by Aashish Kaul
In spite of this, however, I had not yet relinquished control over my thoughts, and the words which I spoke still feared the mind’s whip. But it was enough to tell the king what was going on, he may have expected it anyway from the complete lack of surprise the news made on him in contrast to others who appeared grossly outraged as if I had been unfair in my assessment.
The king heard me silently, almost indifferently, not even speaking when I finished or when speech itself had sunk back into a subterranean stream. But then unexpectedly a piercing laughter rang out, and I felt as if the heavens themselves were coming apart, falling in large shards and with a great force all over me. Evil, I figured, lay not in the depravity of the act, but in the ignorance of its causes.
The king dismissed me with a wave of his arm. Enough of this comedy, I thought. Time to head back. My task was done here. What would follow would follow. I did not know where I was being led, but I complied willingly with my captors’ directions, their pushing and shoving, their needless playacting. Finally we arrived at an open space with trees and bushes. Nothing could be better. From a balcony high above, the diminished form of the king watched the proceedings. Here to my surprise they tied a rag dipped in some combustible substance round my waist and put it to flame. This was entirely unnecessary and despite myself anger flared up in me. Just as the sentries drew apart from the ring of fire surrounding my form, I swiftly untied my hands on which I had been at work for some time and taking the burning cloth from one edge, climbed the nearest wall at lightning speed and set alight a whole lot of silks and tapestries.
How quickly the fires spread, with what ease an entire wing went up in flames. And then another. The king had not left his place on the balcony, and when I jumped here and there, giving a slip to the mob of sentinels loosed upon me, I came right where he stood. He made no attempt to catch me, as if he were a bystander with no part to play in what was happening at only an arm’s length from him, watching the scene with only marginal interest. When I leaped off into the dark from the last of the crenellations, half the palace burning behind me, I could still see his eyes which had in them an expression not of rage, not of surprise, not even of indifference, but something behind or beyond these feelings, an aura of inevitability that cloaks and fixes what has gone before though seldom that which is to come. Yes, in those eyes, the future appeared at the moment as irrevocable as the past.
XV
NOW THAT I think about the past in my self-imposed solitude, a ghost among ghosts in this crumbling forest lodge, it is difficult to say when things began to worsen, when love sprouted in my breast and when it was snatched away by events over which I had little control, that seemed to happen at a distance, but whose slow, broad sweep did not fail to upend my life. Today as the past is nothing but a few sodden tissues of dream that doggedly cling to the mind’s weave, unwilling to let go, I can perhaps surmise that things at times occur too late for us or rather we arrive at the stage only belatedly, our interest is kindled at the very last moment, near the finishing line although the line is not yet visible or has been obliterated by our belief in the turf’s being endless, with many twists and turns, letting us enter or exit anywhere, forgetting so easily that such is the case for everyone, that while with much on our minds and hands to accomplish but scant time and space remaining to attain the goals we have been given or have taken upon ourselves, we measure our breath, we race along in pursuit of the objects of our desire, those we pursue may have long since left the track or would leave it before we have a chance to level with them.
By the time I began to see Misa on the pretext of an evening game twice a week, things were already on the downhill. Our queen, whose marvellous invention it was, played the game no more, or at least not with anyone. Misa herself had told me so, although how, before sooner or later reaching the brink of madness, one could play with oneself a game in which duality was of the essence was something that did not cross my mind at the time. But maybe she did not play at all, did not feel the need in the least. It is not uncommon for creators to tire of what they have brought into being. Nearly a year had passed since she had taught the game to the king, although it had been Misa to whom she had first revealed its rules and properties, months, maybe years, before the king ever heard of it. The two went along playing day upon day without anyone getting to know or being least bit taken by it, so that when the king told me about the game, and when I saw it played between Misa and him one evening, I came under its spell instantly, as if it was not an improvi- sation, utterly clever though it be, of the familiar rudimentary board game, but a gift I had forever coveted without once being aware of the fact. Part of the reason, which I realized only later, was that in the same instant I had also come under the spell of the girl moving the pieces, and after this momentous evening could never separate the image of one from the other in my mind.
