Neptunian

She portrayed a glamorous image of Bollywood with silky long black hair. She wore a parrot green mini dress and a pair of plastic high heels of the same colour as she stepped down from the Ambassador, a white car with white tires. She was greeted by the elderly couple who always maintained her management, believed of to be simple and an easy going couple to work with, since she did her debut in 1973 and now she’d been awfully a successful actress in several male-dominant Bollywood movies appearing next with those heroes.
Aries Khan was an only daughter of a Bombay merchant. Her parents got a child after fourteen years of marriage on 4th April 1949 in Gujarat. She did early schooling at St. Xavier’s College and later at Ahmadabad University when she was discovered by BR Bishar.
Again after some blockbuster films, she got an assignment to do a movie for BR Bishar in 1975.
Aries Khan arrived at Kalol, 14 miles north of Ahmadabad, driving on her own and this area where she grew was pretty familiar. This flagrant and whitish lady removed her large sunglasses and glanced at the bonnet that got sprayed of dirt from the puddle lanes. She also got a complaint of some noises coming from its engine, she bent slightly to check for herself and hair fell down below knees.
“What’s the matter, darling?” Lady Binth asked.
“Nothing, I thought I heard loud noise from the engine. So, where are the guys?” She straightened up. She stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and twenty-six years old. Aries Khan never seemed to complain with matters like this and often the easiest outgoing actress to handle by the managers, actors, directors and producers.
“They are all waiting for you inside. I will see to that fault.”
“Leave it and get my bags in.” It was a wet day and cloudy.
Aries Khan was shown to a chamber where the producer and crew gathered for a late afternoon tea – a habit borrowed from the colonial British era. BR Bishar debriefed them about shooting a harvest dance outside the Temple of Kapileshwar Mahadev for his new movie titled ‘Joie de Vivre’. She had already practised her lines. Then he and the producer left them for a moment.
There entered a horrible man wearing a turban and his huge moustache turned up like a Maharaja. He was the village chief, 50 years old and running few local shops. He saluted in the Hindu custom, “Aries! You are beautiful. I admire you most in Bollywood. Allow me to present this gift from me, a kurta spun of silver kasab threads, handmade by the ladies, highly decorated with embroidery, it’s heavy but soft.”
She could hardly believe what she was holding in hand and paused speechless.
“I have arranged my suite at this residence for you to stay.”
Her counterpart from Bombay smaned from behind. Sargan Bhatt was the hero in Bishar’s movie. She realised a new insight.
Somehow it disturbed to bring out arrogance, “Huh! So what? You have been expecting me? How dare you talk to me that way?” Aries Khan said unexpectedly, putting down the gift, rather not happy with the idea to know she was going to sleep in his bedroom. Besides, in her maverick it was jealousy she harboured not to be a host around but she actually belonged to Gujarat, born in Junagadh.
FK Gulam said, “What’s the matter? I appreciate what you do. You are the first Gujurati to have reached such success. Congratulations.”
“I know you…” When she did schooling in this surrounding, she knew him as an arrogant Indian spun of odorant yarn and having a lot of gold in possession. She said nothing more to contain with remorse, moved away and sat down by Lady Binth to discuss about the arrangement she did not like. It changed her mood and lost an appetite. She whispered, “Why this kurta? Why not a sari? Do you think he’s got an interest in me?”
BR Bishar entered the hall with the production team. They soon learnt of the situation. Producer asked, “Did he use bad language?”
“No, no, nothing of that sort. He’s genuine and generous.” Sargan said.
Aries sat silently while the producer told her, “You’re a girl of the hip Juhu crowd and you shouldn’t bother about all that! You know better, these folks are sometimes distasteful but you shan’t ignore them.”
Aries smiled frowning and she was just about to say something when BR Bishar expressed, “No, Gulam will not speak disrespectfully. He’d be careful to pick his words and probably planned a dialogue like he had chosen the gift since he was expecting her. He’s a mogul in the village and still not married.”
Aries shrugged disgustedly with an uneasiness and embarrassment. She refrained to comment further. She grabbed Lady Binth’s arm and headed to the exit.
“I do not feel like staying here. I shall leave to Ahmadabad,” she said.
