I know I was supposed to do a South Indian Folk Tale. But I figured since it’s Holi, why not do a short story about Holi. As a bonus episode. So here we are.
This story is set in Ancient India, a long long long time ago.
Candy was a villain. She terrorized all villages around her, of which there were many. And by terrorize, what I mean is that she used to walk into any village she liked, and grab any children she could find, and eat them. Yes, so not the kind of person you want to invite home to dinner.
No one tried to stop her. You might be wondering why. Well, it was because she had some superpowers. She was practically invincible.
She had received her powers not by being bitten by a radioactive spider, or by touching a meteorite. She had received them from a member of the Holy Trinity. If you haven’t heard previous episodes, the Holy Trinity consists of Brahma the creator of the Universe, Vishnu its preserver, and Shiva the destroyer. Quick side note there – Brahma is also my dad.
Candy followed the application process for getting her superpowers. The way the process works is that you have to pray to one of the members of the trinity. You can’t pray to them all at once and expect three wishes. If you really want three wishes, you’re better off looking for Aladdin’s magic lamp.
Instead you pray to one of them, say Brahma and after years and years of praying, Brahma will grant you a wish. And because Brahma is so easy to please, he sometimes gives you an extra wish for free. But Candy prayed to Shiva.
This was puzzling, to be honest. Because all three have the power to grant practically unlimited powers. And historically, Brahma has been the easiest of the lot to please. Maybe Candy had malice on her mind and assumed the Destroyer would provide more destructive powers than the Creator.
Regardless, standing in the Himalayas, she prayed to Shiva for years. Until someone appeared before her. It wasn’t Shiva, but it was one of his followers. He was carrying a clipboard. For him it was a short hop from his home in the Kailas range to the Himalayas, but he still managed to look grumpy about it.
He introduced himself by handing her a visiting card. Which said Assistant Secretary to Shiva, wish-granting division. His first remark was that Candy had prayed a long while, longer than average. It meant he was obligated to give her something.
“Don’t you mean Shiva is obligated to grant me my wish?”
“Yeah, he will but he can’t be in all places at once can he now? Besides, he generally delegates when the person praying is maybe not the most model citizen. I’m his little helper, tell me what you want”
“You know Shiva and I are alike,” said Candy, “He destroys the Universe, and I want to help you destroy… stuff”. She was careful not to reveal that what she meant to destroy was innocent human life.
“At this point I should probably ask what stuff, but I don’t care. In your case, I’m only here to fulfill a contractual obligation. So tell me again, what do you want precisely? Do you want a weapon? Do you want your enemies to catch the flu the day before they fight you?”
“I want to be invincible” said Candy
“That’s the type 3.a) package. Very well, fill in this form, sign here, initial here and I’ll get back to you in 10-20 business days” replied the irate little assistant secretary.
It was clear that Shiva hadn’t put his most trusted official on the job. But Candy had to do the best with what she got. And what she got was a lot. A whole pile of papers.
“Is there something easier?” she asked
“You didn’t want the paperwork? You should have prayed to Brahma.” was the reply.
“No, I meant an easier version of this paperwork? Maybe a helpful guide so I don’t make a mistake on the form?”
“You want the online version, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Here, I’ve emailed it to you now. The response time is 20-30 business days”
“But that’s a lot longer than the paper one!” Candy protested.
“What do you expect? Everyone and their mothers are filling in the online version. Now I’ve wasted enough time here. Don’t call us, we’ll call you”
Candy took in the time filling in a very complicated form, requiring multi-factor authentication, OTPs at various times, website downtime and all that. But she managed to put in her request to be made invincible. Because the electronic form required her to enter an exhaustive list of everything she was supposed to be invincible against. And that was exhausting. But she did it, and celebrated by doing the Dora the explorer “We did it” song in the end. She would not have celebrated if she knew that she had forgotten to add an exclusion in the form.
Several days later, she did get back confirmation that her wish had been granted. It was just a letter. The postmark did seem to show it was mailed from Mount Kailas, but she wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a prank. She decided to test it out on her pet cat that often scratched her.
She picked up the cat, and waited for its claws to scratch her arms as usual. And they did. But nothing happened. She hadn’t felt a thing, and her skin showed no marks of any kind. It was working! She tried a few more things slowly escalating the severity, but nothing happened to her. She felt unbreakable.
That meant she was ready to go…. Grocery shopping. And I don’t mean regular groceries and produce. For her, it meant she was going to snatch some children from nearby villages.
That is how she got started. And once she started doing that, she did not stop. Walking into the villages, she felt like a kid in a candy store, picking a child here, a child there.
Many villagers tried to intervene. None succeeded.
This continued for a long time, until finally fed up of Candy’s feedings, the villagers themselves prayed to Shiva. There is power in numbers, and it does matter what intent you pray with. That’s why this time Shiva himself appeared before the villagers.
They posted him on the situation and asked him to intervene. First things first, Shiva said. I have to dock that assistant secretary’s pay for not having performed a full background check on Candy. And for being grumpy. Service with a smile. That’s my motto for the wish-fulfilling division. Secondly, I have to thank Candy for herself suggesting the means to defeat her.
“And what is that?” Asked the villagers eagerly.
“Here see for yourself” said Shiva and thrust a sheaf of papers in their direction.
“No, no. We’ll take your word for it” the villagers said.
Shiva said “It’s obvious from page 233 section 2, paragraph 1 that Candy did not exclude mischievous little kids. So all you need is to round up some kids and you might get them to take care of Candy”
“But she eats our children” a villager protested
“Only the well-behaved ones” replied Shiva. “You need to teach your children to be mischievous”
The villagers would normally have hesitated at the advice but it had come from Shiva himself. So they all went home and taught their children how to be mischievous. Every child in the village was puzzled with the U-turn their parents had just executed. But they didn’t complain. The villagers were buying their children a lot of props.
The next day, Candy showed up ready to select her lunch from amongst the remaining children. And this time, the first person to step out was a plump little boy who walked right up and slammed a cream pie in her face. There was laughter all over as Candy wiped away the remains of the pie. But Candy wasn’t hurt by the laughter. She was actually hurt. For the first time in a long time, she felt pain. But that wasn’t half the end of it. She turned around to suddenly realize that some other boys had tied some firecrackers to her dress. Meanwhile another squirted her with a water cannon.
All the while, everyone was laughing. Candy, who was more puzzled than angry, fled the scene, never to be heard from again.
That’s it for the story.
Some Notes on the Show
Some cultures believe that Candy’s ejection from the village is the reason we celebrate Holi.
Her name in the original story is Dhundi. I’ve called her Candy because I couldn’t resist the opportunity to use the phrase Candy in a Kid’s store.
There are 3 primary theories about why we celebrate Holi besides Dhundhi’s ejection from the village. We have covered the main one back in Episode 20- The Aunt from Hell and Episode 21 – Final Destiny, which features Holika, a demoness on a mission to assassinate her nephew. The nephew prayed to Vishnu, the Preserver of the Universe, who stepped in and preserved the nephew’s life, but not Holika’s. Holi celebrates the elimination of that evil Aunt. Check the links in the show notes for the full story there.
Another explanation is simply that Lord Krishna was playing with his fellow CowHerders on this day. And by playing, I mean splashing water on them and drenching them.
The final theory about Holi’s origin is one I had alluded to all the way back in Episode 16, Six….teen flags. That was when Shiva the destroyer of the Universe opened his third eye and blasted Kama, the God of Love out of existence. Think for a moment that when you are celebrating Holi, you might also be celebrating how love died. Literally.
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll still do the folk tale that I promised last time, about the Prince going on a quest. Watch out for that in a couple of days.