Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai

by Venketesh, R.

  CHAPTER 4

  ESCAPE FROM HELL

  The more she thought about it, the more it seemed possible. The dangers that would accompany her escape were trivial compared to the hell she lived through every day. Ram was smitten with her, and he could be manipulated. The next time they met, Chaula broached the subject in a conspiratorial tone: ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Please try to bear it for a few more days,’ he pleaded.

  She said in a forced whisper, ‘It won’t work, Ram, I have to leave. The Rana will have his way with me soon. I can’t allow that.’

  For a stunned moment, there was silence as the news sank in. Ram felt a surge of unhappiness. ‘How do you know?’ he gasped. He knew what she was talking about.

  Her voice broke. ‘He manhandles me but he can’t do anything more because he has an infection.’

  Her lament shifted the focus in his mind from admiring her beauty to wanting to help her. An anger rose within him, an impotent wrath that could bruise no one. He felt powerless before the Rana; there was no way he could prevent him from ravaging Chaula. ‘H–ho–how can you escape?’ he stammered. ‘He won’t let you.’

  ‘Ram, please take me home’ she pleaded, holding his hands in hers.

  If she had wanted to go to the moon, he would have gladly taken her there.

  After a week of planning, they thought they had covered all possible outcomes, with Chaula guiding Ram on the details of the escape. Ram was more happy than nervous. This was the greatest adventure of his life. He would gallantly take Chaula back home without the Rana knowing it and in the process earn her eternal gratitude. The time they had chosen would coincide with the Rana’s annual visit to the capital, Anhilwad, to see the king. He would be out of town for a week. This would give them a head start and Chaula would be safe in her father’s place by then. Ram could then come back without arousing any suspicions.

  Ram questioned several people about the route they had to take. His father asked him, ‘Why are you so interested in so distant a place?’ Ram told him that the salt business seemed lucrative enough for him to visit the coast.

  Ram took his father’s horse without his concurrence. On festive days his father rode the horse to the palace and dismounted at a respectable distance. Ram knew the horse well enough but could not gallop on it. He planned to be back in a week at the most and was confident that he could bluff his way out if his parents questioned him.

  Chaula slipped out of the harem into the garden in the evening and stayed back till it was dark. She used the shield of darkness to put on one of Ram’s shirts, and scaled the seven-foot harem wall with a rope made out of knotted bedsheets. Ram was waiting on the other side. He carried a sack of clothes, and enough food and water for two days. In addition, he had stolen several silver coins from his father’s moneybox hidden behind the wardrobe. It was a three-to-four-day ride to her village, Chaula had told him and he believed the coins would be enough. With the Rana out of town, vigilance inside the harem had been lax. It would be a day or two before they realized Chaula was missing.

  Their first hurdle and hopefully their last would be the exit checkpost. The soldiers at the gates knew Ram as he had spent several hours there. He led the horse with Chaula seated on it.

  ‘Ram, where are you going at this late hour?’ The sentry had a pock-marked face and his red turban hung heavily from his head. He held a rusted lance in his right hand. Chaula had thoughtfully pulled a rug over herself to conceal her shape. At twilight, the lamps stood at sharp angles from the fort walls and Ram counted on them to hide her face.

  ‘I am going with my brother to the village by the rocks. I have to deliver some medicines,’ said Ram, who did business in villages around their town too.

  ‘Come back before the gates close. That’s an hour from now,’ the sentry warned him.

  ‘As if you will not open the gates if I am late,’ Ram joked. ‘Anyway, I shall return tomorrow,’ he added.

  The man guffawed and stopped halfway. ‘Hey, you never told me you had a brother.’ He turned towards Chaula on the horse. ‘Cousin, he’s my cousin,’ Ram stammered, hoping that the sentry would not take a closer look. No amount of camouflage would take away Chaula’s femininity.

  The sentry looked at Chaula curiously. ‘Your brother looks odd. He ought to be more in the sun.’ With this advice on Chaula’s health, he opened the gates and let his master’s favourite girl escape.

