‘So, you saw your beloved son?’ Sundar began. Kulasekharan sighed, thinking, No, this is not going to be a meeting I will like. Sundar’s words, slurred by the wine in his veins, flowed in distasteful speed. He continued to needle the emperor, taunting him about wasting time on a visit to Veera – finally, Kulasekharan could not contain himself and shouted, ‘If there is anybody who can save the kingdom, it is Veera. You would pledge the dominion to pay for your wine and women. It is better you serve under him. You might even learn something about statecraft.’
Sundar raved about what he could do, and threatened to overthrow Kulasekharan. ‘You two have been conspiring to deprive me of my right. You and your whore’s son.’
‘I will assume that you have spoken no word in the last minute,’ Kulasekharan said calmly. ‘However, I cannot vouch for my bodyguards. I could revoke your post, you know. You will be on the streets, face-down in a gutter in a drunken stupor.’
His words stopped Sundar from going any further. Even in his drunken haze, he knew it was a threat. His world seemed to wobble precariously. How long could he presume the emperor wasn’t serious enough to carry out his threats? He lurched towards the exit, saying, ‘You old bastard, you can’t do this to me.’ The menace in Sundar’s voice was perceptible. Then he rushed out of the tent in a fury. ‘I will return,’ he warned.
The emperor sighed. Perhaps he would return, after another swig of wine. It was going to be a long night.
While Sundar entered his tent in a surly and gloomy mood, his friends could not have been in a more different frame of mind. Loaded with liquor, they were ready for a feast. Amid their noisy uproar, Sundar sat alone, his mind racing. He thought of the temptation that had haunted him for long but his fears and hesitation had always prevented him. If the emperor was left to his wishes, he would crown Veera and retire to make way for him. That would give stability to the transition – but what would happen to him?
When Sundar finally decided what he had to do, the moon had already reached its peak in the skies. He and four of his comrades went out into the dark night and approached the emperor’s tent armed with short daggers. Liquor had dulled their fears and loyalty. With the outer periphery of the camp well-protected, the two nominal guards at the entrance were not very alert. Sundar and his comrades quickly stabbed them in their backs, pressing their palms against their mouths to shut out any last screams.
Kulasekharan lay on his satin bed. In his drunken state, one of Sundar’s men knocked down a spittoon, into which the emperor spit chewed betel leaves, which rolled off with a loud clang and woke him immediately. His hands instinctively went to his sword, forgetting that he had stopped carrying one for the last twenty years. In the darkness of the tent, he could see five figures approaching him.
Kulasekharan could still not comprehend what was happening. Then he recognized Sundar, and his fury at being woken up turned to fear. His hands trembled and terror spread on his normally impassive face. Sundar was quiet, and the emperor whispered hoarsely, ‘What do you want? How dare you come in?’
Someone behind him moved swiftly and pushed the upright Kulasekharan onto his bed. He pushed a pillow on the old man’s face, pressing it as Kulasekharan struggled underneath the stuffed cotton. Four pairs of hands now held him firmly as their hapless victim struggled to free himself. Kulasekharan was a strong man and despite his age, kicked hard. He managed to kick off two assailants before two others took their place and held him down.
Then the resistance collapsed. Even an emperor needed to breathe. Kulasekharan stopped struggling, the hum of a thousand bees in his ears ringing hard before he fell into a deep faint. Sundar and his men let him fall and his head drooped to one side.
A rivulet of blood coursed down from the corner of his mouth.
*
Back in Cannanore, an unbelieving Veera heard the messenger say, ‘Prince Sundar and a group of soldiers are joining the emperor’s camp–’
‘Where did he come from?’ He interrupted the messenger prematurely. Veera was astonished, for Sundar, who usually kept his distance from the emperor even when he was in the same city, was now visiting him in the wilderness. It dawned on him that Sundar was going to do something stupid. His stomach began to churn. He’d better start out and see what was happening.
‘Where are they camped just now?’ He asked the messenger. ‘How long will it take us to get there?’
‘One night of fast riding would take you there, Your Highness.’
