The Rise of Sivagami : Book 1 of Baahubali - Before the Beginning

by Anand Neelakantan

  The dogs’ barking had become increasingly frenzied, and Jeemotha could sense that the pack was approaching them. The oracle was clearly in no mood to bring things to a close though, and kept on muttering his mantras. Jeemotha was tempted to take the rooster from his hand and cut its head. He was sweating from all pores and the humidity was unbearable. Mosquitoes buzzed around him and made a feast of his legs.

  Finally, it was over, and with a shriek that shook the birds out of the nearby trees, Nanjunda cut the head of the rooster. Even the king of Kadarimandalam must have woken up from his sleep, Jeemotha cursed. He did not wait for the oracle to apply the blood on their foreheads. He could see someone in the village had already woken up and emerged from his hut. Drawing his sword from its sheath, Jeemotha ran, jumping over the twitching, headless body of the rooster. He could hear the heavy feet of his men following him.

  The dogs had found them and were now giving chase. The first dog that attacked found itself headless in a trice as Jeemotha ran, swinging his sword, towards the village. The rest of the dogs scattered, running in circles, keeping a safe distance from the attacking men. His men were screaming at the top of their voices now, intending to frighten the villagers. The village guard who was sleeping under a banyan tree did not even have time to see who killed him. Jeemotha grabbed the lamp that was burning in front of a stone serpent under the tree and flung it on the nearest roof. He then threw the stone idol into a nearby hut and someone screamed. The hut where he had flung the lamp burst into flames.

  Before the villagers could understand what was happening, Jeemotha and his men had started their work. Fire spread over thatched roofs, leaping into the sky and arcing over trees. Men and women screamed and ran out of their huts. Jeemotha shouted his orders, ‘Surround, attack, and do not spare any of the men.’

  Smoke billowed from the huts. Some men came out with sticks, sickles and axes, desperate to defend their village. Jeemotha’s men had done this a hundred times before, though. They knew how to use the shadows to their advantage, how to play with fire, how to trip men and hack their heads and limbs before they could blink. The oracle had let loose the animals from the stables. It was a practised act to create pandemonium. He bit the tails of the bulls and buffaloes he could find, enraging them. Panic-stricken due to the smell of smoke and the rising heat, the animals ran helter-skelter. They crashed into mud houses, smashed the carts parked on the streets, and stomped on anyone that came in their way.

  By dawn, the village had ceased to exist. Fire had licked away almost the entire hamlet and only a few huts remained, partially collapsed and smouldering. More than two hundred lay dead and Jeemotha had managed to tie up all the women and children. They were too scared to cry. Some whimpered in fear, some were in too much shock for even that. When a baby bawled, its mother hurriedly clasped its mouth. Corpses littered the alleys and streets.

  The young women and girls were separated from the boys and old women. Jeemotha’s men rubbed their hands in glee, eyeing the young women with lust. Wails rose from hundreds of throats and the old women started pleading with and cursing them in turn. The boys were separated from their mothers and cried for them.

  Jeemotha shouted, ‘Silence!’, and except for the chirping of the morning birds and a few crows that were cawing near the dead bodies, everyone went still.

  ‘I do not want any rapes; anyone touching a woman inappropriately will have his hand cut off,’ Jeemotha said from where he was sitting under the banyan tree. Keera tried to protest, but Jeemotha ignored him. The women watched him with no abatement in their hatred and fear.

  ‘Strip them,’ he said, and a huge cry arose from the women. Some started running, but his men caught all of them. A few tried to resist, some bit, some scratched, but soon his men had stripped the women of all their clothes. The women desperately tried to hide their nudity. Some of the grown boys tried to run to their mothers, but a sword or two thrust through a few daring hearts made both the boys and the women quiet.

  Jeemotha’s men tied the women together, their hands fastened behind their back. They were made to stand in a line. Jeemotha inspected them as he walked from one end of the line to another. He was not interested in their bodily charms. They hung their heads in shame as he weighed their breasts or the firmness of their stomach or buttocks. Some spat on him, some cried. Jeemotha was unconcerned. For him, they were like cattle. He felt no stirrings between his legs; his mind was busy calculating how much each would fetch. Not bad for a night’s work, he concluded, when he finished his inspection.

