In this episode, we’re continuing the story of Angulimala or Ahimsaka. If you’re familiar with Star Wars, Ahimsaka was to Angulimala what Anakin Skywalker was to Darth Vader.
In the two previous episodes, we saw Ahimsaka’s dad, who was the royal priest and astrologer, predict that his newborn baby would become a terrible criminal.
Though the priest wanted to put his baby boy in Prison to prevent the crime, the King intervened when he learned that the boy would not lead others into a life of crime.
So Bhaggava and his wife Mantaani brought up the child. They kept him away from all lightsabers and other weapons, and also named him Ahimsaka which means non-violent.
The boy did grow up more academically inclined. He was the absolute top of his class all through school, and after acing his entrance exams he got to go to the best university – Takshashila. Kinda like the Harvard of Ancient India, and indeed the entire Ancient world.
Things were going really well for Ahimsaka at school. Except for his jealous classmates, who decided to compensate for their academic inferiority by getting him into trouble with their professors.
Unfortunately for everyone, their carefully crafted trick worked.
At graduation time, instead of collecting tuition fees and handing him a diploma, their professor, Master Yodha, instructed Ahimsaka to bring him a thousand right-hand forefingers.
Seeing as this was Ancient India where teachers’ words were law, Ahimsaka did not refuse. This is where we shall continue the story today.
Ahimsaka was walking away from Takshashila. Now he would have to somehow collect fingers from all over the place.
His first instinct was far from gruesome. He could attempt to persuade a thousand people to sign over the rights to their forefingers to Master Yodha. They could treat it like fiat money, fiat fingers if you will.
He could start a drive to get a thousand people to sign a piece of paper that said “I promise to pay the bearer one right fore-finger”
He started his finger donation drive, or rather a promise donation drive. However, he encountered some difficulties. Turns out most people he met had actually gone to Nalanda University, a very famous rival of Takshashila. Think Harvard and MIT or IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi.
After great difficulty, he managed to finagle a thousand signatures. In most of the cases, he had to pay people to get them to sign, and he had to sign a disclaimer himself that he would not force them to give up their fingers.
If all that sounds like hard work, it was! Student life is never easy.
Well, after all that hard work, imagine Ahimsaka’s disappointment when he returned to Takshashila, only to find that that Master Yodha would not accept fingers in fiat currency. I wanted physical delivery.
Ahimsaka choked out that he would certainly try. But, Master Yodha had been blunt – “Do or do not, there is no try” he had said.
Ahimsaka began an organ donation drive next. He set up shop by the highway, in the middle of the forest. Including a banner that said “Ang Daan, Sarvshreshta Daan”, except he had modified it to say “Anguli Daan, Sarvashreshta Daan”.
Unfortunately for Ahimsaka, people weren’t buying it. They refused to sign up, seeing as their donations would only benefit a dodgy old professor in Takshashila.
A few parents however did not walk away, at least not immediately. These were parents of prospective students hopeful of getting into Takshashila. They did rush away when they realized that Ahimsaka wanted their fingers here and now, and not at a vague future date.
When no one fell for that either, Ahimsaka tried deceit. But people were simply far too cautious to try out his fun finger guillotine, or his variation of the Chinese finger trap with the knife in the middle. They said they’d rather not. Even when he said that he found their lack of faith… disturbing.
Ahimsaka had had absolutely no success so far. A whole year had gone by and he had nothing to show for it! Meanwhile, others who had started University much later than himself were graduating while he was hanging around trying to raise his tuition fees! Annoyed, upset, frustrated, angry, sad all at the same time, Ahimsaka decided to try one last time before giving up, going home, and forgetting this whole education thing. Maybe he’d become a farmer. Physical labor jobs were always in demand, according to an article he had read on LinkedIn.
As luck would have it, a cart rolled up. In the lead was a driver who looked quite ill. It was a miracle he was able to steer his cart at all. Actually, the drive did a pretty bad job of steering. Instead, he crashed straight into Ahimsaka’s stall!
