KRISHNA CORIOLIS#1: Slayer of Kamsa (20 page)

‘But
...’
Kamsa said, unaware that he was rocking from side to side like a drunkard in the seat of the uks cart, or that even his Mohinis had stopped their slaughter to stare at him in consternation. Bana and Canura were watching him as well, open-mouthed with astonishment.

With a mighty effort, he raised himself up and roared to the skies. ‘WHAT CAN A SINGLE MORTAL CHILD DO TO ME? WHO IS HE? I FEAR NO MAN! I AM KAMSA!’

Silence fell across the avenue as all stopped to listen and stare. Into that silence, Kamsa heard the voice of the bodiless one speak like thunder out of the clear sky, and this time, not just he but everyone around him heard the words as well: as clear as a peal of booming thunder on the heels of a rage of lightning.

He is Hari incarnate. Vishnu reborn. If you are Kamsa the Great, then he is the Slayer of Kamsa!

six

Devaki cried out as Kamsa grabbed her by her hair and dragged her to her feet.

Vasudeva stood as well, the uks cart shuddering under the shifting weight of the three of them, but was careful not to make any sudden or threatening movements. It was obvious to him that Kamsa was a man already far beyond the verge of madness. If he had doubted it before, he knew it for certain now. The last several minutes, spent watching Kamsa debate and rage against an invisible voice, was not the reason Vasudeva doubted Kamsa’s sanity. He too had heard the voice speak, had heard its brain-crushing thunder and felt its formidable menace. It was not that reaction that made him question his brother-in-law’s mental stability. It was something else, something much deeper, more subtle, something he had glimpsed even on that day in the convocation hall when Kamsa threw the barbed spear at him ... But there was no time to dwell on such subtleties now.

Kamsa held Devaki up by her hair like a rag doll. She screamed and wept copiously – not because of fear, but due to her shame at being treated thus.

Devaki was a strong woman, brought up in the Arya tradition that regarded women as the true leaders of their clans. To be treated in this fashion by
any
person was inconceivable, let alone by one’s own brother on the day of one’s espousal.

Kamsa seemed to care nothing for the humiliation or pain he was causing his sister. His eyes were wide, the whites showing all around, the pupils mere pinpricks, face engorged and red with blood, a vein pulsing in his temple, the muscles and tendons of his powerfully muscled neck, shoulders, arms and chest bulging and straining as he held his sister up high, as if displaying her to the world.

Everywhere – across the great square and the avenues approaching it, on rooftops and windows, casements and verandahs, from the palace and from the streets – horrified eyes watched the drama unfold. Even the Mohinis, swords dripping blood, had paused in their slaughter to wonder at what was about to happen. The dying and the wounded groaned and cried out, unattended, as every citizen – shaken to the core by the shock of the brutal assaults, and now by the bestial behaviour of the crown prince – gaped at the dreadful tableau unfolding on the cart at the helm of the procession.

‘This woman?’ Kamsa bellowed, his voice carrying like a lion’s throaty roar across the square. ‘This woman would be the cause of my destruction? My own sister?’

His voice revealed his outrage and hurt. It was difficult to believe that a man like Kamsa could be hurt emotionally; but, of course, he was no less vulnerable to the arrows and barbs of human pain than any person. If anything, Kamsa was more sensitive than most, imagining slights where none had been intended, humiliation where none existed. As a young boy, he had spent many hours and days brooding over things his companions or playmates had mentioned casually or in play, refusing to rejoin their games or pastimes, often venting his anger on his pets, horses, kine and servants until he was old enough to take out his anger upon those who caused him these hurts, gradually working his way up the scale until the day he had flung his old tutor out of a palace window to his death. He harboured a self- righteous sense of outrage about his temper fugues, an air of being treated unfairly by an unjust and biased world. And never was it so evident as now. Even after his many atrocities and brutalities – after he had crept deviously into his own kingdom’s capital on the very day of his sister’s nuptials, wreaking havoc and causing mayhem all around – here he was, eyes brimming with tears of indignation, holding up his blood-kin as if she was something less than human, heartbroken at her betrayal! Thus are the wicked utterly convinced of their own righteousness, and thus are those who believe themselves the most upright often the least capable of upholding their own lofty principles.

‘Kamsa,’ Vasudeva said gently, careful not to provoke him further by action or vocal inflection.

