KRISHNA CORIOLIS#6: Fortress of Dwarka Page 3

  And yet, if man did to man all that he did, then what were poor beautiful dumb animals? With what tongue could they protest?

  In a way, Daruka was grateful that he drove a chariot without horses for Krishna. Even though, if he had been given charge of actual horses, he would have cared for them as if they were his own children. Yet this was better by far. A chariot that needed no brute force to pull it, no fear of the animals tiring or weakening, or falling ill, or breaking a leg, or being wounded in battle…Much more humane, if not more human.

  He realized that the emptiness of space had achieved a certain purpose for him as well. He might never have thought such a thing through upon earth, busy with his daily routine and work. Least of all during the trauma of battle. Yet here it seemed so clear, so obvious. Perhaps that was the problem. Humans on earth, busy with their daily lives, forced to live minute by minute, day by day, struggling constantly, could hardly afford the luxury of thinking of the needs and welfare of animals! They had their own needs and welfare to think of first and by the time they were done seeing to their own needs, the day was done and it was time to lay their heads down for some much-needed rest. Perhaps someday hence, when the human race had progressed beyond needing to tend to its needs on a daily or immediate basis, there would an opportunity to realize such insights. To free animals from slavery. To learn to fend for themselves, either by using machines such as Pushpak, or more mundane equivalents. He prayed for such a day.

  “We may return now, sarathi,” Krishna said from behind him. His voice sound calmer, more at ease.

  “At once, sire,” Daruka said, willing the chariot to turn around. He then willed it to find its way back to earth on its own, for he could not tell which of the countless gleaming orbs in the endless night sky was Mother Earth, certainly not at this blinding speed.

  “Did this respite help cool your thoughts?” Krishna’s voice asked him.

  Daruka smiled. “Indeed, my Lord. It did.”

  He felt Krishna smile at him. “It helped me as well. It always does. Although, this was the first time I have brought a mortal along.”

  Daruka bowed his head without turning back, for a sarathi’s dharma required him never to leave his post or let his attention stray, horses or no horses. “I thank thee for the privilege, Great One.”

  Krishna’s laughter rang in his mind. “It is I who should thank thee, good sarathi. You see, all I did was listen to you thinking. And it helped me resolve my own problem!”

  And he continued laughing. Daruka joined in as well, although he did not entirely understand what Krishna meant. Then again, even if others may doubt or wonder, he knew beyond doubt that Krishna was God Incarnate. And God was entitled to His Mysterious Ways. Or, as those who loved and believed in Krishna termed it, His Lila.

  6

  DAWN was still some hours distant when Krishna strode through the corridors of the Palace. The palace complex was deserted except for the usual sentries. The day’s victory had been celebrated by the populace until the wee hours and the feasting and dancing and celebrating had wound down only a short while earlier. He had returned with Daruka only moments ago, and had told the charioteer to go freshen up and consume some nourishment before they left again.

  Daruka had been surprised by the hour. He had assumed they had been traveling for only a short while and could not understand how so many hours had passed so quickly. Krishna did not have the time to explain to him that time itself passed more quickly away from Mother Prithvi’s realm, and that the speed of their passage had affected the passing of time as well. Daruka accepted the anomaly as he would learn to accept so much else concerning his Lord. It was one of the reasons Krishna had chosen him on sight without trial or test: a man who excelled at his profession and could accept the impossible without being shocked or impaired was very rare.

  Now, he nodded in passing at the sentries posted at the entrance to his and Balarama’s chambers and entered his brother’s bedplace. Balarama lay sprawled on his large and luxuriant bed. From the remains of the feast on the table nearby, Krishna deduced that his brother had indulged his legendary appetite with great gusto and was now sleeping off the day’s work. What amused him was the sight of the little wooden plow that lay on the silken cushion beside Balarama’s head. Balarama still clung to that old childhood relic, battered and worn though it was after all these years. He clung to it now in sleep like a child to his favorite comforter.

  Krishna bent over his brother’s prone form.

  “Rise and shine, bhraatr,” Krishna said in his brother’s ear.

  Balarama did not so much as stir.

  It took several more urgings, each rising steadily in volume and intensity, coupled with some firm shaking before Balarama was finally roused from his deep slumber.

  “Are you sure you weren’t Karna of the Kumbhas in your last life?” Krishna asked finally, as Balarama sat up, looking around with one warily open eye, rubbing the other one as he stretched out his kinks.

  “Who?” Balarama asked sleepily.

  “Never mind,” Krishna said, throwing off the covers so Balarama could get out of bed. “Come on. I think I’ve understood what Jarasandha’s game is and if I’m right we need to get a move on before daybreak.”