‘Prepare a hundred horsemen,’ he ordered the messenger before rushing to the harem to inform Radhika.
A hundred horsemen could not be readied in the middle of the night without a discernible amount of excitement and noise and soon the townsfolk of Cannanore knew something was amiss. By the time Veera left Cannanore, the fog had obscured the road ahead. They rode hard and Veera’s heart beat clamorously. As they rode down to the camp, Veera caught a movement on the road leading to Madurai. About twenty horsemen were leaving from the other side of the camp. The cloud of dust their horses had stirred on the dry pathways had given them away, showing that they were heading towards Madurai.
‘Do we intercept them?’ asked his assistant, ‘we have a hundred men!’
‘No, there is no time,’ replied Veera.
The horsemen moved into the shadows and soon disappeared. The camp was still deep in slumber and a deafening silence seemed to engulf it. Perhaps I was mistaken, thought Veera as he jumped off his horse and rushed to his father’s tent. Suddenly, his calm was shattered. He faltered at the entrance, engulfed by a flood of paranoia. There were no guards. The only light came from a lamp that flickered when the flap of the tent blew in the wind. But it was too late.
Looking down for only a brief moment, his eyes focused on his father, who looked like he could have been sleeping. His arms lay outstretched, his hands limp. Then Veera noticed Kulasekharan’s eyes were open and his heart almost stopped. Veera was pushed back as if an invisible hand had shoved him. Only by leaning awkwardly on a pole could he balance himself. He touched Kulasekharan, whose body was still warm. Perhaps they were all mistaken – Kulasekharan could not die. The figure that had loomed over all of them and dominated an empire for half a century could not just die. His father had seemed indestructible, eternally undying. Now a pillow had snuffed out his life. Kulasekharan was denied what he and his ancestors cherished – death by a sword.
‘Call the physician,’ Veera ordered. By this time, the camp had fully awakened. Some had heard the argument between the emperor and Sundar. Others had been awakened by the troops leaving. The physician entered almost immediately as if he had been ready for the summons.
Veera turned away from the gaze of his dead father, the eye’s deathly glaze telling him the consternation his father had suffered in the face of death: anger, exasperation, fury, but not terror. So, my father, one of the greatest rulers of his time, had not been afraid of death, he thought, as the physician closed Kulasekharan’s eyes. They seemed to resist at first, their natural elasticity lost as death claimed them.
Then the silence was torn apart by a wail. As soon as the queen entered the tent, she flung herself on her husband’s corpse. With a strong effort Veera overcame his distress and asked in a calm voice, ‘Who was with him last?’
The queen said, ‘Sundar was here…’ and then bit her lip as she realized what she had just uttered. The words had slipped from her mouth.
Veera persisted, ‘Did they quarrel?’
The queen nodded her assent between the tears that flowed down her cheeks.
Veera rapidly proceeded to interrogate the others. He turned to the doctor and probed, ‘How did he die?’ He could guess the answer, but he wanted to be sure it was the only truth.
Everybody wanted it to be a natural death but the doctor said, ‘He was suffocated, the symptoms are all there.’
At that moment, a soldier from Veera’s company entered the tent. ‘Sir, one horseman from the troop fell from his horse when it b
roke its leg. We have captured him!’
Veera ordered the soldier to bring the captive to him. The pathetic soldier who had already been beaten up for answers did not hold back anything when Veera asked for the truth. The horsemen they had seen had been Sundar and his comrades on their way to Madurai after committing the crime.
He turned to the queen. He wanted to confront her because all his life he had thought of her as an enemy agent. Was she also responsible for the death of his father? But when he saw the distress on her face, Veera found himself saying gently, ‘Mother, I will send you with an escort back to Madurai.’
The queen looked up at him gratefully. ‘I may not want to go, Your Highness. I don’t know if you will believe me, I was certainly no accomplice in this heinous act. I know of no other way to prove it except by ascending the funeral pyre with my husband.’
‘We may decide on that later, Mother,’ Veera tersely replied and walked out.
