The next morning, that’s the seventh day after the fiasco on the battlefield, we got word that ten thousand Gujarat troops would be leaving for home that afternoon. This was extremely short notice but Malik Ayaz had little choice but to give in to the restiveness of his soldiers. I immediately sent a letter to General Malik Ayaz apologizing for the delay in seeing him and requesting a meeting the following day to discuss the terms and conditions of the instrument of surrender. I have rarely got such a speedy reply. The Gujarat General would be happy to receive the royal visitor at eleven thirty the next morning. Would we be so kind as to have lunch with him? As expected, it was obvious that Malik Ayaz was now in a rush to get back home. He had been away for more than nine months and could look forward to the triumphant welcome that awaited the hero of Gujarat.
We left around two in the afternoon. Raja Puraji Kika, Mangal and twelve others had gone ahead several hours ago. An hour after our departure, I put up my hand and brought the soldiers to a halt. Another couple of hpurs and it would be pitch dark.
‘There are two thousand seven hundred and sixty of us plus Rawal Udai Simha, your ten commanders and me. You have been chosen because you are the swiftest soldiers in our army. We are not even a tidy round figure of three thousand. The Gujarat soldiers who are going home today are ten thousand in number. Which means we are outnumbered three to one. I know that you are all brave warriors. But that’s not going to be enough. Each one of you will have to be at least thrice as brave as the enemy merely to survive.’ I let that sink in for a full thirty seconds. ‘Twenty years ago almost to the day, three thousand of our troops under our venerable Home Minister, the great Lakshman Simha were killed treacherously about sixty miles from here by the Gujarat armies. I don’t have to repeat the full story of the terrible and deceitful slaughter. You know it well. I want to know what vengeance means to you. Will you be happy if some day you killed three thousand Gujarat soldiers? I can see the gleam in your eyes. Bravo, you are easily satisfied. You are nothing but tit-for-tat men. If that’s all that three thousand of your brothers are worth to you, I suggest we forget Idar and this war, pull up our tents and go home.
‘Seven days ago, when I asked for the white flag to be waved, I heard a lot of brave talk. We were down by seven hundred and fifty men and you only wanted to be given a chance to turn defeat into victory. Tomorrow morning, at five thirty you have an appointment with the Gujarat forces. Let’s see what all your talk amounts to. I have but one piece of advice for you. It will hold true in the coming skirmish and in any other battle or engagement you are involved in. The secret of victory lies in numbers. Does it take you one blow to kill your opponent or three? If it’s three, two other enemy soldiers are going to have a shot at you while you are unable to defend yourself. Besides you are going to tire faster. If it’s one blow, then two other enemy soldiers had better look out. There will be those among you who will live to tell your children and their grandchildren how you wounded at least twenty of the enemy single-handed. Now we know who our enemies at home are. Anybody who wounds but does not kill is making certain that his friend and neighbour’s life is seriously in danger. If the left hand is injured, the right can still hold a sword and kill. My father, the great Rana Sanga, is living testimony of the man who survived seventy or eighty wounds to kill at least seventy men. We all know how deadly a wounded tiger is. Can you imagine how much more dangerous a wounded enemy soldier is? He nurses his hatred and lives with just one thought. He wants to get even. The only trouble is his vengeance is unquenchable. He can never get even. One more and then one more. And then one more. Think about it. A dead man has no enemies.
‘One last word. If from now on any one of you decides to exchange a word with his neighbour, he is going to put two thousand seven hundred and seventy-three of his countrymen in danger. That I’m afraid the rest of us might find unacceptable. Surely you don’t want two thousand seven hundred and seventy three of your friends to kill you.’ They laughed. ‘Godspeed and good luck.’
We took the path parallel to the one taken by the departing Gujarat army. Raja Puraji Kika and Mangal had chosen a site twelve miles from our camp to bivouac. While the men settled down for the night, one of Raja Puraji Kika’s men brought Tej over. My cousin looked a little worse for his stay in solitary confinement but I was sure his mood would improve.
‘I’m dividing the men equally between Rawal Udai Simha, Raja Puraji Kika and you. That means you have a little over nine hundred soldiers under you.’ I turned to my Bhil friend. ‘Will you show us the sites, Your Highness?’
