Kamadeva, the ancient God of Love, woke up in a sheath of fire. Kama’s very first moments of existence were bathed in the destructive, intoxicating, all-powerful force of both Agni, God of Fire and Varuna, God of water, raging and colliding through his channels. He looked down to see a pyre now erupting in consuming blue flame hungrily crawling up his limbs. He looked around to see eleven men in the deepest of meditation. Pulsing lines of radiant, radiating power connected the third eye and heart chakras of each of the ten Prajapatis sitting in lotus position around the sacrificial pyre. The God, enveloped in the smell of burning flesh,  could not find a way out of such confusing pain.

Kama, deep in his shroud of fire, bellowed in pain, trying to vent out Agni’s purifying power with futility. The God turned and looked for his father and desperately called out, “Sri Bhrama! Sri Bhrama!” Bhrama, the Lord Creator, at the head of his ten agents of creation, did not even flinch. Kama’s screams seemed to only go up in dark, blinding smoke.

His father, despondent in the deepest of meditation, had his head tilted back, a radiant blue pulsing line shooting out of his gaping mouth and traveling to the farthest point in the sky. Or from the skies and heavens down into his father, Kamadeva did not know.

His rasping cries unanswered, Kama desperately leapt out of the sacrificial pyre, the barbs of the cracking, sizzling wood clinging to the God’s limbs. The blue fire followed, no, exploded out of Kamadeva, continuing to shroud the God, our embodiment of love, in burning pain. Huddled on the floor, Kamadeva continued to gasp for breath, trying to ignore the finger length thorns penetrating his limbs. He would not give in. He would not give up. But he didn’t know why.

All the Rishi’s heads were now tilted back, similar to their Lord, as if vomiting their souls to the heavens- or swallowing new ones, Kama didn’t know. He looked down at his green, crisping, charring, perpetually repairing hands covered in the unrelenting creative fires.

He then heard a wailing scream crack the sky in half. Sandhya, the object of all of Bhrama’s divine glory and vice, his dawn and his twilight, his beauty, his need, his purpose, his desire, Kama’s mother and the Gooddess made of both Heaven and Earth, arched her spine and let out a shrill, deafening cry of pain and desperation.

And after inspection, Kama realized it was from his own blue fire! “No, no, no!” Kama cried out. He couldn’t stop it. His blue flame, now uncontrolled, began to slowly incinerate one half of his mother’s crackling body. 

Kama, still aflame, desperately and vigorously shook his father, the God of Creation, in an attempt to break the sitting, motionless man out of his trance. “Father!” Kama cried. He shook his father. He yelled, he did his obeisances and he begged. He even hid behind his father, but to no avail. Sandhya, was still screaming in pain, rolling on the floor, like a log pulled out of the sacrificial pyre. Her wails rocked and vibrated Kama to his core. “NO! Why!” Kamadeva wept, slowly incinerating, slowly dying from the shame of his uncontrolled power. “What did I do to deserve this?” He bellowed one last painful scream in the middle of the web of blue sunlight connecting the third eye and heart chakras of Sri Bhrama and all ten Prajapatis to him, and to his burning mother. “Why?…” he thought weakly as his cries turned to sobs, then to wimpers.

As if Vishnu, the Lord of time, graced the sky with his warm bright love, every trace of power around Kama, his parents and the Prajapatis suddenly vanished. The fire, the roaring colors, the black smoke, the screams, the intoxication, the towering pillars of light shooting into the sky - all purified.

“By Varuna’s noose, what is this that has happened?” Bhrama yelled out in shock, breaking his once still silence. 

“Sandhya, your form! Half of dawn, half of dusk, half light, half dark, half of this world, and half in the infinity of the ether, like the mystery of the cosmos wrapped in feminine beauty, like the raging rivers of the mountains yet to come- I beg of you, please, tell me what has happened! And who is this man of wings and green skin, now running to you and clinging to you as you were his mother?”

Sandya bowed her head in her new celestial form, radiating with vitality, health and cosmic energy as if just blessed by the Ashwin Twins. “Oh by Shiva’s third eye, I cannot put to words what has happened, but surely what has happened was the most blessed of boons. I feel recreated my Lord! Please Sri Bhrama, do not ask of me further, for I am stunned and perplexed as you, as if I was lost far behind Maya’s veil”

Kama stood up, “Sri Bhrama, my creator and my Lord, I am your mind-born son. On my arrival, the power of creation, like Varuna’s life-charged waters, like a Bhraman’s boon, charged through my channels and connected all of us. Also, the power of desire, like Agni’s purifying fire, like a Bhraman’s will, flowed through me as well and into the new transformed Sandhya, my mother.” Kama bowed his head in worship of his father. “Whom am I to make proud, father?”[2] Bhrama then understood. He looked around the sacrificial pyre, the ten Prajapatis, still proudly inspecting the now reborn object of their desire, the magnificent Sandhya, radiating in attraction, as if draped in Dharma. “I now understand where you came from and what you must do” Brahma said, turning back to Kamadeva.

Kamadeva’s perpetually-awakened father continued, still half in shock, “Understand, my son, your power only comes from the one true source, a power stronger than either of me or Shiva.” He continued, “Let the minds of living beings be the aim of your arrows, Kamadeva. [2] Your beauty tells me of your name, Kama. Feeling the latent, intoxicating feeling of energy raging through his chakras, he continued “You will be called Madan and Manmatha also. You will be wed to Rati, the truest personification of beauty, and daughter of Daksha. And Vasanta, the God of Spring will be your brother.” He then turned to the Prajapatis, his agents of creation, “May Kama, having well directed the arrow, which is winged with pain, barbed with longing and has desire for it’s shaft, pierce all in the heart.”[1]

Kama, bowing at his father and guru’s feet, said “Let it be so.”