  *

  As soon as they were out of the gates, Ram prodded the horse to make it trot faster. They turned to watch civilization disappear behind them. Ram looked back at the city. A few lights flickered and the moon painted the city a ghostly grey.

  Outside the fort, it wasn’t as desolate as he had thought it would be. There were a few people travelling on foot. Night was always a better time to travel during the hot season, and travelling in groups made it safer from the bandits who roamed the jungles.

  Gradually, the road became less crowded. Ram had also got onto the horse on Chaula’s command. His tired legs were relieved, but the horse was indeed uncomfortable and they found it necessary to constantly shift their positions. But he didn’t mind the discomfort. With Chaula close to him, her scent engulfed him with every waft of breeze. The proximity to her and the probability of being in a similar position for the next three or four days made his posterior bear any strain that the saddle rendered.

  They didn’t stop till the first rays of the sun had peeped out on the horizon. Chaula identified a few landmarks and assured him they were on the right path. They paused for a few hours to nap and woke up when the sun had reached its zenith. Ram leaned back and tried to relax on the horse, but it didn’t take him long to realize that there would be no repose for him till he reached her home. They continued their journey, the horse walking along a track with its grass flattened by thousands of feet and hooves, litter strewn on the sides and an occasional circle of scorched earth where travellers had lit their cooking fires.

  A day and night of close proximity and gentle flirting had broken all barriers between them. The entire sequence was taking a new dimension for Ram. How would it be if he married this girl and settled down? He could always visit his parents a few years later when the clamour over their disappearance had died out.

  Vegetation appeared as islands on dry land where plants struggled to survive around a body of water. When they saw a pond full of lily buds, Ram and Chaula rushed like children and jumped in fully clothed. They laughed and shrieked, splashing water on each other. Atop a tree, the koel cooed to its mate to return home for the night.

  After a few minutes of splashing about, Ram waded out. Chaula spoke to him as she emerged from the water a little later, but he heard none of the words she uttered. Her wet dress had moulded into the contours of her body. Her face became flushed as she saw him stare at her and she ran behind a tree to conceal herself. Ram for a minute wished he had been the tree. When she emerged from behind the tree, she looked even more beautiful, though her hair was in tangles. Chaula had put on a choli and a skirt, but they displayed more than covered her dazzling body.

  They rested in a semi-shaded area under an acacia tree. A gradual transformation had taken place in the landscape. The countryside had become more barren. Tall trees and grassland had been replaced by barren patches of salt-encrusted land and there were no clumps of vegetation here to protect them from the sun. Chaula was confident they were on the correct route. They were a couple of days from their destination at their present speed, if she remembered correctly.

  The wind whistled past them.

  ‘You can hug me if you want,’ she said.

  Without hesitating, Ram did just that, as if he was waiting for her to give him the go-ahead. Their bodies were moulded in matchless perfection and the hug gave him a warmth that suffused his whole body.

  Chaula had not told Ram all the details of her life in the harem because she was ashamed of it and he would have known how important she was to the Rana. But even if Chaul
a had, Ram would probably not have cared, as they lay next to each other, his head resting on the bag of clothing and hers comfortably on his chest. He could hear her heart pounding, or was it his? As she pressed her lips on his for a quick kiss, he thought, If paradise feels half as good as this, I’d be happy to die now.

  Halfway into the next day, the barren wasteland gave way to a greenish expanse. They had to cross the marsh, wading through knee-deep slush and reeds growing in thick bunches. The humidity in the brackish swamp was stifling. Since their water supply was running low, they drank from a clear pond, despite knowing that the water was slightly salty.

  The water affected them only later in the day. They had drunk too much, and it made their stomachs churn. They knew they had to find a place with potable water soon.

  They climbed a gentle hill with a pass at its peak, where the elements had eroded the rocks. They could see a small island of green in the distance. Was it an image conjured in their minds made hazy with thirst? It looked more luxuriant than the brown, soggy marsh, but Ram wondered how safe it would be. When he saw a temple tower from the distance, he was heartened. A saffron triangle of a pennant proudly fluttered in the wind. A path snaked down from the pass to the hamlet below. ‘We will have to stop there,’ he said.