For mapping a territory, especially a hilly one there was no one I knew who could compare with Raja Puraji Kika and his men. There might be a forest of seven hundred thousand trees and the Raja would be able to point out the very peepul to which I had tied my horse Befikir seven years ago and under which tree we had had a picnic lunch. He had total geographic recall. Without him we would be lost tomorrow. I realized how confusing the terrain was when I discovered that we were barely a mile from the massive Gujarat encampment. We went up and down over seven low-wooded hills and suddenly the land turned flat.
It was an unbelievably peaceful scene, almost idyllic with the sun going down over the sands in the distance. The soldiers were playing cards, smoking hukkas, chatting with a senior officer who was having a haircut seated next to his tent. You could hear the nervous chatter of the scissors all the way to where we were lying on our bellies. A man has started singing, another joins him. No, the second man is giving a rejoinder to the first man’s question. It’s a sawaal-jawaab qawwali, a form of improvisation that I love. It’s full of wit, sharp comment, philosophical asides and humour. They are singing not a religious qawwali but its secular and lay cousin.
‘Why is the beloved more beloved when you are away from home? Why does one miss home only when one is away from home?’ The second man keeps the beat with superb clapping while the first singer asks his questions. ‘Is there music in the flute?’ It’s the second singer’s turn, ‘when you are not blowing in the hole? Is the octave on your lips or on your fingertips as they glide over the reed?’ A bulbul tarang accompanies the singers. People are gathering around them now. The first man’s response is ready on the instant. ‘Either way, who is playing the tune and who is dancing? When we sing who dances, us or the Good Lord himself?’ The strings of the bulbul tarang are a limpid cascade of sound, now thoughtful, now bubbling. All those around clap. Did they take classes, have they trained for years to achieve such perfection of rhythm? I look at my companions. I steal a glance at Tej, surely he hasn’t forgotten his avowed enemy, how can these unanswerable and timeless queries elicit such intense attention from him? ‘Tell me, my friend, what is the velocity of a sneeze?’ That evokes gentle laughter. ‘And if you know the answer, pray tell me, how many million times is a thought faster than a sneeze?’ Are these illiterate troopers or the gurus of sages?
The singing is suddenly drowned by the lowing and keening of cattle. It sends a serrated shiver up my spine. They are killing buffaloes for the evening meal. It is a dreadful and terrible sound, this wailing of animals who know that a horrific death with a ritual of bloodletting is at hand. What if the gate of the pen was not bolted but left wide open? Would they run for their lives? I suspect not. They are mesmerized by their own death. The goats have joined the ghastly chorus. The halal blood gushes out, the heart pumping it out in spurts. You wait for the agony to end, how much blood can one body hold? The animal is in a stupor, it has thrown its head back as if to open wider the single cut the butcher has administered and get it over with. Every once in a while, its lifeless body twitches as if at the last minute it is having second thoughts about dying. Why am I horrified? Will I not eat mutton with relish when I go back to our camp tomorrow? The singers continue undisturbed.
Across, near the centre of the encampment where the commandant of the troops, the much feared Bunde Ali has his quarters, a game of kabbadi has started. One of the youngsters is spinning through th
e other team with celerity while muttering kabbadi, kabbadi, and flinging his arms and toes all over the place. He flashes past, makes contact with two of the opposing players and gets them out. They have a tricky job here: stay away from him and yet pin him down, till he can no longer say kabbadi, kabbadi. I am making extensive notes of the enemy camp’s layout when I see Bunde Ali step out of his tent and join the game. He is a little old but what he lacks in speed, he makes up with cunning. It is evident that his troops are awed by his presence until a young soldier shrugs his shoulders and seems to say to himself ‘What the hell’ and grabs the great man’s leg. Bunde Ali tries desperately to reach the dividing line that will give him a new lease of life. But now the other soldiers are emboldened and fling themselves on him. They hang on to him till his breath has run out and no more kabbadi, kabbadis issue forth from his mouth. Tej is watching Bunde Ali intently.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ the muezzin calls the faithful to evening prayer. All activity ceases and three-quarters of the troops gather to the west. The cooks, their assistants and the cowherds join them. How beautifully they arrange themselves. Row after row of evenly spaced men, all of them kneeling down, their heads covered, palms raised to seek Allah’s blessings. Is the genius of Islam military? Perhaps that explains why it elicits such total obedience. Like sunflowers after the sun has set, the heads bend down in unison. The Hindus in the regiment seem a little lost and go about their business quietly. Only the hens and cocks are oblivious of the solemn proceedings. And the flies. There are thousands of them jostling each other, pushing and shoving, trying to get at the blood that has almost completely disappeared into the earth. Another thousand have settled into the open gash that is fast drying up in the buffalo’s neck. God Almighty, the wretched thing is still alive. It shakes its head slowly and they rise like a levitating beehive.
