“I see the coming of another age, where barbaric kings rule over a vicious, broken world where puny, fearful, hard men live tiny lives; white hair at sixteen, copulating with animals, their women perfect whores making love with greedy mouths.
“The cows dry, sterile; trees stunted, lifeless. No more flowers, no more purity. Ambition, corruption, commerce; it is the age of Kali, the black time. The countryside a desert, crime stalks the cities, beasts drink blood and sleep in the streets, all the waters sucked up by the sky, scalded earth scorched to dead ash.
“The fire rises borne by the wind, fire pierces the earth, cracks open the underground world, wind and fire calcinate the world, immense clouds gather — blue, yellow, and red — they rise like deep-sea monsters, like shattered cities. Forked with lightning, the rains fall, the rains fall and engulf the earth; twelve years of storm, the mountains split the waters, I no longer see the world.
“Then the primary god — when all that remains is a gray sea, without man, beast, or tree — the creator, drinks the terrible wind and falls asleep.”
Shiva (as Hanuman, through Yudhishtira)
The Mahabharata, Jean-Claude Carrière
