KRISHNA CORIOLIS#1: Slayer of Kamsa (3 page)

Supremely confident of its strength and tonnage, the elephant trundled forward without heed for the puny sipahis pointing their spears at it. Its flailing trunk, pierced with studs, knocked three sipahis carelessly to the floor; then it proceeded to pound their prostrate forms with its leaden feet. The sipahis convulsed and screamed, the screams cut abruptly short as the massive grey feet smashed their heads with practised ease, spilling their lives onto the polished marble floor. Gasps and exclamations of protest met this callous life-taking.

The hathi-yodhha swung its massive head from side to side, checking for more challengers before covering the last few yards into the centre of the banquet hall. The surviving gate guards, brave though they were, shuffled aside hastily, their faces blanching
at the fate of their companions. Even the lot of them combined could hardly expect to face a battle-ready war elephant, and this, as they well knew, was no ordinary war elephant. This was the feared and hated Haddi-Hathi himself, named for the pleasure he was rumoured to take in crushing human bone, haddi. It only made things worse that the elephant, like its rider, was on their side. Theoretically speaking, at least.

In fact, Vasudeva thought grimly, they had more to fear from their kinsman mounted on the elephant’s back than from the hathi.

That heavily muscled figure, clad in a blood- spattered brass armour to make himself resemble an outgrowth of the elephant rather than a separate being, was none other than the universally feared and hated master of Haddi-Hathi, Prince Kamsa himself, who had evidently returned from a new campaign of reaving and ravaging. Vasudeva glanced around to see his aides-de-camp, indeed his entire entourage of clansmen, reaching instinctively for their swords and maces. They found no weapons: the party had divested itself of its metal implements at the gates before entering at dawn in accordance with the terms of the treaty. But even so, their faces and clenched fists betrayed their rage at the sight of the man mounted atop the elephant. That man – nay, that
beast,
for he was more truly an animal than the creature astride which he sat – had left his bloody handprint upon the spotless reputation of every last one of the Sura houses represented here.

Over the last few years, none of these proud families had escaped the rapacious raids and ruthless violence of Prince Kamsa and his marauders. Vasudeva raised his hands to quell the muttered noises of provocation rising from his party, sensing the desire for just revenge that swelled in their proud warrior hearts. He himself, as king and chief justice of the Suras, had grown heartsick at hearing the innumerable atrocities committed by the prince of the Andhakas and his white-clad mercenaries. Their exploits far exceeded any conceivable desire for revenge or simple war lust; theirs was a campaign of brute destruction.

The list of war crimes, in utter violation of all Arya warrior codes, streamed past his memory’s eye like a herd of sheep impatient to return to the stockade before dusk: women violated, homes and herds put to the torch, entire families wiped out overnight ... yes, the White Prince had much to answer for. But that reckoning would not be here, or now. King Vasudeva kept his hands raised to either side, and his clansmen subsided reluctantly, their faces still dark with angry blood.

Atop the blood-tainted elephant, Prince Kamsa’s proud, handsome face turned from side to side, his piercing grey-blue eyes sweeping the length of the banquet hall, briefly and contemptuously scanning the faces of his many enemies assembled here. He lingered briefly on the women, dressed in colourful and enticing festive garb. The leering grin that twisted his face betrayed his utter lack of respect for any regal protocol.

Even Vasudeva felt his jaw clench as the prince stared with rude intensity at an attractive woman amidst the throng of richly clad nobility only two tables down. That was Pritha, Vasudeva’s sister, who had travelled here from her home in Hastinapura. Her husband Pandu had been unable to attend the function due to ill health, but Pritha’s presence was meant as an official seal to show the great Kuru nation’s solidarity with and approval for the peace pact.

Vasudeva’s hands clenched into fists as he struggled to restrain his warring emotions. What manner of beast was a man who would storm thus into a feast hosted by his father in bloody armour, dash down his loyal kin-soldiers and insult a noblewoman who was under the protection of his father’s hospitality? Often had he heard the tales whispered along the length of the Yamuna, among the many clans and sub-clans of the Yadava nation. It was said that Kamsa was a rakshasa begot upon his mother Padmavati by a demon who assumed the form of his father Ugrasena. Vasudeva was a rational man, and not given to superstition. Yet, looking at those almost-translucent, greyish-blue eyes that glared at the gathered nobles and chieftains with such unbridled hostility, he could almost believe the gossip. Violence exuded from Kamsa like waves of heat from a boiling kettle.

