KRISHNA CORIOLIS#1: Slayer of Kamsa (22 page)

Today, that faith was renewed with vigour.

Shortly after, Padmavati stood at the balcony overlooking the courtyard of the palace. As with the sabha hall, every inch of space was packed with eager citizens wishing to witness the execution of the former crown prince. Never before had such an event occurred. She prayed it never would.

Beside her stood Ugrasena, discreetly leaning on a royal crook that was not visible to the crowds below: a king had to keep up the appearance of strength, even if he was ailing and frail. Vasudeva and Devaki stood with them. Kamsa’s other brothers and sisters and their spouses stood nearby. The atmosphere was grim and heavy and fraught with a certain tension that she understood: not tension for the event, but a kind of tense anticipation, awaiting the end of the event, so they could breathe freely again. Even Kamsa’s brothers, blood-kin though they were, displayed the same impassive expressions, waiting for the danda to be carried out, and the black sheep of the family to be eliminated. Growing up, Kamsa had made enemies of them, one and all; and the chief reason why Ugrasena had chosen to send them out to govern other regions of the kingdom was to avoid their coming into mortal conflict with Kamsa. Padmavati could see no vestige of love or regret on any of their faces, and this made her sad as well. What had Ugrasena and she done to produce a son so unloved and hated that an entire kingdom, including his own family, now looked forward to his execution?

For the people, there were far stronger implications of today’s event. This execution would change the history of the Yadava nations forever. It would prove that no one was above dharma. It would reaffirm their faith in an idea – of a republic – that had been faltering for years.

Padmavati forced herself to look down at Kamsa. He had been pressed into a kneeling posture on the execution platform below, his head resting upon a wooden block. The executioner, a giant of a man who was in reality a shepherd of the mountain tribes – the only community that undertook to perform such executions – stood patiently beside him, a large mace leaning against his thigh.

Oddly enough, Kamsa had done nothing, said nothing throughout the brief trial and sentencing. He had simply knelt thus, as he knelt now, head bowed, long hair unfettered and falling across his face, concealing any expression or trace of emotion. In no way did he betray any other response or feeling. He did not utter a single word or make a sound.

She supposed that he was filled with remorse for his misdeeds and overcome by guilt and shame. She hoped that was the case. It would have been too terrible to bear had he ranted and raved and called out for mercy or abused his accusers. True, he had the right to do so, but it would only have made people pity him. Weakness among Yadava Kshatriyas was unforgivable. They would have mocked him, scorned him ...
hated
him for not accepting his death like a Yadu. This way, he would at least die honourably, executed by official danda, punished under dharma. He could even be cremated officially, his ashes scatteredintheYamunaasthoseofhisancestorshad been.
And soon, my ashes will fall into the river as well,
she thought, sadness pressing against her heart like a cold fist,
for how will I live with the shame of this?

The magistrate presiding over the execution looked up at the balcony. Ugrasena raised his rajtaru, the signal to begin. The executioner lifted the mace over his head, his powerful hands hefting the massive length of iron, dimples appearing in his shoulders and back. Unlike the maces carried into battle, this tool was not plated with steel, silver, gold, or even copper or brass. No filigree work adorned it, no shaping altered its menacing bulk. It was simply a black pillar of iron with a bulbous head thrice as large as a grown man’s, pitted, scored and dented in several places from use. She wondered how many condemned men the mace had crushed to death, whose blood would mingle with her own, for the blood that ran through Kamsa’s veins was her blood.

With the head of the mace lifted as high as his muscled arms could raise it, the shepherd steadied himself to take careful aim. He was known to accomplish his job in a single blow, and Padmavati prayed that he would do so today as well. She could not imagine the cruelty of a man half-crushed, half- dead, lying on the wooden block, suffering.

‘Be merciful; make it quick. He is my son after all,’ she prayed. For her, whatever he may have done, it all came down to a single point: Kamsa was her son. And she could not find it in her heart to wish him cruelty even now.

The mace hovered in the air for a moment, then began its terrible descent. A sound rose from the crowd, an instinctive natural sound that originated deep in the chests of the onlookers and rose to their throats as a wordless growl. As the mace descended, the growl rose to a roar and exploded.

The deadly tool crashed down, hard enough to smash a skull to pulp, to end life instantly, to shatter bone and mash flesh and splatter blood.

