But nature was equally troublesome. Leeches were great pests. Scorpions and centipedes were abundant, as were the red ants, with their pinching bites. Snakes and other vermin, not used to intrusion, writhed amongst the people; people died frothing from their mouths from their poisonous bites without any medical succour.
At night, most of the refugees stretched themselves to sleep on the forest floor. The only light they had was from the moon peeping through the branches and the fireflies moving in gentle ripples of brightness. Despite the cicadas, which filled the forest with their constant racket, and the mosquitoes that pursued their bloodthirsty work, none of them complained.
It was explained to many that a return to Madurai would take some time, and they were encouraged to move further south where Pandyan territories extended. Some took up on the offer, while most stayed back.
Paramkunram’s royal granary was opened to bare its wares. To pacify their warring stomachs, they would have to sustain themselves on gruel. Otherwise they would have nothing to eat in a week. The richest in the realm, despite their gold and gems, queued up like the rest to eat the gruel. They could no longer live oblivious of their inferiors.
The second wave of refugees came on the third day. Veera heard first-person accounts of what was happening to their city and to the people left behind. Many had witnessed the massacre from afar, but no one had dared to help the victims. They all spoke of the cruelty of their oppressors, of the women enslaved and the men killed. Veera had never heard of such atrocities. The refugees spoke of the great plumes of smoke that now engulfed their city.
Despite the horrors, the momentary spate of fear Veera felt ebbed away as his reasoning returned. The Turk was a man too, not a superhuman, and he could not hold on to the city for long. The Pandyans needed a breathing space but could definitely recoup.
*
In the meantime, Sundar and his entourage had escaped Madurai and turned towards Paramkunram too. No other place was safe for anybody connected to the royal family. The brothers soon faced each other. It was a very distressing reunion for them. They had parted as enemy kings and now met as refugees.
Has he changed? Veera wondered. Will Parakrama shift his loyalties now that his father is here?
‘Greetings, Your Highness,’ Sundar said when he was brought in front of him. The words reeked of sarcasm, but Veera let it pass. He ordered his minister to find some place for the new entrants and invited Sundar to join the war council meetings reluctantly. The council had told him that Sundar’s information on the invader would be crucial.
*
The grey sky reflected the sombre mood of the refugees. People constantly looked to it with worry on their faces as the heavens frequently emptied themselves amid lightning. Nothing would protect them from the night’s inclement weather; there were no more palaces or sturdy roofs. Even nature seemed to be mocking them.
Veera was walking through the shallow puddles among his people. When they had tried to enter the fort to gain some respite from the rain the previous night, the gates had been closed to them. The populace now glared at him, thinking him a king with no consideration for his population. He stopped near a woman who had given birth to a child in the rains. The baby, who had the misfortune of being born in exile, was wrapped in rags and wailed in the cold. Veera wanted to weep. The mother held out the baby almost reproachfully. He removed the gold chain that adorned his neck and presented it to the child.
Despite the child’s pitiful state, it had given him a strange hope. He knew life would have to go on. No community wanted fetters on its feet. They would have to fight back. What they had taken for granted just a month ago now seemed like an illusion. The annihilation of the dynasty, the vandalism of their religion and the loot of their temples were but just the beginning of what they had to contend with. In case the Turks decided to move further south, matters would become worse. Despite the fact that the whole country south of Madurai was still under Pandyan domination, Veera did not know whom to trust. The supremacy of the Pandyan dynasty was shaken to its base by the events of a week.
The days of unquestionable loyalties were over. Citizens had begun to ask each other why their king had run away. The reasons for the retreat were stoutly contested and people found great fault with the royalty. Veera dreaded the moment they would cease to obey his orders.
Rumours had begun to circulate among the population and all his time now went in assuaging their fears. Veera needed the support of the people till he chased away the Turks. Unless something was done rapidly to stem the tide, there was but one inevitable end – the ruin and devastation of the Pandyan provinces.
