KRISHNA CORIOLIS#1: Slayer of Kamsa (18 page)

The prince of Mathura looked so different, he even tried to convince himself that it was one of Kamsa’s
brothers,
not the man himself. But there was no mistaking that heavy brow, those almost colourless grey eyes, the jutting jaw and mien of menace. The face was sun-darkened, as were the burly arms gripping the reins; the body had filled out, grown more muscular, bulging powerfully beneath the incongruous, gaily coloured anga-vastra. There was something different about the man that went beyond just the physical muscularity. It was as if Kamsa had grown years in the few months he had been absent. Not that he had aged. If anything, he seemed more vital and vigorous. It was an overall drawing in of energies, a focussing of psychological and physiological strengths, a sharpening and a tightening.

It is, it is
... Vasudeva groped to understand what he saw, even as his mind raced wildly through the myriad implications and possibilities that Kamsa’s reappearance entailed ...
it is,
he realized at last,
as if Kamsa had gone away into the wilderness alone, and had undergone a rite of passage that had made him a man.

Yes. For the face that turned to look back at Vasudeva was not Kamsa the spoilt brat accustomed to having his own way in everything, or even Kamsa the brutal bully who viewed the entire Yadava world as his playground. It was the face of a man who had recently matured and grown into the full possession of his adult faculties.

Kamsa had left a boy, returned a man.

Vasudeva had no idea what this man intended, or what he might do. He could not read his eyes, his face, or fathom his inner spirit.

The question was, would the man act as the boy had done, or ...

And in that
or
lay an infinity of possibilities.

Vasudeva felt a hand on his back, prodding him gently, insistently.

It was his bride, one hand holding her coverlet in place to maintain the custom of modesty, while urging him eagerly to start on the journey to her new home.

He swallowed and looked at Kamsa.

To his surprise, his brother-in-law merely smiled slyly and began driving the uksan forward. The crowd roared with delight, its excitement reaching an apogee as the princesses and their new husbands
clattered away on the carts. Children ran alongside the carts, yelling, laughing; those too old to be out on the streets watched, beaming, from their houses; those on the streets cheered uproariously. The sound of drums and music could be heard all across the city. Beside him, Vasudeva heard his new bride laugh with pleasure, an open-throated laughter that should have gladdened his heart as well.

But all Vasudeva could think of was:
Kamsa is back.

What did he mean to do? Surely he wasn’t going to drive Devaki and him home like a good brother!

That would be too much to expect from
this
brother-in-law.

No, Kamsa must have something in mind. Why else would he have appeared unexpectedly, on their very wedding day, and taken his place on the uks cart as if he was just fulfilling his brotherly duty?

Vasudeva looked at the broad back. Kamsa had changed so much that even the crowds did not recognize the crown prince at first glance. Those who noticed him at all assumed he was one of his brothers – after all, there was a striking resemblance. Did the external change reflect an inward one as well? What were Kamsa’s intentions?

Vasudeva did not have to wait long for the answer.

Suddenly, a sound broke the din of cheering and celebration – a sound that almost seemed to be part of the overall cacophony at first.

It was the sound of a woman screaming.

It was joined by other screams, both male and female.

Slowly, the din in the great square began to die out as people realized that something was amiss.

As the cheering and yelling and whistling dwindled, the screaming grew more audible.

Then, even the music stopped. And the terror began.

three

After leaving Jarasandha, Kamsa had not ridden directly to Mathura.

His new ally had promised him an army of his own when he returned, the better to help him take charge of his homeland and weed out the rebellious elements among his own forces. It was to collect this fighting unit that he had gone after taking leave of Jarasandha.

During the months they had fought together, Jarasandha had taught Kamsa a great deal about warfare, battle strategy, governance, dominion, and related matters. He had mentored Kamsa more effectively than any tutor had until then. Unlike the gurus Kamsa had had as a boy, Jarasandha’s teachings were hard-won ground truths, ripped raw and bleeding from the reality of his life and adventures. Kamsa’s own enthusiasm enabled him to learn more effectively. Instead of the sullen resentment or sneering indifference he had shown to earlier gurus, he received every mote of wisdom from Jarasandha with admiration and respect.

