The Weapon of the Devas

by Nanda Gopal Guruswamy

  Glorious was the day when Lord Shiva took the aspect to Tripurantaka to destroy the three cities, his chariot was formed by the Devas, Lord Brahma his Charioteer. And then Lord Shiva lifted his mighty bow and aimed the arrow, with Lord Vishnu with Lord Agni at the tip and Lord Vayu in the feathers. But he stood smiling and did not fire knowing that the Devas were arrogant enough to think that they were the ones who were destroying the Devas. Only when they realized that it was through the grace of Lord Shiva that Tripura would be destroyed that Lord Shiva released the arrow. But there arose a problem, Mayasura, who was a great Shiva Devotee was in Tripura. And Lord Shiva did not wish to destroy him and thus Nandi raced ahead of the arrow and helped Mayasura reach safety out of the city before it was destroyed along with its inhabitants by the arrow. But …”

  “Ok, Ok stop. That’s all very fascinating. But is there anything specific you can tell me about how many temples Mayasura built and how were they built? ”I sensed that he would continue like this for hours if I didn’t stop him. It was a bit strange that all his most famous creations were burned to the ground, one way or another.

  “Mayasura built innumerable temples for innumerable deities. No one except Mayasura himself knows the entire list.”

  “Very, very helpful” I said.

  “Thank you,” Kajur said bowing, his dreadlocks swinging around his head. Guess sarcasm was lost on the little guy.

  I was having a nagging thought in my head that I may be able to track down Dev by a stroke of luck, but that doesn’t mean squat if I have to go over there and try to talk him out of it. I needed ammunition, I needed a few aces up my sleeve. In short, I needed my mojo back.

  Chapter 18: Celestial Astronomy

  I had covered up my mistakes but not without losses. I still did not have a way for finding out where Devakratha would conduct the yagna. It could not be in a simple temple. It had to be a place of power, a place that echoed of Arjuna, or Lord Varuna, someplace special that could attract the bow. And that place had the fractal as the blueprint. All my resources were exhausted. I did not know where to look. This task required someone really intelligent, and I wasn’t that person. Who could that person be?

  --------------------------------------------------

  “Please, please, please…. I’m sorry. I really am. Can we sit down and have a discussion?”

  I was talking to Meena’s back watching the sway of the multicolored dupataa she stormed away from the desk where she was reading. I came back to the university and tracked her down to ask her for help. But she had given me a haughty look as soon as she saw me and picked up her books to run away. I was almost insulted but couldn’t blame her. It was the response most normal people have when they see me. But I really didn’t have any other choice. She didn’t even give me a chance to explain as she went almost gliding into some of the old bookshelves. I followed her. And to be honest, it was a nice back.

  “Look, I did not know that someone would shoot at me.”

  She turned back with an angry glance and pointed a finger at me, “You are a criminal. I should report you. Get out of here before I change my mind”. She hissed. The scent of some exotic perfume assaulted my senses as she turned and went away. I reconsidered involving an innocent person into this matter, but I truly saw no other alternative. I trailed after her with misgivings in my heart.

  “I am not a criminal, the guy shooting at me was the criminal. Besides didn’t I save you?” I reasoned.

  “You had no other choice,” she said looking at some dusty book she had picked up.

  “I am the good guy here.” I persisted

  “How can I believe you? And if you were the bad guy, you would lie and tell me that you’re the good guy.”

  “Please believe me. Why would I want to harm you?”

  “Clearly you’re mixed up in something dangerous. Probably illegal. I don’t want to get mixed up in anything like that. So please leave,” she said pointing at the exit.

  I caught her hand and turned her around to face me. I looked her in the eye and said “Please. It’s a matter of life and death. I need your help.” I guess she saw the earnestness in my face as her face softened a little bit but she was still undecided. So I took out the paper I had torn out from the book and gave it to her.

  We sat down at a table where there was no one else nearby with the fractal blueprint in front of us. She had somehow agreed to listen to me.

  “This fractal blueprint is for a temple. This temple exists, and I need you to find its location. Within the next two hours.” I added lamely.

  She looked at me sceptically. “I told you, this is stupid. This is just a drawing. I agree that there may be some truth to it. But to suggest it exists is a big stretch of the imagination.”

  “No, I am sure it exists even today and it should be in the country somewhere. It probably relates to the times of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.” I said

  “Look, let’s say that this structure was built, then that would have been possibly thousands of years ago. There’s no chance it’s still standing today.” Well, atleast she was adamant in her ignorance.

  “Then think of it as an intellectual exercise. For fun, let’s assume that Lord Varuna’s temple was built with this as the blueprint. Where could it be?”

  She let out a breath. She scrunched up her face as she thought. I patiently waited looking here and there. Devakratha was probably preparing for the yagna. After some time, she looked up.

  “We can’t approach this directly. Searching for the building using present technology would take months or maybe never. There are no written records of this temple and if there were, they would probably destroyed. All we have is this blueprint. So we have to ask ourselves, where did the blueprint come from?”

  “From fractals,” I said

  “And where did the fractals come from?”

