KRISHNA CORIOLIS#1: Slayer of Kamsa (13 page)

The shadowy silhouette turned away, returning to the darkened recesses of the balcony.

Kamsa saw movement nearby and turned at once to see another eunuch, also a giant, darker skinned than the first one, standing by the archway through which he had been brought to the training area.

‘If you will come with me, My Lord,’ said the hermaphrodite obsequiously.

Kamsa heard the sound of something heavy scraping on dirt and turned again to see two other eunuchs dragging away their fallen comrade.

‘MyLord,’repeated the eunuch by the doorway.‘If you will accompany me ...’

Kamsa ran to one of the pillars that went from the ground up to the roof of the training house. He caught hold of the pillar in a crouching monkey action. Using his hands and feet, he pulled and kicked himself upward, propelling his body with practised ease. In a moment, he was on the upper level, and vaulting over the railing of the balcony. He landed with a gentle thump on the wooden-plank flooring and grinned at the several armed men who turned towards him with expressions of surprise. They drew their swords and daggers instantly but he raised his arms carelessly, grinning.

‘I wish only to exchange words with the lord of Magadha,’ he said, reassuring them.

None of them lowered his blade or moved an inch.

The man who had spoken earlier stepped forward, eyes glinting as he examined Kamsa over the shoulders of his men. ‘I have heard of your impatience, son of Ugrasena,’ said the king of Magadha. ‘But by your rashness, you deny yourself the pleasures of women, wine, food and rest.’

Kamsa shrugged, uncaring of the many blades pointed at him, aware that one wrong move would cost him his life.‘I care not for the pleasures of wine, women, food or sleep. Time enough for all those when I have sated my first hunger.’

The king of Magadha looked at him speculatively. ‘And what would that be?’

‘ To rule the Yadava nations,’ Kamsa said simply.

There was a long pause during which Kamsa could hear the sound of bowmen on the balconies on the far side of the training court pointing arrows at him – he could hear the stretching of the bows as they took aim at his head, neck, heart, liver ...

Then the lord of Magadha laughed softly and came forward, brushing aside his men as if they were wheat stalks in a field. Their blades went down, their eyes averted, to avoid threatening their master.

The king clapped his hands on Kamsa’s dusty shoulders and grinned broadly. ‘You are a man after my own tastes, Kamsa, son of Ugrasena. I think we shall get along very well.’ And he grasped Kamsa’s hand in a vice-like grip, the traditional greeting of warriors, so hard that Kamsa thought his forearm would snap.

‘I am Jarasandha.’

twenty

As the dazed, shaken men of Kamsa’s contingent drifted back into Mathura, word spread about Vasudeva’s ‘miracle’ and Kamsa’s abject humiliation. The return of his proud marauders, now with lowered heads, silent and sullen, sent ripples of shock and confusion through the rest of Mathura’s military forces.

As usually happened in such times, the exact details of the incident grew exaggerated out of all proportion, growing more distorted with each retelling. One version claimed that Vasudeva had expanded his body to the size of a sala tree and flicked Kamsa across the field like a gnat. Another recounted the tale of how Lord Vishnu himself, deeply offended by Kamsa’s challenge to him, had invested Vasudeva with his powers so he could teach the Andhaka prince a lesson he would remember forever.

When Kamsa himself did not return, the rumours grew out of control. He had lost his nerve, people said. He had lost his mind, others insisted, quoting witnesses who had seen him talking to a tree in the woods and cringing as if hearing the tree speak. His absence was taken to indicate his deep embarrassment.

It was even assumed by some that he had banished himself rather than return to face his soldiers again.

Ugrasena and Padmavati received the news of Vasudeva’s triumph with great elation. They sifted through the exaggerations and understood that something extraordinary had occurred at the camp, and that a thousand of Kamsa’s men had witnessed it and been deeply disturbed by it. They were not concerned about Kamsa’s disappearance. Without saying it in so many words, both king and queen were secretly relieved that he had removed himself from the scene. Dealing with his transgressions had been a difficult proposition for them. By going away, he had resolved the issue. Perhaps he would surface again, but at least for a while, Mathura had a season of rest.

