AJAYA - RISE OF KALI (Book 2) (69 page)

Vijaya
– Victory
Vindhyas
– Mountain ranges which separate northern and southern India
Vishnu
– The Preserver, second of the Hindu Trinity of Gods, who protects the rhythm of the Universe
Yadava
– Tribe of cowherds
Yajna
– Ritual sacrifice of herbal preparations into the fire with Vedic
mantras
Yaksha
– Supernatural beings, sometimes the patron Gods of trees and forests in Hindu mythology, believed to guard hidden treasures. The female of the species (Yakshi), are notorious for charming unsuspecting travellers into the forest and drinking their blood or eating them; here, they are simply a tribe
Yavana Desa
– Greece
Yavana
– Greek

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks go to my readers, without whose support, encouragement and criticism of my novels, Asura, Tale of the Vanquished and the first book of the Ajaya – epic of the Kaurava clan, Roll of the dice, I would not have dared to write the second part of
Ajaya – Rise of Kali
– within a year. I thank each of my readers who were kind enough to write to me with their feedback. I also thank the readers of the translated versions of Asura in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and Gujarati languages.

To Swarup Nanda, for being a friend and guide for
Asura
and
Ajaya.

To my Editor, Chandralekha Maitra, for guiding me in making my writing better while giving me enough creative freedom, and then suffering my draft manuscripts with patience.

To my Publisher, Leadstart Publishing, for showing confidence in me by publishing my third book, Ajaya, Rise of Kali.

My sincere gratitude to the other team members: Daniel, Indur, Preeti, Iftikar, Rajesh, Ramu, Salam and many others, who have worked with dedication to make my previous books a great success and showing the same enthusiasm for this one.

To my father, the Late L. Neelakantan, and mother, the Late D. Chellamal, for introducing me to the world of mythology.

To my Aparna, for your unstinting support in my endeavours and for the love I often wonder if I deserve.

To my daughter Ananya and son Abhinav, for keeping the storyteller in me alive, by demanding more and more stories every night and being the kind of critics any author dreads.

To my sister Chandrika and my brother-in-law Parameswaran, my brothers Lokanathan, Rajendran and my sisters-in-law Meena and Radhika; also my nephew Dileep, and nieces Rakhi and Deepa, as well as my extended family members, for all those wonderful days.

To my pet Jacky, the blackie, who keeps me glued to my laptop by barking at the slightest show of laziness and demanding I take him for a walk as punishment the moment I lift my fingers from the keyboard.

To Santosh Prabhu, Sujith Krishnan, and Rajesh Rajan, for the evenings spent together discussing Indian philosophy and the
Mahabharata,
years ago, which sowed the seeds of this novel in me.

To Premjeet, for his maverick ideas, to Ashish Bhatnagar for reading and criticising my first drafts. To Essarpee (S R Prashanth) and D Sivaprasad, for their support in my online campaigns.

To my country and my people, for tolerating different points of view and for the richness of our history and mythology.

To the rich traditions of my hometown, Thripoonithura, and the history of Cochin.

To Vedavyasa, the patron of all Indian writers; the greatest writer to have walked this earth.

To the masters of writing in all our Indian languages, with sincere apologies for daring to attempt something that has already been so skillfully essayed by you over the centuries.

I owe much to all of you, as well as to the others who I may have not named here.

*****

# 1 BESTSELLER

T
omorrow is my funeral. I do not know if they will bury me like a mangy dog or I will have a funeral fit for an Emperor – an erstwhile Emperor. But it does not really matter. I can hear the scuffing sounds made by the jackals. They are busy eating my friends and family. Something scurried over my feet. What was it? I haven’t the strength to raise my head. Bandicoots. Big, dark, hairy rats. They conquer the battlefields after foolish men have finished their business of killing each other. It is a feast day for them today, just as it has been for the past eleven days. The stench is overpowering with the stink of putrefying flesh, pus, blood, urine and death. The enemy’s and ours. It does not matter. Nothing matters now. I will pass out soon. The pain is excruciating. His fatal arrow struck my lower abdomen. But I am not afraid of death. I have been thinking of it for some time now. Thousands have been slain over the last few days.

Somewhere in the depths of the sea, my brother Kumbha lies dead, half-eaten by sharks. I lit my son Meghanada’s funeral pyre yesterday. Or was it the day before? I’ve lost all sense of time. I have lost the sense of many things. A lonely star is shimmering in the depths of the universe. Like the eye of God. Very much like the third eye of Shiva, an all-consuming, all-destroying third eye. My beloved Lanka is being destroyed. I can still see the dying embers in what was once a fine city. My capital Trikota was the greatest city in the world. That was before the monkey-man came and set it on fire. Trikota burned for days. Shops, homes, palaces, men, women, and babies, everything burned. But we restored it. Almost every able man joined in rebuilding Trikota. Then the monkey-men came with their masters and destroyed everything again. Hanuman did that to us. The monkey-man brought us death, destruction and defeat.

I do not want to dwell on that. I should have killed him when my son captured him. Instead, I listened to my younger brother, who then plotted against me. But treason and betrayal is nothing new to the Asuras. I was naïve. I foolishly believed I would always be loved by my brothers and my people. I never imagined I would be betrayed. I feel like laughing now. But it is not easy to laugh when one’s guts lie spread around like a wreath. Sounds of joy float down to me from my city. The enemy is celebrating their victory. The monkey-men will be busy plundering Trikota. My temples will be looted; the granaries torched, and schools and hospitals burnt. That is how victory parties are. We have done the same and worse to many Deva villages, when the Goddess of victory was my consort. Some ugly monkeys must have entered my harem. I hope my Queen has the sense to jump from a cliff before anything happens. I cannot control anything now. I can feel the hot breath of death on my face.

