Asura- Tale of the Vanquished

by Anand Neelakantan

  My brothers and I never had an education to speak of. No Brahmin was ready to take us for free even if we worked for them. We were wild, black and naughty. We had learned that we were half-castes. Our father was a famous Maharishi, but had little use for us. He was immersed in his own world of learning to care about his progeny. He was a Brahmin. My mother was of an unknown Asura caste. He kept the relationship an open secret. He knew enough of the Sanskrit Vedas, which the Brahmins claimed contained all the learning of the world.

  Father wasn’t a bad man, really. He was like any other member of his caste; gloriously self-centered. He considered that we were suitably rewarded with his mere presence in our home. And conveniently forgot that humans need food to live, too. Oh sure, he named us after demons as we never showed any interest in his teachings. Many a time, we mocked him and ever so often, I boldly questioned his faith when he and his friends chanted the Vedas. In our mud veranda, Kumbakarna, Soorpanakha and I mimicked them. Only my youngest sibling, Vibhishana, watched with awe. His eyes used to be fixed on the Brahmins as he listened to their jabbering with rapt attention.

  This was after my father gave away all his money to my stepbrother, Kubera. We were left with nothing. Growing up was difficult, a continuous numbing ache, the kind which throbs and slowly spreads its black fingers over one’s soul. Yet, we never strayed from the path of righteousness. Our sense of justice differed from what the learned and privileged considered right. We decided our righteousness and we defined our rights in our own way. We learned that the truth could be bent to suit one’s needs. Our dharma was based on simple things: a man should be true to his word; he should speak from his heart and shouldn’t do anything he considered wrong. One should not cheat even if one was sure to fail. One should honour women and not insult anyone. If there was injustice, we had to fight it at all costs. We never knew any of the great teachings of the ancient Asura or Deva saints. We followed no tradition. We were almost bastards.

  The next day, we would be leaving this island. I had heard that there are great nations to the north. I would travel across the length and breadth of India. I wanted to climb the snow clad mountains of the Himalayas, swim against the dangerous currents of the Ganga raging in her full monsoon fury. I dreamed of passing through the thick forests of the Vindhya and Sahyas and seeing the monkey men and the kingdom of the Yakshas and Kinnaras. I dreamed of being in the music-filled world of the Gandharvas. Oh, what a world to conquer! What a life to enjoy! One day Ravana would rule the world. From the mighty Himalayas to Lanka, nay, from Lanka to the Himalayas; I would rule the world; with justice, peace and prosperity for all.

  Looming in the shadows of my myriad dreams, there lingered a small doubt. Were these wonderful dreams just hunger-induced hallucinations? I might die today, caressed by the black waves and dragged by the roaring currents. My life might just flicker for a while and end in dark silence. Then who would ever now the passions and ambitions I held close to my heart? Who would know what glories I had planned for my people? My life would be just like the foam on the frothing black waters down below, soaring, ever-expanding, there now but then gone into the unknown.

  My mother’s tears burned a hole in my soul. She wanted us to go out and conquer the world, yet she wanted us nearby as well. Perhaps, she saw the fire raging in my eyes and decided not to uldided nostop us. When I looked back, I saw my mother, a hunched-back figure in tattered clothes, hugging my ugly sister. She was the most beautiful baby for us, but when I saw her with the sense of fairness my mother had instilled in us, I had to reluctantly agree with my father’s belief that my sister was the ugliest creature he had ever seen. I hated him for that statement. I hated him even more for the fact that it was true.

  The gatekeeper of my half brother’s palace was sitting on the beach with his friends. They roared with laughter at the sight of us three teenagers struggling with the catamaran and raised a toast to our death. They even insulted my mother with indecent songs. I wanted to wring their necks! But I had promised my mother that I would not use violence until I got wise to the ways of the world and the sense to use my power with fairness and justice. I fixed my teary eyes on the distant shoreline – there lay my hope of success in this cruel world, my world and my guru.

