Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai

by Venketesh, R.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE END OF AN AFFAIR

  Sunanda moved sinuously under him; nerves she never knew existed within her strongly asserted their presence. ‘Keep still, will you?’ Veera said for the third time.

  ‘I am not a veteran like you,’ she retorted, ‘You have to agree this is better than taking the services of maids in the palace’s backyard.’

  He kept quiet. ‘Aren’t we coming up in life?’ she continued teasing him, ‘From bedding maids to full-blooded princesses now?’

  ‘How the hell did you know?’

  ‘My dear prince,’ she said, as her shapely finger outlined his lips, ‘It is my business to know everything about you. There is nowhere you can hide. You better behave yourself. It is I and only I who should have a hold on you. Next time you bed her, I will kill her.’ Although she said it playfully, Veera knew there was very little jest in her words. Sunanda smiled indulgently and snuggled closer to him. As the shadows of a fire danced near them, a haunting melody from a flute floated from behind a tree. And in that melancholy backdrop, beside the smouldering fire, they made love once again.

  ‘Who is playing the flute?’ she asked, once they were sated.

  ‘That will be my invisible friend, Akshayan. He never makes his presence felt when his lord is making love,’ Veera teased.

  She turned around nervously, with the eerie feeling of being watched. ‘Maybe your friend watches us making love.’ She was nervous now, her eyes darting about.

  ‘He will be there, but he will close his eyes,’ Veera said nonchalantly, and let out a squeal as she pinched him. ‘He should close his ears too,’ she retorted in mock anger.

  Twilight was the time for their trysts. In a tropical land where nights were hot and humid, the palace girls went up to the terrace to sleep. It was easy for Sunanda to slip out conveniently and not be missed. Sunanda’s friend would dutifully unwind a mattress for her in a convenient corner but the princess never slept on it.

  And so the passionate lovemaking went on between the bastard prince and the vassal princess. They walked on the forest paths without any particular destination in mind. She clung closely to him all the time, oblivious of the thorny path or the rocky terrain, not bothering when the rain clouds obscured the moon and drenched them, unable to quench the fire within. They also did not realize the price they would have to pay for their reckless love.

  *

  Legend spoke of a tantric woman who lived in a cave in the forests outside Madurai, a soothsayer, unequalled in the powers she had. It was rumoured that even the kings consulted her when there was trouble in their kingdom. The woman was reportedly seven hundred years old.

  Sunanda had heard of her from the maids in the palace and wanted to meet her. But the last thing Veera believed in was soothsayers. There were hundreds of such people within the city, who used everything from betel leaves to cowrie shells to predict the future. Some of them had caged parrots with clipped wings that would pick out a palm leaf with inscriptions. Veera used to joke, ‘How can it predict your future when the parrot itself has a bleak one?’

  But Sunanda insisted, ‘I have to ask about so many things in my future.’

  Veera agreed reluctantly, and they set out to find her. They were guided by a goatherd who pointed to a direction and asked them to seek out a small hillock where the tantric was said to live. The hillock, with three flat sides, stood alone in a thick forest.

  They searched for a whole day in the forest, but they could not find the hill. Exhausted, they prepared themselves to return. Just before the sun set, painting the area black, they saw him. If he hadn’t moved, they would not have noticed him. He was a midget with a wizened face, a hunched back, matted locks and a tangled beard. Thankful that someone could give them directions to the hill, Veera went to ask him the way. As he came closer, he realized the man’s face had been mangled by pox.

  Before Veera could as much as open his mouth, the man squeaked in a high-pitched voice, almost like the squeal of a piglet, opening the toothless cavity that was his mouth. ‘Veera, I have been waiting for you since the morning. Hurry up, she is waiting.’

