KRISHNA CORIOLIS#4: Lord of Mathura Read online

  Contents

  LORD OF MATHURA

  AKB eBOOKS

  About Ashok

  Prarambh

  Prarambh

  Prarambh 1

  Prarambh 2

  Prarambh 3

  Prarambh 4

  Kaand1

  Kaand1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Kaand 2

  Kaand 2

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Kaand 3

  Kaand 3

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  AKB eBOOKS

  Also in the Krishna Coriolis Series

  Also in the Krishna Coriolis Series

  Also in the Krishna Coriolis Series

  Also in the Krishna Coriolis Series

  Also in the Krishna Coriolis Series

  LORD OF MATHURA

  Ashok K. Banker

  KRISHNA CORIOLIS

  Book 4

  AKB eBOOKS

  AKB eBOOKS

  Home of the epics!

  RAMAYANA SERIES®

  PRINCE OF DHARMA

  PRINCE OF AYODHYA & SIEGE OF MITHILA

  PRINCE IN EXILE

  DEMONS OF CHITRAKUT & ARMIES OF HANUMAN

  PRINCE AT WAR

  BRIDGE OF RAMA & KING OF AYODHYA

  KING OF DHARMA

  VENGEANCE OF RAVANA & SONS OF SITA

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  MAHABHARATA SERIES®

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  About Ashok

  Ashok Kumar Banker’s internationally acclaimed Ramayana Series® has been hailed as a ‘milestone’ (India Today) and a ‘magnificently rendered labour of love’ (Outlook). It is arguably the most popular English-language retelling of the ancient Sanskrit epic. His work has been published in 56 countries, a dozen languages, several hundred reprint editions with over 1.2 million copies of his books currently in print.

  Born of mixed parentage, Ashok was raised without any caste or religion, giving him a uniquely post-racial and post-religious Indian perspective. Even through successful careers in marketing, advertising, journalism and scriptwriting, Ashok retained his childhood fascination with the ancient literature of India. With the Ramayana Series® he embarked on a massively ambitious publishing project he calls the Epic India Library. The EI Library comprises Four Wheels: Mythology, Itihasa, History, and Future History. The Ramayana Series® and Krishna Coriolis are part of the First Wheel. The Mahabharata Series is part of the Second Wheel. Ten Kings and the subsequent novels in the Itihasa Series dealing with different periods of recorded Indian history are the Third Wheel. Novels such as Vertigo, Gods of War, The Kali Quartet, Saffron White Green are the Fourth Wheel.

  He is one of the few living Indian authors whose contribution to Indian literature is acknowledged in The Picador Book of Modern Indian Writing and The Vintage Anthology of Indian Literature. His writing is used as a teaching aid in several management and educational courses worldwide and has been the subject of several dissertations and theses.

  Ashok is 48 years old and lives with his family in Mumbai. He is always accessible to his readers at www.ashokbanker.com—over 35,000 have corresponded with him to date. He looks forward to hearing from you.

  PRARAMBH

  1

  The song of the flute filled the hamlet of Vrindavan.

  Its sweet mournful melody carried to the remotest eaves and highest treetops and no creature that heard it failed to be moved.

  Its daily presence brought comfort and strength to the denizens of that secluded valley, assuring them that they were safe and secure in this little world away from the world at large, that someone powerful and benevolent watched over them constantly, and that any threat would be dealt with at once. But there was another message imparted by the flute: one embodied by the sweet sadness of its song. This said that life and all its pleasures were finite and would end someday, and all we could do was make the best of the time we have for it will not last. It mourned the lost brothers and sisters of the Vrishni who were here in voluntary exile from their beloved homeland, it mourned the tragedy that had befallen the Yadava nation as a whole, it shared the grief of love and loss, death and failure, war and vengeance.

  The flute sang of things that could not be spoken, things that were felt but left unsaid, things that had happened before and would happen again, inevitably, but not now, not just yet. The flute song was the pause between battles, the respite between wars, the rare moment of peace between the violence of yesterday and the madness of tomorrow. The flute was what kept the Vrishni sane and whole and nourished them with the nectar of hope each fine day in Vrindavan. The flute was their reason for going on, for facing each new day with confidence, for living.

  When the song was done, the hand that played the flute lowered the instrument. The player wiped the wooden reed on his brightly colored anga-vastra before tucking it securely into his waistband sash. Even now, despite all that had gone before, he was still just a boy.