“You are not staying for dinner! There’s a party, remember! They throw it for you. You’re the one. They’ll miss you, honey.”
She twitched making a face at her, “Err! I get naked and dance in front of the Maharaja. I don’t know how Bishar seems to know him so well.”
Lady Binth said, “Thunderclouds are gathering, there’s a storm in the way. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave. That room isn’t bad on the top floor over the road.”
“No, but the gift is. Keep my luggage here. I will go to the city tonight. I will be back before noon for the shooting.”
Aries decided not to stay, climbed the car and drove away turning on the headlights. Aries Khan was a modern, Bohemian Indian woman of the seventies, very beautiful and awfully talented. She could be jovial and important to people to look up at a central focus of a limelight but there were times she could also become an elitist. Lady Binth knew her very well.
FK Gulam felt frustrated to receive a treatment like that from a girl he so admired and honestly didn’t mean anything by giving her a kurta. He called the Kalol police and told someone to watch her back.

Thunderclouds were hanging low and sudden lightening cracked splitting the sky in repetition as she left the outskirts of the village in her Ambassador car. It started a heavy downpour. She picked speed heading south to Ahmadabad, driving at 40 km per hour. It was dark around and the wipers cascading water from the windscreen. In fifteen minutes, Aries passed Sabarmati and closing on Sardar Patel Ring Road, over a kilometre away, when she ran into engine trouble. It sputtered to a halt. She managed to park the car on a side. Suddenly, she heard laughter – first time ever in her life and one which haunted for the rest of her life. It came right from the backseat, pretty noisily and astringently. She threw her head with shock and fright. For a moment she just sat bedazzled and could not even scream.
When she turned to face the road, Aries saw a topless woman standing in the rain, in the headlights of the car. Her arms folded and an armband on her biceps, wearing a long golden necklace around her neck and a silver girdle on her waist, wet in a black wrap stuck on her legs. For a moment she sat paralysed observing the dancing and splitting image washed by the water wiped off the windscreen. Then the girl moved away slowly. Aries noticed she wasn’t walking but floating a good six inches above the floodwaters. The topless girl turned into a lane and suddenly vanished behind a tree.
She tried to start the engine but it only choked. Just then Aries caught sight of another vehicle showing headlights and she hurriedly got out into the rain but missed it. She stood trembling and it was very cold. The vehicle, she noted, was a police jeep.
She got no choice getting soaked. Aries picked her bag and followed the path taken by the girl she saw a minute ago. She could also see some lights of a small village settlement that stood to her left. She reached the houses and in a minute she stood in front of a cottage lodging called ‘Neptunian’ and the three-forked symbol of Satan on the door.
Aries stepped under shelter of the overhanging roof edge and washed her feet by an overflow from the gutter. There again she noticed the police jeep passing with high beams flashed on her creating her shadow on the wall. She entered the lodge into a little lobby with an oak wood counter and a girl sat behind. Lights were dim and the walls wooden and brown. The thin girl smiled knowingly who it was calling.
Aries asked, “Is it possible to stay overnight? I got engine trouble. My car stopped out there.” The girl smiled and placed a book on the counter with a pen for her to scribble on.
“I’m wet through,” said Aries and only then did the girl got up from the chair to fetch a towel. She wore a short white skirt and an orange blouse. She had worn them for ages and those pieces turned diminutive.
“Please, write your name down here,” said the counter girl.
She booked in. This little lodge got three rooms and the doors open to the little brown lobby. Each door got a forked symbol of a trident. She was given a room on the right and one that stood deep. A couple of pink-coloured sofas furnished the lobby with a coffee table but hardly any space to hang around. The floor carpeted in orange. Aries noticed an incense of perfumed light-sticks placed on the corner side-table and interestingly a piece of paper that hang from the ceiling just above the counter. It kept spinning but she noticed there was no wind or air to turn it. She could still hear the rain patter on the roof. As she scribbled her name, she could also read the digits on that piece of paper and summed up a total in her memory pretty rapidly to derive 786 that in turn summed up to 21 and that to 3. She was given a key for room number 3.
She was ushered to the little bedroom which appeared to be neat with a low ceiling and no bath. The girl with a smile said, “Take off your clothes, I will dry them.”