  Once he was done assessing the women and girls, he walked up to the boys. They were sturdy, most of them at least. He asked the few weak ones to stand in a separate line, and ordered the rest to be stripped and tied together. The boys who had been excluded looked at him with some hope.

  Jeemotha ordered the chained women, girls and boys to start walking. One of his men started herding them towards the ship. A few of his men had piled up the clothes of the women and boys in a corner. He asked the remaining, weaker boys to pull all the bodies of their slain kin to one place. The old women started wailing as their grandsons began dragging their sons’ inert bodies.

  When the bodies were piled up and the clothes spread over them, Jeemotha pulled a burning ember from a hut and threw it into the mound.

  ‘What to do with the old hags?’ Keera asked with a grin.

  In answer, Jeemotha pulled out his sword and cleanly cut the first boy near him into two. Kicking away the twitching half near him, he said, ‘Is this your first bloody raid, motherfucker?’

  He wiped the blood on Keera’s shoulders and put the sword back in its sheath. He started walking as the cries of women and boys rose behind him. The rooster had been worth it. The gods had started smiling down on him again. He would try to treat the oracle with more respect henceforth.

  In the light of the torches, he could see the naked backs of women glistening with sweat as they were led towards his ship. It was such a beautiful sight. He was going to be rich again. First, though, he would have to find good clothes for them. He had sneaked into a vassal kingdom of Mahishmathi, and had kidnapped the inhabitants. Nothing must give away their origin when he went to make a sale.

  Not that anyone would bother once he was able to smuggle them inside Mahishmathi after greasing a few palms. But there were some officials who were yet to wisen up, who thought honesty would feed them when they got old. Most of them understood how things had to work before their hair turned grey, but there were always a few… Such people either got killed or ‘promoted’ to positions where they would not have to deal with intelligent men like Jeemotha.

  Jeemotha chuckled at the thought. A few more such operations, and he would be ready to settle down. Maybe he would buy some recognition from a king. Maybe the post of a bhoomipathi or nanaka, in Mahishmathi or somewhere else. There was no honour in doing that, his father would have said, but he had killed that nincompoop long ago.

  His father had been a good-for-nothing soldier for Mahishmathi, and had lost both his hands and a leg in some bloody war when Jeemotha was barely five. Until his mother died, his father used to crawl around in the house. The petty compensation the government had given him had run out long before Jeemotha was six. He did not want to think about his home. What had his father gained by serving the country?

  Jeemotha was also serving his country, albeit in a different manner. And see who has been more successful, useless old man, he thought.

  The bitch in Mahishmathi would haggle for the women, but ultimately she would have to pay a good price. And the dwarf too. The boys seemed healthy. They should fetch enough to make him rich.

  When the last of the captives had boarded, he walked into the swaying ship. The eastern sky was a palette of colours. Gauriparvat turned blue-black from blue, then to grey and soon to red. Nanjunda was tinkling a bell and chanting some mantras loudly. Behind him the captives were sobbing. The ‘hey-ho’ shouts of his people shoving the ship with huge poles towards
the centre of the river was music to his ears. The sun poured blood over the holy peak. A lark screeched above him.

  The oracle was right. Faith could work miracles. He turned towards Gauriparvat and folded his hands in prayer. Next time, instead of a rooster, he would sacrifice a boy for the oracle’s god. He bit his tongue—it was his god too. It felt good to be pious. The sail unfurled and the rowers pulled harder at the oars to speed up the ship.

  Just then, he thought he heard something from the bank on the starboard side. As the ship picked up speed, he stared into the bushes. Was someone watching him? Then he chuckled. No arrow could reach his ship. He was too far from the shore. It might be some boy or girl who had escaped the raid. Jeemotha laughed. What harm could they do? No one could touch Jeemotha now. His luck had changed.

  A cuckoo’s call came from the starboard side and, after a moment’s silence, another cuckoo answered from the port side. As the ship moved on, the calls kept following them.

  ‘Swami, that sounds unnatural,’ Keera said.

  Jeemotha listened. Another cuckoo call.