The executioner grunted with the effort.

But instead of meeting skull and flesh, the mace was met by an upraised hand. At the very instant that it began to fall, Kamsa’s hand shot up and, with unerring instinct, met the head of the mace with its palm. It was not entirely uncommon; men were known to panic and attempt to save themselves at the last instant. The mace ought to have smashed the hand along with the skull, without its descent being affected in the least.

Instead, Kamsa’s outstretched hand slapped against the head of the mace, successfully halting its purposeful approach. Stalled mid-hurtle, the mace stayed there: an inch above Kamsa’s head.

A gasp rose from the watching crowd. Incredulity. Disbelief. Shock. Such a thing had never happened
before. The executioner stared down, baffled. He then tried to haul the mace up again, intending to bring it down and do the job properly the next time. He had assumed that he had not wielded the mace correctly the first time; that was the only explanation which made sense.

But though the executioner struggled fiercely, his corded arms, shoulders, back and neck muscles straining until they stood out in etched relief, the mace did not budge.

Then, Padmavati saw Kamsa’s fingers begin to close upon the head of the mace, the balls of the fingers pressing
into
the solid iron bulb.

And the iron yielded.

Kamsa’s fingers dug into the metal like a child’s fingers squeezing a ball of mud. The executioner stared in disbelief, then lost his grip on the mace and backed away. Nothing in his entire life had prepared him for such an occurrence. People across the courtyard gasped and cried out in shock, pointing.

Kamsa rose to his feet. He was holding the mace by its head. He looked down at it and slowly closed his fist, crushing the solid iron bulb as easily as the mace ought to have crushed his head moments earlier. Then he tossed the mace aside – directly at the executioner. A hundred kilos of iron struck the man in the chest, shattering him. He fell off the execution platform, landing on his back on the stone courtyard, broken beyond repair. People screamed now, unable to comprehend what was happening. Perhaps the oddest thing of all was the way Kamsa looked at his own hand, flexing the fingers, and then stared at the dying executioner with the mace embedded in his chest,
as if he is
... Padmavati groped ...
as if he’s as shocked at his own feat of strength as everyone else!

Kamsa seemed to accept his new-found strength at last and raised his head, looking around at the watching crowd. His hair fell into his face, concealing most of his features. Only one eye glared out, bulging, red-veined, the pupil reduced to a pinpoint; and brilliant white teeth flashed in the dark shade of his hair-curtained face. He lifted his heavy-lidded eyes and gazed up at the balcony. Padmavati flinched as his eyes sought out and found her. She thought she saw him grin by way of greeting; then that terrible wild-eyed gaze passed on to find his father. There it stayed. She sensed Ugrasena standing his ground, neither flinching nor showing any reaction that might give Kamsa any satisfaction, but from the trembling of his hand upon the crook that helped support him, she knew that the effort cost him dearly.

Kamsa chuckled.

Padmavati suddenly realized that Kamsa had expanded in size. Instead of his normal height of two yards, he was a good yard taller now. In fact, he was growing even as she watched. She had barely taken her eyes off him, to look at her husband, and found him a head taller when she looked down again. Now, he was twice his height, his width expanding proportionately. Now, thrice his size ... She heard the platform creak as his weight increased as well, now four times, then five times. Kamsa then started growing exponentially, rising like a coiled cobra expanding to its full height. The crowd gathered in the courtyard screamed and shouted in terror, unable to make sense of this new phenomenon.

And Kamsa continued to grow.

ten

‘YADUS OF MATHURA!’

The voice boomed like a peal of thunder mingled with a grinding metallic sound. Ugrasena’s ears throbbed painfully with the impact of the sound. Beside him, Padmavati clapped her hands over her ears. Devaki did likewise. In the courtyard, people reeled and fell back, stampeding to get away from the monstrosity that stood in front of the palace. Elsewhere, horses reared and whinnied in panic, elephants trumpeted in anger, kine lowed in protest, babies howled in dismay.

The being that had been Kamsa just a few moments ago now towered above the height of the palace, with just the head measuring a hundred yards in height. It was the width and thickness of a mansion. Dust clouds, raised by its movement, boiled and seethed around it, lending it an air of sorcery, as if some conjuror had tossed down a crystal ball of magic powder and this impossible thing had emerged. The puranas told of such things: creatures that altered shape at will, grew in size or diminished in stature as they pleased. But this was no creature out of a puranic tale. This was Kamsa!