Aries asked surprised, “Right here, you mean!”
The girl giggled, “No, there’s a toilet behind.”
Soon she was shown into a toilet reached from a dark corridor behind the room. It was a long narrow toilet with several showers and lit bright. A ventilation mounted low on the wall lit up the sky sporadically as thunder and lightning continued. Aries removed her wet clothes and took a warm bathe. Shockingly, she thought she saw a face lit up in the ventilation window. She got wrapped up quickly and walked out to find the girl still seated behind the counter. “There’s somebody watching the bathroom!” Aries complained.
The thin girl lost her smile. Aries grumbled few more times before entering the room.
A moment later, the counter girl knocked the door and entered with a nightgown. “You may wear this for bed.”
“Very well, thank you. What’s your name?” She asked snivelling to have a pale pungent odour present in the room as the girl came in.
“Soma Wali,” the girl replied. “I like your films.”
“Tell me something about you.”
Soma Wali sat down on the comfortable chair. “I work here doing beds. This place belongs to mom. We live in the house behind the lodge. I have a sister and this gown belongs to her but…harmosh…she’s lunatic. She’s pretty but she just can’t work. So I got to run the generator set, sell fuel and helping mom mostly. This place is usually locked…”
Aries yawned and dropped to bed.

An hour passed and she was sleeping soundly. A woman in her mid 50’s entered silently. She carried a pair of scissors with her. She picked Aries’s long silky hair, carefully untangled some portion and cut only nine strands. It was Soma’s mother, Nurith Wali. Aries Khan hadn’t slipped on the robe provided because it belonged to a lunatic.
Aries Khan woke up another hour later feeling hungry. It was around eleven-thirty. She noticed a blue light glowing inside the little bedroom making shadows and caressing her skin. It was very faint though pretty awesome as if a television set lit up somewhere. Aries undid the towel contemplating her body in a blue tone and caught that nasty feeling which haunted her for the rest of her life – exercise nudism.
She walked out to the lobby posing nude. The girl had left and the lodge stood empty. Only candles lit the place and flames dancing with shadows. In a while she was concentrating on the details which she failed to notice before. Those forks of the door signs appeared fiery or blood red. The spinning piece of paper got new figures that summed up to 666 that in turn summed up to 18 and that to 9. She noticed large placards of Arabic writings in faint green sheets hanging on the wooden walls with thick white boarders and black lettering. She could tell they were verses from the Holy Koran as she belonged to such background. Many followers believed in having those sacred writings would bring good luck to their domains.
As she entered into obscure details, she knew a girl died here a week ago. She could tell that that girl was sixteen, Soma’s age. She died in room number 2. In her memory which got so alerted by now, she could also read a name for the dead girl. It was a single singular name of Maduri and the girl belonged to the Jain. She knew somehow there were some ghostly figures lodging in this house and they appeared in form of blue lights. She heard that laughter she heard in the car. This time it came from the lobby. She withdrew to her room. Picked the gown and put on. She went back to sleep. It rained heavily.
They missed her posture only by a split second. Two women passed through the rear door and entered room number 1. It was here and that very night while it rained, Soma’s mother scrawled an amulet, bound with Aries’s hair and tied it around the neck of her daughter, Neptune Wali – eldest daughter.
On a haunted night sleeping was a big mistake, though she was not scared or terrified because she just knew little about the spirit world.
Next morning, Aries was a bit annoyed because there was nobody at the reception. She washed her face and returned to the little room totally naked. Soma sat behind the counter. Aries stopped right there, “I want to make a call.”
Soma smiled broadly passing the telephone to the counter, “I got your dress dried and ironed.”
“Thank you.” The whitish woman stood stark naked and made that call to Kalol. Soma stepped out of the counter and stood by the entrance looking at this whitish woman making matters disturbing.
After all these incidents, Aries climbed her car wishing and only wishing it got to start. Aries tried and the engine chokingly fired to life on her first attempt. She returned to Kalol and told about this eventful rainy night to Lady Binth who just couldn’t believe a word.
