Kara Saved?

At two years and nine months Karasura was giving enough reasons for his demonic parents to be very proud of him. His propensity for evil was immeasurably varied and thrilling. He squished ants and spiders with gurgling glee when he was all of five weeks old. Carefully collected photographs in the blue and violet “Our Little Flower” album that his parents maintained with loving indulgence chronicled his infant steps into the cavernous dark comfort of evil. There’s the one where he tripped the day care nanny with an innocent little side step – five months and twelve days. First terrible tantrum that could at its mildest deafen human life within a three kilometer radius- six months and eight days. Wanton carnage of neighborhood house- eleven months. Attempted sexual assault on pretty little Tanya at pre nursery- eighteen months and nine days. And so on.

So when Kara’s parents came across the below advertisement tucked away in the Obituary column of their daily newspaper, they could do little but exult.

Launch your Child into a Career of Evil. Horness their potential the old way. The sure way. No new fangled  brouhaha. Just sheer Talont tapping. Contact us now!

Contact they did and found out that the advertisement came from the truly unpleasant highly unrespectable pinnacle of His Unholiness himself, manifest malevolent presence and true leading shadow for the discerning evil doer. Thus, Karasura was entrusted into the two year career program at the tender age of two years and two hundred and fourteen days with much jubilation amidst the demonic race and futile moaning and groaning amidst the do gooders and the impotents.

Kara found himself a little out classed in his early days in the class of sixty six. He was easily repulsed by the girls in the class who were mostly being trained to be exceptionally evil witches.  His mild attempts at evil against them had resulted in toad transformations, wretched illness and family line curses. The boys were more accommodating and indulged in back stabbing, merciless thrashing and friendly dismemberment.  However soon they all realized that Kara’s talent for scheming and plotting great evil was unrivalled. This led to further thrashing and cursing- only bettered by the lacing of warm envy.

Most classes were taken by two disciples of His Unholiness called Nadhu and Keru who also happened to be the evil incarnation of two extremely wicked asteroids that frequently demolished planets with intelligent life and attempted solar flares and eclipses. Kara had been their fan since the day he was born and had used their methodologies in his neighborhood carnage experiments. So had several of the other boys in his class.

His Unholiness was of course a presence felt and cherished but never really ever even glimpsed at by any in the class. The only ones who ever got to see Him, or so the folklore went, were the ones who experience break down of some kind. There are cases whispered about trainees who woke up one day distraught at the stereotyping of evil or questioning the nature of moral duality. Some supposedly have even experienced a mild form of depression that could manifest as compassion for the impotents. Such were the cases that got to meet His Unholiness and not much is ever heard of them again. Such cases were too rare anyways. A once in few centuries phenomenon- if folklore is to be believed. Folklore, but, is for the weak.

Kara’s progress was swift and promising. At the end of his first year, his parents received a list of his meritorious achievements and there was much joy and evil revelry in their neighborhood for a week, till a God was sought to intervene.

Kara had purged through sheer scheming genius fourteen of his classmates by inciting a little war that had all of them killing each other in great merriment. He had been so magnificently revolting that ten girls and nineteen boys had grudgingly accepted him as their Great Leader. This was a stroke of genius. The declaration of Leadership was done with such unholy style that eleven trainees switched sides and became good. They were of course eliminated from the race. There were only eleven trainees who remained undecided or as prospective rivals for Kara in class in year two.  Four of them were fallen angels, who are more often than not known to be more style than substance. Three were girls, who after a while decide to get married to a demon and move on, sooner or later. Two were hypocrites who are prone to get very confused about their stance given the right amount of time. One was on his way to becoming an atheist and nobody ever took some one who took himself so seriously, that seriously. That left Basma as the sole true contender to Kara. And Kara knew better than to take Basma lightly.