*
His father’s body lay in state. Veera sat on the floor as crowds came up to him to offer their condolences. Among them was a person he recognized. Through the corner of his eye he noticed it was the aging spymaster Veerasekharan. He had accompanied the emperor on his trip to Cannanore and had excused himself from returning with the royal entourage. Now, when he had been informed of the calamity, he stood before Veera with tears in his eyes.
Veerasekharan bowed and whispered in Veera’s ears, ‘Sundar has rushed to Madurai. He will crown himself in the Meenakshi temple this week.’
Veera felt dizzy. A fog enveloped his brain and his surroundings seemed to ebb away. The startled espionage chief had to bear his weight momentarily as the prince clung to him for support. Clenching his sweaty fists, Veera steadied himself. It was imperative that he rush to Madurai now. Everything else seemed unimportant to him. The lessons of the civil war were not lost upon him and he knew he had to act fast, for the man who held Madurai ruled the empire. Such was the sway the city held on the psyche of the people. He may still get to Madurai in time to stop Sundar from crowning himself.
Veera thought he should force an encounter. He was the only one who could jeopardize Sundar’s mission. Mustering all the strength he could, he whispered, ‘We must stop him.’
Veerasekharan frowned. ‘But, sire, you have to finish the ceremonies for your late father.’
‘That will take sixteen days,’ Veera objected. His father was hindering him even after his death. By that time, Sundar would be the legitimate ruler of Madurai and would have dipped his dirty hands into the treasury. He felt like a rodent trapped in a hole with baying hounds out to get him.
Seeing the anger seething on the prince’s face, the espionage chief remarked, ‘Your father on his deathbed has given you the recognition he had denied you all his life.’ Veera now realized what Sundar did not. The son who lit the funeral pyre was the most important son in the eyes of the public. He realized the folly of his earlier impulse to rush to Madurai. He gave a half-smile, acknowledging Veerasekharan for showing him the right way. ‘What’s first on the agenda?’ he asked submissively.
‘Let’s concentrate on the emperor’s last rites. Don’t you think he deserves it, that it is the least you could do for him?’
Performing the last rites perhaps was one of the last rights Veera would have as his father’s son. This debt must be paid off, and he would pay it himself. His father, by not marrying Tara, had placed a ceiling on his ambitions. By dying, Kulasekharan had broken all the shackles and this soothed Veera’s ruffled mind. He finally broke the silence for all to hear, ‘I will finish my duties here first. My father was one of the longest serving monarchs in the world. He needs rest after the labour of his life in which he had ushered in permanent peace in the Pandyan empire. His final rites will be performed with utmost care and duty.’
Silently, he swore, After this, I will get the rascal, even if he hides on the edge of the earth.
Veera’s mind was racing. He could still crown himself king. But if he crowned himself before he got to his beloved Madurai, he would end up as a pretender to the throne. With him away, there would be no objections to Sundar’s coronation unless the populace of Madurai rose in revolt, but that was a far-fetched scenario.
The dead monarch would normally have been transported to the capital, embalmed with an oil of herbs and honey to prevent putrefaction, but Veera thought his father would have preferred to be cremated on the banks of the Cauvery itself. After having ruled Madurai with an iron hand, he would not have liked to return as a victim of patricide.
The body had been given a bath and dressed in fresh clothes. Fragrant sandalwood paste was applied to the corpse, which was then decorated with flowers and garlands. The body was placed on a bed made of coconut leaves supported by bamboo rods and carried away to the cremation ghat. The women were not allowed to accompany the body. The local population had gathered with a strange fear writ on their faces. Rumours were rife in the town; the absence of one prince, who had hurried to the capital just moments before his father had been found dead, only added fuel to the fire and now the possibility of a civil war loomed large.
The pyre had been placed on a riverside meadow. The logs had been arranged much ahead of the corpse’s arrival, like a bed being readied. Soon the king was buried under sandalwood logs, with only his face exposed. Veera waited with bated breath as in the next minutes, his father’s face was about to be covered by a cowdung cake.
