GODS, KINGS & SLAVES
THE SIEGE OF MADURAI
R. Venketesh
First published in 2013 by Hachette India
(Registered name: Hachette Book Publishing India Pvt. Ltd)
An Hachette UK company
www.hachetteindia.com
This ebook published in 2013
Copyright © 2013 R. Venketesh
Illustrations © 2013 Saurabh Deb
R. Venketesh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this
work
All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be copied, reproduced, downloaded, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover or digital format other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Print edition ISBN 978-93-5009-586-7
Ebook edition ISBN 978-93-5009-613-0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents (other than those obviously genuine) are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
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To Lakshmi, who may never read this book, but without
whom it would not have been
PROLOGUE
MADURAI
He was born a bastard!
All that he would achieve later in the battlefield would not assuage the anger he felt about his parentage, nor the truth that he was of royal stock remove the stigma he was condemned to for the rest of history.
Veera was a prince, no doubt, with the royal blood of the Pandyan kings flowing in his veins. But any royalty in his blood came only from his father’s side.
Not all bastards thought about their parentage every day, but today the fact had been rubbed into the three-year-old’s mind like salt on an open wound. For today, the nation was celebrating his father’s wedding.
Veera’s mother, Tara, was a concubine of the Pandyan heir apparent Prince Kulasekharan. Scribes would not note that the only woman the Pandyan heir had ever loved was a dancer beyond her prime. Not when the Pandyans claimed descent from Goddess Meenakshi and ruled from Madurai – the city that had risen when a drop of maduram, the holy ambrosia, accidentally fell on earth. Kulasekharan had refused to marry for long out of his love for Tara, but even he could not hold out forever. Being the crown prince meant he had to marry a blue-blooded princess, and the entire empire had rejoiced. Except for Tara – and Veera.
Never before had a concubine’s son ascended the Madurai throne, and Veera, though firstborn, could not be expected to wear the crown of pearls either. The throne hall of Madurai was sanctified territory. Had not the supreme goddess herself ruled from its portals as Meenakshi? Any stray thoughts on his prospects would have to end now, especially after his father’s lawful matrimony to a pedigreed princess.
Veera watched the wedding celebrations carefully. Much later, when he would wonder where his stream of memories began from, he would realize it was the staging of this nuptial, when the entire empire had rejoiced. Veera and his mother had taken so much for granted that it was rather hard to accept Kulasekharan was marrying someone else. What they thought was as permanent as the sun and moon had been rudely snatched away by reality, the suddenness mocking the contentment they had felt when it was only the three of them together in this world.
Madurai’s riches had remained unused and laid buried for too long, and the king needed a celebration to flaunt its wealth and taunt his vassals. It was a royal wedding after all. The sun never seemed to set on the city when the festivities began. With night came tens of thousands of lamps, glittering like a million fireflies converging on one selected spot. Almost all the buildings were resplendent with the oil lamps on the windowsills, their flames flickering in unison with the gentle breeze like golden flags, joining the people in their revelry. Even the street urchins had coir ropes ignited with glowing embers at their tips. To convert night into day, the Nagarathar merchants, in a show of unbending loyalty to the throne, had distributed mustard oil in huge drums around the city so that the lamps could be lit. It was not often they got to affirm their loyalty to their rulers.
Many years of peace had passed in the Pandyan lands, with the treasury bulging with revenues from conquered kings. Their enemies were far away, and even the century-old civil war was now a distant memory. It seemed the Pandyans would rule for eternity, guaranteeing perpetual peace. Peace did not just mean an absence of war. Peace was when war moved away from homes, when sons were not conscripted into the armies and wealth was not looted by invaders – an even-handed barter the kings gave for the taxes they collected.
The seers and priests predicted that this wedding would change the annals of Tamil history. What they did not realize was that gods heard the prayers of mortals sometimes – and then punished them by granting exactly what they had asked for.
The empire resonated with sounds of glee, yet the harem reverberated with silence: an island of hush amid an ocean of howling humanity. The walls of the harem had always been constructed to keep out sounds unless the windows were opened. It was a pity no architect could insulate a home from the emotions beyond its walls.
Veera’s mother had barely uttered a word for over a week. Initially, the relationship between Kulasekharan and Tara was like one between a conqueror and the conquered. Submissive and resigned to her fate as a mere concubine, she had shared his bed, but it was difficult to ignore love for long. She eventually realized Kulasekharan’s affection for her went far beyond carnal craving, and responded by falling in love with him too.
The birth of a son cemented their relationship. Veera was a lucky boy. He did not know it, but his mother certainly did. Conceived not only from primal lust but also from love, he had been allowed to live. Other courtesans who conceived were forced to abort their babies because a royal bastard could create problems in the future and spoil the woman’s physical allure. The practice was to force a handful of sesamum seeds into the courtesan’s mouth, which would ensure the death of the foetus.
That was Veera’s first brush with death. He could have died even before he was born.
