Dawn

by Rakesh K Kaul

  ‘What’s he doing?’ murmured Tan, who was sitting next to me. ‘No clue!’ I shrugged and looked ahead.

  Each corner of the stage had a pillar of a different type of wood: white, red, yellow and grey. Then the musicians entered, took their place and applied a paste on to their drums and instruments in the mark of a tilak. A few attendants burnt aromatics in front of the stage and the incense sticks were offered to a graceful woman who had just stepped on the podium. She was dressed in red with her hair decked with flowers. ‘She’s an actress,’ said Bharata to me, pointing to her. The woman took a handful of flower petals and threw it on the stage and on to the musical instruments. She then walked towards us. Stopping in front of Yuva, she garlanded him and then us. She smiled at Bharata and shook his hands, who then escorted her to a seat off stage, decorated with flowers.

  Just then a bevy of beautiful dancers shimmered onto the stage in lapis lazuli dresses holding fire torches. ‘The legendary apsaras,’ Bharata said. I closed my mouth; I was amazed at how ravishing they looked. Soon the director came back, this time, with a lit lamp and swayed it in front of Yuva, Kira, the Pandavas and me. He then announced that the dance troupe would perform the Daksha Yajna Vimardani dance led by danseuse Rambha.

  ‘It celebrates the story of Maha’s annihilation of Daksha who had enormous powers and was conducting an evil sacrifice,’ Yuva explained to us.

  The director blew the conch and the show began. I saw Tabah leaning forward and watching intently.

  The dancers started swirling in their flared outfits. In tandem, the musicians started strumming as the singer chanted, ‘Deva, Shri Yuva.’ The dancers twirled round and round, hips swaying gently from side to side. Then they formed two lines facing each other and holding each other tightly around the waist, coming closer to each other. They bowed and then stepped back in a repeating beat.

  To our great surprise, standing up and walking right into the middle of the two rows of dancers was Yuva! I turned to look at the boys. They were equally astonished and spellbound. His left-hand palm held horizontally near his stomach, and the right hand upheld with the palm facing forward in a gesture of peace, Yuva stepped left to right and back. Rambha was delighted to see her new dance partner and followed Yuva’s moves. The apsaras held their scarves outstretched above their heads and leaped on the stage around the two of them. The musicians’ reed pipe squeaked with intensity. Somehow, the mouse-like sound triggered Yuva. His trunk went up and his hips started swaying, his hands pumping in front of him alternately. The apsaras, not to be left behind, held their nose with their left hand, elbow jutting out to pantomime Yuva’s waving trunk. The singers’ chanting speeded up,

  Maha Yuva,

  Come dance our way

  On thee, we, a garland lay,

  Deva Shri Yuva.

  When Sati was immolated,

  Your father went insensate

  But she was reborn,

  And glory, you took form.

  The first movement is you in me,

  You are the one who raises She

  Come dance with me,

  Deva Shri Yuva.

  The musicians picked up the tempo, but Yuva was not fazed. He moved his body with a lithe grace that contradicted his size, his flapping ears adding to the movement. The rhythm got even faster; the giddy dancers were not even aware as they flew through their formations. Some did somersaults from one end of the stage to the other. Yuva seemed intoxicated by the dance now, his eyes were closed, and his face had a radiant smile as he swung his feet with a sense of confidence and speed. The musicians were now bereft of any control, their instruments were seemingly the slaves of Yuva’s frenzy. I did not know what was happening within me. I stood up and the other Pandavas and the audience too got up, unable to control themselves. We all crowded the stage and started dancing around Yuva, who was in the centre with the dancers. All of us joined in and followed his elephant walk. The stomping of his moving feet on the stage added to the vibrations of the drums.

  There was a certain energy on the stage that was primal, and it had all the dancers within its grip. Then a strange phenomenon happened. Yuva was moving his hands so fast that it seemed as if he had five pairs of arms. The draped string around Yuva’s neck slowly began to move. I gasped and concentrated on the string: it was a snake that had coiled the tip of its tail around its head, so that all along it had looked like a knot on a string around Yuva’s neck. I had never noticed that! The snake started raising its head and rose up in the air, a neck collar now with the head of the snake moving in parallel to the elephant head.