Analytically speaking, Madurai was tough to defend. Unlike men who had taken advantage of hills on which to construct citadels, the Pandyans had built their city on the plains. They had no rivers which offered a barrier, the Vaigai but a shallow stream. In hindsight, it seemed remarkable that the Pandyans had survived so far.
The Turk was the architect of the downfall of nations. The invader was bringing in his train of death and disease and without doubt would contribute to the decline of the empire and cause poverty for decades to come. Their future was hidden in mists of primeval darkness, which was his making.
Veera’s entire world seemed to fall to its knees.
The days were filled with empty speeches and rhetoric against the Turks. Veera observed that time was passing by without any achievement, any change. What opposed the fulfilling of his wishes was his own inability to provide effective leadership. He was now genuinely scared.
When he had been young, he had been trained in the upkeep of elephants. The trick was that an elephant could only be trained as a calf and so the stick used to tame the unruly calf was retained well into its adulthood. The giant would still be terrified at the sight of the stick and would obey orders when confronted with it. That was precisely what was happening to Veera.
He realized they could not wait for Parakrama. True, he had the best of soldiers. What they needed was a leader with the charisma and the ability to plan so that they could take on the Turks. At best, he or Sundar could serve as kings during peace time, not during war. Who would listen to those who had themselves run away?
Veera looked at his tired feet where there had been a constant itch. Three strips of glistening black adhered to his skin like a part of his body and feasted on his blood. The soldiers scraped the skin, shaving the hair under the belly of the leeches. They held on tenaciously till the edge of the knife sliced through their suckers. Then they crumbled to the ground.
Thoughts ran through Veera’s mind about what Vikrama had suffered for so many years. The father’s sins often visited his progeny, he realized. In a flash he had an answer to his question. It was not up to him to check this wave of foreign invasion. Only one man could halt it and serve as a cohesive wall of resistance. It had to be the person who had predicted the doom and warned him. If Veera had shown some interest, perhaps Vikrama could also have shown him a way out. Instead, he had treated his words as the utterances of a senile mind.
Yet, they needed a leader. It was better to trust Vikrama’s guidance than waste away in exile. Veera told his guard, ‘Send a messenger to Pasumalai immediately.’
CHAPTER 29
MEENAKSHI'S ELEPHANTS
The old man sat in a typical yogic pose, wedged between the trunks of two stone elephants carved into the wall next to a sculpted column that rose to merge into the painted ceiling above. The aged resident could have passed off as an exquisite sculpture without as much as eliciting a glance from a passerby, so still was he. His chiselled face resembled the idols too, but for those haunting eyes. Atop his head was a misshapen lump of matted hair and the sunlight seemed to lend itself to him as a halo. A few strands of hair trailed in the air like a spider’s broken web.
He had no possessions except a walking stick across his lap, and, surprisingly, several bundles of sugarcane next to him. Malik wondered how he could eat them at his age. He appeared utterly u
nperturbed by the state of his country but seemed genuinely happy to see them, as if he was bored with his isolation and very pleased to have the benefit of Malik’s society.
Malik realized the irony: all of Madurai had fled before him and here was this old man waiting for him with a smile. He was entranced by the grey eyes, but Rayan could not bear their intensity and looked at the ground. Malik signalled to the old man to stand with a gesture of his hand. The man leaned forward, as if he had not heard the words. It was clear he did not suffer the fear of his fellowmen. Malik felt slighted; the mendicant seemed to be looking down on him in a regal way. His stance was haughty and Malik detected a flash of mockery in his eyes. He gritted his teeth and waited. The man needed some schooling.
The battle lines were clearly defined. One end of the old man’s walking stick, which he now held in his hand, was near Malik. Malik was tempted to teach this man a lesson and with a jerk he caught hold of the stick and tried to pull the man down.
The grip did not loosen, though Malik struggled. With a quirky little motion which caused Malik to lose his balance, the man retained his hold. Finally, the walking stick slipped from Malik’s sweaty hand. The man pulled back his stick, waved it two times to warn Malik and placed it beside him carefully, this time out of Malik’s reach. He was not just a man of religion, Malik realized. His strength for his age was decidedly out of place.