By the time we were back in camp it was getting dark. We conferred for the last time, Rawal Udai Simha, Raja Puraji Kika, Tej, Mangal, the platoon commanders and I. We went over every step, move and countermove, attack and defence tactic. Each commander was allotted a specific task and a specific geographical area. He was not to stray from it unless ordered to by me, King Puraji or Rawal Udai Simha or under the most exceptional circumstances. I was willing to bet that there were a hundred contingencies that we had overlooked. And yet, it was of the utmost importance to have a detailed plan and make sure that everyone knew his role and objective in it. I didn’t want to just choose the time and place of the confrontation, I didn’t want the enemy to have a say in his mode of retreat either. It was critical that we dictate just how, when and where he would retreat.
By nine fifteen the camp was quiet. I don’t know if the men were asleep but they had spread out the single bedcloth each one of us was permitted to bring along and covered themselves with a blanket. Dinner had been four big bajra ki rotis, congealed ghee, radish and garlic chutney so hot it would make you weep. You could change the order of the dishes but tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch would be the same stuff rolled up in a piece of cloth riding side-saddle along with the leather bottle of water. The wake-up call was for four thirty. There was no way I was going to get sleep unless I did yoganidra or shavasan. I lay myself down and took in the sky. It was flat and black and had holes pierced in it. Light leaked out through the tiny dots. I knew many of those holes. We had been taught to read them at school as an aid to finding one’s bearings but I didn’t think they would give me direction in a spiritual crisis. I closed my eyes and recalled the stars on the closed screen of my eyelids. They would be witness to my death. I started with my big toe, withdrew the sensation from it and the other toes, the heels were dead, then the knees and the thighs, my crotch and belly were a void, the lungs dropped out, then the hands, arms and shoulders. I had disengaged myself and now stood among the stars watching my lifeless body. My feet were a foot and a half apart and my hands had fallen by the sides. A dead man without a bier, flowers and mourners. My head is busier than bazaar-day at Chittor. What decision has Father taken about Vikramaditya? Sunheria’s bangles break. My mother is forcing me to eat. The scent of Kausalya’s vagina is in my nostrils. What will Father’s reaction be when he realizes that I have abandoned orthodox and sensible ways of warfare? Was the Gujarat commander, Bunde Ali, slightly walleyed? Who will take him on tomorrow? Images of my first debacle try to come centrestage but are sent packing by my wife. I erect a whirlpool mandala between my eyes and spin it. As it picks up speed, it draws all thoughts, images, colours, ideas into its vortex. It goes faster and faster till everything collapses in its vertiginous velocity. At its still epicentre is the third eye, the one that never closes and sees everything. Gradually everything comes to a stop. The occasional thought floats down my mind and is washed ashore. The lapping of the void is a soothing sound. It came to me then that we had passed the point of no return. The two thousand seven hundred and ninety-four of us would never be able to join the mass of humanity again. We may mingle with the others, break bread with them, go to mushairas with them, play holi with them, fornicate with their daughters but we would be forever outsiders. We would be bonded together by the unspeakable deeds we were going to commit the next morning.