  My brothers and I travelled through the thick, evergreen Sahya forest. We saw glorious palaces and ports; ivory and sandalwood and peacocks and monkeys. We saw ships with kaleidoscopic-coloured sails sailing to distant lands, laden with gold and diamonds, pepper and spices. We saw temples where the Gods resided and demanded a portion of the earnings which men strived hard to earn. And we also saw the representatives of those gods who plundered in God’s name. The cities were bright with lights as brilliant as the sun and the women, beautiful like those in paradise. I saw with mixed emotions of pride, jealousy and anger, the ships on which my half-brother’s flags fluttered.

  Whichever city we went to, Kubera’s enterprises had an office. He ran a tightly controlled business empire from his palace in the island. Equestrian messengers carried important letters to his business partners and trade guilds. He owned more than a 130 ships, which sailed to Greece, Egypt and China. I was sure any junior manager of his numerous units would have welcomed us to their gold-brocaded offices, had we identified ourselves as Kubera’s siblings. But that was the last thing I wanted to do.

  I could have easily led a comfortable life as a clerk in any one of my half-brothers offices. It would have ensured that my family got at least one meal a day. But how could I forget the bored look in my step-brother’s eyes when he dismissed us from his palace with a few gold coins? I would rather die of hunger than demean myself for a lowly job in his business empire. It might have been false pride. Many worldly-wise people have said so, to get along in the world you had to be practical and satisfied with what your measly life offers. But I was a dreamer. And I did not want to just get along in this world. I wanted to own it. Why were our people so meek and humble? That was something I always wondered about. Why were only a few able to control the power and wealth while the rest obliged them, and even laid down their lives to help this small selfish gang oppress them and their children? Was it fear? I don’t know. But wherever I looked, I only saw oppression. Money, caste, rituals, traditions, beliefs and superstitions all conspired together to crush the humble majority. Why couldn’t there be a more just way of living?

  The moment I started asking why, I was branded a hothead. The Brahmin friends of my father once tried to banish me from the village saying I was possessed by evil spirits and that I was a Rakshasa, a demon. Perhaps I was too young and brash and my view of the world was yet to get tempered with experience. Except for my youngest brother Vibhishana, who was always quiet, I could see the same restlessness in the rest of us. I believed Vibhishana was a bit of a nitwit. But he idewit. Buwas the darling of our village while we were growing up. He followed whatever was laid down in the books and never asked any questions. There were many times when I felt that Vibhishana was most suited for this society and that he was going to make it big in life. And I liked him. He was so small and vulnerable and I always felt he needed to be protected from this cruel world.

  I desperately needed some confidence. I wasn’t intelligent in the conventional sense either. I could not recite the Vedas backwards the way Vibhishana enjoyed doing. In any case, I thought the Vedas were a load of humbug and it didn’t matter which way you recited them. Some jobless Brahmin like my father, created them thousands of years ago. Instead of making themselves useful, the Brahmins prayed to the Gods they themselves invented for the rain, the sun, horses, cows and money and many other things. It must have been very cold, from whichever cursed places they came. Otherwise, why would they croak like frogs and appeal to the Gods after putting hundreds of assorted twigs into the fire?

  Perhaps I was prejudiced. I shouldn’t think that the work they were doing, as Yajnas, was useless. In fact, it served as a perfect tool to mint money and gain material favours. They were no fools-these
Brahmins. They knew how to project even the mundane tasks of burning twigs as earth-shaking, scientific discoveries and claimed to tame the forces that controlled the world. And it was funny that the majority of people like the carpenters, masons and farmers who were doing something meaningful, had become supplicant to these jokers croaking under the warm sun, sweat pouring from their faces in front of a raging fire and chanting God knows what.

  They had a Yajna or a Puja for everything under the sun. If you had leprosy or a common cold, there was a God to whom you had to offer a special puja to appease him. You wanted your pestering wife to elope with your bothersome neighbour, there was a puja for that too. You wanted your cow to have a calf or your wife to have son, the Brahmin would help you. He would just conduct a Puja and a divine calf or son would be born. You curried favour with the Brahmins and your son would become the biggest pundit in the world by the age of sixteen. If not, he would perhaps become rowdy like me, who did not respect Brahmins or rituals. He would become a Rakshasa. I think there are many more Rakshasas among us now. Perhaps, it was because the ‘why?’ virus spread. Couldn’t the Brahmins conduct a puja so that our heads were cleared of sinful thoughts? This is something I have to ponder over when I have time.

