Fire Bath

A dead body is seen by a shepherd boy Beera. The body is totally burnt. The inspector goes in search of clues. There is a small shirt label which is taken to the tailor to look out for the identity of John Doe.

The search ends up in knowing that the dead person is a youth Chandru who was crazy about joining movies. There was this friend Ravi who was trying to help to get a chance in films. Ravi is a junior artiste. He entices Chandru to shell out money. All the fingers point out towards Ravi. How the inspector finds out is a tedious process, but of course, interesting!

For the climax, I used a real incident which had just then occurred in a village in Karnataka. The villagers used to sacrifice a buffalo as part of some festival. That particular year, a social activist attends the function and protests against the sacrifice. He says ‘over my dead body!’ Finally the villagers give in and remove a little blood from the buffalo using a syringe and ‘please’ the goddess.

This incident the murderer doesn’t know because he was not there. He was busy in killing his friend by using fire. He says that he was in the village during buffalo sacrifice since it was happening every year from his childhood and even before.

As luck would have it, that becomes the last nail on his coffin.

I sent this story to a monthly magazine called Bhavana. The editor of the magazine was Mr. Jayant Kaikini, today’s most prolific lyricist of Kannada movies. He has written some of the most meaningful songs which have been very melodious as well.

He sent me a letter (or did he call me? I don’t remember!) asking me to meet with him. I went to his office in Vyalikaval. He was appreciative of the story. But he said that the story is little long and dragging a bit in some place. Could I be able to trim it a little?

So, trim I did. The story’s name is Agni Snaana meaning ‘fire bath’

This theme was given by Anil, my friend. I had seen a charred body in a sleeping (and about to get up) posture during one of my visit to Chikmagalore (on my way). That became the opening scene of the story.

When I was writing this story, my son who was in 6^th standard got inspired and wrote a mini story in Kannada. I sent it to Bhavana, because they were publishing stories from kids on one page. Out of the blue, even his story appeared! His friends do not believe that he has written it because his father (that’s I) is a writerJ

Mr. Kaikini mentioned that when he saw the surname being same, he thought he might be my relative (son).

Well, some other story some other time!