Then Kamsa’s gaze sought out and settled upon Vasudeva. And his entire aspect changed so suddenly, it was almost as if he had seen something quite different from merely the king of the Suras.

As if he’s seeing some terrible foe rather than just me standing here, overdressed in my ceremonial robes,
Vasudeva thought. Kamsa took a step back, then another, and Vasudeva thought he saw something akin to ...
fear?
... cross the prince’s otherwise handsome face. Kamsa’s magnificently wrought arms rippled with muscle beneath the chainmail armour he wore.

Vasudeva was caught off-guard by the look on Kamsa’s face. What had the feared reaver of the great and powerful Andhaka clan to fear from a simple, peace-loving man like him?

The stunned silence in the hall gave way to surprised whispering as the assemblage took note of Kamsa’s strange reaction to seeing Vasudeva. At the same moment, the Haddi-Hathi raised his trunk and issued a bleating call that oddly echoed Kamsa’s own mixture of awe and terror. The sound served to snap the Andhaka prince out of his daze.

The look on his face changed at once. The fearful, awestruck expression dissipated and was replaced instantly by a mask which was blank and inscrutable but to those who had already seen or worn it themselves – it was the mask a warrior wore when he prepared to launch an attack on the battlefield, severing his normal human self from the battle machine he was about to become.

But it was the glimpse into Kamsa’s naked inner self that caught Vasudeva’s attention. Yes,
that
look had been unmistakably an expression of fear. He was still pondering the meaning of that expression when Kamsa issued a loud curse, raised a barbed spear, and flung it with a roar of fury – directly at Vasudeva’s breast.

three

Devaki shrieked as her brother threw the spear at her betrothed. Her planned union with Vasudeva was yet to be formally solemnized; but she already thought of him as her husband-in- waiting. There was no man she would be happier to unite with in matrimony than the chief-king of the Sura Yadavas. That their joining would help further the cause of peace between the neighbouring nations was incidental to her. She had always been a woman led by her instinct and spirit, and she knew that she would love Vasudeva deeply, indeed had come to feel great affection and admiration for him already, after only a few meetings; and
that
mattered more to her than politics and statecraft.

She had watched with rising horror as her brother stormed into the sabha hall, then proceeded to slight, dishonour, and variously embarrass her royal dynasty as well as their entire clan by his behaviour. To come thus armed and armoured was bad enough, but to bring a war elephant – especially that brutalized and perverted beast for whom she simultaneously felt pity and disgust – was a terrible act, a flagrant slap on the face of their royal guests. When Kamsa had stared
at Vasudeva with that peculiar expression, she had thought that perhaps, for once, sanity and sense had percolated into that dense brain.

When Kamsa had turned, plucked out a barbed spear from the side-saddle of Haddi-Hathi and flung it with vehement force at her husband-to-be, it shocked the life out of her and she could hardly help shrieking her dismay.

To her further amazement, Vasudeva made no move to twist, turn, dodge, or otherwise avoid the trajectory of the missile.

The spears Kamsa favoured were brutal things. Metal heads barbed in an asymmetrical pattern of recurved points, any one of which was sufficient to rip to shreds a person’s flesh and organs, and impossible to remove without further damaging the wounded individual. His aim with these inhumane missiles was renowned. She had once seen him fling a spear at a grama chieftain in a dense milling crowd and strike him in the throat without touching anyone else on either side.

This time too, his aim seemed perfect. The spear was flying towards Vasudeva’s chest, poised to shatter the Sura chief-king’s unprotected breastbone and destroy his heart, and to kill him instantly. Her shriek was echoed by an outburst of screams and shouts of dismay, male as well as female, from across the crowded sabha hall. The distance from Kamsa’s hand to Vasudeva’s chest was barely twenty yards, and the spear bridged that distance in a fraction of a
second; yet in later years, as the legend grew, it would be said by some that the spear had slowed in mid-air as if travelling through water or against a powerful headwind, rather than simply across empty stillness.

If such a phenomenon truly occurred or if it was merely a product of the active imagination of those watching, she would never know for certain. For no sooner had the spear started on its trajectory than a man rushed forward, blocking Devaki’s view. It was Akrur, a close friend and ally of Vasudeva and a chief mediator in the peace alliance between the Sura and Andhaka nations.