  Balarama muttered sleepily as he re-tied his dhoti. “So what did you find out?”

  “I’m not sure yet, that’s why I want to go see for myself. Come on.”

  Balarama struggled with his dhoti but managed to get it around himself somehow. He was still surly from being woken up early. “Why didn’t you just go and see for yourself and then come and wake me?”

  Krishna looked at him balefully. “For the same reason that we were both placed upon this earth during the same lifetime, instead of just me coming down alone.”

  Balarama frowned, trying to work out the mental equation while trying to knot the dhoti. “Because you can’t do anything without me?”

  Krishna made a sound of amusement. “Because sometimes two can do what one cannot. Come on now.”

  Balarama picked up his anga-vastra and stared at it doubtfully. It was terribly tangled up.

  “Leave it,” Krishna said wearily.

  Balarama tilted his head, looking at one knot on the anga-vastra as if he might have figured out how to unravel it.

  “Leave it,” Krishna said firmly.

  Balarama sighed and tossed the anga-vastra aside, stepping into his slippers. “It’s warm weather anyhow. Don’t really need an anga-vastra.” He added after a moment. “I could have untied that knot in a second, but it’s so much nicer being bare-chested.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, bhraatr,” Krishna said, “Someday you might start to believe it.”

  Balarama punched his brother in the back. Krishna barely missed a step. Balarama shook his fist, wincing.

  It was still quiet when they emerged from the palace. Daruka had kept both their chariots ready. Krishna gestured by nodding his head and Balarama got onto his own chariot, while Krishna climbed aboard his chariot. Both chariots took off, the sentries on duty and a few early risers—or late sleepers—tilting their heads to gaze skywards as the gleaming golden celestial chariots flashed away like flaring diamonds against the deep blue velvet sky.

  ***

  They hovered several hundred yards above ground, about a yojana from Mathura. Up here they had a panoramic view of the flat lands around the city for several dozen yojanas. The familiar lines of Jarasandha’s armies marched on endlessly, seemingly to the horizon. They were still at rest, biding their time until dawn’s arrival and the lawful start of battle under the prevailing rules of war.

  Balarama grunted. He was standing in his chariot, only a yard from Krishna’s chariot. Daruka was managing both vehicles at once and doing an excellent job of it.

  “Same old same old,” Balarama said. “So is this what you wanted to show me, bhraatr? This is just business as usual.”

  “No,” Krishna said. “What I wish to show you requires going through
Vortals.”

  Balarama raised an eyebrow. “Vortals? Plural? Isn’t it treacherous enough going through a Vortal, let alone more than one?”

  “That it is, but it’s the only way we can find out what Jarasandha’s real game is, without living through as many Tuesdays as it might take until the event itself is sprung upon us unexpectedly.”

  Balarama looked at him with one raised eyebrow and one half-closed eye. “You do know that it’s very early, I haven’t had my full quota of sleep and I can get a little cranky until I’ve eaten my first meal of the day, don’t you?”

  “You’re cranky when you go an hour without eating a full meal,” Krishna said. “Do you need me to break that down into parts and explain it?”

  Balarama groaned and rubbed his face. “Just the brief explanation, please. No need to make it a full lecture.”

  “Jarasandha has some power over Lord Kala, most likely through a boon granted in eons past. As a result, he is able to travel through a Vortal each day precisely at dawn, and take us also through the same Vortal at the same instant.”

  Balarama’s other eyebrow rose up this time. “I thought Vortals had to be physically stepped through at the same time? Like going through a doorway. Hence the word Vortal, similar to Portal.”

  Krishna nodded. “Usually, yes. But asura maya can alter those qualities. Vortals can be opened and closed, entered and exited through other means as well, if one knows how to manipulate them. And Jarasandha being a powerful asura sorcerer, has mastered the art of manipulating Vortals.”

  Balarama shrugged again. “So somehow he’s able to push us through the same Vortal he goes through each night, thereby transferring us into an alternate Earth, with an alternate Mathura, and hey presto, in this alternate reality, his army is still intact, it’s still Tuesday and we have to fight the same battle all over again.”

  “Exactly,” Krishna said. “And the reason he’s doing this is to conceal the real plan he has devised to destroy us.”

  “Can he do that?” Balarama asked. “Destroy us, I mean?” He gestured at the 23 akshohini arrayed below them. “All that couldn’t do it. Since he hasn’t dared to fight us yet, presumably he can’t do it either. All those asura assassin and his son-in-law Kamsa, enhanced with potions or whatnot, couldn’t do it either. So what other move could he possibly have left to deploy in this game of chaukat?”