Kulasekharan would not hear of it, though. He took great care of Tara during her pregnancy and was overjoyed when a son was born. The prince had doted on his bastard, given him a name and a childhood befitting royalty. Tara’s status was now staunchly established. Though marriage with the heir apparent was out of question, she thought her newfound security would last forever. Three years later, it stood threatened.
Kulasekharan, after years of disagreement with the king, had finally agreed to wed a Chola princess.
Tara hugged her son close and wept, but Veera ran away to the balcony to see the celebrations. No boy could resist the rhythmic beat of the drums made from an assortment of cured animal skins stretched on a frame. As more wine went into the guts of the musicians there was a cacophony of sounds – drums were out of beat and pipes were blown out of tune. But nobody seemed to mind. To Veera, he and his mother were invisible to the million eyes that watched the celebrations that day. The country seemed to have snatched the sole rights they had over his father.
Bored after a while, Veera wanted a snack. He went out of his room, but the darkness outside overwhelmed
him. Only a few stray lamps in the corridor flickered. The harem was usually the most well-lit part of the royal enclosure, and the gloom meant there was nobody in the palace, except the two of them. All other inmates had gone out to see the ceremony. Disoriented by the gloom, the boy felt a deep panic and rushed back to his mother. He hugged her from behind, but she did not turn. Ignoring his embrace, she gazed vacantly at the wall.
His father had not visited them for a whole week. A royal wedding usually went on for three days in separate palaces belonging to the groom’s and the bride’s families. On the third day, the prince would ride a lavishly bedecked horse from his palace to marry the princess at the auspicious hour. The usual custom was that the groom’s entourage would go to the bride’s land, but the Pandyans were too powerful to have a wedding in a vassal’s land. The princess had been brought to their territory two weeks before the wedding and lodged in a spacious palace, which housed the wedding hall where most of the festivities took place.
Veera had seen his mother age ten years in the last three days. Until last week she had been the only woman in the life of the most eligible prince in the realm. Today, she was a discarded rag. She knew all her privileges would be snatched away one by one and she would fall prey to intrigues within the palace walls.
When the marriage was fixed, it did not take time for the news to spread and its impact to be felt. Tara was among the last to hear of it – the prince had not broached the subject on his last visit. And then he had stopped coming to their quarter altogether.
Almost immediately, there was a visible change of attitude in the harem’s inmates. The prince, who had spent all his nights with Tara for three years, had forsaken her for a woman of royal pedigree. Most of the other courtesans now looked at them with more contempt than pity. There were whispers at first and then louder taunts, but his mother remained still like a rock. Tara stoically made her sorrow her personal grief, refusing to share it with anybody else – not that there was anyone in the harem to share it with. Veera could not understand the depths of her distress. Tara did not cry – not in front of Veera, but she was weeping within and her son could sense it. Veera had been praying the whole day, wishing some mishap would happen to the princess. Perhaps she would trip and break her leg or it would rain and spoil the wedding. But even if Varuna, the god of the clouds, did hear his prayers, rain would do nothing to dampen the wedding of a prince.
Once the wedding was over, the prince rode back in an open chariot with his new bride by his side, waving to the euphoric citizens cheering from the sides of the road. No one went back home without a patriotic wave at their prince and his shy Chola bride who did not even raise her head.
Veera could hear the voices of the returning harem women. Their loud chatter alerted him, who shut the door and stepped outside. He did not want them to ridicule his mother. Their jealousy, built up over years of subservience to Tara’s status as the preferred concubine, was now venomous. The women came closer and one of them offered him a sweet. ‘Take it. It’s your father’s wedding.’
He shook his head.
She added solemnly, ‘Take it as a farewell gift from him.’
The others burst into laughter while he fled into the sanctuary of his room. His mother had fallen asleep. Veera was determined to stay awake; he would wait for his father till dawn, if need be. He still harboured a tiny sliver of hope, and Kulasekharan proved him right.
Mortal predictions may often be right in the long run but they fall miserably short when asked to foresee the next few hours. Kulasekharan, with as much decisiveness as the swing of his sword, silenced all criticism. Veera and his mother were not alone for long.
The prince spent his nuptial night not with his new bride, but with his mistress. He laughed aloud to find her sleeping, for Tara had not expected him to visit that night. Words failed her as she embraced him and her sobs shook his shoulders – shoulders that court poets compared to the peaks of the distant Himalayas. He gently patted her back and said a few soothing words. Veera knew he was witness to a solemn occasion. He kept quiet, drawing little attention to himself. Only a while later did the two lovers realize their son was in the room. His mother’s expression was strange, he observed, before he was smothered in her embrace. She was laughing and yet her tears flowed like the Vaigai river. He had never seen anybody do both together.
Kulasekharan spent his wedding night with a woman he could never hope to marry, while his princess-bride slept alone.