“Keep silent about it,” Lady Binth told her, “You know, with all that you just said it occurs to me you got under a Neptune influence, intellectual as it seems with a strong Uranus but also true to have contact with the occult and the atomic sphere. Sometimes dreams come true, prayers are answered and wishes are fulfilled. But remember, you are an acute Aries. Don’t ever show your qualities to anyone.”
Aries was prone to high fevers and headaches. She was born a talented dancer with troubled anatomies diagnosed of bones and the skeleton structure. She got imaginations, delusions and often socialising.
“I seldom find satisfaction.”
“You demand, I know, you find that emotional imbalance because your Moon is placed in Gemini.”

Two days later, it turned out bright and sunny. Outside the Temple of Kapileshwar Mahadev, the valley was neatly carpeted with dry sand and decors hanging everywhere. Villagers gathered around to observe the rehearsals going on of the harvest dance for the film shooting. Finally, it was in the afternoon that Aries Khan came out dressed in her dancing costume along with the dancers and musicians. For some hours they continued on shooting her movements and it was in fact one of the best dances she performed.
By late afternoon, among the crowd she noticed the cute smiling face of Soma Wali escorting a woman probably her sister in mid 20’s but looked disfigured. Next to them, she noticed another woman in mid 50’s, assumingly their mother. She got all sweat on her body after the shooting but walked up to them to exchange greetings.
Soma’s mother, Nurith Wali, briefly introduced, “Here’s my daughter, Neptune Wali. She’s got dementia sickness but today she feels better. I made an amulet bound in human hair. I’m so delighted she’s up and out to watch you. She grew together with you in Junagadh. Both attended a class in our neighbourhood. Remember, that little incident when you pushed her…”
“I do…and she broke an arm.” Aries Khan could remember that day. Neptune wasn’t a close friend but it did happen one day. She did not mean to hurt her but pushed her in a hassle outside the tuition class. They were eleven years old. Later that night her mother took Aries to the house where Neptune dwelt but they were not allowed in, nor were they treated badly. Aries and her family felt awfully sorry and her father even offered money. All got rejected because of discrimination – her father and family belonged to the rich, the royal and the highest caste of the powerful Nawabs and the famous Bhuttos of the Babi dynasty while Neptune’s family was poor.
Aries scrutinised the sick girl. Neptune wore a white dress, top and bottom. She was beautiful with a baby face but slightly obese. She learnt that the girl was suffering diabetes, hypothermia, mental dementia and even schizophrenia. She was a complete breakdown and an unfortunate daughter. She still looked gorgeous and often those who got restricted in life never grew old and mature. She was indeed wearing a red string around her neck attached with a talisman written on paper, folded to a gobble and bound in human hair. This family came from seven miles to watch Aries Khan and the film crew shooting a movie.
There came Gulam who knew this family and greeted. Aries wished to leave them apologetically not to confront him but she was uttered at, “Moslem women should not dance,” said FK Gulam, “When you dance, all hell breaks loose and cries for limbo. Your dancing legs get swollen and paralysed. You die of disease. You go to hell.”
Hearing the worse, she left hurriedly without a word. Among the lessening crowd she came face to face with the topless woman she obviously saw on the rainy night of thunder and lightning. She looked into her eyes and they got no irises, they were totally blank, all white and scary. She could not hold her stare so she turned away and ran towards the temple. She heard laughter.
Once again she told about this incident to Lady Binth who brought her in front of a mirror. There she was – Aries could not see her own irises in the mirror, they were milky white. “What’s happening to me?”
“It’s evil adoption. Did you disturb anything?”
“I saw that girl…a topless woman.”
“You look alright to me otherwise. I think we keep this secret between you and me. People will think you’re insane if you talk about imaginations.”
In the meantime, the production team found something quite revealing. In several places of the film clip she appeared a figure out of focus. Soon BR Bishar decided to shoot the whole scene again. It was Gulam who got other ideas and told him the whole thing would flop, she should be substituted or else this movie, Joie de Vivre, would not make money because the girl called Aries Khan was under a curse. He suggested a solution which BR Bishar agreed and carried out for a heavenly sum. It was during this time in 1975 that Aries Khan got alleged to schizophrenia and insanity.