From the room where I remain unmoving for hours, I often lose myself in the shape of the clouds that forever seem to be on the point of dissolving, untangling in stray vaporous wisps into the blue membrane of emptiness, and are yet held together by some invisible inner cohesion as they drift from one horizon to the next, measuring the vast expanse of the sky. It is the way of clouds. And not so different is our own. Meandering and dissolving through great unseen distances, wavering in a torrid, incandescent landscape where space shines like a molten mirror, where nothing is what it seems and everything is a mirage of itself, it is a mystery that we are able to take even a single step forward, transport ourselves from here to there and from there to elsewhere, without crumbling to dust or liquefying into the elements along our wayward tracks. Moving, changing, disintegrating slowly in the river rush of life.
What I could never see before, no matter how hard or close I looked, I see now in the simplest of phenomena. The most common- place of events sometimes will lift the fug from over our thoughts, and what has accumulated by our passage through a stormy, chimeric landscape will melt away in an instant of pure lucidity, like rain in a desert, clarifying, refining the filters of vision. There begins our freedom, there, too, our terror.
The king had learnt the game on the open sea. Three full days were enough for him to learn and master the play. Perhaps the royal pair went on playing and improvising, developing further variations and openings, tiring themselves out thoroughly, so that what was chiefly meant to be a period for relaxation ended up being the arena of contest.
Their return from the sea was no different this time from those in the past. Soon enough, however, things began to alter. Within the first few months, the queen seemed to have lost all interest in the game, in time turning her back on it completely, while the king began to play with an ever burgeoning passion, first only with Misa, but then with others as well, close friends and aides among whom the new version had gained immense popularity in the shortest of time. A restlessness that hadn’t been seen since his return from the far north years ago came to fill the king little by little. When playing, he would begin thoughtfully, at first making outwardly innocuous moves, absorbing any and all attacks of his opponent serenely, while managing to preserve his own reserves with the least damage to his ranks, yet by the time the game had barely developed into a middle phase, he would trap and smother the enemy’s forces as and when he pleased, advancing with astonishing speed toward an endgame, and finishing him off in a fury of moves. Over the following months he had demolished any and all adversaries, Misa not excepting, although she was the most exacting of players he encountered over the board. The restiveness was not readily apparent, but to those of us who had been with him for long, it was not also entirely invisible. Was this because of a mere board game? It was silly to imagine so. Yet some hidden connection surely lay between the game and his past. Even if the game was not the cause, it was the catalyst. One thing though I had noticed, the king always played black. Could this seemingly innocent fact point to something significant? Could it be something carefully buried in his memory as a child, which as soon as it had bee
n revealed was encouraged to be forgotten? For only that which is forgotten assails us in time with fiendish impulses.
What cannot be doubted, however, is the moment when the axis tilted completely. That was when the king’s half-sister came crying to him for help, bloody and mutilated in the face. As if it was the one excuse he had been waiting for, the slight opening to thrust his foot in, he flew into a rage, stomping off as if a demon had settled on his breast. Without consulting anyone, without investigating the matter further, after all that cunning woman was not above reproach herself, forever busy hatching dirty little schemes to invite trouble, he had flown away in his vessel to carry out the accursed kidnapping.
There was hardly anything special about the meek woman the king returned with some hours hence, walking in tow, whimpering and terror-stricken, in a state of shock amid the alien splendour of the palace, perhaps even at the colour of our skin and the shape of our heads and eyes and noses. Accustomed to the slow sameness of days in the forest, the few comforts of a frugal existence in exile by the side of her spouse, she seemed as confounded among these foreign men as by the swiftness and villainy of the event itself.
