Pralay- The Great Deluge

by Vineet Bajpai

The elegant godmother smiled.

  ‘Our friend Matsya informed us,’ she said simply.

  Manu was confused. ‘Yes I met him. But how...how could he have reached you before I did?’ he asked. ‘I was on a horse and he was on foot. I rode straight to these grey mountains. There is no way he could have gotten here first!’

  The lady grinned, walked up to Manu and touched his cheek lovingly.

  ‘Matsya doesn’t need to reach anywhere, Manu.’

  ‘Sorry I don’t understand, my lady...’ said Manu looking up at her serene face.

  She laughed kindly and turned to leave once again. As she reached the door of the cave she looked back at Manu.

  ‘Matsya doesn’t need to reach anywhere, because he is everywhere, Manu’.

  Banaras, 2017

  THOSE MEN IN WHITE ROBES

  ‘I’m going to kill him, ‘said Sonu, fuming with rage.

  This was the moment Vidyut had been waiting for. Battling for his own life first and then confined to a nursing bed, all Vidyut could think about was the grisly betrayal by his most trusted friend. He needed to know why Bala had stabbed him in the back. He needed to know how Bala was connected to all that was going on around them.

  The lack of answers to these questions was killing him and he wanted to hear everything from Bala. The pain of disloyalty was far more insufferable than the bullets that had torn deep into Vidyut.

  Balvanta pushed open the heavy door of the matth prison.

  Vidyut was still recovering from his grievous injuries and slowly limped in to the dark cell.

  Sonu flicked on the loud switch of an overhead lamp. In a blinding flash it filled a tubular portion of the black space with glaring white light. Under that dazzling light sat the muscular man, tied to a metallic chair. Despite his bondage and the hostile cell, he appeared to be in deep meditation. Not in the familiar yogic way. But like he stood at an altar, his fingers clasped, crossing each other. His head was bowed in reverence.

  Vidyut had never seen this before. In the several years they lived and laughed like brothers, Vidyut had not seen Bala meditate before.

  Who is this man?

  ‘I am going to smash his face into a pulp!’ exclaimed Sonu, as he charged forward towards the tied man. But he stopped midway. Bala had suddenly opened his fiery eyes and stared at Sonu. That was enough to dampen the enthusiasm of the young man. There are few things more chilling than the I-see-you glare of a caged tiger.

  Vidyut walked towards Bala and sat down on the chair across the steel tabletop that separated them. The two old friends, the two brothers joined at the hip, the duo that looked like they could conquer the world, sat staring at each other.

  ‘Why, Bala?’ asked Vidyut.

  Bala looked into Vidyut’s honest eyes for a few seconds, and then burst out laughing. It was the familiar, hearty merriment that Vidyut so loved over the years. Only this time, it was an unsettling laughter.

  It took Bala a minute to compose himself. He was bordering on lunacy, in the way he was acting delirious, though completely unprovoked. Or maybe this was who he really was.

  ‘Why, Bala? Why did you try to kill me?’ asked Vidyut again, unfazed by the display of madness.

  ‘Sorry…? Did you say I tried to kill you?’ retorted Bala, his eyebrows raised in amazement.

  Vidyut stayed quiet. He knew he had got the man to talk.

  ‘Who are you, Vidyut? Are you a God? Are you a devta? Are you some naïve boy or some wicked conjurer?’ hissed Bala in a melodramatic tilting of his head. The cold hate Vidyut had seen in his eyes at the ghaat when Naina overpowered him, was back.

  ‘I tried to kill you, Vidyut? I tried to kill you? An ace marksman who can shoot a pigeon from two hundred meters; who can find the head of an enemy soldier from a mile away; a deadeye who has never missed a target…missed your heart from 8 feet? And you say I tried to kill you??’

  He was right. And Vidyut knew it. Bala was not one to miss his mark from point blank range. He was a trained commando, a shooter par excellence. Almost instantly, an eerie realization dawned upon Vidyut. Bala had purposefully kept Vidyut alive!

  ‘And not just me, Vidyut,’ barked Bala. ‘Even Romi was not going to kill you till the prophesied hour. He had stuffed just enough mercury fulminate into that zippo lighter to injure you. The mercenaries were going to mutilate you, which they couldn’t, but even they were under strict instructions to keep you alive, you devta!’

  ‘Get me some rum, Video…’

  Matth members in that dark chamber scowled at this ridiculous request from their captive.

  ‘Get me some rum and untie my hands, man,’ urged Bala. ‘You know I would not stand a chance in front of you, even with this broken condition you are in.’

  Vidyut gave a weak smile. Bala laughed again. ‘Come on, man. You know I need my drink!’

  Vidyut nodded at Sonu. The young lad let out a groan of protest, followed by a disapproving stare at their prisoner. But he left right away to obey his devta.

  He had gulped down two double shots of rum in less than a minute. Heaving a sigh of relief, Bala poured a third one for himself.

