KRISHNA CORIOLIS#1: Slayer of Kamsa (26 page)

His feint worked perfectly at first. Still laughing at the ease with which the brother of the prophesied slayer had been despatched, Kamsa was not expecting an attack, let alone one so cleverly planned and executed. When he heard Vasudeva’s roar, he assumed that the Sura king had finally lost his wits and was foolishly attempting a futile assault. He swung around, intending to easily block the fist and hammer a blow at the side of Vasudeva’s head that would – then he recalled that the blow would have no effect on Vasudeva.ThatnothinghedidcouldharmVasudeva directly. Well, he could still block the fist and any other blows Vasudeva threw at him. He had been strong enough to take a beating even as a human. As a rakshasa, he could take much more than Vasudeva could dish out.

But then Vasudeva changed tack. And did it so cleverly and quickly that Kamsa had no time to react. He was still turning to block the fist when Vasudeva suddenly seemed to slide a whole yard to Kamsa’s right; the next instant, he was right beside Kamsa, driving what appeared to be a spear-like weapon into his body.

Under ordinary circumstances, it was a brilliant, audacious move. One that would have succeeded. Kamsa would have been mortally wounded, unable to fight effectively, perhaps even killed at the first blow. And everything would have changed right there and then.

Instead, Kamsa discovered something incredible.

The spear came straight at him, broke through his skin, and entered his body. He distinctly felt the sharp jag of pain as it pierced skin and penetrated flesh, scraping against his lowest right rib; then entered his liver, skewering it like a piece of meat to be roasted; before punching through his back and emerging again, with a small explosion of blood and gristle.

Vasudeva stepped back, already preparing his next assault. Mortal blow or no, a warrior always prepared to follow up. Too many fights were lost because one party assumed the other was downed when, in fact, it was not.

Kamsa looked down at the spear sticking out of his body. He realized that it wasn’t a spear at all. It was Vasudeva’s crook. The same crook that had shattered his sword, a mace, several arrows and sundry other weapons at the war camp. It was sticking out of his chest now.

He reached down and snapped it off. It broke quite easily, given his new rakshasa strength.

Then he reached behind with both hands, groped once or twice, found the spear point, grasped it, and pulled the weapon out of his back. It came free with a further burst of bodily fluids and a sucking, crackling sound. He brought it around and looked at it. The metal spearhead had bent and twisted during its progress through his body. It looked like a bad imitation of a spear rather than a real weapon.

He tossed it aside. It clattered on the polished floor, sliding a good many yards before it came to rest beneath a wall splattered with the remains of his nephew.

He looked at Vasudeva.

Then he put his hands on his hips.

And he laughed.

Vasudeva stared at him in astonishment.

Kamsa pointed down at his own chest, still
laughing.

Vasudeva looked down. And saw the open wound closing of its own accord, the organ regenerating instantly to regain its form.

Kamsa turned around, showing his back to Vasudeva, showing how the exit hole in his back was closing – it had closed already – and the wound healing by itself.

Then he turned back and spread his arms wide. His chuckling reverberated through the large, white sabha hall.

‘I thought you understood,’ he said to Vasudeva. ‘When I said I was immortal, it meant I cannot be killed. Not by a mortal at least. That is why I am King
Eternal.
I will
live
forever and
rule
forever.’

In two swift strides, he was at Vasudeva’s throat, grasping it with a single hand. The hand expanded, filling with rakshasa blood to grow several times the size of Kamsa’s body, the rest of which retained its human size. Vasudeva coughed and struggled as the hand lifted him off the ground to hover a yard in mid- air, feet kicking and flailing uselessly.

‘That one I grant you as a learning experiment, brother-in-law,’ he snarled.‘The next time, I will break our pact and kill Devaki. Do you understand?
Answer me!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND?’

With a supreme effort, Vasudeva managed to croak out a mangled ‘Yes!’

Kamsa released his grip and let Vasudeva drop to the ground. Immediately, his hand began to reduce, returning to its normal size.

