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Long shot of a room. At the far end, we see a young boy tossing and turning in bed. On the other side stands a giant cupboard with a mirror and a carving of a stag’s head. It is night and the only light comes from the moon that can be seen through a vast window.

Medium shot of the boy tossing and turning in the moonlight.

Close-up of the boy’s face. It is crunched up with tension and a frown crunches it even more.

The title card reads: ‘The young Prince Prahlad is having a bad night. Like every night, he is wracked with uneasy dreams.’

Medium shot of Prahlad’s mouth opening and a white, translucent ether seeping out of it. The prince is still tossing in his bed and is completely unaware of the mist-like emissions from his mouth travelling across the room and taking shape near the cupboard. The room is bathed in a light that seems to be moonlight reflected off and refracted from the white mist.

Long shot shows the mist slowly taking a human form. It hovers a few feet above the floor near the cupboard. It throws no reflection on the mirror. In fact, it is forming in the mirror.

Medium shot of the mirror which now shows a full-formed human body still swirling into complete shape. But instead of a human face, the head solidifies into that of a lion.

Close-up. The lion’s head blinks its lion eyes. It is calm and it ducks its head once.

Long shot of the room with the lion-man apparition hovering at one end and Prahlad still in his bed. The reclining figure lifts his hands up to his chest to form a pranam.

The lion-man lifts one of its legs, brings it up and across its waist, even as it keeps standing.

Close-up of Prahlad. He opens his eyes with a start.

Title: ‘Prabhu! Save me!’

Long shot. Prahlad is sitting up. The moon is shining. There is no one but the boy in the room. Iris-in on the moon.

Another day of storms and thunder. Another day of torment for Prahlad. It was as clear—clear as the waters that went up, down, through, under, over and out of the aqueduct that his father had installed downstairs—that it would be a terrible day. It wasn’t that the rains were responsible for him feeling this way. It was the knowledge that once again he would not make the grade. Being the only son of Maharaja Hiranyakashipu sounds like a delightful thing. Heir to the throne, free of confusion that affects so many other royal houses where squabbles break out as fast and furious as the thundershowers across the kingdom. But unlike the near-perfect sewage system of the capital, Prahlad’s heart was getting clogged with rising misery. He had failed his father so often, and he knew he would do so again today.

He remembered, with shame, his archery lessons. ‘Hold the bow finger below your chin. It’s pointless if you dangle it in front of your chest, like a woman,’ Hiranyakashipu would tell him with all the patience that the Lord of the House of Dwabhuja could muster. And that was a lot, considering the stories that Prahlad had heard about his grandfather Trinayanraje. His uncle Paranjaya had once let go of the rope in a tug-of-war contest. To set an example for all the male members of the House of Dwabhuja, Trinayanraje had ordered his son to spend six weeks in a farmer’s household. Paranjaya was to drag a heavy ploughshare every day, replacing two fine and relieved bullocks who tasted leisure for such a stretch after so long.

The most recent occasion when Prahlad had disappointed his father was when he had fainted at the sight of blood. The encounter had been postponed for as long as things like that can be postponed. To make matters especially humiliating, it wasn’t even human blood that was spilled. At the annual festival, twelve buffaloes were sacrificed at the altar of Lord Maheshwar. It was the usual thing. But unusual for Prahlad, for Queen Kayadhu had done her bit all these years to protect her son from seeing the bloody ritual. She knew that Prahlad had an instinctive squeamishness about blood. She had almost had to call for the calming herbs—dangerous if administered to minors—when the boy had once scraped a knee playing. Red pinpricks had appeared on the damaged skin, and the sight of these droplets, rather than any pain, had made young Prahlad scream in terror and agony as if he was being crushed to death by one of the crusher elephants his father used to deliver justice. So every year close to the anointed day Kayadhu sent out the message that the prince was stricken with some contagious ailment, or had developed stomach cramps (for which one of the cooks, rather unfortunately, received ten lashes), or had dislodged his shoulder bone after a rough tumble from the royal pony.

This time, though, it was not just any old buffalo sacrifice. It was impossible for Prahlad to get out of this one. He had reached the important age of fourteen.

And after he had fainted, and recovered—forced to, by his father’s mighty roar—Prahlad was told that, two days hence, he would have to undertake a much more severe task than blood-watching—and that his father would be close at hand to initiate him into manhood. To make matters worse, even this, like practically everything else in the world, would be initiated with another round of bloodletting.

The cutter in the hands of the man reflected the bouncing flames of the torches lighting up the hall. Beyond the hall was the newly constructed bedchamber. Hiranyakashipu was waiting, along with a hallful of elders and priests, for his son to come down from his room and take one of the most important steps in any man’s life. He remembered his own case and smiled to himself. His father had led him to the chamber where the lady, decked in gold and nothing else, waited on the bed. She was blindingly beautiful, as temple ladies were required to be, but as his father saw him to the door and closed it, he was too nervous to look at her.

‘Nothing to fear, Rajadhiraj,’ she had said.

It was important that no kind of stimulant was taken by the virgin prince. The time and occasion would come when stimulants could be taken and would be taken. But tradition dictated that the first time it would be done, it would be done with all the senses intact. The idea was to confront and conquer the fear and nervousness that comes with ignorance.

