Shaynani And The Beauty. Flash Fiction, A Loving Offering To Jodah

Shaynani tossed and turned into the late hours of the night, yet could not sleep. His heart quivered and pulsated rapidly, and his body burned with desire. He had never seen a woman so beautiful, so enticing and now, lying in his bed some eight hours later, everything else paled into insignificance.

Shaynani recalled all the books he had read about the pinnacle of beauties: Helen of Troy; Queen Nefertiti; Cleopatra, the celestial nymphs and goddesses … slowly he began to comprehend elegance and charisma, such as he had never done before. Shaynani’s heart sank.

She was never going to be his, was she? Him, only a mere servant in a rich man’s house. Working class, with high school perhaps his greatest achievement, why would the boss’s youngest and most adorable daughter, take a second look at him? Indeed he was quoting disaster, he felt, simply by furtively glancing in her direction.

Filled with the allure of youth, she was all those afore-mentioned women rolled into one. Azure blue eyes; stately gait, slender to medium built and height, Ramona had a commanding appearance. She knew how to walk and dazzle, and Shayani fell victim to her charms and wiles.

Paradoxically, Shaynani was brought up in a devout household. His mother was accustomed to praying to Lord Krishna every day, and she walked in the ways of goodness and Love. As if by instinct, Shaynani knew that he should not lust so one-pointedly, but he was burning with passion and needed help rather quickly, to quell his now tormented mind.

Amidst all this chaos and waves of desire flashing across his brain, the young man, remarkably, remembered a mantra that his mother had taught him to induce sleep. It was 0300 hrs into the twilight, and Shaynani began to repeat this mantra. Somewhere between his mother’s mantra and his exhausting thoughts, he fell asleep…

That morning, Shaynani had a visitation from a most effulgent Being. Looking up, he found himself in the portals of another realm, and a luminous female, was giving him the most captivating smile. She reached out and touched him, and his body went into an acme of ecstatic states, such as he had never experienced, and could only dream of in his wildest fantasies.

He felt an unutterable Love and Joy unprecedented, sending him into a drunken stupor, and begged for it to stop. It was truly blissful! So blissful in fact, that Shaynani, being so unaccustomed to such lavish inner Love, found it all too much to embrace. He felt an astonishing happiness beyond measure, and yet, he begged inwardly, for the Celestial to stop this ambrosial Delight, or at least diminish it, so that he could assimilate the experience.

“I am only the messenger.” Said the Being as she smiled sweetly. “Where I come from, the happiness you can have is infinitely greater than I offer right now.”

Greater! Here he was flooded with something only understood in Silence, and the Celestial was telling him that there was a paragon of more to come. Shaynani began to remember his lusts; his mundane desires …as one by one they slowly faded into non-existence. The goddess smiled and slowly diminished from his dream…

When Shaynani’s mother came to his bedside that morning, she saw a most illustrious glow on his face, and the desires of the previous evening, had all dissipated from his Heart. His mother bowed in Gratitude, that the merits of her life of prayer, had taken root.

-Manatita, The Lantern Carrier. ©Copyrighted, 22^nd January, 2016.

~ Awakening The Inner Light ~