None of us had moved since the king had stormed out in fury, even that wicked woman, the cause behind our future ruin, who, now that her wounds had been dressed, didn’t arouse in me any sympathy. As the king entered the hall with the weeping woman trailing behind, a cruel mocking laughter rang out of her. He turned to his abductee and told her in the most matter-of-fact way to wipe off her tears and make herself at home, for this was home now, and in the same instant made her a proposal of marriage. This did not stun the woman as much as it stunned us. Although marriage by abduction was not uncommon or considered immoral in our tribe, it was something hardly expected of the king, particularly since he was only half like us, the other half of his blood answered to other customs, other rites, the social mores that bound him to the clans of the north.
Then, too, a proposal of marriage when the woman was already married, and the abduction committed not out of love or desire, but out of spite, this was against the norms, whether of north or of south, grossly improper.
What did the king see in her that none of us did? What had smitten him so? At any rate there was little in her compared to the daring allure of our own women, to say nothing of the queen. But no one questioned him, not one dared to offer his opinion, not even his brother, who subsequently resisted his every move and when things came to a head, as they were bound to do eventually, defected to the enemy camp only to return after the war and be proclaimed king, no, not even he, not at first, for in that moment each of us felt a tremor pass under our skins, something made us fear the king, who by then was a profoundly changed man, the man we had not known in years, the man we had long since forgotten.
Later, when that spy had burnt half the city to cinders, when our armies suffered one blow upon another, when one brave fighter after the next was felled by the enemy’s blows and arrows, when the king in a final attempt to save the situation withdrew behind the city walls to perform the grand ritual sacrifice to propitiate the deity, the yajña from whose blazing fire he vowed not to separate himself until he had imbibed its fierce heat to become a being of pure flame that nothing could touch and from which the enemy would run in fear and trembling, when a handful of enemy soldiers breached the city walls to disrupt this very ritual sacrifice and distract the king, jumping from ledge to ledge, swinging from curtains and banisters, even harassing the queen, rending her robes, nearly raping her, obliging the king to break his vow, voices slowly began to murmur, as if from deep down empty wells, posing questions that seem to have no definite answers.
One blamed the kidnapping, another that devious sister of his, yet another attacked, though almost in whispers, the false pride of the king, his casual dismissal of our every misgiving, of our rising concern since the burning of the city, even the queen’s repeated entreaties to set the captive free and avoid a pointless war. Indeed a priest went as far as to predict the king’s end, since it was common belief that the queen’s chastity was his one true shield, which, alas, had fallen at the hands of those wretched harrying savages, monkeying about with the sole aim to disrupt the sacrificial ritual, the yajña. As if this wasn’t enough, the oracle drew a connection from some past life in which the captive was none other than the king’s own daughter, and a desire to join with your daughter, in this life or another, was a sin for which even Prajāpati had not been spared.
Prajāpati had awakened from his long cosmic slumber in the dead of the night. It was always night. Only he at first, no other. From this loneliness had arisen first fear, then desire. He stared into space, and his desire made a rent in the fabric of darkness, letting in streaks of light. Thus was born his daughter, Uṣa, the dawn. The God rejoiced, for here at last was company. Instantly, without him coming to know, lost that he was in delight and desire, were born his descendants. Yet no sooner born than they wished to rid themselves of the Father’s sin. Thus they sacrificed him who had engendered them. How, then, if the divination was correct, reasoned one old courtier, could the king elude a fate before which the Creator himself had yielded?
Tiresome speculation. Meaningless exchange of words carried out by fools and parasites who knew nothing better, forever playing with symbols, the one perennial pastime which was the basis of so much of our philosophy and history that we had long since forgotten their essence, content with believing the flimsiest story in the name of truth.