  Somebody noticed them climbing down and by the time they approached the village a crowd had already gathered. As they came nearer, they noticed a priest standing in front. The temple was the centre of the hamlet, which had grown in circles around it. ‘If the priest asks, do not say that we have escaped from the Rana. Tell him we have eloped,’ Chaula instructed him.

  The priest was older than any man Ram had ever seen. His long hair and flowing beard were white, and Ram was surprised that despite his age all his teeth were intact. The younger man behind the priest looked almost like him too and from the moment Chaula and Ram arrived, he had his eyes set clearly on Chaula – more precisely, on her bosom.

  Ram shouldn’t have worried, for the priest was a charming man and very religious. He believed their story that they were husband and wife. ‘You may take your wife to that room,’ he said, and pointed to a small hut on the side of the temple. ‘We will talk in the morning.’

  The hut was a sort of a rest house for countless pilgrims who had trodden this very path, seeking to pay obeisance to the deity at Somnath. But since the original temple had fallen, fewer people followed this route now. Men had become cynics. Their gods seemed no more than stone figurines, helpless and without power. The wreckage the mleccha invader had wrought on Somnath only seemed to testify to the weakness of the gods.

  Chaula wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smell of bat excreta inside. The priest sent a woman to dust the room and wipe it. A few moments with an open door and windows and it smelled better. Ram reassured Chaula, ‘There is really nothing to fear. These men are different.’

  ‘The priest is a good and religious man and I trust him. But his son ogles at me,’ she said.

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ Ram asked mischievously.

  They decided to freshen up for the evening prayers. There was a small well in the backyard. Chaula used a creaky pulley to pull out a wooden bucket that leaked half its water before it came up. Ram decided to take a walk around the corner of the street till she finished. When he returned, he saw that Chaula was seated with her back towards him; her hair, still wet from the bath, was pulled into a knot at the base of her neck. The moment he laid eyes on her, he felt a tremor through his body. She felt his hungry gaze and turned towards him, before smiling warmly and running the comb through her silken hair – now, a black lustrous cascade as it fell to below her hips.

  Ram decided he needed to do something – his body hungered for more than just a touch. His gaze lifted to her face and his intensely dark eyes probed her face for any telltale signs of reciprocity. He had the distinct impression she was willing, too. He could barely restrain his feelings now as he walked close to her and touched her shoulder. She held his hand and pulled him down. The aroma of her freshly washed hair overpowered him. He placed his head on her lap and she slowly trailed her forefinger along his face. He closed his eyes, feeling a sense of comfort he had never felt before.

  After a minute or so, when his face had got wet from the dampness of her dress, she shook him from his stupor. ‘Go have your bath. It’s time to go to the temple.’ By the time he returned, she was dressed in a fine skirt that swirled around her knees. Her choli and skirt were embroidered in golden zari, which shone even in the dim light.

  Darkness had engulfed the hamlet by the time they reached the temple. Within the inner sanctum, a lingam stood almost as high as the priest himself. When the priest mumbled a few chants, Ram recognized most of them, though the accent was different from what he was used to. The priest’s son almost devoured Chaula with his eyes. With his eyes fixed on her, he even stumbled on the step that divided the altar from the main hall. The priest looked at him reproachfully, before lifting a brass bell and shaking it. A warm tinkling sound filled the temple. A villager took the cue and rang the larger bell hanging from the roof, the sound of the gong spreading through the village. Like the primal sound of Om that it was supposed to recreate, Ram noticed the feverish fervour of the worshippers.

  When the chanting was over, the priest lit the camphor from a hanging lamp and placed it on the plate, before circumambulating the lingam thrice with the tray in his hand. The lingam glowed in the warm orange light of the burning camphor. The priest walked towards the waiting devotees after he was done. The brilliant glow of the camphor threw a dazzling light into the outer sanctum. The priest pushed the plate forward and the devotees rushed to take a share of the divine blessings. Ram and Chaula waited for their turn. When the plate was presented to Chaula, she dutifully placed her hands above the flame and on her eyes. The movement seemed like a mudra of a dance.