The jackals have come. Which part of my body will they eat first? Perhaps my guts, as they are still bleeding. What if a part of my breastplate chokes a jackal? I chuckle at the thought. A jackal sinks his teeth into my cheek and rips off a chunk of flesh. That is it. I’ve lost that bet too. They have started on my face. Rats are nibbling at my toes. I, Ravana, have come a long way. Now I do not have anything left to fight for, except this battle with the jackals. Tomorrow, there will be a procession through the streets. They will raise my head on a pole and parade it through the same roads that saw me racing by in my royal chariot. My people will throng to watch the spectacle with horror and perverse pleasure. I know my people well. It will be a big show.

I do not understand why Rama came and stood over me when I fell. He stood there as if bestowing his blessings upon me. He said to his brother that I was the most learned man in the world and a great King, and one could learn the art of governance from me. I almost laughed out loud. I had governed so well that my empire lay shattered all around me. I could smell the burning corpses of my soldiers. I could feel my Meghanada’s cold and lifeless body in my arms even now. The acrid air of a smouldering Trikota smothered my senses. I could not save my people from these two warriors and their monkey-men. And he was saying I was a great ruler? I could appreciate the irony of it. I wanted to laugh at my enemy; laugh at the foolish men who trusted me, who were now lying all around, headless, limbless and lifeless. I wanted to laugh at the utopian dreams of equality for all men on which I had built an empire. It was laughable indeed. But laughing was no way for an Emperor to die. I have worked hard and fought with the Gods and their chosen men. I doubt if heaven has a place for people who die of laughter.

Then just as suddenly as it had started, the rats and jackals scurried away. A shadow, darker than the dark night, fell upon me. A dark head with curly hair blocked the lonely star from my view.
Is it Kala, the God of Death, who has come to take me away?
I struggled to open my eyes wider. But dried blood held my eyelids together.
Is it one of Rama’s lowly servants come to sever my head and take it back as a trophy?
I want to look him in the face. I want to look into his eyes, unwavering and unflinching in my last moments. Something about that head and curly hair reminded me of my past.
Do I know him?
He leaned down to look at my face.

Ah! It is Bhadra.
My friend, perhaps the only friend left, but I do not know if I can call him my friend. He was my servant, a foot soldier to start with. Then he got lost somewhere along the way. He strolled in and out of my life, was sometimes missing for years together. Bhadra had access to my private camp when I was the head of a troop that resembled a wayside gang of robbers rather than a revolutionary army. Then, he had had access to my private chambers when I was the King of a small island. Finally, he had access to my bedroom when I was ruling India. More than that, Bhadra had access to the dark corners of my mind, a part that I hid from my brothers, my wife, my lover, my people, and even from myself.

What is Bhadra doing here?
But why am I surprised? This is just the place for people like him, who move about in the shadows. I can hear him sobbing. Bhadra getting emotional? He was never angry, sad or happy. He acted as if he was very emotional now. But I knew he had no emotions. And Bhadra was aware I knew.
Bhadra, carry me away from here. Take me away to...
My strength fails me. I do not know whether the words were spoken or died a silent death somewhere in my throat. Bhadra shakes his head. I am cold, extremely cold. My life is ebbing out of me. Then Bhadra hugs my head to his bosom. I can smell his sweat. Pain shoots through me from every angle and spreads its poisonous tentacles into my veins. I groan. Bhadra lays me back on the wet earth – wet from my blood, the blood of my people, the blood of my dreams, and the blood of my life. It is over. A sense of sadness and emptiness descends upon me.

“I will complete your work, Your Highness. Go in peace. I will do it for our race. My methods may be different, even ignoble, compared to yours. I too was once a warrior but I have grown old. Arms frighten me now. I am terrified of war. I cannot even hurt a child. Nevertheless, my methods are deadly. I will avenge you, me, and our blighted race. Rama will not go free for what he has done to us. Believe me and go in peace.”

I did not hear most of what Bhadra said. Strangely however, I was soothed and slipped away from this foul-smelling Asura and drifted back to my childhood. A thousand images rushed to me. My early struggles, the pangs of love and abandonment, separation, battles and wars, music and art, they flashed through my mind in no particular order, making no sense. Meaningless, like life itself.

I sensed Bhadra bowing down to touch my feet, then walking away. I wanted to call him back and take me to a doctor who would put my intestines back, fit my dangling left eye back into its socket and somehow blow life into my body. I wanted to withdraw to the Sahyas forests in the mainland and start a guerilla war, as Mahabali had done years ago. I wanted to start again. I wanted to make the same mistakes, love the same people, fight the same enemies, befriend the same friends, marry the same wives and sire the same sons. I wanted to live the same life again. I did not want the seat Rama has reserved for me in his heaven. I only wanted this beautiful earth.

I knew it was not going to happen. I was sixty, not sixteen. If I lived, I would be a one-eyed, dirty, old beggar in some wayside temple, wearing stinking and tattered clothes – a long way from what I once was. I wanted to die now. I wanted this to end. I wanted to go away. Let the burning cities take care of themselves. Let the Asuras fight their own wars and be damned along with the Devas. I only wanted to return to my childhood and start over again, every single damn thing, again and again, and again…

*****