Arjuna, Arjuna

When I was about 12 years old, I was standing under a tamarind tree in front of my house during a thunderstorm, along with some other people, and the tree was struck by lightning. I vaguely recall seeing a fireball -- like they show in movies -- before the lightning struck. [One of the women standing next to me -- a visitor to a neighbor - fainted and fell down. As she came to (i.e., returned to consciousness), she asked people to get her husband so that he could lift her and take her inside the house -- he desire that nobody but her husband touch her even in an emergency made a positive impact on me.]

For the next several years, I was very conscious of clouds, rain, thunder, lightning, and lightning rods. I would constantly be paying attention to the sky wondering whether even the little cloud in an otherwise blue sky would be the one to kill me with a lightning strike. There was huge mansion like building near my house -- built during British times, which had a lightning rod at the top. I craved for a lightning rod at the top of our very small house also.

Any metallic sound -- for instance, a metallic spoon or ladle banging against a brass vessel -- would make me jump out of my skin. Of course, the sound of thunder was worse. I mentioned my fears to Sanjeevi, one of my classmates. He told me that by the time the thunder sounds, you are out of danger, since the lightning has already occurred. He was absolutely right. However, this didn't help at all. It is the sound of the thunder that produced strong fear reactions in me. When this happened, I seldom stopped to recall that the lightning had already passed.

A few months after the thunderstorm incident, we were inside our house during another thunderstorm. One of my aunts who was visiting. She told us that we say "Arjuna, Arjuna", he will spare us from being struck by the thunderstorm. I tried this during the next several thunderstorms.

Over the years, I grew out of this fear.

I still have a very strong fear of heights. I find it very difficult to drive in mountains, with steep drop-offs in one or both sides. Maybe I should try the "Arjuna, Arjuna" trick the next time