  Wherever I travel I find imposters claiming to have direct access to god and fleecing people. It is strange how kings of antiquity suddenly became Gods. How they metamorphosed into specialty Gods is even more amusing. I am no atheist. I strongly believe in God and am always willing to pray for my material and spiritual progress. But for me, God is a very personal thing and prayer

  needs to be spoken silently in my heart.

  3 Captives

  Ravana

  The Asuras were a casteless society and had a highly democratic set up where an elected council, instead of a king, held actual power. They were also a roaming tribe, hunting and raiding for their existence, but somewhere, perhaps 2000 years ago, they settled down in cities and towns along the river b wifanks. It has been said that the Asura kingdoms had roads paved in gold. But what an empire they built! It sprawled from the Indus in the west to the Brahmaputra in the east, and from the Himalayas in the north to the Narmada in the south. It could easily have been the biggest empire on earth at that time. When the kings of Egypt were busy building great tombs to bury themselves, the democratic council of the Asura kingdom was busy laying roads, building hospitals, drainage systems and everything they thought was useful for the people.

  My mother claimed that she belonged to a prominent Asura tribe, the Hethis. Few believed her. However, it made me proud to think that I did indeed, belong to an elite Asura tribe. Though Asuras were never overtly religious, we had our own gods. Prominent among them was Shiva or Parameswara. We learned that Shiva was a great Asura king of antiquity, when the Asuras were a wandering tribe. I love to think that he is The God. He was my personal favourite.

  It might have been about a 1000 years ago, when the horse-mounted, savage tribes of central Jambu Dweepa plundered the Asura cities in the great plains. A council of ten kings led the mighty Asura, and they met the horse riding savages. The mighty Asura army met the horse-riding savage tribes near the river Jhelum. The leader of the plunderers was named Indra, who through his atrocities had earned the title, Purendara or ‘Slayer of Cities’. Thousands were slain; women irrespective of age, were gang-raped, children burnt alive and granaries plundered. Magnificent cities crumbled. A civilization was destroyed and the clock of progress was set back by centuries. The Asuras lost everything and they fled to the south. The Nagas withdrew to the eastern hills and the Kinnara and Yaksha kingdoms were wiped out. The Gandharvas became a wandering tribe and soon got long lost in the bylanes of history and mythology.

  The Asura civilization was at its peak during the invasion, but they had lost their fighting power. Culture, music, art, architecture had conspired to blunt the fighting prowess of the asura armies, which in fact, was nothing but a charade. There was no efficient leadership, no professional command and no strategy or plan for national defence. It was no wonder that the mighty Asura army was routed by a handful of aggressors under Indra’s dynamic leadership. Of course, the supremacy of the Asura race could have been highly exaggerated. A defeated race often uses its cultural supremacy to cover the shame of defeat. The victorious party was always portrayed as barbarians who defeated and destroyed a highly-cultured and well-developed civilization through deceit and sorcery.

  But the Asuras fought back. They staged a battle from the south to reclaim their lost land. They won occasional victories and even held sway over all of India at times. However, it was the intellectual war that they were losing. Tribes which came from the north-west, had begun losing their moorings and a synthesis with the Asuras had begun. They stole the great Asura God, Shiva. Brahma, the teacher, also became their god. However, the most prominent God who suddenly appeared was Vishnu. The Brahmins, who were the official priests of the Devas, began formulating complicated rituals. They found that the main strength of the Asura cities was its cosmopolitan culture. The Asuras were a free people. Their fertile imagination made Shiva into a lovable God who demanded nothing, and no ritual was required to pray to him. He was the Asura’s friend, cousin, son, father, or anything one could imagine. In many cities, Shiva was portrayed as a phallus, to celebrate virility and fertility.