  How the hell did he know my name? Veera wondered. The midget walked off on a beaten track into the forest behind him. Veera and Sunanda followed. A little ahead, they reached a clearing, in the middle of which stood a hill they hadn’t noticed before. The midget climbed the weather-beaten track up the hill deftly. The hump on his back oscillated from one side to the other as he climbed the steep slope like a goat. Sunanda and Veera walked behind him slowly, pausing to place their feet firmly at every step. About halfway to the top, they saw the ruins of a long-deserted temple which had blended into the forest, camouflaged beneath the smothering vegetation. A banyan tree whose seed must have sought refuge in a crack between the slabs of granite half a century ago had grown and now held the temple in a tight embrace. Plaster was falling from the walls and the chiselled blocks of smooth granite, once set close together, were now cruelly parted by the roots, which crawled on the surface like writhing snakes.

  In the moon’s milky light, the walls of the temple seemed to throw up shapeless forms, rather like monsters. Sunanda dug her fingernails into Veera’s biceps and huddled closer. They saw the midget standing outside what would once have been a magnificent doorway to the temple. The only way into the cavernous temple was through the passageway, and the moon cast long shadows into the depths of the cave.

  The midget stepped back as if forbidden to enter. Veera sniffed the air; the odour seemed to be a strange mixture of smells. It reminded him of a caged lion they once had in the palace, with its excreta and the rotting meat inside its cage. For the first time in his life, the flesh on his nape tingled and his skin was covered with goosebumps.

  As if propelled by destiny, the two stepped inside. They could sense a presence within but their eyes were yet to adjust to the shadows. In a corner, they could see a diminutive figure, seemingly crouched in fear. Veera’s first impression was that the person was a captive. The figure turned and he saw that it was a girl, maybe around fifteen, naked and with hair down to her knees. She smiled the sweet smile of a child. ‘Welcome, Prince,’ she cooed softly. Veera was shocked to hear her voice – she sounded like a seventy-year-old crone.

  Two thighbones and a small human skull lay on the ground in front of her. It had to be the skull of a firstborn male, Veera knew, because his mother had lived in perpetual fear of him, her firstborn with a royal pedigree, being killed for his skull, which would fetch a premium in the black magic market.

  Their eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the cave. The tantric was more visible now. The curves of her nubile body, although covered with her tresses, were of a young girl who has just crossed the threshold of maidenhood. Veera could not but let his eyes wander all over her body.

  ‘Lust not for me, mortal!’ she croaked and started what seemed a well-rehearsed and oft-repeated speech: ‘I can hear the sounds of silence, see the invisible and feel the touch of the non-existent. What do you want to know? If you know tomorrow in entirety, you will not like to live today. But I cannot help you forestall fate, I can only foresee it. It is you who will have to live it.’

  Veera and Sunanda hesitated. The witch then imitated Sunanda’s voice, asking, ‘Will we live together?’

  Veera turned to check if it was Sunanda who had spoken, but she, too, looked at the witch in bewildered silence. The witch had closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, they were gleaming. ‘Like last night?’ she smirked, as if she had seen them making love on the forest floor.

  Then she croaked in her own voice, ‘Yes, yes.’

  Sunanda’s face glowed with happiness. But the witch was not finished. Almost as an after-thought, she added, ‘But not in the way you think.’

  As if he had not heard her, Veera asked, ‘Who can defeat me?’

  With a few deep breaths that made her nostrils flare, she went into a trance and began frothing from her mouth. Then she whispered,
‘No man can. Neither can any woman.’ And again as an after-thought, ‘But you will be defeated.’

  Sunanda shivered, apprehensive about these revelations. She was now clinging to Veera, her feet rooted to the spot. The witch started screaming, ‘Go back, you fools, and prepare for the future. Don’t look for your enemies in the vicinity. They are but weaklings when compared to the one who comes for you.’

  The next few sentences were spoken at such a high pitch that they could not decipher her words. They left her as quickly as they could, while she screamed like a chained animal. When the couple came out, they found the midget sitting on a rock. Veera beckoned to the dwarf and gave him a few silver coins. The man took them with indifference. When they climbed down, Veera turned around. The midget was using the coins to stone a distant rock, each clang clearly audible in the moonlit night.