  Yet there was a sense of serenity about him that belied his years. His dark face could be sombre and brooding like a monsoon cloud yet when he smiled his white teeth flashed in that dark space like lightning against a pitch-black sky. His hot brown eyes gleamed with life, danced with intelligence. His smile tended to crease one cheek more than the other, giving him a sly rascally look that portended mischief. Unconcerned about his appearance and grooming, he nevertheless managed to always look fetching, almost girlishly handsome. In contrast to his brother’s fair-skinned bullish bulk, he was a slender dark calf.

  Already, the mother gopis gossiped about what a handsome young man he would turn out to be and how some young gopi would be very lucky to have him as her mate. Child marriage was common among Yadavas but not always compulsory. In the case of a clan headman such as Nanda Maharaja, his sons could choose their mates when they pleased. The Vrishni,
even more than other Yadavas, appreciated the finer emotions and the heart played as important a part in that choice as other factors such as clan, tribe, gotra and family. In Krishna’s case, he was already a prince among gopas and could have any gopi of his choice for a paramour and wife.

  The younger gopis returning from the pastures, herding their calves before them, were proof of this adoration: every last one smiled and waved and greeted him as they went by, praising his flute playing. He smiled enigmatically as he always did, saying nothing, but acknowledging them all and somehow making each one feel as if it were she alone that he had smiled at so fetchingly. They ran giggling, happy, to pen their calves for the night.

  Lazy summer was working its way slowly towards autumn and the cowherds of Vrindavan spent the evenings indulging in their favorite ras-lila pastime. When the work was done for the day, everyone looked forward to a few hours of companionship and respite. The cowherd’s life was a simple one: hard-working, responsible and honest with no unendurable hardships or glamorous highs, merely an endless series of routine repetitions, day after day, season after season. After the first traumatic year of exile, the idyllic hamlet of Vrindavan now seemed like home itself to the Vrishni and they had already come to love and enjoy its bounty.

  Krishna wandered down the dales and glens, pastures and pens, hills and dips, lakesides and wooded areas, playing his flute. At the meadow where the community played ras-lila, every gopi waited and hoped to see him appear. More than one dreamed romantic dreams of herself with Yashoda’s dark-hued son. But today Krishna was not in the mood to play. Today he felt his heart ache with a peculiar sadness, a commingling of the dusky languidness of evening and the satisfaction of a long day’s hard work mixed with the certainty that this season of peace and calm would not last, that it was but a lull before the coming storm, and when that storm came, it would be terrible in rage.

  He did not feel fear exactly for despite his mortal form, he was Himself incarnate and as such immune to the weaknesses and injuries of flesh and mortality. But he had come to care deeply about the people amongst whom he lived and he knew they would pay a price for sheltering him—were already paying a price indeed, for here they were, in exile from their beloved home pastures. Many mortals believed that to be able to see the future would be a wondrous gift but those immortals who did see the future knew that it was no gift, nor wondrous. For the future, like the past, like life itself, contained not only good, wonderful things and events, but also many dark, terrible, painful things. What person could want to know all the bad that would befall them before it happened? Mere knowledge of it alone would cast a backward shadow over all the rest of that person’s existence. And so, in Krishna’s case, that shadow loomed long and large, for he could see all the way into Eternity.

  In a manner of speaking, it was grief that Krishna was experiencing at this moment. For time could keep no secrets from him. And he saw the terrible wages of death and suffering that had been endured since his birth on this mortal plane, the deaths and suffering that were being endured even now, at this very moment, and the many yet to come. And the burden of all this pain lay heavy upon his heart.

  And so he wandered the hills of Vrindavan and played his flute, filling the world with melody, the sweet-sad beauty of his song, trying to lighten his burden through music.

  He was not wholly successful.

  But it helped.

  It helped a little.

  And that was enough.

  Even a god could not will away pain entirely. At best, he could try to transmute it into something else: painting, music, katha, dance, any of the many ways in which mortals and gods and yes, even demons, transmuted their emotions into art.

  In its own way, the song was Krishna’s own form of ras-lila.

  2

  WAR was an art.

  Kamsa was a master of the art.

  He charged through the enemy ranks, flailing, pounding, battering, bludgeoning, hammering….

  Though he wielded swords and weapons when required, his new method of attack relied more on brute force than technique or finesse. Under Jarasandha’s guidance and aided by the Magadhan’s ayurvedic elixirs, his body had grown even harder and become more invulnerable than before. Finely honed Mithila steel blunted when in contact with his skin, a javelin thrown by a bull-strong giant shattered without leaving the tiniest scratch, and even arrows with special steel heads designed to punch through armour splintered on impact with his impenetrable hide.