Basma was the kind of demon whose cunning rested in being mistaken for someone good by the non demon world. Most of his acts looked so well intentioned. His demeanor was kind and almost ridiculously foolish; as if he was incapable of anything, why bother about him doing something evil. This was of course a façade. He tricked people by being the helpless baby tapping into their potential for good and leaving them as dry shells. His well intentioned acts of forgiveness, warmth and charity were subtly calculated measures for future profit. Basma’s parents ran the business wing of the Demonic universe and you could see that he had learned well the dark subtleties of being evil at such a tender age. After all he was a good nine months younger than any one in his class and well below them all on the weight and height charts- he was actually still measurable on them. A true demon by age three should be of proportions beyond any chart.

Kara’s parents were worried a bit and wondered if they should start a penance- a terrible and long penance that would shake the firmament- for his victory. They did start the penance as well, but out of sheer habit were sidetracked at the time of wish fulfillment and asked for collectible Wonder Woman play cards instead. They were tricked by the Gods.

When Kara heard of this he was understandably furious and after a few days of unleashing arbitrary cruelty and violence on his classmates and the world at general, he decided to vindicate his parents faith in him, by coming up with a fool proof device to outsmart Basma.

The opportunity arose in his eighteenth month at the Training, when the Fourth Anniversary Celebratory Parents Teachers Meet was announced. Demons from across the known universe would be invoked and invited to interact with the two Teachers, indulge in mutual hatred envy and occasional hero worship, collect autographs, cheat en masse and thus participate in some unfettered celebration of evil. Their descendants and/or wards would entertain them and even come up with a play soaked in depravity for them. By default Basma and Kara were made in charge of the entertainment and asked to share credit -if they managed not to kill each other- for the direction of the play.

Both budding demon geniuses realized that this was their sole opportunity to establish unquestionable sovereignty in class. Kara took the lead. Kara started a cleverly envisioned newspaper that detailed for a month the preparations for the Meet and fed ribald sleazy stories to keep the class entertained and enthusiastic through the days of groundwork. This was just an excuse for a smear campaign against Basma. Every day the paper carried an article on Basma’s benevolent deeds to mankind, much to the revulsion of the readers. Basma was forced to reply every day through a Letter to the Editor, justifying the deed and explaining the true evil intent behind it. His letters were poorly written and he tried so hard to balance self explication with some vagueness around the evil master plan, that it led nowhere. An evil master plan once revealed is never the same and most often just comes out sounding ambitious, ill conceived or ridiculous. Some were shocking and nicely depraved but lost their impact when they went through Kara’s horrid editing team.

A week before the Meet, Basma was nowhere to be seen. Demoralized and vanquished he wrote an anguished final Letter to the Editor, admitting defeat and hailing Kara as the Great Leader. He then to all appearances isolated himself for deep introspection – the kind that normally leads one into a philosophical labyrinth and a meeting with His Unholiness.

Kara’s joy could know no bounds, and that was not any different from the norm. Demons are known to be thus. His parents came to the Meet too. Other demons tried to poison them out of sheer envy, much to Kara’s parents pride and joy. The play that featured every form of imaginable badness and some beyond was hailed by everyone as fantastic entertainment and the theatre was destroyed in appreciation. Two actors were also killed. Basma’s parents sulked around and were invited to come for some private counseling the next day by Nadhu and Keru.

When all the fun was over and the demons from across the known universe were finally exhausted and ready to call it a day, Basma emerged from his isolation and tried to slip unnoticed into Kara’s End of Meet class meeting. His parents who were on their way out noticed him and pretended to look elsewhere in shame. Kara noticed him too but pretended to be too busy stroking the vipers on his demon girl friend’s head.

Basma walked up to Kara and whispered the strange and terrible truth about life and after life in his ears. Kara’s masculine chest drooped. His fingers entwined into a viper and they bled profusely, bitten by his ignored girlfriend. His talonts were forgotten. His vim, a whimper. He looked at Basma with silent red eyes, pleading mutely to tell him that was not true. Basma just kept standing around looking his old ridiculously helpless self. With little hope and future, Kara the Great Hope of the Demon Race, took Basma’s extended hand and walked silently into shared isolation and depression.

Folklore says that Basma was long dead and what Kara saw was an illusion- a trick by the Gods. The truth about life and the afterlife can never be for a Demon to know, it says. Folklore, but, is for the weak.