  ‘I was not going to let them kill you, Video,’ said Bala. ‘That was my precondition.’ He was looking straight at Vidyut, with the accustomed sincerity that Vidyut trusted with his life. But he had had enough.

  ‘Aw, shut up, Bala!’ Vidyut exploded.

  ‘You knew what was going on all this time! You knew a master-assassin was after my life. You knew there were trained mercenaries that day at the ghaat. You knew I was not supposed to leave Banaras alive!’

  ‘No, I didn’t!’ Bala barked back. ‘Romi was sent to kill you no doubt, but not just yet. I was told the mercenaries were there to overpower you and capture you. They had assured me that you would live through this episode. You are supposed to live till the prophesied hour!’

  Vidyut could see Bala’s eyes glinting with moisture under the hot, overhead white light.

  ‘I shot you because there was no other way, Vidyut. You are unstoppable and you know that. You crushed over a dozen trained killers in a matter of minutes. What choice did I have? They were watching…’

  There was silence in the dim chamber, which now smelled of strong military grade dark rum.

  Finally Vidyut spoke. ‘Who are they that you keep referring to, Bala? Who are you working for?’

  Bala looked up at Vidyut. The devta notced both amusement as well as mortal fear in his erstwhile friend’s eyes.

  ‘You really don’t know anything, do you, Vidyut?’ asked Bala. His brave eyes were now wide with fear.

  ‘You know nothing about me, Vidyut,’ said Bala, as he washed down his fifth drink. Vidyut permitted him this indulgence, as he wanted Bala to sing.

  ‘I know you for years, Bala. You were like family to me,’ replied the devta.

  ‘Rubbish! You don’t even know where I come from. I was not born into a powerful family of spiritual God-masters like yours, Vidyut. I was born to a bloody nobody!’

  Vidyut was listening. As were Balvanta and Govardhan.

  ‘Coconut climber. That was what my father was - a poor, famished, helpless coconut tree climber, from a remote village in Kerala. We were tribal, Vidyut. Living off the land. Or should I say, dying off the land…’

  Bala took another big gulp from his glass and continued.

  ‘We slept hungry most nights. Or drank a revolting gruel of a local seed soaked overnight in water. We had clothes that barely covered my mother’s dignity. Home was a leaking hut and meat was what we stole from recently dead animal carcasses. It was poverty beyond imagination. It was a sub-human existence. We could enter no places of worship. We were thrashed out of even funeral kitchens. There was no medicine when we fell ill. My little sister died in front of me, rotting on the mud floor with diphtheria. And no one came to help us. We were living and dying worse than animals.’

  The prison cell was quiet. Bala’s eyes were gazing deep into his glass, as if reliving eve
ry horrible moment he was recounting. The gnawing wounds of abject poverty and irreparable loss can only be hidden. They never fully heal.

  ‘And then one day, they came. Those men in white robes, walking straight into our pathetic huts and embracing us like no one had ever done before. They fed us, clothed us and cleaned us. Do you know what it feels like when someone offers you acceptance and hope, after the whole world around you has only subjected you to humiliation and hunger, Vidyut? Of course you don’t! You don’t even know what it is like to stay hungry for three days at a stretch. What would you understand?!’

  Vidyut did not know how to react. Bala was right. Vidyut was not aware of anything about Bala’s childhood beyond perhaps some incidents here and there narrated by Bala himself. Nor did Vidyut have an idea that his friend turned foe’s background was so scarred.

  ‘I did not know all this, Bala. And I can only imagine the pain that you went through. But that still does not explain why you would join forces with murderers and conspirers.’

  ‘Because for once I wanted to be on the winning side!’ screamed Bala, smashing the table with his powerful fist. ‘Don’t you get it, you bloody divine boy - for once I wanted to win, goddammit!’

  The ex-military man was now panting with rage and emotion.

  ‘The day they took my parents and me into their place of worship, the day they told me that God loves me too, the moment they changed our names and welcomed us into their community, I swore I would do anything for them. Live and die for them. Blindly. They were the only ones who spotted talent in me. They were the first to trust me with their secrets, even if that meant my leading their violent missions. Even as I grew up amongst them and sensed a larger, almost unimaginably ambitious design in the whole set-up, I never broke my oath.’

  Suddenly Sonu came rushing into the cell. He was panting. And he appeared nervous.

  ‘Vidyut dada, we need to leave. Now. The grandmaster has summoned us all in full strength to the outer periphery of the matth.’

  Balvanta, who was standing in a corner all this while, turned to Sonu. ‘What is the matter, son?’

  Sonu looked like he was going to suffer from an acute anxiety attack any time. He was now perspiring profusely.

  ‘He is here, Balvanta dada…’ said Sonu, as he swallowed a visible lump in his throat.