‘Devaki means you no harm. She loves you as you are her brother. Look at her. See for yourself. She is a woman unarmed and intending no violence.’

Kamsa turned his mask of fury upon Vasudeva, and it took all of the Sura king’s self-control to keep himself from flinching. It was indeed like looking upon a mask rather than a man’s face, so distorted and bloated by fear and hate was Kamsa’s visage.

‘Are you in your senses, Vrishni? Did you not hear the saptarishi’s words? She will bear the child that will destroy me! Her womb will carry my slayer into this mortal realm.’

Vasudeva kept his head lowered, deliberately crouching a little to keep his considerable height below Kamsa’s eye level, his own eyes cast downwards rather than looking directly into Kamsa’s. He was keenly aware of how tightly Kamsa’s hand was wound around Devaki’s hair, and of the drawn sword in Kamsa’s other hand that needed only an instant to strike a death blow.

‘But she is just newly wedded to me, barely just a wife, let alone a mother. How can there be any child in her womb? Do you think she and I would violate the sanctity of our customs and traditions thus? Never! Whatever the voice may say, Devaki does not bear you any harm, nor does she bear any child that could possibly harm you!’

Kamsa was in no mood to listen. He turned his flashing eyes towards Devaki again, the poor woman squirming and writhing in pain, for Kamsa had her in a grip that not only held her up by the roots of her hair but also twisted her neck and torso agonizingly.

Vasudeva saw that were Kamsa simply to wrench his hand in a certain action, he would break Devaki’s spine and neck as easily as one might snap a dry twig by twisting it suddenly. Given his musculature and strength, the sword was redundant; Kamsa was capable of killing Devaki with barely a wrench of his wrist.

The crown prince of Mathura heaved and said in a tone of infinite suffering: ‘What you say matters not, Vasudeva. She is the one who will someday bear the instrument of my death. The only way to protect myself is to kill her now, before she slips out of my grasp and fulfils her destiny. I was warned
now.
There must be good reason why I was instructed thus at this point in time and not tomorrow or ten years from the morrow. I must obey.’

Kamsa raised his sword with the ease of an accomplished warrior, tossing it up in the air and catching it easily. He then gripped it in his right hand, with the point inwards, like a dagger. His massive back muscles clenched as he brought both arms closer to each other in a pincer-like action, the sword now poised directly above the weeping Devaki’s breast.She stared up in misery at the weapon of her annihilation, crying out for mercy. Vasudeva felt his whole world tremble on the brink of an abyss. It was impossible to believe that only a short while ago, his new bride and he had been about to embark on the first journey of their newly wed lives. What evil twist of fate had turned their joy into terror so abruptly?

He knew that being subservient and obsequious would not serve any longer. He must penetrate the veil of conviction that Kamsa had wrapped around himself. And he must do it at once. Otherwise, the sword would pierce the breast of the woman he loved and his world would lie bleeding upon the uks cart.

Vasudeva raised his head, drawing himself to his full stature, speaking in his normal voice. Despite his gentle nature and love of all living beings, he was a chieftain, a general, a king among men. He spoke now, not as a gowala, a cowherd, a husband or even a brother-in-law. Simply as a king. His voice rang out clearly across the sea of stunned faces filling the square.

‘So you serve a
voice
then?
That
is Kamsa’s lord and master? A disembodied voice that only
you
can hear and which speaks inside your head?’

He did not curb the scorn in his tone, the natural cynicism in the phrasing. He sought now not to appease but to provoke, to draw ire upon himself. Words were his only arrows, his voice the only bow.

Kamsa’s back tensed, his arms flexed. Almost without realizing it, the arm holding the twisted mass of Devaki’s hair in its fist loosened a little. Not enough for Vasudeva’s wife to be free, but just enough to give her a moment’s relief. She gasped, hitching in her breath and hope. Kamsa turned to look at Vasudeva, head lowered on his powerful neck, eyes glowering like those of the wound-maddened boar deep in the Vrindavan forest. Vasudeva still bore the scar of that boar’s left tusk on his calf where the beast had cut open a gash. He had never forgotten the malevolence with which the boar had watched him from the leafy depths of the undergrowth, challenging the two- legged intruder to face him in his domain. Vasudeva had been seven years of age. He had killed the boar, but not because it had wounded him; he killed it because it had killed three other children and two grown men and had become a menace to their village.