‘So long as you uphold our pact and bring Devaki’s newborn children to me each time, I shall let you both live under my protection. Those are the terms of
my
peace treaty. Uphold them. Or face the consequences.’

seventeen

The human mind and heart are only equipped to feel so much pain and sorrow. Beyond that point, it is simply more pain, more sorrow. Not bigger, greater, grander, just more. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one knows this to be true. The tear ducts can only produce so many tears at a time. The heart can grieve for only so long.Anything beyond that is simply more of the same. After a time, the mind grows numb. The heart hardens. The spirit withers and starts to die.
This is life,
says that part of us which enables us to survive holocausts and hurricanes, war and bereavement alike,
live through this.
And so we do live. We go on. We survive. We endure the unendurable and come out the other side, blinking, dazed, shocked and stupefied, but still alive. Still breathing. The heart, hammered by grief, still beats on, pumping life through our veins, keeping us alive. The lungs expand and contract. The brain still fires sparks of thought and reflex. The eyes still see, the ears still hear, and the sun rises and sets, the earth turns and the stars shine on, and the universe proceeds the way it has always proceeded ... unhindered.

hrough the terrible years that followed, Devaki was kept alive by just two thoughts: The first was Vasudeva’s entreaty at the very outset, on the very evening of the day he had been forced to make the awful pact with Kamsa.
Live through this,
he had said. And the simple power of that command struck a deep chord within her. For it was true, despite all else. If they did not live, they would already have failed, without Kamsa needing to lift even a finger against them. And if they failed by giving up, by letting themselves die, or by killing themselves, Kamsa would surely have succeeded. And then what chance would Mathura have? Or the Yadava nations? Or Aryavarta as a whole? For what Kamsa was doing to Mathura, Jarasandha and his allies were doing to the rest of the civilized world. No, whatever happened, they must endure, they must survive. After Vasudeva’s attempt on Kamsa’s life and his failure, they realized that their best interest lay in upholding the pact. It was the only way for them to survive, to live, to go on.

The second, and most powerful of all, was the knowledge of the eighth child. The one yet to come. The one who was prophesied.
Slayer of Kamsa.
She mouthed the words silently to herself each time she felt her womb quicken with child and during the subsequent months of pregnancy.
You will come and save us, Slayer of Kamsa.
She called him by that title for it was the only name she knew to call him. Or her. All she knew was that the eighth child she would bear would bring about the doom of Kamsa. And if Kamsa could be defeated, surely Mathura could be saved ... the Yadu race freed of its yoke of oppression ... and in time, Aryavarta rid of the evil of Jarasandha and his allies. The eighth child spelt hope. The future. Infinity.

And how could she give birth to the eighth child if she did not survive?

More than survive.

For a mother could not simply pretend. She must care. Thrive. Prosper. For what she felt, thought and experienced, her unborn child would feel, think and experience as well. So she must be strong and resilient and happy and healthy in order to produce children that were all those things, and more. She must
live.

I am rich today,
she had said once to her father, the fathershehadnotseeninoversixyearsnow.Andshe was rich even now. Rich in the love of her husband and companion. Rich in hope. Rich in promise. Rich in prayer and faith and conviction.

For six years, Vasudeva took her newborn children to Kamsa.

And six times in as many years, Kamsa murdered the babies: held them by their feet, swung them overhead, and smashed out their tiny brains on the walls of his palace.

Six times. Six years. Six lives.

Innocent, beautiful, perfect, wonderful lives. Snuffed out. Destroyed.

Of all the crimes he had committed, all the injustices, all the atrocities and brutalities, surely that was Kamsa’s worst offence? To kill innocent babies the very day of their birth? For no good reason.

And now, she was about to bear a seventh. The seventh. Where had the years gone? They had gone to the same place that her dead babes had gone. Into the mouth of Sesa, the serpent of infinity, its coils winding around the Samay Chakra, the great Wheel of Time upon which all Creation revolved. And once Sesa took hold of anything, it never returned. What was gone was gone, what was dead was dead, past was past.

Think only of today and of tomorrow, Devaki. The eighth child comes. Slayer of Kamsa.

But this was the seventh. The seventh, not the eighth.

Even if, somehow, the eighth was born and survived the wrath of Kamsa and lived to grow to adulthood and fulfil the prophecy, that would come later. This next one would only be the seventh. The prophecy had said nothing about the seventh killing anyone.So it would surely go the way of the first six.

Somehow, this realization broke her heart more than the grief she had lived through each year for the past six years.

Not another one, Devi. Not this one.

