Vampires and Sunburns

Did you know that not a single vampire has been to the Sunburn festival in Goa?

The Sunburn is a big party held every year in Goa towards the year end, and it continues for three days. It is an occasion where people who love the sun, music and general merriment are happy and contented.

And not a single vampire has been to this party.

It is not that vampires are a boring lot and do not appreciate festivities, but as most of you may know, they cannot go into the sun because tradition says, the sun literally burns Vampires.

So a vampire going to a party called Sunburn, is like a human going to a party called Funeral & Last Rites.

I agree that life for a Vampire has changed immeasurably in the last few decades with the inventions of products like the sunscreen lotion and the Twilight saga, but there remained much to be done if we, as a species, had to evolve.

The first step was that we must learn to step outside in the sun.

Although there has never been any reports of Vampires burning up into flames when he/she went out to get the morning newspaper, but none of them have actually dared to test this theory.

I personally felt that it is not true, and I was determined to put this superstition to test.

My name is Bhaskar, and I am an Indian Vampire, which is ironical, because Bhaskar, in Sanskrit means the Sun. They say it was my mother who named me Bhaskar, because she was one who absolutely loved the sun before she turned into a vampire. Later she confessed to her friend, that it was a price she knowingly paid for love, when my father, a Vampire, got drunk and bit my mother in an uncontrolled moment of desire at a dinner party. A few days after the bite she started showing a preference towards blood, which increased gradually, until by the end of the month she was an absolute blood-thirsty savage. This propelled her career in the corporate world and she became the CEO of her company in the next five years.

A year later, she resigned and joined an NGO to work with the blood bank. She felt the rewards were much greater. After a few years in the blood bank, my parents decided to start family and they adopted me.

I grew up normally and mostly had bats for friends. But being in India, life was easier, as the people were more accepting to my special condition. I had done my studies and like most of India, finished my engineering studies to join the computer and Information Technology industry. I did well in my career until I felt there was something missing in my life. I was not doing what I was meant to do.

It was at this point in time when I learnt about the Sunburn festival which happens in Goa every year in December.

I was intrigued.

In fact, it was the spark I was missing. I needed to get out in the sun. I just had to find a way to do it.

So, I did what anyone would normally do.

I asked a friend.

“Bro…I will go to the Sun Burn this December.” I said, and immediately turned my head away, as he sprayed the drink he was having on my face in a cough of shock.

“achmm…what?” he said after having recovered from the cough.

“The Sun Burn festival in Goa this December. This is June so I have about five months to get ready and I think I can do it.” I replied.

“Either you are drunk, or you have lost your mind. You want to spend three days in the sun, among thousands of people, drunk, dazed and what not, and would kill you the moment they find you are a Vampire….?” He said.

He was right. It had tremendous risks, possibly to my life. But it was also something that I felt I must do if my life had to mean anything.

“I know this sounds like a totally ridiculous idea, but I must challenge this superstition that we cannot step out in the sun. Just imagine, we just live half the life normal people do. They can stay out in the sun, and they even have the night to enjoy. While, we just need to do whatever we have to do in the twelve hours of darkness and the lock ourselves up in our coffins during the day. Can you imagine how much freedom we will get if we could break this sunlight barrier? How much more we can do, and how much progress will be made in our lives? If only I could challenge this theory and come outside of it alive, I would usher a whole new era of Vampire progress… and if it means that I have to put my life on the line by attending three days in Goa at the Sun Burn, then so be it.” I stomped down my glass of beer to emphasize.

I looked straight into the eyes of my friend and then to his girlfriend. Her jugular vein was throbbing. She was aroused, either by the alcohol, or my speech, or probably both. I looked away.

I had to prepare for Sunburn.

The Preparation

I did all the research I could do, by going through books and tales, and found that the heat from the sun had a lot to do with the superstition. So I decided to start interacting with fire, but I had to do it carefully, sensibly and… responsibly.

I bought a cigarette lighter and started playing with it. The first spark was the scariest and I had to do it all alone as none of my vampire friends were willing to be in the same room as me when I would light up the lighter.

I could not ask a human friend to help me with this, as I had kept my Vampire-ness a close secret from them since college.

So it was up to me and a cigarette lighter, alone in my room, trying to overcome the fear to strike it.

The month of June went and all I could do was hold the lighter in my hand and stare at it for hours, with a trembling thumb unsure whether it should strike the flint and let a flame out.

It could not. The fear was too high, until one night, in the middle of July, I let out a scream and did it. I slid my thumb across the flint and saw the sparks come out and there flickered a majestic flame. I could see it for a second before I threw the lighter away and crawled back into my coffin, scared, crying and wishing I did not have to go through it.

But I stuck to it and by the end of July I was lighting cigarettes for people at the bars. I already felt that I had experienced more than any Vampire and was very proud of myself.

It was time for me to begin the second phase.

The Second Phase

Even from a distance of 93 million miles, the sun was much stronger than a cigarette lighter flame. I had to increase the intensity. I needed to burn bon fires. From my cigarette lighter experience, I could tell that I was not any more vulnerable than other people from flames. My skin did not brittle away, or sizzled at its proximity. It was just fear I had to overcome. And I was still not very confident if I could handle big fires.