  But more amazing than his ability to withstand damage was his ability to inflict it.

  As he was demonstrating so ably right now.

  He was working his way through a throng of enemy foot-soldiers. There had been perhaps four or five hundred when he had made first contact. Two score or more had been killed at that very instant, bodies crushed and smashed to bloody pulp like ripe berries under the impact of his weight and forward momentum. The huddled mass of the remainder, no doubt believing that by concentrating their strength together they might resist him, swayed for a moment then held their line like a hemp rope strung taut between trees. Perhaps half a score more were then crushed between their own comrades behind them and Kamsa when he pushed forward.

  He saw men wheeze bloody spray from their mouths and nostrils as their lungs collapsed or were punctured in the killing crush. He heard bodies crumple and lose their very shape as he exerted strength. Others exploded like bulging wine bags bursting under an elephant’s foot, spraying bloody remains everywhere.

  He was coated in blood and guts and bone chips and offal.

  It stank of victory to his flaring nostrils.

  He roared and heard his own roar resonate, the increased density of his body somehow altering the sound of his voice to sound lower-pitched, gutteral, hard enough to assault those unfortunate enough to be within his proximity and cause actual physical pain: he saw men clutch at their ears and blood ooze from their auditory orifices.

  He spread his arms, bent forward in a bull’s charging stance, locked his knees, and shoved forward with a mighty effort.

  The ranks of enemy soldiers rippled like grass before wind. At the back of the huddled ranks, men were thrown yards away, tumbling madly head over heels.

  He heaved again, then pushed forward, feeling his feet sink into the hard packed earth, the earth yielding beneath his weight and force.

  The entire battalion of enemy soldiers were pushed backwards as if struck by a battering ram. Soldiers at the edges and rear went flying in all directions, bodies flung through the air like straw scarecrows in a storm gale.

  Kamsa grasped hold of as many of the nearest unfortunates as he could get a hold of—perhaps a score of enemy soldiers—picked the whole mass up bodily, and shoved them.

  The soldiers whom he grasped and used as purchase were crushed like ripe grapes, their organs and bodies spattering in his iron grip. The combined mass of their bodies served as a cudgel with which he bludgeoned the battalion itself. He shoved this way then that, pushing forward until the whole mass began to give way like a laden wagon once inertia is overcome, and he walked forward slowly, steadily, step by step shoving five hundred massed men backwards.

  It was a sight to behold.

  Many of Kamsa’s own men stopped to watch. Even the enemy stopped to watch, unable to believe their eyes!

  At the rear of the enemy battalion, men were being thrown onto their backs, then trampled underfoot by their own comrades as they were pushed back by the power of Kamsa’s onward momentum. Men were being pressed brutally hard against each other, some pierced or penetrated by their comrades’ weapons or armour, others merely caught in the press and crushed to death.

  It was a grape-press and Kamsa the vintner pressing living men into blood-wine.

  By the time he had pushed ahead a hundred yards, every last man in the battalion was dead or dying from fatal wounds. Not a man remained whole in the entire lot.

  Finally, Kamsa stopped and let go of the men he had been holding onto
. They fell like wet sacks to the bloodied ground. Ahead of him, the mass that had been an assembled battalion of some five hundred enemy soldiers, clad in gleaming armour, had been reduced to half a thousand pulped and mangled corpses.

  He glanced back and saw the gory trail of his death walk: two score yards of the battlefield painted crimson with the blood, gore and offal of crushed bodies and body parts, like a great mark of death upon the face of the enemy’s ranks. It reminded him of a freshly ploughed field, the dark just-turned earth contrasting with the unploughed side. Except that what he had done here was better compared to reaping, not sowing. He had reaped their lives like wheat cut by a harvest blade.

  He looked around the field. The battle was still continuing to either side of his position. But not a single other enemy soldier approached him or dared to attack. If anything, they had pushed back and away to stay clear of him. It was one thing being before him in battle and compelled to fight; it was another thing to witness the mayhem he caused and still wish to fight him.

  He stood alone, alive, in a clearing of corpses within a forest of battle.

  He grinned and thumped his own chest twice to mark his victory. There was no need to issue the typical chauvinistic roar of triumph.

  The sound of his chest-thumping itself was louder than a full array of tom drums. It resonated across the field, louder even than the mangled screams and clash of weaponry, like a giant drumbeat tolling the defeat of the enemy.