The army, disheartened and disturbed by the humiliation and subsequent disappearance of their commander, began to question its existence. What good was a fighting force whose leader could not face and fight a simple cowherd armed with a crook? What point was there in maintaining the legendary iron discipline and rigorous training of Kamsa’s Army if the peace treaty was to be upheld to the letter?

Several akshohinis disbanded, soldiers returning home to their families and fields, glad to be tilling the soil or raising livestock instead of slaughtering innocent Yadavas. They kept their spoils, for those had been earned in the course of duty, and took their pay for the time they had spent in Kamsa’s service;

but thereafter, they were happier being farmers and citizens rather than soldiers.

The marauders remained in service, for they were soldiers for life. For them, the only retirement was death, the only holiday granted for recovery from grave illness or grievous injury; the only payment, the spoils of war and the largesse of their commander.

They received word from the spasas who had trailed Kamsa in the woods and learnt that he had gone to Magadha. The spasas had not chanced following him into Magadha – they would not have been allowed to pass as he had – and knew not what had transpired inside the city. They could not even tell if Kamsa lived or not. Ever since he had gone into the great kingdom, he had not been heard from or seen again. They tried to glean information from travellers from those parts, but even the citizens of Magadha knew nothing beyond the fact that their king had granted safe passage to Kamsa and that he had been permitted to enter the palace. Apart from that, not a single scrap of news or information came out of Magadha.

All they knew was that Bana and Canura had also disappeared at around the same time as Kamsa. Some said they had been seen riding south. Others, east. None knew for certain. But they had gone away; that was certain. Everyone assumed that they too had deserted like the rest. After all, as Kamsa’s closest friends and advisors, they had committed the lion’s share of atrocities and war crimes. In the present mood of Mathura, they would have borne the brunt of the anti-Kamsa wave sweeping the kingdom. The rumour was that they had vanished precisely to avoid this controversy.

After the regular army disbanded, the marauders stepped down as well, disgusted by the breakdown in military discipline and the cavalier, almost festive atmosphere in Mathura. Which is to say, they remained in uniform, occupied barracks, and drilled daily as well, but they no longer patrolled the perimeter of the city or the kingdom’s borders. These latter lapses in duty were not their own choice, but on the orders of the king. With Kamsa gone, Ugrasena resumed his duty as their supreme commander, and it was his wish that the marauders be disbanded. They compromised by stepping down temporarily, making it seem as if they were disbanding but, in fact, merely pretending to do so. They remained close to the palace, their fingers on the capital’s nerve centre, knowing that if their master returned, he would expect them to be here, ready to serve at a moment’s notice.

But with each passing day, their morale ebbed and waned. Held together mainly by Kamsa’s obsessive, self-driving ambition, they lacked a cohesive force or motivation now. What if Kamsa never returned? The politics of the Yadava nation were a perpetually shifting quicksand of major and minor interests, some openly conflicting, others intertwined in a complex series of convenient alliances and temporary truces. The longer they stayed loyal to an absent master, the
more time they were out of the swirling circuit of contemporary interests.

Already, the resentment that people had felt towards Kamsa’s brutalities was being directed towards them, the executors of that brutality. When they went on their twice-daily patrols of the inner city – a ritual initiated by Kamsa, designed to remind the people as well as the regular conscripts of the superiority of the marauders – they were greeted with abuses, jeers and stones flung at them from rooftops. One night, two of the rear enders in their jogging column were pulled away into dark alleys by anonymous mobs and stabbed to death before they could cry out or fight back. It was only a matter of time before full-scale reprisals were launched against them.

Ugrasena and Padmavati debated briefly over how best to take advantage of this unexpected turn of fortunes. Both happily agreed that the best answer would be to invite Vasudeva to ally with them openly and to fix a date for the proposed wedding of the Sura Yadava king with their stepdaughter Devaki.

Devaki’s father, Ugrasena’s brother Devaka – after whom Devaki was named as was the custom in Arya royalty – was happy to give his consent. He had been most pleased at the prospect of her matrimonial alliance with Vasudeva and the peace treaty, and most apprehensive once word of Kamsa’s misbehaviour had threatened both the alliance as well as his daughter’s nuptials. A peace-loving man devoted to bhakti and spirituality, he was thrilled at Kamsa’s self-banishment and happily threw a grand feast to celebrate the announcement of the wedding date. The city celebrated with them, and when the auspicious date of the wedding was announced publicly, cheers rang out in the streets. It had been a long time since Mathura had something to celebrate.

