In the dark zone

We sat on the edge of the crater of sorrow, defeat and destruction, which was much like the crater of a great volcano, with the inferal interiors obscured by pumice and granite. We saw many yakShIs, apsaras, pishAchis and rAkShasis pass by in silence. We were haunted by the memories of the fierce battle at the pAShaNDa hill in our native land in 2003. It was a demon-haunted world into which we had slipped after that battle. The chiefs assembled for the kuriltai, but we could not go there because we wanted to avoid any further pain of the same prying questions. We summoned the rAkShasas plaguing the internal world and asked them what was the cause of this dismal darkness. One of them replied: “it was daNDa yuddha which was your undoing.” The other replied: “It does not matter whether you failed to use daNDayuddha in the battle or not. It was all already destined that you would slip that way.” Yet another replied that the rAkShasa mAyAvi was the cause. We were drowning in this cacophonies of rAkShasas shouting in the demon haunted world.