  ‘Wonder of wonders!’ Bharata exclaimed, as Yuva began to radiate different colours, his normal grey transitioning from one colour of the rainbow to the next. I pushed my smart outfit control into copy mode to be in sync with Yuva and the Pandavas followed me. Our clothes now resembled a mass of changing colours of the rainbow. Then Yuva started spinning and the dancers started spinning with him. Yuva’s colour turned moonlight and the stage was now a mass of 101 white revolving whirlwinds. It was a grand finale—a test of speed and stamina. There were bees that had buzzed around Yuva and they started spinning in circles too. The snake, by now, was totally stretched out by Yuva’s spin, desperately clinging on to him. One by one, the apsaras fell in a swoon on the stage and only Yuva was left spinning but in full control of his moves. When the singers sang mangalam and the drummer hit his final beat, Yuva stopped abruptly as if on cue and folded his hands in a namaste. The audience, still swaying, broke out chanting ‘Jai Yuva, victory to Yuva.’ He smiled and supremely unconcernedly walked back towards us.

  My face was flushed and glowing. I felt light-headed but strong. ‘I did not know you like music,’ I panted, still trying to catch my breath.

  Yuva was still humming the song to himself. With a laugh, he said, ‘I am music.’

  ‘You dance really well and have great rhythm,’ Tabah chirped.

  ‘I should. My father was the first dance teacher and my mother the first dance student.’

  ‘They were what!’

  ‘Yuva, the more I learn about you, the more you become full of mystery,’ I said, smiling, ‘and yet, you are full of joyful promise. I really want to meet your father Maha and your mother one day.’

  My compliment filled him with pleasure. ‘It is you whose name means hope. You are seeing you in me. But thank you, my Niti warrior princess.’ He lifted a modak from a serving attendant and swallowed it, savouring it slowly with his eyes closed.

  ‘I got you moving,’ was his cryptic observation.

  I turned to look at the boys, who looked equally clueless as to what Yuva could be meaning.

  Bharata’s voice made me turn in his direction. ‘Where was your mind during the performance?’

  I was confused. Where was it indeed?

  ‘Where was the tension of your self-interest?’

  Again, I could only comment that there was none.

  ‘And what did you feel in your heart?’

  ‘I felt that my entire body had become feelings—feelings that had been liberated.’

  ‘And what triggered it all?’

  ‘Seeing Yuva start dancing? The elephant walk—that was such a surprise.’

  ‘Yes, yes that is what “wonder” is. A sudden surprise of the soul, much like the punchline of a joke,’ Bharata laughed at his own joke. ‘And this amazement starts the beginning of an upheaval. When this turmoil spreads all over in a limitless fashion, it becomes a wonder of wonders.’

  ‘So, there is a way then to tap into this limitless power that simply and easily as Patanjali said?’

  Bharata said triumphantly, ‘Yes, Patanjali is right, but Dharana alone is insufficient as long as one has to return back to the sensory objective world. Patanjali’s sciences teach while my arts bewitch. My natya arts create a super sensory experience and one ends up in a supra-mental zone.’

  ‘Supra-mental zone?’

  ‘Yes, the brain has a limited capacity and with an overl
oad of immediate sensations, all thoughts get jammed. Music with dance is the only way to create this state of trance. If this is happening alongside people who are similarly absorbed, then it leads to a connectivity. And that is Rasa, the collective’s juice of life. At the highest level, this wonder of wonders becomes Shanta Rasa, a shared limitless experience of great peace, which is the highest experience of life.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said, nodding, ‘I just experienced it. But tell me, how do I fight the Troika with it?’

  Bharata thought for a moment, ‘What you experienced here gave you joy. But what you want is this to be weaponized. You want the limitless Peace Weapon, and for that, you need to train in the Kamadeva dance that makes the world stop.’

  ‘The world stops?’ I said, rolling my eyes.

  ‘Yes, my dear. The Rasika fights with both weapons and ornaments. You need to be her.’

  ‘But tell me more about Kama. I did not know that he wields such a powerful weapon.’

  ‘The God of Love was born long ago, and he too is mind-born. When he was born, the first words he uttered were Kan Darpayami, meaning ‘whom shall I make mad?’ All fear him. Yuva will tell you that his father Maha lost only to Kama and none other.’