  The two were struck by what they had just witnessed, but the witch’s answers had set them thinking. They were quiet as they rode back to the city, wondering what she had meant. Yet, there was one question on their minds above all others, and Sunanda gave voice to it: ‘Will we get married?’

  Then, as if answering her own question, she said, ‘My aunt will not allow our marriage.’ She took care not to mention Sundar’s name in fear of angering Veera.

  ‘Don’t be a cynic,’ he chided, but in his heart, he knew it would indeed be difficult.

  *

  What Veera needed was an intermediary. If Vikrama had been around, things would have been different. Luckily for him, Meena had come over for the ceremony in which her child’s head would be tonsured at a Pandyan temple. Such rites were conducted only once a year at a temple. On her arrival the rites had just been completed at the Alagar temple and she preferred to stay in Madurai for the second tonsure ceremony at the Mariamman temple rather than return the next year. Her father’s palace had been cleaned and decorated, more so because she was now the queen of the Chera hill country. Her son was cherubic, with the ivory complexion of his father and his mother’s chiselled features. Her husband had insisted on naming his son Ravivarman Kulasekharan.

  Meena looked regal, every inch the queen that she was. She had put on weight, which added to her stature. She seemed very contented. When she asked about her father, Veera confessed he had not heard of Vikrama since his exile. As soon as he saw him, Ravivarman leapt into his uncle’s arms and Veera held on to him and examined his head.

  ‘He doesn’t have much hair on his head,’ he observed, ‘you will end up shaving his skin off if you tonsure him. And that’s cheating.’

  ‘I want to finish it and return home,’ Meena said, and added, ‘now that my brother doesn’t even have time to come and see me. I know what you’re up to – so tell me, who is she?’

  Veera smiled sheepishly at being caught red-handed. Then he said, ‘When we were kids, do you remember there was this Chola girl?’

  ‘Sunanda?’ she asked hesitantly. Sunanda had already visited her four or five times. Meena had been impressed by the changes in the girl, despite their childhood animosity. But now the reason for her visits struck her and things fell into place. Why would she come on the pretext of seeing her child multiple times when one visit would have sufficed?

  ‘We have come to loving toads now, have we?’ she teased Veera. ‘If I were you I would wish I had treated her better when we were kids.’

  Embarrassed, Veera mock-threatened her, ‘I’ll drop your baby,’ and acted as if he would drop the Chera prince he was holding.

  ‘We hill people bounce back,’ she countered, with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

  The boy squirmed as if he understood the conversation and held his uncle more tightly.

  ‘I want a favour from you, Meena,’ Veera got to the point. ‘I want to marry her and I have no one to speak for the alliance on my behalf. If your father would have been here he would have taken care of it. But he is not – which is why I want you to arrange it for me.’

  Meera readily agreed. ‘It’s time for my brother to grow up, then.’

  *

  The Chera queen was welcomed with pomp by Sunanda’s father. She was an ally of the Pandyans, whereas he was only a vassal. After the initial formalities were over, she broached the topic of Sunanda’s marriage to Veera. Meena outlined his qualities and his prospects for the future. Sunanda’s father, though, was only polite out of necessity, since he was speaking to a queen. The only indication he gave of his dissent was when he said custom decreed that the maternal uncle’s daughter be given in marriage to his nephew, Prince Sundar. ‘Otherwise, I would be breaking the tradition,’ he said. ‘However, I would like to have an insight into what the king has in mind before deciding. I will let Your Excellency know of my decision.’

  Meena decided she would wait for a week before talking to her uncle herself. But within that week, all hell broke loose.

  When her father confronted her with Veera’s proposal and her existing betrothal to Sundar, Sunanda was adamant she would not marry the younger prince. Her father explained to her that her marriage to the Pandyan prince was essential. ‘My daughter, all this land was once ours. Now we are begging from those who begged from us. The Chola empire must become stronger. There is no other way to do this, except by creating relationships and alliances with our rulers,’ her father cajoled her.

  ‘Your sister is the Pandyan queen. How has it helped your kingdom?’ retorted Sunanda.

  ‘Others like us have vanished, but we have remained – all because of your aunt. Please, for the sake of the dynasty and your brothers, marry Sundar.’