  ‘The birds are in heat,’ Jeemotha shrugged, and Keera smiled, showing his brown teeth.

  ‘I am too. If you permit, I can…’ He eyed the naked women and wet his lips with his tongue.

  ‘Keera,’ Jeemotha smiled, and Keera smiled back.

  ‘Yes, swami?’

  ‘I love fishing.’

  ‘I know, swami.’

  ‘Do you know the best bait that can tempt the biggest of fish?’ Jeemotha said, and slowly pulled out his dagger from his waistband. He ran a finger over its sharp edge. Keera was silent. The crew was looking at them. In a flash, Jeemotha grabbed Keera by his neck and pulled his sailor’s face inches away from his own. He enjoyed the look of terror in Keera’s eyes. Jeemotha lifted his arm, and then swung his dagger down at Keera’s belly. Keera screamed. Jeemotha smiled.

  Keera looked down. Jeemotha’s dagger tip was a hair’s breadth away from his manhood. Keera’s eyes bulged in terror and he gulped. The pirate pressed the dagger above Keera’s crotch.

  ‘This is the best bait for fish, Keera. Should I fish today?’

  ‘N…no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘B…because…’

  ‘Because…’ Jeemotha pressed the tip of the dagger on Keera’s skin and twisted it. A drop of blood stained Keera’s dirty dhoti. Gripped by fear, Keera passed water and Jeemotha could feel the warm liquid touching his feet. He crinkled his nose at the pungent smell of urine.

  ‘Time you carry a pot between your legs, whoreson. Now tell me, because…?’

  ‘B…because…a good merchant…’

  ‘Hmm, a good merchant?’ Jeemotha pulled Keera closer.

  ‘A g…good merchant never eats from his ware.’

  ‘You are a fast learner. Maybe I will not fish today.’ Jeemotha pushed Keera away and he fell on his back on the deck. Jeemotha’s men laughed until he stared at them. They looked down and got busy with whatever they had been doing. After a moment, Jeemotha burst out laughing, slapping his palm on the casks tied on the deck. Soon, except for the sobbing women and children, everyone was laughing. Even Keera. The cuckoo calls continued to come from both banks.

  ‘Fuck the cuckoos,’ Jeemotha said, and everyone howled with laughter again. Two of his crew rolled a casket of palm toddy onto the deck. Jeemotha slapped Keera’s back and the assistant grinned like a monkey. Pots of toddy were passed from hand to hand and Jeemotha lost count of how many swigs he had taken. His crew sang raunchy songs about the old maid of the clove island, who went to the forest in search of her buffalo and got caught by the king of bears. The bear wanted to marry the girl, but so did all the other bears in the forest. Each line was more bawdy than the other, and howls of laughter followed when Keera started enacting the lyrics with lewd gestures.

  Jeemotha spotted the oracle and saw that he was not taking part in the celebrations. ‘What is wrong with you, holy man? Did Yama take your father?’ he asked.

  ‘Laugh not, for she is coming.’

  ‘Who? Your mother?’ Jeemotha said and laughed, spitting up some toddy in the process. ‘You shrunken coconut, you make me laugh so much.’ He hit his head with his palm as he coughed and spluttered.

  ‘I can see her. I can see the future. Laugh not,’ the oracle said as another cuckoo call was answered.

  ‘Oh, the great oracle Nanjunda is scared of a few cuckoos. Come on, take a mouthful of this toddy and you will be dancing with the rest of us,’ Jeemotha said, offering his pot to the holy man.

  The oracle turned to the drunken pirate and said, ‘Fool, don’t you even know that it is not spring, and cuckoos do not mate now? It is her.’

  The pot fell from Jeemotha’s hands and shattered on the deck. Another cuckoo call was answered followed by yet another. He could not believe his own stupidity.

  ‘Get back to work!’ he screamed at his crew, and his men hurried away. From either bank, the cuckoo calls went on relentlessly. It is her, it is her, they seemed to say.

  For some strange reason, his captives had stopped crying.