Lady Binth and Aries did not tell them anything about the oddity hanging around them and of incidents she faced evidently during the week in Kalol. Lady Binth failed to find a cure in good course because BR Bishar came up with a new plan.
A ‘Rasleela’ choreographed devotee dance of soul cleansing followed by a drama was planned to be filmed next in her hometown of Junagadh where Aries Khan was born, in the location of the Mohabbat Khan’s Makbara of the Nawabs generation and to a great extent this place resembled her past. Lady Binth thought it was a good idea and agreed without hesitation.

In the old city of Junagadh located at the foot of the Girnar Hills, they arrived separately and the first orientation took place that very afternoon at Bhauddin College, again a place of resemblance to Aries Khan. It was a Friday, 25th April 1975, during the dry season but at this time of the year storm fronts brought rain from the Arabian Sea and over the coast without warning just like the unexpected thunderstorm during the new moon two weeks ago.
In this meeting where events got rescheduled, story and script changed a great deal and the dance got to be choreographed and rehearsed. It would take some days while the storyboard got redrawn on the drafting table. It was here BR Bishar asked her out that night for dinner and Aries agreed.

In the Scorpio Moon, it was a full house shown bright in the sky as big as a dinner plate. Bishar stopped his car outside the magnificent Makbara where they’d very soon perform the devotee dance and soul cleansing drama scene. It was a graceful town and Sorath, just as the Sanskrit name dictated, it awfully looked glorious. They took a walk around the monument where the great Nawabs were buried.
She wore a white overall with a bluish bodysuit, in white bell-bottoms and high heels, her hair done in a long plait. Friday evening, there were some crowd in the area outside the Makbara though very few. They entered through the gate and she saw the ground magnificently lit of moonbeam in faint blue light.
Suddenly, three men on horseback turned up and stopped them. They wore turbans and decorated outfits of the Jain Lashkar. Some dacoits holding rifles surrounded the two like in an original Bollywood film or motion picture. They held them separated. The middle man on the horse threw a piece of garment asking her to wear it. It was the kurta spun of silver threads done by the ladies and presented to Aries Khan as a gift from FK Gulam. She was shocked and surprised. They took Bishar out of sight.
All of a sudden, the dacoits released Aries and started to lash her with whips. She moved backwards but the dacoits let her move towards the Temple of the Mohabbatan. The men kept tearing her clothes with an excitement, laughter and pleasure to hurt a celebrity.
In the first hall she got her garments torn and partially naked. Some blood appeared in her nostrils. It was around twelve and her friend was nowhere in sight. The moon climbed overhead, shadows were not tall but strong on the pavement. She could not scream because they lashed. They even touched her privates from time to time. After twenty minutes of violent tease, she was taken to an inner hall, a big chamber and forced to wear the heavy kurta. With all that torture she could hardly open her eyes. Right there somebody appeared with a tray of halwa. The girl was laid down by the mortuary well. He attended to wear a massage on her putting his hands under the kurta to fumble with her skin and body parts. By then the dacoits put the lanterns on flame and the whole place lit up with smoke created from castor oil. Ending the massage, he drew her body with Arabic writings and decorated with crystallising natron salts and phosphorous compounds used in embalming. Her skin suffocated and she dozed off. They wore make-up on her face and body using sorts of cosmetic. She was placed methodically by the mortuary well with her arms and legs open like the symbol of Uranus.
Meanwhile, 300 kilometres away, on the other side of the Girnar Hills, in the Temple of Adalaj and by the Stone Well that got no bottom, as to mythology, the body of Neptune Wali was embalmed in similar fashion by her mother. She was placed in a similar manner like the symbol of Uranus.
Aries Khan could observe the progression in a dream of hallucination. In her subconscious mind her vision grew vivid. She was awake and alert in the brain as she kept watching the surrounding metabolism in a metamorphic transformation.
There was this corpse of a sixteen year old girl placed in the Temple of Kapileshwar Mahadev. Her body deteriorated to infect with gangrene all over the skin and unrecognisable. Aries knew her name was Maduri who died in Neptunian about three weeks ago. She was buried behind the lodge and not properly in a cemetery or cremated or abandoned in a river – cause of death unknown. It was dug from the grave recently, moved seven miles from original position of its resting ground to the rooftop of the temple, placed in the moonbeam with no shroud or wrapping.
