held his hands up in a gesture of emptiness. The beggars withdrew; and the cries of “Baksheesh” grew less plaintive and less obviously turned in his direction.
At last he found himself in front of a stall which featured both the attractions which Chris Anderson considered as belonging to the bazaars. The stall holder was not a wizened old man or a hideous hag, as with most of the stall holders, but an extremely beautiful girl, and it was obvious from her costume, her grace of movement and loveliness of feature that she was not a professional saleswoman, but a professional dancer.
Chris Anderson wondered whether she was able to speak any English. He smiled at her and paused, examining the objects on the stall.
“Do you see anything that is of interest to you sahib?” asked the girl. Her voice was as beautiful as her face and figure, and Anderson was tempted for a moment to give the obvious reply, but his lips pursed into a slightly enigmatical smile.
“At the moment I am looking, thank you; your stall contains many interesting pieces of work.”
“My worthy uncle, for whom I am at present tending the stall is one of the greatest experts on Indian art and culture,” she said. “Here is a small carved ivory copy of the scene depicting the Bodhisattva bathing in the river Niranjana. The original comes from Boro-Budur in Java,” said the Indian girl. “It is a carving of great delicacy and beauty. Here is an interesting bas-relief,” said the girl in the dancing costume.
“Let me see if I can identify this,” said the doctor. “Surely, that is Indra riding on his elephant.”
“It is indeed,” replied the girl, “and that, too, is a copy, a copy of an original which comes from Bhaja.”
“And surely, this one must be Indrani.”
“Yes, it is indeed Indrani,” agreed the girl. “Here is a statue of Agni, carved in wood. I believe it was made locally, but I am not exactly sure where.” Dr. Chris Anderson was nodding.
“And here is another replica, beautifully hand carved. This time,” went on the girl, “it depicts Surya, and below him you can see the exquisite detail of the seven horses and the charioteer of the sun …”
“And as for this one,” put in Chris Anderson, “surely it was copied from the great statue at Konarak.”
“I am sure that you are right,” said the girl. She showed him many other beautifully carved statuettes. There were depictions of Durga slaying the demon and a strange, multi-armed bas-relief which showed Vishnu Narasimha seizing the demon Hiramyakasipu. Chris Anderson recognized it as a piece of work from Ellora. A strange statuette of two intertwined snakewomen was obviously meant to represent the Nagas; while Nagini was also represented and the doctor recognized this as a detail from the “Descent of the Ganges”. Here and there strange flying genii were carved and among the other treasures on the stall was a beautiful hand painted copy of the “Churning of the Sea.” It showed the Devas and Asuras using the body of the snake Vasuki, coiled around Mount Mandara, borne up by Vishnu in the form of a turtle. It was one of the strangest and at the same time most fascinating pictures which Chris Anderson had ever seen. There were statuettes of Brahma, and of Sarasvati; a strangely ascetic Rishi was depicted in an attitude of worship, while other statues depicted the practise of weird austerities and scenes from Jainist and Buddhist religious history, mythology and legend. The grimly frightening and well-known copy of the ascetic Gautama from Peshawar was represented in several places and the statues were all executed with an almost frighteningly skilful workmanship. A particularly beautiful carving of Lakshmi attracted Chris Anderson’s attention. But after thinking it over carefully for a few moments he put it down again.
His attention had suddenly gone from the stall to the girl—there was something wrong. For the life of him he couldn’t tell what. She was looking towards him and then away from him to some inner, curtained recess, at the back of the shop. When she looked back her face was a mask of the most abject terror that he had ever seen.
“Please—please—you must help me sahib! It is life and death and more than life and death! Hush!”
Anderson was not a professional psychologist for nothing. He stood still, acting perfectly normally, weighing up every facet of the situation and wondering what the devil was going to happen next.
Something, or somebody, was coming through from the back of the shop.
“Remember” hissed the girl in a tone so low the doctor could hardly hear, “my name is Uma. Do not forget … And now, sir,” she said, raising her voice appreciably, “you would like to take the Nataraja statue.”
“Yet, I think that’s the one I’ve decided on,” returned the doctor.
“It is a very, very fine reproduction,” said the girl coolly, but the fear in her eyes belied the tone of voice which she was using. The doctor was unable to see the stranger clearly, but he knew that standing behind her was someone—whether male or female, even, he couldn’t tell. He was aware, however, of something in the air, something sinister and deadly, but he was sufficiently in control of himself and the situation not to stare overlong into the shadowy patch where the presence stood. The girl laid both hands on the small statuette of the dancing Siva or Nataraja as she handed it over. Dr. Anderson took it from her and their fingertips touched for one split second. For that split second their eyes met, and for just that tiny fraction of existence out of Time Chris Anderson felt something that he had never felt before in all his thirty-five bachelor years. He had never met a woman in any land who impressed him as this frightened dancing girl did. Uma, she had said her name was. Vaguely and oddly it rang a bell somewhere; he felt he had heard it or read it. He had read much Indian literature an. . .
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