True education comes about through insightful
learning,
not from being
taught.
The greatest lessons are those gained through self-awareness and realization, not merely rote learning. This is especially true for a Kshatriya for whom practical knowledge was the most valuable and often made the difference between life and death, unlike the memory-testing scriptures that Brahmin acolytes were required to parrot almost from the time they could speak.

Kamsa had learnt his lessons well with the king of Magadha and among those lessons was the crucial insight that while any good leader could rule a kingdom, it took an extraordinary one to continue to rule it. His encounters with Vasudeva and the shocking failure he had experienced on both occasions had shown him the importance of relying on more than brute force to defeat his enemies. The news of his army’s disbandment and the subsequent dissolution of the marauders made Kamsa realize the necessity of an elite unit that would serve him with absolute loyalty. His own countrymen and clansmen, while great fighters, were too independent minded. He needed a group of prime soldiers who would obey and serve him unquestioningly, unto death.

For this, Jarasandha had given him the Mohini Fauj: An army of eunuchs named after the avatar in which Vishnu the Preserver had taken the feminine form in order to deceive the Asuras.

Mohini – a woman who was in fact a man, and vice versa.

Mohini Fauj – a motley collection of boys taken from enemy camps and kingdoms during Jarasandha’s many raids and invasions, clinically emasculated and trained into superb fighting units. The eunuchs had no nationality, no family, tribe, clan, faith or affiliation. They lived and fought purely for the honour of the Kshatriya code, and to serve their commander. Their only means of proving their self-worth was through fulfilling the wishes of their commander.

Jarasandha had raised a particular unit to obey Kamsa as their leader. For them, Kamsa was god incarnate, the ultimate being, one who could do no wrong. By implication, all those who opposed him were evil incarnate and must be destroyed. Their world was neatly divided into these two convenient compartments. Kamsa = Good. Kamsa’s Enemies = Evil. As simple as that. They were indoctrinated so deeply that they could not comprehend any world view that challenged it. In short, it was simpler to kill them than to attempt to argue them out of their conviction that Kamsa was god.

And killing them was not simple at all.

The dregs of their communities, witness to the most horrific war crimes, abuse, atrocities, brutalities and every other variation of human cruelty, they had had every drop of humanity drained from them through a training regime designed by Jarasandha himself, a regime of such sustained, vicious and inestimable indoctrination that only the hardiest, most indestructible specimens could survive it. Those that did survive were deemed to have excelled, because survival against such odds as Jarasandha stacked against those pathetic eunuch-orphans
was
excellence in itself. They came out as lethal killing machines, superbly conditioned and honed to fighting prime, obeying only Kamsa, committed to destroying all others regardless of the risk to their own lives and well-being.

Jarasandha had demonstrated how his Mohinis could be ordered to maim themselves, commit suicidal actions and endanger the lives and limbs of their fellows at a single command. He had squandered several Mohinis just to demonstrate this fact. Those that survived with mutilated bodies or severed limbs had to be executed because a Mohini had to be utterly self-sufficient and ruthless to a fault. Even Kamsa was not privy to the training regime, or to the process of indoctrination, as these were personally supervised by Jarasandha and none but he possessed full knowledge of all the details and methods employed.

It did not matter. What mattered was that he had been handed a fighting force of such formidable power that no other force comparable in number could survive an encounter with his Mohinis. If anything, they could be put up against a force far superior in number, position, or means, and while they might not always triumph against impossible odds, they would cause such damage to the enemy as to render his victory hollow.

It was this Mohini Fauj that Kamsa had gone to collect from the remote wilderness camp where they were spending their days in endless training and preparation. Jarasandha had not permitted the Mohinis to be used in his own army, or to serve anyone else but Kamsa himself. At one point, Kamsa had wondered aloud about a situation in which he commanded them to wage battle against Jarasandha. Would the Mohinis comply? Would they remain loyal to him?