It all started in the Temple of Adalaj. Gurus sat around Neptune Wali and reciting prayers. Abruptly, a topless girl entered the big hall in candle lights. She was shy because of human beings present there. She slowly crept by the stone-carved wall in the light and shade but there was no shadow of hers whatsoever.
What happened next was bewildering to watch. The female whom they called Anzala Fahsha climbed on top of Neptune Wali placed between the two lion-heads flowing water to the emerald pool with a statue of the half-naked water-bearer standing in the middle. Anzala Fahsha started to smooch on Neptune’s skin. She turned heedlessly hungry and wildly to have sex with Neptune. In the fumble, her wrap turned up and exposed. As it came undone, she vanished into a cloud of mist. Nurith Wali, dressed in maximum robe, touched her daughter’s pulse and she was still alive. Then in a moment, a blue light glowed from the mouth of the Stone Well. It kept glowing for a while and disappeared instantly. The holy recital continued.
What happened was this spirit called Anzala Fahsha entered the body of Neptune Wali and removed her soul. Blue lights that appeared were the Neptunium composites of pre-atomic structure and totally invisible elements to the naked eye.
It was said that this bottomless well linked to the subterranean waters of the Girnar Hills and believed that her body would be transposed to Aries Khan lying in the mortuary of the Mohabbat Makbara in Junagadh on the western side of the mountain. This was believed a superstitious operation of a soul transformation and ultimately Neptune would wake in new rebirth – reborn to new status of life and understanding with good luck and fortune. Nevertheless, no three souls could contain in one vessel so the bearer, in this case Anzala Fahsha acting like the Aquarian, would carry Neptune’s soul to give rebirth to a third subject that happened to be the corpse of Maduri that got no soul. And it also said any soul placed in a corpse would be diseased, ill-fated and evil for the rest of the life. It happened to be the soul of Neptune Wali that was placed in the corpse.
As the blue light disappeared from the mouth of the Stone Well, Nurith Wali, her mother, checked the pulse of Neptune. She was literally dead.
And it did occur that the carcass of Maduri at Kapileshwar Mahadev temple in Kalol got a soul and life simultaneously. She opened her eyes. Maduri wanted to return to her original position, Temple of Stone Well in Adalaj because she contained the soul of Neptune Wali currently. She got up on her feet and started to walk.
The spirit of Anzala Fahsha also appeared at the Mohabbatan Makbara in Junagadh. Here she was brutally aggressive, not shy. She performed to have that metacarpal touch, fleece with skin, even undid the long plait of Aries’s hair with her teeth deliberately. As the dacoits abandoned Aries Khan, the absence of humans allowed the spirit to impend determinedly. She placed herself to position sixty-nine on Aries, facing opposite direction, while Aries lay with her limbs outstretched like the symbol of Uranus. The images were so real and metamorphic. It could be said that the Uranus symbol defined two souls and matter. Suddenly, the spirit of Anzala Fahsha vanished into a cloud of mist. Blue light appeared on the mouth of the mortuary well. Aries lay dead or unconscious.
Meanwhile, the corpse of Maduri had climbed down from the roof and she was crossing the ground in the moonlight.
On the opposite side of the mountain, in the Temple of Adalaj, blue light reappeared on the mouth of the Stone Well in a blush and Neptune Wali opened her eyes totally cured to continue with a new soul and life.
What happened here was that Neptune Wali got transplanted with the soul of Aries while her ethereal was in the diseased carcass of Maduri.
In the village of Kalol, the dogs were barking as Maduri confronted the topless woman. It happened on a narrow lane and during midnight. Sadly, only a boy, who woke up at that hour and glanced out of the window, saw this confrontation of the corpse in a fight with the half-naked woman. They fought for sometime and the corpse fell down. Anzala Fahsha disappeared removing any form of life in the carcass of Maduri.
Literally, she had taken the ill-soul of Neptune from the corpse of Maduri and transported to the vessel of Aries Khan lying in the Mohabbatan Makbara. Blue light reappeared on the mouth of the mortuary well and that gave life to the body of Aries Khan. She woke up to experience pain of the dacoit lashings and torture from the men on horseback. There was no one in the Temple of Mohabbat Khan’s Makbara.