We were up by four. The horses were fed and the business behind the trees done by twenty past four. Ten minutes for breakfast. At four thirty we had started walking the horses across the seven intervening hills. Perhaps we could have cantered over the first four knolls; the woods might have muffled the sound of the hooves but I was not taking chances. Within fifty minutes we were spread out and lying on our stomachs in the same spot where we had been last evening. We had long since got used to the darkness around us. I wondered why there were only seven sentries guarding the Gujarat encampment on the side closest to us. It took me a while to figure out the answer. As far as they were concerned, the war was over. They had defeated us and were going home. Raja Puraji Kika’s men, silent as the beasts they hunted in the jungle took care of those seven with their bows and arrows. They were among the cattle pens now and letting the cattle out. Some of the more stolid of the five hundred buffaloes needed heavy prodding to move. A small contingent of ten Bhils was making its way down to the left where about a half mile away, half the horses of the garrison were tethered. There was a downwind blowing and a dog picked up the scent of the intruders and started barking. In a minute the whole tribe of dogs in the camp would take the cue and alert their companions in Kashmir, Persia and China not to mention Bunde Ali and his armies. Raja Puraji Kika’s arrow cut short the dog’s alarm. From nowhere five other dogs had turned up. Something about the inert dog warned them and made them whine but not bark. The ground was heavy with dew and I was half-wet as I lay on the grass. There was a low mist rolling over the hills and would soon reach the encampment. The sky was bleaching out in a few places. Any moment now the birds would be up. The leaks in the sky had been plugged by a heavy cloud bank and for a few moments the density of the darkness increased. Who wakes up first when the women are not around? The cooks, the syces or the mullah? What an easygoing, lazy sight an army was when it was on its way home.
There was a bird call, an unseasonal papiha. It was one of Raja Puraji Kika’s men telling us that the horses were free. I had debated endlessly with myself whether I should lead the troops or sit back and coordinate the action. I guess at heart I knew all along that I had no option but to set an example in today’s treachery.
The troops were divided into three groups. Tej on my left, Rawal Udai Simha on my right. Each one of us commanded nine hundred and odd cavalry. My forces and I would lead the charge. It was Tej and Udai Simha’s task to prevent anybody from escaping to either side of us, thus forcing the enemy to retreat in only one direction: directly ahead of us. We wanted all roads to lead south-west.
It was time for me and my contingent to head down softly. When we reached the bottom of the hill, Tej lit the soaked cloth bandaged around the head of the arrow, aimed and stretched the string as far back as it would go. The rest of t
he officers did the same. At a signal from me the arrows flew forth to their various destinations. Tej’s arrow made straight for Bunde Ali’s shamiana. It lost altitude fast. I was sure it wouldn’t make it. I needn’t have worried. It sank into the frilled edge of the shamiana and torched the roof. There were flares whizzing past everywhere. The guard on duty in front of Bunde Ali’s residence must have got up to check where the comets were coming from. No one heard from him again. Raja Puraji Kika’s arrow had found the soft spot below the sentry’s Adam’s apple. The sky paled visibly. The seven horses of the Sun-god were in a tearing rush and churning clouds of pink and yellow overhead. The muezzin’s cry pierced the still quiet air. (And I thought I had factored in all the imponderables. Bunde Ali’s men would be up and headed for prayers in a minute or two.) The sun stuck its head out. I bowed down, did namaskar and said a prayer. Why hadn’t the muezzin noticed the pyrotechnics all around? Fires had broken out all over the camp as my heel dug into Befikir’s flank. By now the animals in the Gujarat camp were stampeding murderously over sleeping bodies. The deafening noise gave us a tremendous advantage. It spread the impression that a force of about ten thousand cavalry was sweeping through. Twenty of Puraji Kika’s men shot out and headed for the second series of stables at the other end of the camp. If they could let loose the horses and camels there, they would add to the pandemonium. My sword was out and I was bending low. I struck anything that woke up, rolled over, moved, stood up, screamed or ran. I hacked, I cut, I chopped, I smashed, I mutilated. The Gujarat soldiers, still only half-awake and bewildered, held up their hands as protection against our swords. The hands and the heads fell on the ground together. I set the pace and rhythm. My men followed. ‘Say a prayer for me,’ I whispered as I extended myself and smote a frightened and powerless soldier. A diagonal stroke from left of neck to right of waist. A crushing blow from the left shoulder blade that sank down to the thoracic cavity and cleaved the heart. An oblique cut of such grace and power that the head and torso were not aware that they had been severed. An elementary thought crossed my mind as if it were a revelation. An unarmed and unprepared soldier is nothing but a civilian. Rajendra, I promised you two men for every man that was treacherously killed by the Gujarat army under your father’s command. Start counting. I hope to pay you back with compound interest. I am any man’s equal in treachery and deceit. I don’t forget and I don’t forgive offences committed against Mewar. Expect the worst of me. I will always improve upon your expectations.
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