  I thought and said “uhh, the stars?”

  “Bingo, the stars. We have to find a way to use the stars to find the location of the temple.”

  “How?”

  “Look at the pattern of the stars in this fractal, it is very specific and unique. And this was three thousand years ago when astronomy was not as good as it is now. Whoever built this had to have seen and recorded the astronomical formation himself.”

  “So?” I asked

  “So, this specific and unique combination of stars would have been visible only from a few places on earth. Whoever saw this formation must have been standing in a specific location on the planet. If we can find that location, then chances are that the temple must also be nearby.”

  “That’s true” I said excitedly, now we were getting somewhere.

  “So we have to just go back in time three thousand years and find out all the places where this particular event would have been visible.”

  “That’s also true. But how can we go back in time?” I said depressingly, maybe she wasn’t that smart after all.

  She looked up, her eyes were shining.

  “We can’t. But computers can.”

  A short trip to the university planetarium ensued. I was sitting in the comfortable bucket seat and looking up at the night sky of the planetarium. It was eerie and beautiful. There was the Milky Way slowly spiralling not giving a damn about anything. Meena had a laptop and was feverishly typing away.

  “Just hold on. I’m downloading a few tools I need and trying to connect to the planetarium’s main server.”

  “You’re a student, right? So isn’t that illegal?”

  She looked guilty for a second before asking “Do you want my help or not?” in a bossy way.

  “I do, try using ‘password’ as the administrator accounts’ password” I said enjoying the night sky of the planetarium.

  She cracked it a few minutes later. The password was ‘qwertyuiop’, the alphabets on the first row of the keyboard. She turned to me. I could see a few stars reflected on the beautiful milky complexion of her face.

  “When I was studying astro
nomy, there was a very interesting field I came across called celestial astronomy. Basically, it is the method used to calculate one’s position on the planet using the position of the stars. It was what the sailors used before all the modern techniques were invented. Like how the sailors used the North Star for navigation.”

  “I follow.”

  “What we are going to do is to map how the sky looked three thousand years ago.” And the planetarium’s sky changed. Stars were twinkling brighter this time.

  “We can do that?” I asked.

  “Of course. We have been doing it for years. How else do you think we can predict upcoming astronomical events?”

  Meena leaned in. Her damn perfume was intoxicating and distracting. Focus Shiva, focus. The Gandiva bow, I repeated to myself a few times.

  “See that star there and one over there?” I saw the stars she was pointing to and nodded.

  “That is the star here.” She showed me a point on the blueprint. So we had mapped the night sky as it was three thousand years ago. I looked up in wonder and thought to myself that Mayasura, the divine architect had seen this very same image in the sky.

  I slowly made out all the star positions and was able to sketch the blueprint in the sky of the planetarium.

  “Now, we run the software for celestial astronomy. This software will take in the image and calculate the places on earth from where this particular formation of stars would have been visible via latitude and longitude. Now, since you want this quick, I have used a few parameters of my own to eliminate places that didn’t exist three thousand years ago, a few other conditions to ensure a dead accuracy. Otherwise we would be here for hours. But I want to stress to you, that this is likely a hit or miss thing, ok? ”

  I nodded and watched the screen of the little pink laptop with bated breath. It was small, one of those ultrabooks. It was slowly crunching away the numbers.

  “Is your laptop powerful enough to process this information?” I asked

  “No, it’s not. I am using the planetarium’s main server. It’s the closest thing to a supercomputer that we have.” It was taking its time to give the results in which time, I was a nervous wreck. If this worked, then I would have the location of Devakratha’s yagna. I would have a chance of stopping him. But how would be another question entirely.

  Forty five minutes and several pulled hairs later, the little pink laptop in Meena’s lap beeped. She and I leaned in closer to see the names of the location. The first location was in somewhere out in the ocean, it was a few kilometres from Gujarat. Then I remembered with a chill that that was supposed to be the location of Dwaraka, the golden city of the Lord Krishna. I panicked for a second, if that was the place, then I was screwed. But then I remembered that it was submerged and let out a breath of relief. It couldn’t possibly be the place of the temple. Next up was south Bihar. I remembered that in the times of the Mahabharatha, south Bihar was called Magadh, ruled by the powerful Jarasandha, whom Bhima had snapped in half.

  I could remember nothing linking Mayasura to this place, but I was doubtful. The whole of Bihar was now covered with sprawling cities, no way would a temple of Lord Varuna go unnoticed.I let that go for now and looked at the next result. It was Patna, I had no idea why, but I rejected that outright. I went to the next and the last name on the list. It was a bit strange, it was at the edge of southern India, and I had been to this place myself. I felt a funny twinge at the pit of my stomach, as I studied the map on the screen.

  It was in the Coromandel coast near the apex of the river Kaveri. It was called Point Calimere and I knew it was the place. It felt right. Point Calimere is now a forest, a huge wildlife sanctuary. There is a watch tower here called the Ramarpadam. It literally means ‘Rama’s feet’ meaning that Lord Rama had stood here as he looked out into mysterious Lanka and tried to figure out a way to get his huge monkey army all the way into Lanka. This place was more isolated than the others, and what’s more there were deep forests in the northern part of the sanctuary where there are a number of shrines like the Shevrayan Kovil. A huge abandoned collapsed temple here would have been reclaimed by the forest and with greenery all around, it could have easily escaped the sight of men all these years.