‘You would cause me great losses,’ Jarasandha replied, answering the question quite seriously and without taking offence.‘But eventually, your Mohini Fauj would be wiped out to the last individual.’

Kamsa had chuckled and said that if the Mohinis were able to get to Jarasandha himself before being cut down by superior numbers, it wouldn’t matter if they were wiped out. After all, the ultimate goal was to kill the enemy’s leader, was it not?

Jarasandha had smiled and said that Kamsa had a great deal to learn about warfare. Those were the initial days of their friendship.

‘The purpose of war is not merely to kill one’s opposing king or commander, it is to render that kingdom or force incapable of attacking you again. It’s not enough to cut off the head, it’s more important to sever the limbs and puncture the vital organs.’

Kamsa had frowned, not able to extrapolate the application of this anatomical metaphor to actual warfare. Jarasandha had shrugged, saying Kamsa would understand in time. ‘But to answer your question about the Mohini Fauj,’ the Magadhan said, ‘they might succeed in causing me great losses before
being cut down to the last man, but they would never succeed in harming me personally.’

Kamsa had chortled and suggested that Jarasandha was saying that because he couldn’t concede that his forces could ever be defeated.

‘No, my friend,’ Jarasandha had said good- naturedly.‘I say that because while my Mohinis will indeed obey you unto death, they do so not because they are loyal to you, but because they are loyal to me. You see, they obey you
because I tell them to obey you.
They obey me
because they are trained to obey me.
That is a crucial point. If, by some unhappy mischance, you were to order them to attack my army, they would do so, but they would stop short of causing me any personal harm.’

Kamsa frowned and asked how that was possible if the Mohinis thought of him, Kamsa, as god incarnate.

Jarasandha smiled his calm smile and said, ‘They think of you as god incarnate, but of me as god in person. You are my incarnation. I am god himself !’

It turned out that Jarasandha could name any man or woman as his avatar or amsa and the Mohinis would worship that person as their master thereafter. But Jarasandha himself always remained their true god and commander.

After that, Kamsa never asked any theoretical questions regarding the loyalty of the Mohini Fauj. He simply accepted the gift he had been given and used it as best as possible.

When he returned to Mathura, he had taken the Mohinis with him.

Now, he raised his whip and spun the lash, once, twice, a third time, giving his aides the predetermined signal to start the‘festivities’. It was time to let Mathura know that its crown prince was home.

four

At first, Devaki could not comprehend what she saw.

The procession had just begun moving. She had even prodded Vasudeva impatiently to continue on their way. After days of ritual ceremonies and feasting and celebration, days and nights spent with more people than she had ever had around her in her life, she wanted nothing more than to be alone with Vasudeva.

My
husband.
The words warmed her heart, made it glow.

She was happier than she had ever been, looking forward to the rest of their life together. As the uks cart trundled forward, she laughed, raising her hands to wave gaily at the crowds, at the children running alongside, at her sisters in the carts following them...

That was when she saw the woman attack the soldiers.

Soldiers of both Ugrasena’s and Vasudeva’s armies were lining the avenues, ostensibly to keep the crowd back and clear a path for the wedding procession, but also to keep the peace. Fat chance of that with the populace wild with joy and venting years of pent-up energy on this tumultuous event.

Most of the soldiers wore a festive look, with the citizens having smeared coloured powder on their faces as well as each other’s, and made no attempt to curb their smiles. Both armies mingled freely, chatting, exchanging views on the wedding, the food, the grand arrangement, boasting of which wedding party had celebrated the most, consumed the most honey wine, eaten the most sweets – basically behaving like brides’ and grooms’ relatives at a wedding feast.

Devaki’s gaze happened to fall upon a woman approaching two soldiers from behind. The woman in question was dressed in garb as gaily coloured as the rest of the crowd, but it was the way she moved that caught Devaki’s attention. She had a litheness about her that was almost like a dancer about to perform an acrobatic step.