In Kalol village, next morning, people gathered around a corpse of a female unearthed from its grave and lying on a lane. One boy claimed he saw a topless woman fighting with the corpse during midnight. Thus the people knew there was a woman involved in digging the corpse from the grave. That was strange and the boy also claimed the dead body walking and living. Shortly, this strange carcass was cremated.

In the morning light, someone harshly tapped on the door of the Khan residence. People woke up and opened the door. Aries stumbled over the steps and fell down to the floor. She crawled further in. She got blood on her face and body. She cried, “Close the door, they are coming to kill me, close the door quickly!” She got only the torn kurta on her body and much of her nude disclosed.
Lady Binth quickly attended to her, “What on earth happened to you?”
A doctor was called urgently. She was bathed, treated with medicine and put to rest with an injection. Later on, Aries woke up and the first thing she did was surprisingly a prayer. Aries Khan told Lady Binth of the incident that took place in the Makbara. And she told about a soul transformation. Lady Binth couldn’t believe a word. Since then Aries grew suspicious of someone following her and trying to kill her, she heard laughter always from the surrounding. She got a strange feeling of getting naked when unhappy. She got hallucinations – utter paranoiac schizophrenia in which a victim got prone to all sorts of grandiose delusions and seeing the topless girl watching sadly and smiling no more. She disbanded the movie Joie de Vivre. It never got released. She also disbanded her friendship with BR Bishar who said that a gang of dacoits confronted them that night and took her away. He was tied down on a railway track and knew nothing about the ritual.
There was not any proof to support her story, not the incident but her claim of a soul transformation. Only evidence left behind was the corpse found in Kalol by the villagers next morning.
Aries was a strong and acute Arian with several planetary positions to strengthen Aries qualities. She demanded freedom. She demanded dignity and respect. When people started to bluff at her with such stories she expressed in public, she felt belittled, let down and disrespected. However, she managed to appear in many blockbuster movies of the well-known Indian Bollywood productions until the late 1980’s. She had 13 years of a successful career in showbiz. Aries grew world famous to rise as a superstar. Though many friends stayed away from Aries alleged to be a lunatic and a schizophrenic gypsy.
Aries Khan flew to New York with an interest to follow spiritual psychology associated with the Indian gurus, GU Murtikrishna and Soho. She returned in 1992. She had grown unrecognisable of obesity and diabetes. Aries attempted to pick up with her movie career but unsuccessfully. Aries Khan was slain with controversies everywhere she turned. She tried to get attention of the people by creating stories she claimed not hallucination but truth that she knew about the Bombay Bombings in 1993 and other cases she brought to court. She claimed that the Bhug earthquake was an intended attack and a propagated implosion. She feared death threats. Aries needed identity desperately but her beauty faded and nobody took interest in her.
Aries Khan managed to find a posh penthouse apartment in Bombay and entered reclusive life. Only visitor she knew happened to be the sad looking topless woman, Anzala Fahsha, she told Lady Binth on several occasions.

In the years that followed, Neptune became a business woman no longer with complaints of sickness or disease, diabetes or obesity. As a born Capricorn she even looked younger. She left for Italy in the year 1980 and only met Aries Khan once in a party in Florence. She continued to wear that amulet her mother made for her as a charm bound in human hair and it happened to be Aries’s hair. Now it was placed in a golden locket and worn as a pendant. Aries Khan never came to know the whereabouts of Soma but she remained in her memory until death.

Aries was found dead in her Juhu apartment in Bombay on 22nd January 2005 by her residential society secretary notified by the milkman that Aries Khan had not picked milk and newspapers for two days. She died precisely on the 20th January. She was found dead with gangrene on her foot. There were talks and rumours of unnatural causes of death alleged to poisoning or an act of God to let her die bloated on her dancing legs, evil causes, diseased and cursed, even voodoo killing but the police ruled out foul play.
Aries Khan was buried on the 23rd January in Santa Cruz after a formal ritual in the Moslem custom and none of her friends or movie associates attended her funeral. She was unloved, unappreciated, uncared and forgotten.