The strangest beat in the whole Holi talk: Śiva burns Kāma (desire) to ash with his third eye — the textbook image of renunciation winning. Then the gods reanimate the ash into a figure, and Śiva gives the ash-man a mantra. The ash does tapas with it and comes back as Bhaṇḍāsura, the binding-demon. Suppression didn't delete the drive. It empowered it and renamed it bondage.
The Live Wire: This is the cleanest mythic statement of why ascetic negation backfires that I've found — and it's self-aware enough to have the renouncer himself arm the thing he just killed. The tradition is saying: you cannot burn a desire, you can only drive it underground, where it does its own practice and returns stronger. The cure isn't a hotter fire (more repression) — it's Lalitā, who reintegrates: revives Kāma into union rather than killing him again. Second framing: the personal version — every drive you've "transcended" that came back wearing the mask of a discipline, a virtue, a project. The workaholism that is starved play. The asceticism that is starved appetite doing tapas in the dark. What would it look like to give the ash a mantra on purpose — to consciously re-enliven a buried drive rather than wait for it to return as a tyrant?
Related: Bhaṇḍāsura: The Demon of Repression, Lalitā Emerges from the Fire, Sadāśiva to Kāmeśvara