The man’s mirth caused his eyes to glint with mischief as he basked in his triumph. Malik was angry as well as amused. He had won battles far too easily to tolerate any resistance. But he badly needed a guide inside the temple and it seemed that the hermit would know the place inside out. He had a feeling this old man would know about the location of the wealth within the complex.
Malik finally addressed the old man, ‘What are you doing here alone?’
Rayan dutifully translated into Tamil. Cocking his head, the man spoke in a chillingly low voice; Rayan had to bend forward to hear him. ‘If I leave, who will take care of them?’ He pointed at the stone elephants. When the answer was conveyed to Malik, he laughed. The old man’s voice sounded familiar, though he couldn’t place it. Where have I met him? Malik wondered.
‘You should look into your own past,’ the old man now addressed him directly. Rayan translated it without understanding its significance.
Malik looked steadily into the face of his tormentor and said, ‘Why are you here alone? Is it because you are old? Beg for my forgiveness and I will escort you to your king.’
The old man mockingly frowned and fluttered his eyelids. ‘Tell me first, why did you come here?’ he asked. Malik had no secrets to guard. Though he was not bound to answer, he simply replied, ‘Wealth and elephants.’
The man now pointed at the twenty stone elephants carved on the walls, all life-size sculptures. ‘I have twenty of them, would you like to take them too?’ the old man asked with feigned anxiety. Malik decided to play along. ‘I may, but what do you feed them?’ he mocked. But he felt he was being led down a path he did not want to travel on.
‘What else but this sugarcane?’ the old man pointed to the bundle at his side, now irritated that Malik could not see the obvious.
‘Feed them the sugarcane. If they eat it, I shall leave them alone,’ Malik humoured him.
‘Why don’t you feed them yourself?’ The man picked up four or five sugarcanes with their sheath of wavy leaves intact. Malik couldn’t resist going along with this childish ruse. He wanted to prove that this man was mad once and for all. ‘What if they don’t eat it?’
‘Then we shall face the consequences.’
Malik slowly lifted a cane and held out his hand in front of a sculpture. Suddenly, the stone elephant’s trunk swished and snatched the sugarcane from his hands. It placed the cane in its mouth, a mass of pink flesh amidst rock. Its teeth clamped down on the plant, and its mouth began chewing it in a nonchalant manner.
*
Malik was stunned. Had it been a trick of light or had the man hypnotized him? But a great degree of skill was needed to practise such magic convincingly. Malik stood transfixed, reduced to a quivering reflection of his own fears. Had he been the only one to see it? With a shudder of panic, Rayan averted his eyes. So he had seen it too.
The other elephants began swishing their hungry trunks now, demanding their share of the sugarcane, their trumpets echoing from the walls of the deserted temple. Malik was stupefied. As he tried to pry his eyes away from the pachyderms waving their hungry trunks, a serious battle raged within him as rationality made a desperate attempt to understand what was happening.
The old man’s voice now took on a scolding tone and he waggled a finger at the beasts. ‘Don’t be greedy,’ he chastised them. The elephants quietened down and turned to stone again. A twinkle lit the old man’s eyes. ‘It is tougher to feed elephants than unload horses, isn’t it?’ he asked.
Malik felt as if he had woken up from a dream beyond belief. The stranger was recalling an incident that he himself had buried under memories of achievements. The old man suddenly fell silent and gazed into the granite walls. As the minutes passed, the magic wore out, and so did Malik’s patience. He didn’t care for any more illusions; he wanted to see the wealth.
‘Where is the gold?’ Malik thundered. An amused expression came over the old man’s features. ‘Now that the elephants are stone, you want the gold, eh?’ He laughed. ‘Come, I will take you to it.’ He caught Malik’s wrist to get down from the platform and walked towards the eastern rooms. Malik and Rayan followed him as if he had tied them to an invisible rope. At one point down the corridor, he stopped and turned. With his eyes locked in Malik’s, he said, ‘Over there.’ His bony finger pointed at a door on the eastern side of the temple. ‘Over there,’ he repeated, ‘is the greatest treasure in this world. They left me behind to take care of it, but you may take it if you wish.’