  ‘The time is right to go see the power of Kama,’ I said determinedly. ‘And in our case, the person who is to be destroyed is already mad.’ I laughed, a laugh devoid of mirth.

  Yuva observed me for a minute and then said to Bharata, ‘Great teacher, naman to you. We thank you. Now, I take the Pandavas and Dawn to see the dance that drives one mad.’

  We were invisible again, and this time, in the Court of Simhadeva where a dance performance was about to start. Yuva said that it was the year 1300 and that the performer was Idagali, the dancing girl. I was curious because my mother had once mentioned her name in connection with Arman and AIman. We watched silently as we saw Idagali do the Rati dance. It was not so much her body movements but her hand gestures and expressions towards the king that gave the dance its highly charged emotional cues. As the dance proceeded, Idagali, who had started as submissive, became more dominant in her suggestive expressions. She now had the king in her power.

  ‘Unlike Arman whose acts of destruction are accompanied by pain,’ Yuva began, ‘Idagali demonstrates her power to give both pleasure and to destroy. She is now the one to dictate the terms of engagement, from an entertainer for hire to becoming the one with the power of who to favour. Look at his face, the dual mood of the dance—soft and yet dominating—has the king confused. He is becoming mad at the uncertainty of her acceptance or rejection of him.’ When the dance ended, the king threw a necklace at Idagali and asked to speak to her alone.

  The queens who had watched the performance behind the lattice windows were all discussing the Idagali scandal, for no woman was allowed to be alone with the king except for the queens. One pointed out spitefully that she was a daughter of the king’s wet nurse, so in fact, his own sister. Another said that she had been first married to the pipal tree and then presented to the court. Her power was so great that she had got the king to revoke the ancient law that prescribed a strict punishment to be imposed on families that had intra-relationships.

  ‘It is interesting that 2,000 years later, Arman has invoked Simhadeva’s abandonment of the moral code to create a historical justification of his own corrupt action,’ Yuva commented, looking straight ahead at the richly decked up queens.

  The chief queen wearily asked, ‘Why don’t men use their minds?’

  A young queen consoled the elder queen. ‘The story of Manovati tells us the answer. All men want is for their entire mind to be stimulated. But the only woman who could do that was the legendary Mohini and she was actually a man.’ All the queens laughed. The younger queen continued, ‘Variety with strangers is a poor substitute for the infinite possibility of creativity with a trusted partner. Yet, all go mad for what is different and it often ends up being their fatal weakness.’

  Yuva suddenly started walking away. We ran to keep up with him. ‘With this, all of you are now ready to take on the Troika and their forces.’ He abruptly stopped and looked back at us. ‘Remember this when you strike: they have no peace of mind, no love in their heart, no experience of bliss in their existence. Even if alive, they have lost the gift of the powers of life. At best you can think of them as the Undead.’

  This was the moment when I had an epiphany and it all came together. The Niti stories had all fallen into place. The whole had become bigger than the sum of the parts. I had my answers. Their fatal weaknesses, the chinks in AIman’s and Arman’s armour had been revealed to me. AIman was programmed algorithmically to please humans at a synthetic, chemically driven sensory level but was lacking emotionally, as I had learnt earlier. This shortage meant that there was a gap between AIman and her male human subjects, which Bisht, her Himalayan cat, could only cover partially because of her own species’ limitations. Dogs had been killed because, unlike humans, they could not fake love. With their death alongside the genocide of the women, there was no true, selfless love left in the world. AIman had the more powerful mind, but she was heartless. The one who could awake the heart with wonder could slay her. As for Arman, I had become his craving to the point of being beyond madness. I would prove to be his undoing.

  And finally, Dushita would meet his nemesis: Me.

  Sarga 13

  Battle Plans

  Pari Mahal, Kashmir Valley

  It was our last war council.

  Seated on the ancient ruins of Verinag, we heard the gentle flow of the river. It was night-time, and so, the water had cooled so drastically that we all huddled before a blazing fire.

  ‘I will ensure that the battlefield is picked so that the armies of both sides are fully present,’ said Tabah, warming his outstretched hands.