The driver apologized to Ahimsaka who was trying to pick up the pieces. “Let me give you a hand,” he said as he stepped off his cart. Unfortunately, though, that’s the last thing he said. The poor chap collapsed and had breathed his last. Ahimsaka’s first instinct was to call an ambulance, the police, the man’s next of kin. But then he remembered the man’s last words – he had offered to give Ahimsaka a hand! A hand! And all Ahimsaka needed was just a finger.
Ahimsaka built up the courage to whip out his swiss army knife. In minutes, he had pocketed the grisly souvenir from his very first victim. “One down, Nine hundred and Ninety-nine to go,” he said, as he scanned both directions of the highway for a sign of traffic.
After that, it got worse for everyone, because it got easier for Ahimsaka. Ahimsaka learned that things worked in his favor if he didn’t wait for his victims to collapse just as the first one had.
In fact, he did all he could to hasten their demise. Whether they liked it or not.
His collection began to grow quickly. He tried to store his collection in a tree, but scavengers kept getting at it. He resorted to wearing his collection in a string around his neck. That gave him his nickname. Angulimala – which literally means a finger necklace.
Over time, and in an attempt to make up for all the lost time, Angulimala was especially horrible, sparing no one irrespective of age or gender. The indiscriminate destruction he had caused, caused grief in hundreds of villages and thousands of families. Even the King’s soldiers sent to capture him suffered the terrible fate of other victims.
This goes to show, that no matter how much parents may try to shield their children from something, those children will discover it for themselves once they go to University,
Pretty soon, Angulimala was inching closer to his goal. Meanwhile, the news of this crazy bandit had spread like wildfire all over the country. It was only when the news hit Bhaggava and Mantaani’s Kingdom that Mantaani realized that this bandit must be her son. That would nicely explain other things she had learned. She had reached out to Master Yodha after her boy failed to return after the expected 4-year graduation window. But Master Yodha had claimed that the boy had been kicked out of University for failing to complete a simple practical exercise.
Mantaani knew this must be her boy, and that this was the prophecy come true. She had to talk some sense into him. The newspaper reports were unanimous in condemning him, but she believed there was still good in him. She set out for the forest where he was last seen.
Angulimala meanwhile was whistling and idling away his time. The media had been bad for business. All those news stories and twitter hash tags that were trending meant no one in their right mind would bother traveling through this forest for a while.
Maybe he’d give it another day. He was up to 999 fingers anyway. It would be a shame for him to make the trek all the way over to another place just for one other finger.
Just one finger? Hmm, he looked down at his own right hand and stared. He then laughed and shook off that weird feeling and went about ordering food. Now even Grubhub and Doordash deliveries were done by drones, otherwise, he could have secured the last finger that way.
When no one showed up the next day either, he finally decided to move. Just then he saw someone near the horizon. It was an old lady. Nice, this would be easy he thought.
He grabbed his weapons, unpackaged a complimentary “I met Angulimala” car sticker, and got out a notebook to take down his newest victim’s next of kin info. This is how his gruesome business had evolved.
But when the old lady got closer, he realized with a shock that this was Mantaani, his mother. Oh well, but at least he had no need to collect next of kin info. Consider myself informed he thought.
His mother hugged him tightly. In between sobs, she expressed her despair at the beast he had become. She wanted desperately to help him somehow but didn’t know how to. She confessed she thought he was still a good boy. He had done some terrible things, but there was still good in him she said.
And as if to stop him from making her his victim, she unwrapped a package for him. She’d made his favorite food – his Gajar ka Halwa. Sidebar here – Gajar ka Halwa is a dessert made of carrots that’s a specialty in many parts of India.
Angulimala devoured it. It was delicious, just like all the times during his childhood she had made it for him.
Sitting together after lunch, Angulimala thanked her for the delicious meal. It was truly the best he had ever had, she shouldn’t have put herself to so much trouble on his account. But now that she had, he was going to make her his victim.
Shocked, his mother stared at him open-mouthed, as he got out his weapons and advanced menacingly.
Next Time
We’ll leave it here. We’ll conclude the story in the next episode, where we’ll see the kind of stimulus you might need to change a beast into a human being.