  When Ram’s turn came, the camphor flame went out. The outer mandap was plunged into darkness and only the lamps from the inner sanctum offered some light. The priest shook visibly. He turned to look at the lingam, then straight into the eyes of Ram and seemed to recoil. ‘It was the breeze,’ he said, but within him the old man knew, in that windless altar, the force that had put out the flame was the breath of God.

  After the puja, the priest walked to Chaula and gave her the prasad, ignoring Ram completely. Ram felt the man must have missed him by mistake, but the priest would not look into his eyes at all. ‘You may use the resthouse for as long as you want,’ he offered Chaula. ‘We do not have many pilgrims these days.’

  *

  Chaula came in with a lamp, shutting the door behind her. The flame flickered in the breeze, which forced itself through an opening in the door. Her russet skin was deeply tanned and in the yellow flame she looked like a statue moulded in bronze. It was when she closed the door that she noticed something strange. There was no bolt.

  ‘Ram, how do I secure the door?’ she asked.

  ‘We are going to stay for one night and you want to repair the entire house,’ he mumbled.

  A twinkle came in her eyes. ‘Well, get a bolt from the ironsmith tomorrow. We may be staying longer.’

  The shimmering moonlight shone through the small holes in the roof, the beams visible as they struck the dust floating within the room. Chaula’s face shone. But it was not just the moonlight that had lit her up. A glow seemed to be emanating from inside. Her tresses cascaded over her shoulders. Ram longed to run his fingers through her raven-black hair. Her expression softened when their eyes met and she smiled at him. Chaula wanted to reward Ram. Nobody else had taken such a risk for her. Even her parents and kinsmen, fearing a few blows, had left her in the clutches of the Rana’s men. On second thoughts, she wondered if she really wanted to go back home. She could always settle with Ram here.

  She sat next to him. Despite being with her for two days, Chaula’s closeness made him shiver. When his gaze locked with hers, it was inevitable that their lips moved closer. When she kissed him, he did n
ot open his eyes. He wanted to relish this moment. He responded with hungry kisses as if he had been waiting for her all his life. In truth, he was doing so because he was not sure how long it would last. Perhaps it was a dream and he would wake up any moment now.

  He held her tightly and kissed her on the forehead and then on her nose. After her lips, he went on to kiss her swanlike throat, his lips quivering with desire. He held her in a tight embrace. Chaula was more experienced in the erotic arts but she restrained herself lest Ram doubt her about what she’d learnt in the harem. She waited patiently with a tinge of amusement as he fumbled with her clothes clumsily, until she could wait no longer.

  She bent her hands backwards to untie the knot of her choli. The garment fell as if it longed to be free. Ram responded with the most ardent embrace. When both their clothes were off, she lay down and beckoned him to lie over her. Ram was shivering with nervousness and pleasure. When he entered her, Ram felt her sucking in her breath into her throbbing heart. As she gasped out of uncontrollable desire, he paused, wondering if he had hurt her. Their sweating bodies slipped over each other and as if to get a grip, she clawed his back. Chaula was clasping his body as if it was an anchor, for she felt like she was falling in a bottomless pit of pleasure. After what seemed like an eternity, her body spasmed, and his with hers. He rolled off her, sated and exhausted. Chaula had at last found peace and Ram had found nothing less than heaven.

  *

  A bank of stormy clouds in the distant horizon had hastened the sunset. The village had gone to sleep but the priest was still awake. When the camphor had gone out, he had seen a vision of the future, like a man who had peeped into a keyhole and realized what lay behind the door. When everybody had left, the priest went to the altar and looked straight at the lingam. ‘Mahadeva,’ he pleaded, ‘who but yourself can give us answers to the riddles in our lives?’ He prostrated himself before the idol. His mind made up, it was time to close the doors. Those old doors groaned as their rusted hinges protested.