The effects of his action, however, would be felt – not now, but in the future. Kulasekharan’s preference for his concubine meant that Veera was back in the race that led to the throne of Madurai – although, when the princess bore him a son, Kulasekharan was as overjoyed as he was at the birth of Veera. ‘As unvarying as the two eyes on my face,’ he would proudly declare. But eyes don’t always see the same way.
*
GUJARAT
The astrologer Somnath jerked up in shock as if the horoscope in his hand had slapped him. In his sixty years, he had never seen such a chart. He had cast a thousand horoscopes in his lifetime, but he also had access to several thousands more – records so ancient that they had to be copied every ten years on palm leaves before they crumbled to dust. Having dealt with a science that was infamous for its discordant and unpredictable nature, it was usual to be daunted by the occasional shocker that cropped up in his charts. But today, he wished he had not stepped out of his house. He should have pleaded sick. He blinked stupidly at the chart before him. He did not bother about the fifty eyes in the room eagerly looking for clues in his expression. His recoil went unnoticed and his shivering was covered by his clothing. The sweat that broke out on his face could be attributed to the crowd in the unventilated room.
As an infant, he had watched his father immerse himself in his collection of horoscopes, working feverishly on the innumerable planetary permutations. The incessant excitement of divinations and prophecies and the inextricable muddle of the unpredictable had hooked him too. And then came a tutorial by his father that lasted twenty years.
Every horoscope was different and even those of twins differed. The moon changed houses every two and a half days, the sun once a month, Jupiter once a year and Saturn once in two and a half years. The two snakes, Rahu and Ketu – placed opposite each other – moved in the diametric direction of the other planets.
The planets were his friends. He spoke to them through the charts and in the skies when he went out on starlit nights, until his eyesight began to fail. He knew exactly where they were at any given time – where to look for Mars in his fiery red and Venus in her bluish silver.
The boy whose horoscope had shocked the astrologer looked up at him. Somnath turned to meet his gaze. It was his first birthday. The cherubic baby smiled back at him. Perhaps the child liked the splashes of white in Somnath’s black beard or the wrinkles on his face amused him, or perhaps he enjoyed the discomfiture the astrologer was suffering on his account.
The father of the boy, the local bania, trusted him. Somnath had cast the horoscopes for their entire family. He consulted his almanac, which indicated the change of every planet for the previous fifty and the next fifty years. And it had taken him just a few minutes to know every planet’s position on the day the boy had been born. Was this child a symbol of the incessant struggle between good and bad?
And was he destined to be a soldier, but on the wrong side?
The din of the party disturbed the astrologer’s thoughts. He looked at the crowd. Let them enjoy themselves while they can, he thought sardonically. If men knew what the planets held for them, they could never live like they did.
The child’s first birthday was being celebrated with all the pomp the father could afford. Hindus considered the first birthday to be of paramount importance. It was more of a celebration of a hurdle crossed than a count of days lived. Some of the primary duties of being a Hindu were performed on this day – horoscopes were cast, ears were pierced and heads were tonsured. Wit
h the Mohammedan waiting at the gates of Gujarat to pounce on their wealth and to dishonour their women, any occasion to celebrate was a moment to rejoice – as if it were the last thing they would commemorate.
It had been a hundred years since the Mohammedans had come. With the invaders so near at hand, and even the Somnath temple ravaged for the fourth time, people should have emigrated down south. But the new dynasty of the Vaghelas, which had succeeded the weak Solankis, could surely hold out against the invaders. The defence outpost of Karnavati on the banks of the Sabarmati was impregnable. No Muslim invader had ever crossed it after it had been strengthened. If it fell, soothsayers said, so would Gujarat and the rest of the south.
The immense loss of life and wealth each invasion brought had a devastating effect on one generation, but the people eventually recovered. Now, rumours were rife that the enemy had been sighted once again. Some who seemed to have seen the signs of disaster had sold their assets for a song and set out in search of a place where they could build new futures. They had migrated to the southern tip of the continent, where dark-skinned people worshipped the same gods as they did. Their warnings were ridiculed by those who stayed. They had prospered and the Mohammedan was yet to come. The stability that the Rajput kings had provided also added to the opulence of the kingdom, which, they did not realize, would invariably entice the invader again.
The astrologer looked at the boy again. They had dressed him up in a silk tunic embroidered with gold zari strands that glinted in the sun. The silk had come from China and had found its way up from the south, since the Turks had closed the northern routes of commerce with finality. Yet, the child seemed unappreciative of its commercial value. He had duly wetted it twice already. For the sake of luck they had not changed his dress and he now stank like an unwashed cowshed.
The child’s father held him on his lap. He was precious, the answer to many prayers and a pilgrimage, suggested by the astrologer himself. Somnath felt a fleeting guilt for he, too, was responsible for the existence of this boy. He could hardly believe that the parents’ horoscopes had not augured any event of this sort. Or had he disregarded the subtle clues?
Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai Page 1