Malik pushed the door; it opened noiselessly on well-oiled hinges. On a central pedestal was a small statue of a goddess, that of Meenakshi. Rayan recognized the idol as the one that was taken around Madurai in chariots during festivals. ‘It is not gold,’ he whispered. Instead, it was a panchaloka idol – an amalgam of five inseparable metals, and hence not as valuable as gold.
Malik’s eyes did not move from the statue. A warmth invaded his mind and his desire to possess it surged. He would be a fool to risk losing it. He had forgotten what it was to desire. All his conquests had been about his acceptance. But he wanted the statue; his craving for it burned like a fire ready to consume all that lay ahead of it.
‘I think I shall take this,’ he said. The old man’s eyes misted over and he quietly watched Malik lift the statue with ease. Malik almost expected the idol to scorch his hands in castigation, but it was pleasantly cold.
‘The rest of the treasure is in those rooms,’ the old man pointed to a few padlocked rooms on his right. ‘You came for the gold, take it. But do not harm this place! Even stones have life here.’
Malik nodded like a child. The old man had scorched his pride. He could take the gold but this was one conquest he would never complete.
‘I will see you later,’ the hermit said prophetically and hobbled away. Rayan and Malik saw a blurred impression of the man as he turned around a pillar and disappeared. They stared after him, unbelieving and helpless. The man had left a message that even Malik with all his intuition could not decipher. As for Rayan, he stood dumbstruck like one of the statues.
They waited a few minutes and then a new apprehension engulfed them. Without the old man, their earlier fears resurfaced. Malik now dragged the hesitant Rayan towards the treasure room, the statue of the goddess firmly held in his arms. When he threw the door open, he was stunned to see the room – for it contained more wealth than civilization had ever seen.
The room was large, but there was little space to walk ahead without stamping on something worth a king’s ransom. Gold was stored in sacks and precious gems in steel buckets and woven baskets. Crowns and ornaments of id
ols were stacked on racks that stood from floor to roof. It was the greatest wealth Malik had seen in his entire life, and he was sure no one before him had seen any like it.
Rayan was not spellbound by the bullion. He begged Malik to leave the place. ‘Please, Your Excellency, let us go,’ he wept. Malik was perturbed, but he didn’t let it show. There were too many questions in his mind. He suddenly felt ill, constricted; he needed some fresh air. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Malik offered, leading a thankful Rayan by the hand to the exterior.
When they neared the guardian statues, Malik shivered involuntarily and fought the urge to panic. They seemed more menacing than they had before. Malik assembled his courage and tried to exorcise his fear, but his eyes still turned to the rear with dread. As they neared the exit they felt a rush of cold air from outside the temple and Malik was greatly comforted to come out in one piece. Thunder and lightning greeted them.
Damn these temples, Malik thought, they’re driving me mad. Then, after a pause, Did I dream the whole thing? But Rayan’s shivering and the statue nestled under his arm were there to prove he hadn’t.
CHAPTER 30
BORN FROM THE ASHES
A charismatic man like Vikrama could not live for a decade without exciting popular notice. He was found almost immediately by Veera’s messengers among the tribals of the forest. Reluctant to answer the sovereign’s call, Vikrama had asked, ‘What does the king of Madurai want of me?’
‘The emperor is in Paramkunram and so is Prince Sundar, Your Highness,’ came the reply. Vikrama knew instantly something was wrong for these lifelong enemies to come together.
Hearing in detail about his people’s exile from the messengers, Vikrama was distraught. A rueful smile played over his parched lips. To think I had trained them well. But this was bound to happen. Empires fall to the rot that sets in from within. Otherwise the Cholas would never have given way and the Pallavas before them.
Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai Page 40
