Vampires and Dracula

I read about "Vampires" over past few days.

Like all good things they come in "Variety"

From Chinese vampires (with red contact lenses and hair colored green or pink) to Japanese vampires (Foxes) to Greek Vampires (i found them particularly intersting, with bust of a woman and lower of a serpent, reminded me of my Nagraaj Comics days; remember Visarpi :-).....)

Our modern concept of Vampires, theoritacally, is of a neck-biting, blood-sucking character, who can't be killed; Thanks to all those hollywood oldies as well as recent flicks like Blade and Van Helsing.

I can't help myself from quoting the following text which says India has the oldest history of Vampires:

The ancient home of the Gypsies, India has many mythical vampire figures. The Bhuta is the soul of a man who died an untimely death. It wandered around animating dead bodies at night and attacked the living like a ghoul.

The most famous Indian vampire is Kali who had fangs, wore a garland of corpses or skulls and had four arms. Her temples were near the cremation grounds. She and the goddess Durga battled the demon Raktabija who could reproduce himself from each drop of blood spilled. Kali drank all his blood so none was spilled, thereby winning the battle and killing Raktabija.

Don't know what hindu fanatics can do to this naive writer, who thinks of "Kali" as a Vampire

No discussions about Vampires is complete without "Count Dracula" and "Bats"

DRACULA

Dracula, a fictional vampire character, is believed to be iconic among all the vampires. The first description about Dracula in 1879 novel by same name is as follows:

face was a strong - a very strong - aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

Bats

There are just three (some may argue for four, specially batman fans) species of Bats around the world. And only one of the feeding upon blood. The drawn analogy was inevitable.

The Truth

The most convincing, credible and cogent explaination is Rabies (to be written about in next post)

God bless all!!!