‘Those who want to see him may do so now,’ the priest announced. Everybody was weeping, but tears would not come to Veera’s eyes. He suddenly remembered a joke that Akshayan had told him about a funeral in his village: The man on the pyre was the richest man in town and everybody wept copiously. One person wept louder than the others so Akshayan had asked him, ‘Were you closely related to him?’ The man had replied honestly, ‘No, that is the whole problem.’
Veera murmured, Akshayan, you were wrong. I am closely related to the emperor yet I don’t have tears to weep or treasures to reap.
A barber shaved Veera’s head and moustache on the banks of the river, but even as he smelt the rust of the knife shaving his hair off, he was thinking of strategies to win Madurai back. He was then made to carry an earthen pot of water and circumambulate the pyre thrice. A man used a curved knife to puncture one hole after every round. The wails continued to flow, but Veera still did not cry. Somehow, he knew his father would have liked him to put up a brave face.
A funerary hymn from the Rig Veda was chanted:
May the sun take your eyes,
The wind your breath
The sky and earth could take
The rest of what was you
Tread those age-old paths,
Bond with our ancestors
In the highest of heavens.
Leaving all blemishes behind, return home
To merge with your marvellous lord...
Veera was given a yard-long stick dipped in butter. It was alight. He placed it on the camphor at his father’s feet and slowly walked away. He turned one last time to find the fire gnawing into the body of the man who had been one of the greatest monarchs in history. When the pyre was fully lit, the last hymn was addressed to the funeral fire, Agni:
O Fire, do not burn him completely
Just take him to the fathers…
And as the fire raged, the final hymn to Mother Earth was uttered:
Open up, Mother Earth, swathe him
As a mother wraps her son
In the verge of her robes...
Spontaneous wailing erupted as the flames leapt into the air. In the pre-dusk light, the pyre lit the night and heat waves danced over the fire. An hour or two later, the flames would be contained by glowing embers and the smoke would cease.
But right now, the land behind the pyre seemed to ripple with the flames. It seemed ominous, as if Kulasekharan was trying to tell Veera of the events to follow. It was a sign that life would never be the same again.
*
Vee
ra waited impatiently for the days he was obliged to spend in mourning to end. A week had gone by – each day heightening Veera’s sense of doom. His days could roughly be divided into three: the puja before the sacrificial fire in the morning, an evening discussion with his generals on military matters, and a late night discussion with Radhika.
Veerasekharan mentioned that an alternative could be an uncomfortable reunion with Sundar and a possible split of the kingdom. There were many aging courtiers who favoured this approach and would negotiate the deal. But Veera had made up his mind and his hands itched for the sword. He was no longer the bastard son; he was heir to the largest empire in the subcontinent and no one could trifle with him any longer. Sundar had got his woman and his son. He would not let him take the throne. Madurai was just not big enough for both of them.
The military discussions made Veera sigh in relief; it was fortuitous that he had not immediately picked up a sword and rushed at the gates of Madurai. The more he discussed the crucial state of affairs with Veerasekharan and his advisors, the more he realized the disadvantage he was at.
The land that was traditionally loyal to him lay beyond Madurai. He would have to send emissaries to solicit support and coordinate with allies who lay beyond his enemy.
Sundar also had an unfair advantage over him, for Madurai still held the wealth that could make or break an invasion. The treasury was in a subterranean building with dark passages leading to secret dungeons. It was shown to Veera only after he became the crown prince. This labyrinth of galleries was perpetually damp with water oozing from the walls and the floor, and at the end of the maze was a large chamber. Until the lamps were lit, Veera had assumed that there was a shadowy pile of rocks inside it, but once the lamps had been lit, the rubble glowed and then glittered. It was gold, pure gold – molten bars that had been hidden here for over two centuries.
Veera’s heart ached and he spent long, sleepless nights, knowing that over the edge of the horizon lay darker clouds of war. But even dark clouds had their silver lining. The first good news was that the chief priest had refused Sundar entry into the Meenakshi temple on the ground that a son could not enter the temple premises for sixteen days after the demise of his father.
Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai Page 29