Devaki and Vasudeva were both thrilled, of course. ‘I never dreamt you would accomplish so much so easily,’ she said to him when they met in Vrindavan for a walk one evening, chaperoned by Akrur and Devaki’s hawkishly watchful daimaa. This was their last walk before the marriage. After this, they would meet only on the day of the wedding when Vasudeva brought his baarat – the lavish groom’s procession – to her father’s house to claim her.

He smiled, as self-deprecating as always. ‘What had to be had to be,’ he said simply.

‘And I had to be yours,’ she said, then blushed at her own audacity.

He nodded.‘And I yours as well.’

Only the watchful eyes of their chaperones prevented them from showing their affection more clearly. Soon, the brief hours of their assignation flew by and it was time to go.

‘When I see you again, it shall be as your bride,’ Devaki said, her raven-black eyes brimming.

‘I shall ask the sun to dim his light, as he will not be able to contest your beauty,’ Vasudeva said.

They parted with tears of anticipation. Even the stern wet-nurse, sensitive to her young mistress’ depth of emotion, was quietly sympathetic.

Akrur was equally quiet as he drove the uks cart away from Vrindavan, allowing his friend and king to dwell on the assignation at leisure.

Vasudeva looked back one last time at the idyllic grove. The next time Devaki and he visited it, they would be wife and husband. They would have no need of chaperones then, or care for how they showed their affection for each other. They could quaff as much of Vrindavan’s famous soma or honey wine as they wished, and do with one another as they pleased.

He smiled to himself, looking forward to that day.

He had no way of knowing then that it would never come.

twenty-one

Jarasandha rode with Kamsa through the streets of Magadha, which were devoid of people. Even the merchants and bazaars, traders and whores and people scurrying through the lanes on urgent errands were gone.

Kamsa asked Jarasandha why this was so. The men accompanying the king glanced sharply at Kamsa as if expecting his host to order him cut down on the spot for daring to question their master.

But Jarasandha only smiled and told him that the citizens had cleared the streets on his orders.

Kamsa marvelled at a king who could shut down the business of an entire city simply so he could ride through the streets. He thought of mentioning to Jarasandha that such regal arrogance would never be tolerated in Mathura or any other Yadava nation. Then he recalled that Magadha was not a republic like most Arya kingdoms and kept quiet.

‘Do you know anything about Magadha at all?’ Jarasandha asked as their horses picked their way along narrow, cobbled streets packed on either side with hovels jammed so close to one another that they seemed to share common walls. Some were piled three and four houses high, which made Kamsa think that they might fall at any moment.

He answered his host’s question as best as he could: ‘Only that you take in those who are outlawed and banished by other Arya nations.’

Jarasandha did not nod or acknowledge Kamsa in any way. He was a quiet, lean man, with the appearance and manner of a munshi rather than one of the most powerful kings in the Arya world. Kamsa thought that had he passed him walking on the streets of Mathura, he might have run him over without even realizing he was someone important. But there was no mistaking the power of his grip, or the casual yet supremely confident way he spoke, and the sense that he saw, heard, and knew everything there was to see, hear and know. The sheer power that he radiated was magnetic. Kamsa had never met anyone whose physical appearance so belied his inner power and strength. He wondered idly how difficult it would be to kill Jarasandha in hand-to-hand combat. He assessed every man he met the same way, that being the reason why he had been able to despatch the eunuch so quickly – he had already noted the man slightly favouring one knee during the long walk through Jarasandha’s palace.

Jarasandha’s voice was neither deep nor high- pitched, pleasant to the ear, clear enough to be understood even when he spoke quietly, which was almost all the time. In fact, he spoke so quietly that Kamsa kept feeling the need to lean closer. He found
himself having to resist this urge several times as they descended the winding hillside road. It would take him a long while to realize that this was precisely why Jarasandha spoke so quietly, compelling others to be quiet around him in order to hear what he said. Powerful men exerted their power in such ways.