BY
CONDEMNING MY MORTAL BODY TO DEATH, YOU HAVE RELEASED MY TRUE FORM. UNTIL TODAY, I TOO HAD JUST PREMONITIONS AND GLIMPSES OF MY TRUE IDENTITY. BUT BY BRINGING ME TO THE POINT OF DEATH, YOU HAVE UNLOCKED MY TRUE NATURE. THIS IS WHO I AM. NOT A MERE MORTAL LIKE YOU. LOOK UPON ME AND WEEP, FOR I AM YOUR DESTINY. I AM YOUR DEATH. I AM YOUR OVERLORD!’

Ugrasena sucked his breath in, struggling to support his weight on the crook. He realized that he had inadvertently been leaning back, causing his balance to fail. He reached out and grasped the balustrade, using it to prop himself up. It no longer mattered if anyone saw him; nobody had eyes for him any more, or for anything else except the giant rakshasa that loomed in the palace courtyard.

Yes, a rakshasa, for what else would you call this being!
His mind shuddered, desisted from accepting what he was experiencing with his own senses. It was something straight out of the scrolls that recorded ancient tales and forgotten legends.

Grotesque, malformed, hideously shaped and bulging out from unexpected places, it appeared to be more a war machine than a living creature. Its size was the feature that was least unusual about it. Its massive muscles were an epic parody of Kamsa’s physique. Its feet were ringed with a fuzzy down that was more goat- or sheep-like than human. It took a step forward, crushing the remnants of the execution platform to splinters, and the earth reverberated with the thud of the impact. When it spoke, its tongue protruded, a violent, swollen purple tongue crawling with life. Were those
serpents
weaving in and out of the flesh of its tongue? And the eyes, those terrible bulging eyes with the pinpointy pupils – there were living things squirming inside its eyeballs as well, wriggling to and fro and falling ... to land with a sickening plop on the courtyard far below, each the size of a finger, trailing a blood-red, mucus-like residue.

Despite this macabre transmogrification, there was no question that the being was Kamsa. That face, swollen and fat with hatred and rage; those eyes glittering through the curtain of filthy ropes of hair; the overall shape of those features; that body, the way it moved and walked and turned its head ... even the voice, thunderous and with its undertone of gnashing metal, was still recognizably Kamsa’s. As the creature spoke – almost to itself at times – with curious lapses into a kind of self-questioning tone, Ugrasena realized that the being was discovering its true self even as they were viewing its transformation.

‘TOO
LONG HAVE I ENDURED IN THIS FRAIL, MORTAL FORM. TOO LONG DID I STAY IMPRISONED IN THAT PUTRID CAGE OF MORTAL FLESH AND BONE. THIS IS THE DAY OF MY RESURRECTION. YET I DO NOT THANK YOU, FOR THIS TOO WAS
ORDAINED, AS WERE ALL THE THINGS THAT HAVE PASSED AND THOSE THAT ARE YET TO HAPPEN.’

The giant took another step, this time stepping right onto a section of the crowd of onlookers who had come to witness the execution. Ugrasena saw a dozen innocents crushed like ants beneath the giant foot. Kamsa did not even realize that he had ended their lives. All he had done was shift his weight from one foot to the other.

Ugrasena realized that he had to take charge of the situation somehow, or at least attempt to do so. The being was not killing people ... not by its own volition ... at least not yet ... Perhaps if he kept it talking for a while longer, he could pre-empt some violence.

‘Who are you?’ he cried, his voice cracking with age and emotion. ‘You are not my son Kamsa. What are you? Identify thyself, creature!’

Kamsa turned and looked down at him. The yard- thick black lips curled to reveal ivory-white fangs. ‘WHO
AM I? WHY, I AM THE ONE YOUR WIFE NAMED KAMSA. DO YOU NOT KNOW WHY SHE NAMED ME SO? ASK HER THEN.
ASK
HER WHY SHE NAMED YOUR FIRST- BORN KAMSA!’

Ugrasena frowned. What was the creature talking about? Surely, it was raving. Then he glanced at Padmavati and saw the way she stared up at the rakshasa, her face drained of all colour, and realization dawned.

‘My Queen,’ he asked her,‘what does this monster mean? Can you explain?’