I don’t know how long I was hunted in Raurava. In that realm of blood and terror, time had no meaning. It was a constant cycle of being torn apart, remade, and hunted again. But eventually, the Yamduts dragged my tattered soul away from the plains of the Rurus and into the next Naraka.

The air changed. The scent of blood was replaced by the thick, greasy smell of a kitchen where the deep-fryer has been running all day. The ground was no longer cracked earth, but a slick, oily stone floor. All around me were enormous vats, the size of small houses, made of a dark, bubbling metal. Fires roared beneath them, and from the tops of the vats, a thick, acrid smoke rose into the blood-red sky.

This was Kumbhipaka. The Hell of Boiling Oil.

“This punishment is for those who cooked living creatures for the pleasure of their own tongue,” a Yamdut’s voice resonated in my mind. “For those who took a living, breathing being and subjected it to the torment of fire and oil, simply to satisfy a momentary craving.”

A memory, sharp and sickening, flooded my consciousness.

It was from a vacation in Goa. We were at a beachside restaurant. A man was pulling live crabs and lobsters from a tank and throwing them into a vat of boiling water. I remember hearing the faint, frantic scrabbling sounds they made against the metal before they fell silent. I remember ordering a plate of fried fish just moments later, not even thinking about the connection.

Here, in Kumbhipaka, the connection was everything.

The Yamduts dragged me to the edge of one of the giant vats. The heat was immense, blistering my soul-body even from a distance. I looked down into the vat. It was filled with a thick, black oil, bubbling and spitting like a living, malevolent thing.

There was no ceremony. There was no warning. They simply lifted me and threw me in.

The pain was beyond anything I have ever experienced. It was not a cut or a burn. It was a complete, instantaneous immersion in pure agony. The hot oil was a living fire that clung to every inch of my being, searing my spiritual flesh from my bones. It was a pain so total, so absolute, that there was no room for thought, no room for a scream.

My consciousness was simply erased by a wave of pure, boiling torment.

And then, just as quickly, I was whole again, being fished out of the vat by a giant, iron hook. I was dangling over the boiling oil, my body trembling, before being dropped back in for another round of annihilation.

With each plunge, a new memory.

Plunge. I am Dimple, in my kitchen. I am frying fish for Rohan and the children. The smell of the hot oil, the sound of the sizzling fish—a sound I once found comforting. Now, it was the sound of my own damnation.

Plunge. I am Maya, at a friend’s house, eating fried chicken wings, laughing and greasy-fingered, completely oblivious to the life that was sacrificed for our snack.

Plunge. I see Rohan, at a work function, ordering the ‘catch of the day’, not caring how it was killed, only how it tasted.

I saw the lives of the creatures we had so casually consumed. The fish pulled from the water, gasping for air. The chicken in its cage, knowing only fear. The lobster, boiled alive. Their terror, their pain, their final, agonizing moments—it all became my own.

In Kumbhipaka, the law was simple and perfect. For every life you had cooked for your pleasure, you would be cooked in turn. For every creature you had boiled or fried, you would be boiled and fried. It was a hell designed by chefs. A perfect, inescapable recipe of consequence. And I knew, as they hooked me and lifted me for another plunge, that I had a very, very long time to spend in this kitchen.

Index of: Journey Of Hell: The Unforgotten Promise

• A Warning to the Reader
• A Mother’s Testimony
• Chapter 1 The God of Small Betrayals
• Chapter 2 The Sins of a Mother
• Chapter 3 The Soul and The Body
• Chapter 4 the Road of a Thousand Regrets
• Chapter 5 A Desert of Burning Rage
• Chapter 6 The Prison Before Birth
• Chapter 7 A River of Self
• Chapter 8 The Twelve-Day Ghost
• Chapter 9 The Refusal
• Chapter 10 The Universal Law
• Chapter 11 The City of Hounds
• Chapter 12 A Forest of Lies
• Chapter 13 The Weight of the World
• Chapter 14 The Price of Meat
• Chapter 15 The Question of Hope
• Chapter 16 The City of Strange Torments
• Chapter 17 The Road to the Court
• Chapter 18 An Interrogation Before Judgment
• Chapter 19 The Hall of Judgment
• Chapter 20 The Book of Deeds
• Chapter 21 The Currency of Hell
• Chapter 22 Tamisra, The Hell of Darkness
• Chapter 23 The Anatomy of a Jailer
• Chapter 24 Andhatamisra, The Betrayer’s Hell
• Chapter 25 Raurava, The Hell of the Hunted