What if I did it wrong and it would spread?

And what If I actually could not withstand the bon-fire, then who would douse it?

Questions started pouring into my head until a book caught my eye - The Edge of Trust.

Something in the title caught my attention and I picked it up.

In the middle of the flight, Kiara woke up to go to the washroom. When she returned, she was too lazy to push her way into the middle seat. And with Rishaan readily offering to shift seats, the seating arrangement changed. With 20 minutes still remaining for the flight to land, a sleep starved Kiara took another power nap, this time holding Rishaan’s right hand more firmly. Rishaan’s other hand, though nervously moved to touch Diya’s. Her heart skipped a beat. Diya pulled her hand away. But a defiant Rishaan held her wrist again, this time firmly and more reassuringly. The changing behavioural dynamics between the three perhaps gave out a foreboding of what was to come in Goa.

Goa!

I felt it was sign of some sorts. I immediately felt that I should go ahead without further deliberation and tore up a page from the book. This was in ceremony as I wanted the first page I burnt, to be special. I lit up my lighter, and brought the flame close to the lower corner of the page. It started to catch fire and curled up. As the flame devoured the page I felt a faint wave of panic rise up in me. I breathed deep and it passed away. Encouraged, I decided to build a bonfire immediately in my room.

My “room” is the terrace of an abandoned building. I liked the place as it is far from the city and closer to nature. The nights were amazing here and in the day, I could quietly sleep without being disturbed by the city traffic. It was the perfect place to build a bon fire.

I got a few drums of water filled, in case things went out of control and collected some dry twigs from the ground outside. I tore a few more pages from the book and placed the twigs over them. Then I lit the flame from my lighter and touched one page with it, until all the pages were engulfed in flame.

The twigs started to crackle under the fire, and suddenly my face started burn.

I was scared. Was I dying?

I turned away and ran towards the water drum. My face was still throbbing with heat. I was in panic mode. I jumped towards the drum and thrust my face into the water. The coolness engulfed my face and neck and immediately I felt better. I could not check if my face melted because one of the inconveniences of being a Vampire is that, our reflections did not show up in mirrors.

I felt my face with my fingers and thought that it was fine. I turned around to see what has become of the bon fire; it was still burning with flames a foot high from the ground. I decided to go nearer and sat down a couple of feet away from my bonfire. I sat there watching it until it died out into a pile of red ambers. 

By November I was regularly building bon-fires on the terrace, sometimes even with big logs, with flames three feet high. The fear was no more and I had found out that I could withstand bonfires too. I had noted all my findings on a blog.

It was time for the final showdown.

 The Final Showdown

It was towards the end of November. The passes for Sunburn were available online. Time was ripe and the final hurdle now looked at me in the eye. If I passed it, I would bravely walk into the sun the next day.

That night as I slid opened my coffin and saw the moonlight kiss my face, I was eager towards a good night’s work. I had prepared hard for the final hurdle and had scoured the internet for all the information on one ancient exercise practiced by the great yogis in reverence to the power of the sun. 

I had memorized the yoga-asanas, or poses, by heart in the darkness of the night until I could do all the poses in one fluid motion.

Now I had to consummate the asana by doing it at the break of dawn. 

I decided to fast and took a midnight bath. I drank a few glasses of water as I wanted my body to be as hydrated as possible. I set an alarm for 5:15 am, fifteen minutes before sunrise, and lied down on the ground. I decided not to think about anything and just stared into the moon. It was beautiful. And I dared not to think anything beyond that and dozed off. I woke up at the sound of the alarm and quickly took another quick bath to regain my senses.

It was 5:25am. Time to start my asana.

I faced east and placed my palms together in a Namaste and closed my eyes. The next time they would open, they would see the sun.

 I took a deep breath in and extended my arms towards the sky.

Then from this position I bent down to touch my knees with my forehead. I heard the birds chirping and could feel a bit of heat on my bare spine. I took a deep breath and focused on my mental training over the past few months. I had learnt to control my fear.

In a fluid motion, perfected over the past few weeks, I slid my left leg back and arched my back like a bow.

Now my face would have been facing the sun. All the trainings of learning how to stop thinking and focus on doing, evaporated as the realization hit me like a wave of thunder. The future was unknown between the spectrum of death or freedom. 

I opened my eyes. 

There was silence.

The birds have stopped chirping and I could not even hear my heart thump. All that I was aware of was the orange globe in front of me – 93 million miles away.

Some external force took over my body as it moved voluntarily through more movements before finally settling down facing the sun with my palms in a Namaste. 

A feeling akin to freedom swept through my body as I realised that I had become the only Vampire who had done a complete Suryanamaskara.

I let the feeling sink in as my eyes welled up with tears and I stood there in the dawning sun.

Later I bought my pass to Sunburn and climbed into my coffin.

The sun was at its full glory and I laid there in my coffin without the lid, embalmed in SPF-50 sunscreen.

The End