She prayed to the Goddess, her patron deity, with fervent ardour. Before her mind’s eye flashed the several avatars and amsas of the Goddess: Durga, Bhadrakali, Vijaya, Vaisnavi, Kumuda, Candika, Krsna, Madhavi, Kanyaka, Maya, Narayani, Isani, Sarada, Ambika ... and so many more she did not
even know the names of. Resplendent, omnipotent, magnificent in feminine shakti, they appeared before her one by one and seemed to meld into her own essence, like layers upon layers of thinly beaten metal joining together to form a single blade.

Something happened within her womb.
She cried out.
A great heat surged within her. It grew to an

unbearable degree, threatening to consume her alive in a single flash. White light tinged with blue at the corona exploded behind her eyes. She heard a great roaring, as of the ocean. And felt as if her stomach were being turned inside out.

She blacked out.

When she returned to consciousness, she found Vasudeva cradling her head in his lap, anxiously examining her. He had dripped water into her mouth and cooled her head and throat with a damp cloth. Her body was bathed in sweat as if after a high fever.

And her belly was as flat as it had been months earlier.

She touched it, needing to feel the truth for herself before allowing her faith to overwhelm reason. Then she knew it had not been just a hallucination.

‘He has gone,’ she said. ‘He has been taken away, carried to safety.’

Vasudeva stared at her as if wondering if she was delirious.‘Who has gone?’

‘The seventh child. Our son. See. Feel for yourself.’

She took his hand and pressed it to her belly. He stared into her eyes as he groped to decipher what she wanted him to feel, then understanding shone in his eyes.

‘The baby is gone,’ he said in wonderment. ‘I no longer feel his shape, his legs, the edge of his heel digging out of the side of your stomach.’

She nodded. ‘He has been carried to safety,’ she said again.‘To a place where Kamsa will not be able to seek him out.’

He stared at her.‘How do you know this?’

She shrugged.‘I was told ...’ She shook her head; that was not quite right. ‘It was
shown
to me. By Yogamaya.’

‘Yogamaya?’

‘Yes, one of the infinite forms of Devi. She came and spirited away our seventh child from my womb, transferring it to the womb of another woman.’

‘Who?’heasked.

‘Rohini. Your first wife. My elder sister by way of marriage. There, he will come to term and be born without incident, safe from Kamsa. For how will Kamsa kill a child when he does not be able which child to kill?’

Vasudeva stared at her, sharing her excitement, his mind racing.‘And we shall tell him that you miscarried the seventh child. He can have his women check if he wishes. There is proof too: the child is gone from your womb.’

‘Yes!’ she said, clapping her hands together. It was the first time in years that both of them had exhibited such happiness so freely.

Vasudeva nodded. He pulled her closer, kissing her on the top of her head, and she sighed with joy. ‘But why the seventh child?’ he wondered aloud. ‘If the eighth was to be the Slayer ...’

‘Perhaps the seventh has some role to play that we are not yet aware of,’ she said.

He thought about it, then nodded.‘Yes, that must be it. And what matters is that he will live now. We will have a son! What shall we name him?’

Shethoughtlongandhard,thensaid,‘Weshould name him Shankarshan, for he was removed from the womb. But because he is the cause of such ramana, pleasure, to us, we shall call him Rama as well. And finally, because of the greatness of his strength, his bala, we shall name him Balabhadra.’

He chuckled.‘Shankarshan, Ramana, Balabhadra. Three names for a little babe! Will they not be too much for him to carry?’

She smiled proudly, knowingly. ‘He can carry Creation if he wishes. Like Sesa, the infinite serpent.’

eighteen

Kamsa prowled the corridors of his palace. He now commanded the greatest Yadava standing army ever maintained; a force great enough to challenge most other kings, perhaps even great enough to challenge Jarasandha himself. The past seven years had seen him grow from strength to strength. Today, even Jarasandha’s emissaries dared not raise their eyes to look directly at him, and spoke only soft, sweet assurances and words of agreement. He still fed the occasional eunuch to the beasts in the courtyard at the back, just to ensure that they stayed humble and polite. But in
his
kingdom, none dared even speak to him unless spoken to. He ruled with an iron hand. Absolute power. He had it, he enjoyed its fruits and spoils, and he would rule forever.