KRISHNA CORIOLIS#1: Slayer of Kamsa Read online

  King Vasudeva’s soft tenor blended with King Ugrasena’s ageing gruffness as both kings recited the ceremonial shlokas aloud, each line cued to them by whispering pundits seated behind the dais. The sacred flame, symbol of Agni, the god of fire, flared up brightly as a purohit, one of the many priests who oversaw the arcana of traditional rites and customs, tossed a ladle of ghee onto the chaukhat. The flames shot up almost to the raised sceptres, licking briefly at the point of their unity. Sunlight above, fire below. It was an impressive and auspicious moment, brilliantly and meticulously conceived and staged by the purohits of the two kingdoms. To the dwindling Brahmins of Aryavarta, such occasions grew more precious with each passing decade since the world was turning away from old ways and traditions.

  For the duration of this ceremony, the pomp and grandeur of Aryavarta – literally, the noble and proud – would shine as brightly as a beacon fed by the light of Brahman shakti. The chanting of the kings rose to a peak, ending with a final shloka that seemed to sing out from the very walls of the sabha hall. This last bit of theatrical magic was, again, wrought by the Brahmins, who, strategically positioned at the far walls of the hall, joined in with the kings’ chanting at the penultimate quartet and raised their voices – to match the well-rehearsed baritones of the kings – until it seemed that the entire world was chanting the verses.

  || yadrcchya copapannah svarga-dvaram apavrtam ||

  || sukhinah ksatriya partha labhante yuddham idrsam ||

  The chanting died, the doleful drumbeats fading away at precisely that instant. In the silence that ensued, the gathered assemblage could hear the crackling and snapping of the sacred flame as the purohit continued to feed ladlefuls of sanctified ghee to insatiable Agni. The faces of the kings had grown warm from the heat of the flames, a few beads of sweat standing out on the clean-shaven good looks of the young King Vasudeva and the tips of King Ugrasena’s grey-shot beard.

  Moving in perfect unison, they lowered their rajtarus to form an inverted V. The crooks of the sceptres dipped directly into the flames and the purohit ceased his ghee-tossing to allow the sacred fire to quell itself somewhat, lest the kings lose the skin of their arms. Beads of perspiration swelled and rolled down their faces as both monarchs held the crooks of their rajtarus in the fire just long enough to let the heat travel up to their bare hands.

  Finally, the royal purohit uttered the words quietly enough so that only the kings could catch it, and both lieges broke their stance, stepping away from the fire. They exchanged their sceptres, each handing over his proof of kingship at the exact same time as he accepted the other’s royal seal. This was executed with surprising ease, considering that both rajtarus were close to blistering hot by now. The watching assemblage could hardly know that both kings had had their hands anointed with a special herbal paste prior to the ceremony, or that the near- invisible paste prevented the transmission of heat quite effectively.

  The sight of the red-hot rajtarus being exchanged and then held aloft to allow every individual in the hall a chance to witness this momentous event, seared itself into the minds of all present. The painstakingly staged ceremony had served its purpose. Then, with obvious relief, and great smiles creasing their tense faces, the two kings embraced.

  The crowd released its breath. Upon the fortified palace battlements, waiting courtiers blew long and hard on their conch-shell trumpets. The low, deep calling of the conches filled the air for hundreds of yojanas, echoed from end to end of both kingdoms, announcing the most welcome news in over two centuries. Peace. Shanti.

  Outside the Andhaka palace, the waiting crowd, which had now swollen to tens of thousands, broke into a ragged roar that almost drowned out the conches. Royal criers rode through the avenues and streets, pausing at corners to shout out the news – in Sanskrit, and then in commonspeak – confirming the details of the peace pact. Stone pillars, carved and ready for weeks, were hastily but ceremoniously erected at strategic spots in the capital city and at junctions along the national kingsroad, setting down the same details for posterity – or at least as long as stone and wind and rain would allow, which would probably be a millennium or two.

  Sadly, the peace pact itself was not to last even a fraction of that time.

  two

  The massive teak doors of the banquet hall flew open as if struck by a battering ram. They swivelled inwards on smoothly oiled tracks and crashed against the stone walls, swatting aside the guards milling about the entrance. Vasudeva glanced up from his meal just in time to see a young soldier’s foot caught by the lower bolt of a door, dragged to the wall, and crushed against the relentless stone with a bone-crunching impact that left the poor fellow’s face white.

  The other guards, drunk on the festive atmosphere and milling about jovially, responded belatedly, joining their lances and challenging the rude entrants. The armoured bull elephant that trundled into the banquet hall paid no heed to their shouted challenges. It was armoured in the fashion of Andhaka hathi-yodhhas – the dreaded war elephants of the Andhaka clan – its head couched in a formidable headpiece bristling with spikes that made it resemble some demon out of a myth, its tusks capped with brass horns tapering to resemble spears, and rows of ugly spikes protruding out of its sides.

  Vasudeva had seen the destruction that these hathi- yodhhas left in their wake during close combat. His heart lurched at the thought of the havoc even a single such monster could wreak in a confined, crowded space like this hall. The dried, brownish smears on the elephant’s armour left no doubt that the shield was not merely for decoration. This particular hathi-yodhha had seen active combat this very day and had taken lives in that action. Vasudeva prayed silently that they were not Sura lives, then felt mean and small for having thought so. All life was precious, all humanity united in brotherhood. No matter whose blood lay dried upon the armourplate of this hathi-yodhha, it was a death he would not have wished for anyone.

  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.