She had patted the white spread on the bed and had gently told young Hiranyakashipu to sit next to her. What had followed was, on his part, clumsy, terrifying, pleasurable. Parts of his body were guided into parts of hers, all the while, constant motion being of utmost importance. And when he cried out—a shrill, short unmanly sound—he had gained the right to claim something new in this world.

In the end he had come out of the room wiser, in charge of his body and with the knowledge that seeking the pleasure of a woman, like seeking victory in war, needed preparation and a mindset. The woman had kissed him fully on the lips, smiled a motherly smile and had bid him goodbye. On the other side of the door, the awaiting crowd had roared in approval and, to the sound of conch shells blowing, the cutter had come down on yet another buffalo.

Today, Hiranya’s son, Prahlad, was to gain that knowledge and correct the sinful blemish of being ignorant of bodily pleasures. Except he was late.

Climbing down the broad staircase, escorted by two junior priests and two royal guards, Prahlad was worried sick. His stomach had already heaved much of its contents out of his body. This, despite his mother having stayed up with him the whole of last night, trying to dispel as many fears as possible. She had even tried to make light of it by showing him parts of her own body, if only to tell her son that he would encounter them and many more in a totally different context but that finally nothing would be entirely strange. But he had shaken his head furiously till dawn, and twice broken into sobs.

It was useless, Queen Kayadhu thought, as she heard the drums beating downstairs. She prayed to her God, Lord Narayana, for some kind of help, considering she had no idea what she could specifically pray for, since she did want her son to know the pleasures of a woman—let no one doubt that she didn’t.

But it was Maharaja Hiranyakashipu who was now starting to harbour unpleasant doubts. Where was Prahlad? Where were the two temple priests and guards who were supposed to bring him to the ceremony? By sheer force of personality and writ, he had managed to negotiate many other embarrassing moments that his only son, his heir and pride, had brought on him. He had been patient and yielding also because he wanted to be considerate to the wishes of Kayadhu. But this was getting too much. Would Prahlad now refuse to be led by him to the bedchamber that awaited him? And would that be because the boy disapproved of his father, or was it something more fundamentally abhorrent?

Hiranya sprang out of his bedecked seat and rushed upstairs himself. The whole hall went silent with only the gurgle of the aqueduct audible. He swivelled round at the black stone banister, already thundering, ‘Prahlad? Prahlad!’ But before he could set a foot on to the second step, there was Prahlad, flanked by his four escorts, some twenty steps above him. The son froze seeing the father. Both man and boy remained planted where they stood as if momentarily transformed to stone.

It was Prahlad who first spoke. His voice had changed from its usual whinnying tone and, for the first time in his life, Hiranyakashipu was afraid of his own, beloved son.

‘Dearest father, do you not know who is king? This is the time for people—subjects and monarchs in this mortal world—to gird up their loins for the honour of the real king, the Lord who is everyone and knows everything,’ said Prahlad, boring his eyes into his father’s and emitting this guttural string of sentences. ‘Your false rule, father, will end and the true king shall rule again. I care little about what I am to do as prince or son. For my heart and my mind are free and settled in the true king’s worship. The person who calls me his son is no father of mine until he accepts this truth.’

Hiranyakashipu had started shaking with a shame that quickly transformed into rage. This was his son, his heir, his pride and joy that had spoken these words in a voice dripping with disdain. Understanding would come later. He first let out an amplified groan and turned around to rush back to the silent, dumbfounded hall. His head was throbbing with a ringing sound that, if anyone else could have heard it, would have been identified as metal on metal. As Hiranya went to grab the nearest blade that he could lay his hands on, Prahlad rushed up the stairs and barged into Kayadhu’s room.

His mother was resting on the bed. She propped herself up immediately on seeing the look on her son’s face. It was one of horror mixed with surprise and Kayadhu jumped up and dragged the bar across the door behind her sobbing son. He was crying, unable to hold back anything at all. His nostrils and now his face were wet with dripping mucus and he shuddered in recoil as he wept uncontrollably. Kayadhu held him and also shook with his sobs. Prahlad was momentarily blinded in the darkness of her embrace. All he heard was a muffled heart beating furiously through the silk.

As he lay there in his mother’s arms, oblivious of the first thumps on the barred door, his hands felt the soft body that lay under the rustle, the world-defying contours of her waist, the cloth-like surface of her back, the cliff-drop of her shoulders. Above all, he felt the pressure of his body on her body and he felt cushioned by her breasts. He was aware of every part of her body except her hands when the thunderous shout on the other side of the door demanded that he come out.

‘Come out you worm!’ he heard the roar above the thudding of the battering ram against the door to his mother’s room. In the overpowering silence that followed, he was in the arms of an armless woman. Raising his head a little, even as he clung to her tightly, he noticed that his running snot had formed a pattern on the cloth that covered his mother’s right shoulder. And then he noticed that the shoulder belonged to a human form with the head of a lion. Prahlad awaited his fate in the folds of something that was neither here nor there, neither of this world nor of that; something that was all body, no hands and as quiet as a relic.