Because I was away in battle, and because most of the talking took place behind my back, I only heard these rumours belatedly, when there was little left to prove or salvage. Since that time though I have come to feel, whatever be the merit of these assertions, that the reason itself was far simpler. How easily we had forgotten that the king had received the boon of immortality from none other than Śiva himself, who is beyond time, and hence the one best placed to offer it. Or was it Brahmā? No, it was not a matter of honour, pride, or colour, not a matter of lust or desire, but a call of something smouldering inside, an invitation to endgame, to death. Something had taken root deep within the king’s soul the moment it had been set free. For he must have known better than anyone else that what the gods grant they take away, or rather they only grant that which can be taken away. The boon after all comes with its terms, and terms are expressed in speech, and what is speech but a dark slimy tunnel through which every real intention slips past. The terms can never cover all possibilities, and so every immortality is contingent on one or another excluded event not taking place. Hence are the gods so free with boons, because in due course all things come to pass.
Did the king see then, when he heard the avalanche answering his prayers in the desert, what I see now, this image of himself falling in battle, the end of the accursed arrow sticking out from his navel, and the shining bare landscape with small triangular flags of five colours fluttering from a line stretched across it, home of homes, to which he had at last arrived?
A shadow passes over me in sleep. I look up. A crane, its legs tucked in, is catching the sun in its outstretched wings. I dream on. I am alone, the world nothing but a small empty room, a ten-by-ten- foot space, somehow glowing. In a corner, a large copper urn. Near the centre, a deity with a flowing mane, face turned away from me, stomping and swaying in a slow, surprisingly soundless dance.
XVI
TWO ANCIENT, venerable bloodlines met in the king. Two elements. Born of light and dark in equal measure, there was something of the inexplicable in him, something which resisted naming, escaping even those who knew him best.
Legend spoke of his birth on the banks of river Hir that flowed through the island of Lanka. Sumali, the king of the southern clans, dubbed by those in the north as the Asuras or the dark ones, wished to increase and fortify his already vast dominion, the preferred way for which was alliances formed through marriage. Toward this end, he set his sight on the sage Visravas, not only the most powerful man on earth, but the son of th
e great Pulastya himself, one of the ten mind-born sons of Prajāpati, now twinkling upon the world from the asterism of Big Dipper, to whom he intended to give away in marriage the hand of his daughter, Kaikesi.
While he was pondering over his plan, news came to him of the sage’s visit to a hermitage in a neighbouring forest. Taking this to be a fortuitous sign, he arranged for his daughter to be noticed by Visravas just as the sage was leaving his host’s cottage. Nothing more was needed on Sumali’s part, he knew that if the two met, things would inevitably take the course he desired. Famed for her charm and intelligence, Kaikesi would not fail him.
Not altogether unexpectedly then, the king found Visravas walking into the royal court the very next day with a wish to seek his daughter’s hand in marriage. Only too happy to oblige, the king at once announced a grand ceremony to be held in three days’ time. Filled with a sudden tenderness for this man who had received him with such humility and devotion, the sage blessed the king and promised his eternal protection to the empire and its people.
This being achieved, Sumali rested in peace and, once the wedding was over, left them undisturbed in the hut by the river, calmly watching from a distance, awaiting the birth of his grand- child.
In time the couple was blessed with a son. More children would follow. But that first child was special or was considered special. Considerate and kind, aggressive and arrogant by turn, he would grow up to be an exemplary scholar and warrior, learned in scrip- tures, reader of stars, master of the vīṇā. They called him Rāvaṇa, after a thought came to the mother’s lips on seeing the infant, he who wins the gods by just actions, he, the lineage-bearer of sun- worshippers. Straddling two very different worlds, with one foot in the forest and the other in the palace, at home both in the pieties and rituals of his father’s life and the splendour and ethics of his mother’s world, he grew up into a hybrid like no other, an ascetic with the brow of a king, or a king who went around in a sage’s garb, a man loved and feared equally, discoursing in two tongues, moving from observances of one realm to those of the other with uncommon ease, channelling and blending the knowledge of two distinct cultures to leap beyond into an understanding greater than either and one that was wholly unique.