  I stood up and paced around for a while. There were references to Mayasura throughout the Ramayana. He was in fact the father of Mandodari as Kajur had said. Could he have been inspired there by the astronomical formation to build a temple? This was supported by the fact that Point Calimere was next to the ocean. Lord Varuna was Lord of the Oceans. It added up.

  I looked at Meena triumphantly.

  “You did it.” She smiled back.

  “Thank you. You have no idea what this means to me. I’ll never forget it. And I shall never disturb you again.”

  She looked at me blankly. She looked pretty cute, and I would have liked to stay for some more time. But the Gandiva beckons. Besides she was a beautiful, educated, highly intelligent lady … way out of my league. I was a poor, scarred Wizard trying to scratch a living and I probably wouldn’t survive my next encounter with Devakratha anyway. Any relationship would meet an inevitable ugly end.

  I left the university on the bike I had left earlier in the parking lot during the shoot-out. On the way, I tried to think of a way I could beat Devakratha and came up with nothing. I had tried conventional, unconventional and plain old dirty. But nothing had worked. I had with me nothing that could even slow down Devakratha, much less stop him. If I were to fight him again, chances are that he would kill me. Or capture me. And the very thought of another night with drugs and beatings left my hand trembling. I reached home.

  The first thing I did was to call the Guardians and let them know what I had discovered. But the status was the same as before. No one was available, they were off fighting the Asuras. I tried the local authorities, they laughed at me. I sat for a while and tried to come up any sort of desperate crazy plan that might have a one in million chance of working but nothing came to mind. But that didn’t change my intention, I was still going.

  I would see this to the very end. Most likely mine. But I was going the distance. Someone needed to stand up to that crazy madman.

  Chapter 19: Onward and Upward! To Death!

  I found my assessing the situation and finding myself on the short end of the stick. But just for the heck of it, I prepared myself. It was the usual things I did usually before I went out into the night to face some unfriendly creature of the night. I found myself glancing often at my torn and battered leather jacket. It was a grim reminder of my opponent’s power.

  I sat down for a talk with Kajur. If I didn’t come back he would probably be free and I told him so. He seemed sad but put on a brave front for me. He nodded after my short speech that the internet should at least be good for a month.

  “It is the way of life, Guardian. Some are born as kings, lovers, poets, traders, the majority are born to be ruled. But some, some are born to be warriors. Normal life is denied to them. They live with one foot in the grave, they live for the thrill of the fight. That last blow, that last stand, that hopeless gesture of defiance. To spit in the face of fate, and challenge the devil. Go down fighting, Guardian, there is no other death more noble. May you attain moksha and be free of this cycle of birth and death. ” He said solemnly. His little speech cheered me up. Go down fighting, I liked that.

  “But I have one last gift for you.” Kajur said

  “What’s that?” I asked

  He took that weird Alfred Lanning voice again “My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked

  Kajur didn’t say anything.

  A tingling went across the back of my neck. I thought for a while and then asked “Is there anything that could stop Devakratha?”

  “Possibly” Kajur answered vaguely.

  “Is it in the temple?” I asked

  Kajur smiled, “Yes”.

  “Do temples have defenders?”

&nb
sp; “That is the right question. Yes, Mayasura was a great architect. All his creations were protected on several levels from attack from earthly agents as well as heavenly. He was a Master Architect. He had the knowledge to bind various warriors of all races to protect his creations. Although he used warrior yaksas of the highest class to defend temples, unleash the temple’s yaksa and there will be chaos.”

  A new hope lit up. “But I doubt that if any yaksa can handle the Jamedar of Thugee. At best he could thwart Devakratha for a little while.” The hope dwindled. Atleast false hope is better than any hope. Maybe I could distract Devkratha while the yaksa can sneak up on him.

  “How does one release the Temple yaksa?”

  “The main chamber. The Garbagriha. Look for a symbol like this…” He showed me the symbol and the mantra to release the temple yaksa.

  “That is my last gift to you, Guardian.”

  I got ready. There were a few things I took. Mainly guns, I dislike guns intensely, but I know the basics of using one. With my magic still inaccessible, there was nothing else I could do. The staff was less than useless, a dead weight, unless I could smack a Thug on the head with it. I left it. Lastly I left a message to Alagaraja, thanking him for all his help. Once a new Guardian came to this city, Raja would contact him and assist him.

  Just before leaving, I closed the door behind me exchanging a nod with Kajur. I swung a bag over my shoulder and took Raja’s bike and headed off, I planned to get to Madurai first by using the temple transport I had used earlier. The mantra for Madurai was still in my mind. And I knew that would work, because I was not using my magic, I was using the magic of the temple. From Madurai, I could transport to the nearest temple in Point Calimere. I was just thinking about all this. It was evening and the breeze was nice and clean as I rode through the city.