  Sunanda maintained a sullen silence. Finally, her father’s reserve of paternal patience wore off. In a raging temper, he screamed, ‘Why do you want to marry the bastard when you could be the queen of this empire?’

  ‘What makes you think Sundar is going to inherit this kingdom?’ she asked. ‘What if I marry Sundar and Veera is crowned the king?’ Her father obviously had not thought of this. He stood silent before his daughter, who had a triumphant look on her face despite the tears rolling down.

  *

  A few days later, Sunanda sent a message to Veera through Akshayan, asking him to meet her at the pond. She was there earlier than usual and had obviously been waiting for quite some time when he arrived. She did not speak much but he could sense the craving within. Her embrace was hungry and she seemed almost hesitant to release him. Her lovemaking was eager, and halfway through, he even heard her whimper as she held on to him. As they finished, she was racked by sobs.

  When their passion was sated, they sat next to each other facing the pond, trying to calm their disturbed minds. ‘My father does not agree to our marriage,’ she said quietly. Her lips did not seem to move, as if her mind rebelled against the words they spoke.

  ‘What do you say we should do, Sunanda?’ he queried.

  ‘I will have to give in to my father’s wishes, Veera.’

  His shoulders collapsed and the fight went out of him. They sat in silence. Their surroundings seemed to swirl and their world, like a structure lacking substance, collapsed within.

  Veera was first to break the silence. ‘You will marry Sundar then,’ he said, almost hating himself the instant they were uttered.

  She remembered her father’s words, when she had tried to reason with him. He had said darkly, ‘Well, the queen wants this rather badly and she will fix Veera.’

  ‘Fix’ could mean anything. She knew Veera had as fair a chance of being seated on the throne as Sundar. But anybody could arrange a simple accident. An arrow could fly off its intended trajectory, a drugged horse could throw off its rider.

  She hoped against hope that Veera would react violently, would revolt against her decision and enforce his rights. But she knew she was wrong. As soon as she told him what she had to do, defeat had made him go slack.

  ‘Go back, my prince,’ she whispered. ‘We will not wed in this life. In the interests of your future and mine we have to stay apart.’

  ‘Why?’
cried Veera. ‘We could run away. I know people who could cover our trail. There are a thousand places we could go to.’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head in firm disagreement. ‘Every part of me wants to see you on the throne of Madurai. I do not want history to record you as the prince who ran away.’

  Veera began thinking of the alternatives he had. What if Sunanda and he ran away to a place where valour was respected? A place where his past did not hold him back. If only he had told his father earlier, if only Vikrama was around. Ifs – life was full of them. No mortal could ever make amends for deeds of the past. Life was full of bridges that collapsed as soon as you crossed them.

  Sunanda shut her eyes, and as if in protest, a single tear squeezed out. She leaned forward and planted a kiss on his lips. Though the moment was too small to relish, the fragrance of her love lingered. She tore herself from him and ran into the darkness, out of his life.

  *

  As Veera walked back to the palace, he realized his father had become more insecure after Vikrama’s rebellion, and now wanted to make the most of his alliances. Then the truth struck him. This was not about the girl or a marital alliance – it was about the throne. If the plan had been to give Sunanda to Sundar, did that not mean that the throne would go to Sundar too? Sunanda was just a symbol for the throne of pearls. The actual prize was Madurai itself.

  A senseless stupor enveloped him and as these thoughts filled his mind, he knew he would have to create an armour of self-defence to keep his sanity. Akshayan walked behind him, silent as ever. Veera cursed him mentally, If only you had dissuaded me earlier. But then he remembered the murmurs and realized he hadn’t listened to him at all. Despite Akshayan’s counsel, Veera had ignored the fact that he was trespassing.

  Like a drunk walking in a haze of intoxication, Veera stumbled back home. His legs led him straight to his mother’s chambers. Where else could he go? How would he explain his loss? He wished he didn’t have to go to his mother, but who else could he turn to? Not to a father who had sided with his stepmother.