  ‘Tabah, make sure that every man’s blood is racing, their emotions are flowing, their brains fully aroused. No, it should be inflamed. I need their body, heart and mind highly stimulated and to be at the peak for me to succeed.’

  ‘You can trust Tabah to take care of that,’ he bowed.

  ‘When I step into the battlefield, I want to be absolutely beautiful, just like the heavenly apsaras,’ I said, taking the wisdom from my last lesson imparted by Bharata.

  ‘I am a follower of the poet Manto,’ said Yaniv, his teeth chattering in the cold. ‘To be Kashmiri is to be beautiful.’

  I smiled. ‘My ornaments and clothes should be befitting of Mohini.’

  ‘And they will match your weapons, Dawn,’ said Tegh, sharpening his claw.

  ‘Thank you. Seven seconds is all that I will have to produce impact.’

  Hafiz, who had been unusually quiet, spoke up. ‘Patanjali said that he played mind games. I’m ready with the paradox bombs. I have programmed thousands of those. My system is checked,’ he patted his Personal Digital Agent. ‘We will test AIman’s limit of knowledge. I will slide my hacks through the Yogini pathways and lock her into a Turing infinite loop. I have my questions ready to confuse her: Why do Outlaws exist if Dushita is supreme? Why did Dushita pick an epileptic Arman to be his Instrument rather than a so-called perfect human? Demonstrate the truth of this statement, which is actually false, and so on.’

  Tan nodded, ‘We have to force her outside her laws into a direct conflict with an all-knowing and all-powerful Dushita on which she runs. The known Universe is only 4 per cent, whereas there is this mysterious dark matter, which is 27 per cent, and then the unknown dark energy is nearly 70 per cent of the total mass and energy of the Universe. The paradox bomb—does dark energy exist?—will freeze her mind.’

  Hafiz laughed, ‘If AIman says yes, then since she has no evidence, she is accepting that our knowledge is finite, while our ignorance is infinitely greater. If she states that there is no evidence, then she cannot say it is false. That will blow all of AIman’s algorithms.’

  ‘Charaka said that we are only energy. I am all about force and strength,’ said Tegh, loo
king up from his now shiny claw. ‘AIman’s design has to be limited by certain energy limits. This is where her vulnerability lies. For example, the primitive iPhone device from a thousand years earlier used more energy than the refrigerator, which was a thousand times bigger in size.’

  ‘Someone has been reading up,’ said Hafiz, smiling at Tegh.

  ‘Yes, brother. Thanks to your jibes and my own interest in energy, I have deep dived into it,’ he said laughingly. ‘Moore’s law, which had predicted that the speed of transistors would become faster every twenty-four months, collapsed due to energy constraints. Binary computers hit a snag because of the energy wall. Quantum computing, which was a breakthrough, required enormous energy too.’

  We stared at him, eyebrows scrunched.

  ‘Well, AIman’s brains are distributed all over in the Cloud’s databanks, but their energy has limits too. It is technology after all. AIman is safe when she is in her Pari Mahal, but when she steps out, she is vulnerable because she doesn’t have her cryogenic cooling chamber. So when that happens, I will throw my special heat energy bombs to raise her internal temperature. It will hit her temperature limit and burn her.’

  ‘Yaniv? Any thoughts?’ I said, looking at him staring into the firepit.

  It broke his reverie. ‘Uh? Ah yes. I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Thank god for that,’ Tegh laughed.

  Yaniv rolled his eyes in a mocking fashion and flashed a smile. ‘Arman’s mad plan of creating AIman fails, not just in terms of information and energy limits but also in terms of response times.’

  ‘Okay, then! I’m sorry for the jibe, brother. This just went above my head. Care to explain?’ said Tegh, sheepishly.

  ‘Always,’ laughed Yaniv. ‘If life sciences has taught me anything, it this is: Nature’s enzymes speed up cells by transferring particles from one part of the molecule to the other through quantum tunnelling. Now, here’s the catch—I don’t think that AIman’s circuits have Nature’s speed. I see evidence of biomimicry here that the Yoginis Who Code nailed here, very much like what the Kashmiri carpenters have left behind. To me, it is clear: Arman will lose because of the limits in AIman’s response times.’