  Once the cities were conquered and the temples destroyed, the Brahmins demanded the conquered people worship a for Cwor

  The Deva capital city of Amaravathi, paled before Patala – the temporary capital of the Asuras in exile. Amaravathi, once a huge city at the mouth of the Saraswati river, was now a miserable old shanty town. It was built by the Asura school of Mayans, who were great city builders. Almost all the available books on art and architecture, city–planning, parks and amusement centres, temples and theatres, had been produced by them. Once the Devas settled in the great northern plains, they started building a few scattered cities and founded their own school of art and architecture. But the Vishwakarma school paled in comparison to the Mayan, even though ideas were liberally lifted from the Mayan books. What they achieved, as far as I heard, was some shanty towns on the river banks of the north. Mithila and Ayodhya could perhaps have been their best towns. Going by the accounts of travelling mendicants like Narada, who was an inveterate liar, these towns were neat and not overgrown like the others that abounded on the northern plains.

  I had never ventured this far north but wherever I travelled, I saw unrest. The Deva empire was slowly crumbling under the relentless pressure of guerilla warfare. I could feel the distant rumblings of a massive uprising. For years the defeated Asura tribes had been fighting a bitter war but were only partially successful in reclaiming the asura territory. For a few years, some life was injected into the dead dreams of the Asuras by men like Mahabali of the Keralaputra tribe, who held sway over all of India for about 18 years or the supposedly invincible twins, Hiranyakasupu and Hiranyaksha, in south-central India. But they all collapsed soon enough.

  Initially, the Asuras had superior warfare strategies, better engineers to create machines of war and great generals and kings to lead the battle with valour. But the cunning of the Devas and the treachery of their own people ensured that the Asuras snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It was obvious that the Asuras lacked unity. One–upmanship, false pride, overconfidence in their powers and of course, the belief that the Devas would fight the war fairly; something that the Devas always believed but seldom practised, ensured that the Asura tribe would wander in the wilderness of India for a 1000 years.

  And then began an intermingling of the tribes. No one can really claim to have pure Deva or Asura blood. The deep black Asuras mixed with the pale Devas, who in turn mixed with various shades of skin colour ranging from the yellow of the Gandharvas, to the pure white of the Kinnaras, and the pitch black of the Yakshas. It was not unusual to find a pitch black Deva maiden with blue eyes or an Asura man with yellow skin and brown hair. Nor was it considered ex
traordinary to have a coal black brother with grey eyes and straight hair, Ctra an A a very fair sister with dark eyes and wavy hair and another sibling with yellow skin and curly black hair in the same family. I myself am fair complexioned with thick wavy hair and deep black eyes. My sister is as dark as midnight with straight hair and brown eyes. Kumbakarna is stocky with black skin and black curly hair and black eyes, whereas Vibhishna is light brown with light blue eyes and brown wavy hair.

  Mixed races were held in contempt earlier. The Devas shunned them like lepers and they were laughed at by the Asuras. Stung by social antipathy and disdain, a group of this mixed race withdrew to the forests of central India. They were weak and uncultured, even by Deva standards and chattered incessantly without doing any productive work. They led a crude and miserable existence collecting berries and honey from the forests, living in tree houses and caves and occasionally raiding nearby villages in search of gold and women. They came to be called the monkey tribe – the Vanaras. They were mostly ignored and often considered boors. In the Deva or Asura languages, the word Vanara was a curse word and to call someone a Vanara was the ultimate insult which resulted in duels and death.

  The Vanaras led a miserable life until Bali appeared. He burst upon the scene like a clap of thunder in summer. Bali was a great tactician and a superb military general. After suppressing the opposition in his Vanara tribe, he became their supreme leader and a brutal dictator. Along with his younger brother Sugreeva, Bali raided both the Asura and Deva tribes several times from his capital, Kishkindha, on the banks of the river Tungabhadra. Soon the Vanaras extended their sway from the Western Mountains to the Eastern Hills and were threatening the borders of Lanka. In the north, all the petty Deva kingdoms up to the Ganges River lived under constant fear. But Bali maintained a peaceful relationship with Karthi Veerarjuna, a powerful tribal monarch and descendent of an aborigine tribe, who were the original settlers of India. He ruled the narrow coastal strip on the west coast between the sea and some table–land on either side of the Vindhya mountains, on the banks of Narmada.