Kamsa’s eyes glowered in the darkness of his own face. He raised the sword, fingers deftly manoeuvring the blade till it was once again held in a forward grip. Now the point was aimed directly at Vasudeva’s right eye.

‘I serve no master. I have no lord. I am Kamsa,’ he said, the words exploding from his heaving lungs and bursting from his mouth with frothy spittle.‘You dare call me a slave?’

Vasudeva had done no such thing, but that was Kamsa’s way – to exaggerate everything in order to emphasize how unjust and unfair the other person, or the world, or the universe at large was to him, Kamsa. Because, of course, he, Kamsa, was the centre of all creation.

Vasudeva stood up to that gaze, meeting Kamsa’s fevered eyes without blinking. He used Kamsa’s own paranoia against the man. ‘A voice speaks, you obey. If you are not its slave, why do you obey? How do you even
know
whether what the voice tells you is true?’

‘Because it has spoken before, and what it said came to pass!’ Kamsa said, still holding the sword pointed at Vasudeva. ‘I have no time to bandy words with you, Sura. The voice has told me that this woman will be the cause of my destruction. I believe it. I do not care if you believe or not. I will kill her to protect myself.’

‘And be known as a woman yourself!’ Vasudeva’s voice rang out loud and clear.

Kamsa stared at him.

‘You command an army of womanly warriors.’ Vasudeva gestured at the Mohinis. ‘You raise your sword against an unarmed woman, your own sister, no less. What will itihasa say about you in times to come? It will say that Kamsa was a woman among men, a eunuch who recruited others of his kind, who did not dare to face warriors with weapons; he chose only to kill by stealth, deception, and attack defenceless women of his own house!’ Vasudeva raised his hand now, pointing his finger at Kamsa. The tip of the finger barely inches from the tip of the sword.‘You will be known as a craven without dharma or honour.’

Kamsa roared with fury, bristling with such rage that he was momentarily rendered speechless.

Vasudeva moved closer, into the arc of the upraised sword, close enough for the edge of the blade to be almost touching his own neck, the blade itself poised over his shoulder. He looked directly into Kamsa’s eyes, challenging him openly.‘Too craven to fight
me
as a man.’

seven

Mathura held its breath as Vasudeva stood before Kamsa, his neck bared to the edge of Kamsa’s sword. One sideways cut of that muscular arm and the blade would bite into Vasudeva’s neck and sever his most vital vein. The Sura king had no defence, nor a weapon of his own to counter Kamsa’s. He faced certain, instant death.

Yet, Vasudeva stood ramrod straight, eyes unblinking, face fearless and set in the equanimous manner of a warrior who faced death daily and accepted its inevitability. For Vasudeva was a true warrior, not a mercenary thug like Kamsa who fought for personal gain and selfish motives, but a Kshatriya of the highest order, serving only the cause of dharma. Not just a
soldier
of dharma, a
sword
of dharma. And what does one sword have to fear from another?

It was Kamsa’s hand that shook. It began as a tremulous quiver, just a single ripple of his etched-out muscles, as if the sword had grown too heavy for him to hold straight. Then the entire arm began to shudder and shake, and then the elbow bent at the crook and the sword descended, falling out of Kamsa’s numb grip to clatter on the wooden planks of the uks cart.

The rest of him shuddered as well, a quaking of his entire body that bent him over double, bringing him to his knees in a posture curiously like supplication. His other hand, grown as numb as the first, released his sister involuntarily, and she fell, gasping with relief, on the cart. Kamsa shook and shivered like a man in the grip of a malarial fever, and from his mouth came a trickle of drool ... and a single word ...

None but Vasudeva heard that word.

Then, Kamsa buried his head in his own lap, his arms held out by his sides, twitching of their own accord. To all those watching, it seemed as if he had surrendered to Vasudeva, and was now repentant for his sins. It was a profound moment for all those who witnessed it. A moment of great clarity. For in that moment, every Yadava knew the truth: Whether by divine miracle or by dint of superhuman power, Vasudeva could not be defeated by Kamsa in single combat. This was the third and final encounter between the two men, and even the most sceptical supporter of Kamsa or hater of the Suras and Vrishnis could no longer deny the stark evidence of their senses. Kamsa could not kill or harm Vasudeva. ‘Not so much as a hair on his head,’ people would say with pride and wonder afterwards.