She would later learn that he had attempted to fling himself into the path of the onrushing spear, to take the death that was meant for Vasudeva, but at that instant, all she knew was that his body had blocked her view. As if galvanized by Akrur’s action and the violence that had abruptly exploded into a peaceful event, everybody else began moving as well, further obstructing her view.

All she saw was bodies and moving heads, none belonging to Vasudeva. But even above the cacophony of shouts and exclamations that had erupted, she heard one sound clearly. The sound of spear striking flesh and bone came to her like a half-remembered nightmare that would plague the deep watches of restless sleep for many moon-months to come. This sound she would remember because, with her vision obscured, she sincerely believed that it was the sound of her brother’s ill-intentioned spear shattering the bone and flesh of her beloved betrothed: the sound of widowhood even before her nuptials could be solemnized. It would haunt her until another, far more terrible sound replaced it for sheer nightmarish horror. But that other sound still lay in the future.

For now, the sound of metal flung at great velocity, shattering bone and splintering it like matchwood – flesh and fluid resounding wetly from the impact – was a horror beyond imagining. She shrieked again, and if she could, she would have flung herself directly at her brother. She could see him clearly as he stood in the centre of the hall, like one of the many stone pillars arranged in even rows to either side.

In that instant of panic and terror, she saw him turn his head at the sound of her voice. For it was his name she was shrieking.‘Kamsa!’

His eyes found her in the melee and locked on her briefly. The malice and glee she saw therein, the sheer lascivious delight at what he had just done, was in such stark contrast to the awestruck expression he had exhibited only moments earlier that she could not help thinking, as she had a thousand times over the years,
My brother is no mortal man, he is a rakshasa born in mortal form.
For even if a mortal man had done such an act, whatever the reason, surely he could not have such an expression on his face: a look more demoniac than anything the most imaginative artists and sculptors could conjure up when recreating scenes from the legendary wars
against the rakshasas in the Last Asura Wars or from that even more legendary battle of Lanka waged by the great king Rama Chandra of Ayodhya. Kamsa could have modelled for those artists and sculptors, yet none would have possessed sufficient skill or art to capture the sheer malevolence of the look his face bore at this moment.

Then the moment passed, and he turned back to look in Vasudeva’s direction, no doubt to gloat over the new murder he had just added to his epic tally. Devaki wished at that moment that she had a spear of her own within reach, for she would surely have flung it at this instant. To hell with filial loyalty and feminine propriety. The fact that Andhaka women were no longer permitted to go to battle did not mean they were good only for the bhojanalya and bedchamber. A daughter of Raj-Kshatriyas, she had been trained and schooled in the arts of war as thoroughly as her brother. Better, probably, for she had not been banished from her guru’s ashram as a child as Kamsa had been for incorrigible behaviour. But, of course, there were no weapons here and even at the peak of her rage, Devaki could not simply murder her own brother, however just her motive under dharma.

But in her mind, she flung a barb of retaliation no less deadly and far more portentous:
Some day, my brother, your reign of brutality will end. And mine shall be the hand that flings the spear that ends it. This I swear here and now, by Kali-Maa, avenger of the oppressed.

Then she pushed her way through the crowd, desperate to reach Vasudeva’s side, if only to offer her lap for his head in his last moments. The crowd did not resist her passage, for everyone there knew what she was to the Sura chief-king; and they stepped aside to let her through. She reached the circle that surrounded Vasudeva and looked upon a heart- stopping sight.

four

Blood pounded in Kamsa’s head with the ferocity of a kettledrum. His vision blurred for a moment and, once again, he saw the horrendous vision that had met him moments ago – the sabha hall was filled with fierce Kshatriyas and mighty yoddhas, all determined to destroy him and his kin. To wipe out his entire race from the face of the earth. He recognized many of the faces as new aspects of old foes, reborn in this age for the express purpose of decimating and committing genocide upon his blood-kin. He had met them before, in another city, another age. A place named Ayodhya where, twice before, he had bravely attempted to strike a blow for his people’s cause, and had tasted the bitter fruit of their deceitful thwarting of his noble efforts. He had been in possession of a different form in that age and place, and been known by another name. It eluded him now, but he knew that his name in this life simply meant‘amsa’of ‘Ka’,‘Ka’ being the first syllable of that ancient name and ‘amsa’ meaning his partial rebirth, similar to an avatar. This was but the newest round of battle in an age-old conflict with the greatest enemy of his kind.