  They knew.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Kattappa

  The rain had petered off to a drizzle. Kattappa stood in the clearing where they had dumped him. It was pitch-dark and the ground was wet under his feet. He tried to make sense of where he was. Lightning split the sky then and he saw he was standing before a fierce-looking stone statue of Amma Kali. Like many tribal worship places, there was an iron trident with withered lemons on its tips, stuck into the ground infront of the idol. A stone pedestal for sacrifices was placed near it. As darkness descended again, Kattappa’s heart skipped a beat—a ritualistic sacrifice place.

  ‘Kattappa.’

  A voice boomed around him. Kattappa turned on his heels. He could not place where the voice had come from.

  ‘Kattappa.’

  This time the voice seemed to come from the other side of the jungle.

  ‘Who are you, coward? Come out in the open and fight,’ Kattappa screamed.

  The forest shook with laughter. ‘Fight?’ the voice asked, this time from behind the Kali statue. Kattappa ran to the rear of the statue, wincing in pain as his injured heels touched the ground. There was no one. Lightning cracked again. Laughter echoed around him.

  ‘You are going to die, Kattappa.’ This time the voice came from the opposite side.

  ‘You could have killed me when you caught me and carried me through the forest,’ Kattappa yelled as he inched towards the trident. He was trying to keep his opponent talking.

  ‘We are going to kill you the way we kill wild boar,’ the voice said, this time from his left.

  ‘But why? What have I done to you?’ Kattappa was only a few feet from the trident now.

  ‘You stopped us from killing that dog Bijjala. You killed our people, Kattappa. For that, you have to die.’

  A streak of lightning traced its path through the horizon and this time Kattappa saw a figure to his right, a score feet away. He dove, pulled the trident from the ground, and threw it at the figure in one swift motion. The trident pierced its chest and it fell down. Kattappa limped over quickly to the fallen figure. Lightning cracked open the sky again and he saw the mud-pot head of a scarecrow grinning at him from the ground. The trident had cut through its straw body and buried itself into the ground.

  The forest shook with laughter, mocking him. Kattappa pulled the trident out and screamed, ‘Cowards, come out and fight if you are men.’ The forest went silent. It was pitch-dark again. When eyes fail to see, ears have to become eyes—Kattappa remembered his father’s words during his training.

  ‘Kattappa, this is how we hunt wild boar,’ the voice said, and Kattappa swirled on his feet. He shifted the trident from one hand to the other and stood ready. How do they hunt boar? His mind raced, trying to estimate the direction of the impending attack. A stake came whooshing towards him from the jungle. He smacked it with his trident in mid-air, just in
ches from his neck. The wooden stake splintered. He had not been fast enough, he thought; he had been lucky this time. He stood still, listening for the slightest movement of air.

  ‘Impressive,’ the voice said, from another direction now. ‘But that was close, much too close…ha ha…to your neck. Now try this.’

  Kattappa blocked the next stake that came at him and the two that followed in quick succession. He leaned on the trident and panted. They gave him no time to catch his breath. The air filled with the sounds of stakes hurtling towards him from all directions. He twisted and turned, smacking, splintering and breaking whatever came to him. Every nerve of his body was alert, every part became his eyes. The trident swirled like the wheels of a racing chariot, forming a shield in motion around Kattappa.

  He turned around, yelling at the top of his voice, but he knew it was a losing battle. His injured legs were making him slow, and he was panting for breath. A slight dip in concentration or in the speed of his hands would result in one or more stakes piercing his chest. A few had already grazed his legs and shoulders, making him bleed. He could hold the attack off no more; what strength he had remaining was seeping out of him. He spun, wheezing for breath, waving his trident at invisible enemies, his mouth frozen mid-scream, and then collapsed. He heard the thud of his face hitting the ground. His right ear filled with sticky clay and his face felt warm with the prickle of wet grass. ‘Wet, it smells wet, death smells wet,’ he mumbled incoherently before his eyes closed.

  When he woke up, the first thing he saw were faces. Dark faces with strange tattoos on them were staring down at him. The forest was alive with the chirping of birds, and light streamed in through the gaps in the canopies, drawing curious patterns on the faces around him. He tried to get up and cried out. The pain was back in his legs. It felt good to be alive, though. He looked down and saw that he was lying on a crude bamboo cot.