  Krishna pursed his lips and looked out at the horizon. “The reason he doesn’t engage us himself, I suspect, is because we would then be entitled to kill him, as it would constitute a fair champion’s duel in battle. By avoiding confronting or challenging us personally, he makes it impossible for us to kill him by the rules of kshatriya dharma.” He turned and looked at Balarama. “What I’m saying is, I think he’s saving his own skills and strengths for a future time, holding them in abeyance in case even this plan fails for whatever reason. Like Kamsa, he knows that using himself as a weapon is the last challenge he can issue: once he throws himself at us, there’s no turning back.”

  “It’s either win or lose, kill or be killed,” Balarama said, nodding thoughtfully. “I see that. Besides, if he wants this other plan to work, he needs to stay alive long enough to keep us moving through this endless succession of Vortals to relive Tuesday over and over again on alternate Earths, fighting the same battle over and over again.”

  “And that’s why we need to cut his plan short. Hence the early rising, before we are switched through the Vortal yet again. So we can steal a glimpse of his real plan.”

  Balarama nodded. “I see it now. All right. Let’s do it then. I’m tired of reliving the same damn day as it is. Anything will be a welcome change.”

  Krishna reached out and touched Daruka’s shoulder. “Daruka, brace yourself.”

  Then he gestured, voicing mantras too quietly to be heard by even the charioteer, and with a blinding flash, they were transported.

  7

  THERE was only a flash of light and Balarama felt a slight disorientation. He also smelled an odd odor, something he could not immediately place, and then he realized that they were still in the exact same spot, standing in their respective celestial chariots, hovering some seven hundred yards above ground, Daruka at the helm of Krishna’s vehicle, looking out at Jarasandha’s army. He glanced around.

  “Everything looks just the same, bhraatr,” he said. He couldn’t see a single detail that differed. He glanced down at himself—his anga-vastra was still missing. Apparently, once again the knots had beaten him. Two Tuesdays to the knots, then.

  Krishna was looking about too. “That it does. Daruka, take us around in a large circle. Around the flanks of the Magadhan force.”

  Daruka did as his master bid. The night wind was cool to begin with, but at the speed that the celestial vehicles flew, it became bracing. Due to the size of the Magadhan army, the circle they circumscribed was a very large one, covering several hundred yojanas of actual travel distance. The vaahans covered the distance in moments, which turned the bracing night wind into a chilling one.

  Balarama was relieved when they drew to a halt again on Krishna’s orders, stopping at a different location than the one before. He gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering and flexed his muscles to try to warm himself up.

  Krishna was looking out at the distance. “I see nothing amiss. Do you, bhai?”

  Balarama’s teeth almost clattered as he opened his mouth to reply. “N…no, bhraatr.”

  Krishna nodded and uttered the mantras of transport again. Once again, the flash of blinding light, the brief moment of disorientation and that same strange odor, pungent and oddly familiar.

  Balarama shook his head to clear it, then realized that yet again, he didn’t have his anga-vastra on. Damnation.

  “All looks the same again,” Krishna said. “What say, bhai?”

  “True, bhraatr,” Balarama said, almost losing his control on the second word. “Do you think we need to do another flyabout?”

  “Another, bhai?” Krishna raised his eyebrow. “We haven’t done so yet. Not in this world, not on this particular Tuesday. Remember?”

  “Ah,” Balarama said. “Right.”

  By the time they had finished circumscribing the extent of Jarasandha’s forces this time, his teeth were chattering and there was nothing he could do to stop them. He hugged his bare chest, unable to control himself. It didn’t help much.

  Krishna seemed not to notice Balarama’s discomfort. And Balarama would be damned if he would admit his weakness to his younger brother.

  “Nothing apparent here again,” Krishna said, then shrugged. He uttered the mantras again. Again, the flash. Disorientation. Odor.

  “Daruka,” Krishna said again.

  This time, when they finished flying around the Magadhan armies, Balarama was almost in tears. His teeth were chattering, his lips felt frozen to each other and he could barely breathe or speak.

  “Should…have…brought…damn…anga-vastra,” he managed to say aloud.

  “Did you say anga-vastra, bhai?” Krishna asked from his chariot.

  To Balarama’s surprise, Krishna tossed him his anga-vastra, duly unknotted and perfectly usable. Balarama’s frozen arms flailed at it and for a moment he was afraid the night wind would whip it away. But he managed to snag it with a finger and somehow wrapped it around his bare torso. He felt immediately better although it was just a long strip of linen. Somehow, it was the psychological protection more than the physical comfort, he realized.