  Balvanta and Govardhan had barely exchanged glances, when a dull, rumbling din made the floor under their feet tremble. This was followed by a rhythmic, sky-shattering thunder of metal clashing in a distance.

  DDHAAKK! DDHAAKK!

  THWANNG! THWANNG!

  DDHAAKK! DDHAAKK!

  THWANNG! THWANNG!

  Vidyut was completely bewildered. He looked at Balvanta and Sonu enquiringly. At this very moment, Bala broke into a wild and nervous laughter. ‘He is here! He is here!’ he started chanting feverishly.

  DDHAAKK! DDHAAKK! THWANNG! THWANNG!

  DDHAAKK! DDHAAKK! THWANNG! THWANNG!

  The noise grew louder, as Vidyut saw the faces of Balvanta and Sonu distort with fear and anger. He knew something was not right. If his great grandfather had summoned all his physical and spiritual troops to the matth’s outer sanctum, something was really, really not right.

  ‘What is it, Balvanta dada?’ yelled Vidyut above the maddening roar of the thuds and twangs.

  Balvanta paced hurriedly towards Vidyut to help him up. As he struggled to get back to his feet, Vidyut noticed Bala had gone into a trance again. His bald head was sweating under the gleaming light and his eyes were rolled up completely, showing only a sliver of white. He looked like a goblin in demonic penance.

  ‘It is him, Vidyut. The most threatening creature in all of Banaras. In fact the most dangerous demon left.’

  As Sonu tied Bala’s hands again and they prepared to leave to join the great matthadheesh, Vidyut turned to Balvanta again.

  ‘Who is it, Balvanta dada? Who are you referring to with such fear and awe?’

  Balvanta looked at Vidyut and explained in one sentence.

  ‘It is who Dwarka Shastri ji believes to be the last raakshasa on planet Earth.’

  Vidyut was straining himself to grasp every word Balvanta was uttering. He had heard of himself being called the last devta. But the last raakshasa??

  ‘He has come with his six hundred and sixty six manic followers,’ continued Balvanta.

  ‘It is none other than the ruler of the smashaans (cremation grounds); the deity of the dead; the maha-taantric – Trijat Kapaalik!’

  Banks of the Indus, West of Harappa, 1700 BCE

  THE DEATH OF EVERY SON

  ‘Think again, O great a-devta,’ asked Sura again. ‘Is this really what you want?’

  ‘Yes, I am sure,’ replied the rusty, cruel voice. ‘I drew the maps for the mountains of brick and bronze with my own hands. A minor variation in the construction plan will alter the course of the Saraswati completely. And the glorious city of Harappa will be wiped out forever, cleansing Prithvi of all its maleficent inhabitants.’

  Prachanda was skeptical of all that he had heard so far. It was their dreaded archrival, the tallest commander of the Harappan armies, the demi-God that had vanquished them in battle – sitting in their tent, asking for assistance in what was going to go down in legends and folklore as the most ruthless undertaking in the history of time. The only thing that was compelling him to believe the incidents narrated by Vivasvan Pujari was his inhuman condition. No ordinary man could have survived such pitiless punishing of the body.

  ‘For a moment suppose we agree to help you, and put our armies and beasts at your disposal. What then? What is in it for us?’ asked Prachanda. ‘What use would we have for a vast graveyard?’

  Vivasvan Pujari looked up at Prachanda with unhidden disdain. The man once known as the Surya of Harappa, was not accustomed to debates with lesser men. Sura sensed this tension. Without a moment’s delay he intervened.

  ‘All Prachanda means to enquire, O great Avivasvan Pujari, is that once such large swathes of Aryavarta are swept away in a deluge, what will I have left to rule over? What use is an empire without its subjects?’

  The fallen devta was quiet for a moment. He then responded, systematically and clearly. He knew what the Asura wanted to hear.

  ‘You can call it an empire without subjects, or you can look at it as being the unquestioned ruler of the world’s most fertile lands. Lands that you can then populate as you like, build into cities as you please and rule over under your own order. Isn’t that what you always wanted, Sura?’

  The demon king was pleased to hear these words. This was indeed what he always wanted.

  He ate flesh of a roasted goat right from the bone and glugged down several skull-fulls of the Asuras’ dark wine. Vivasvan Pujari had never tasted meat or touched an intoxicant before in his life. He was now making every effort to forget who he was. He was slowly killing the devta in him. And feeding the beast.

  ‘There is one more offering we will need from you, O a-devta,’ said Prachanda carefully, as they dined together over a feast of meats and liquors.

  Vivasvan raised his bloodshot eye to look at both Sura and his military chief.

  ‘You are going to get everything anyway. The lands, the rivers, the ruins, the treasures…what more can you want?’ he asked.

  ‘A-Saptarishi,’ said Sura suddenly, referring to the holy Seven Sages.

  And then he said something Vivasvan Pujari was hoping never to hear.

  ‘We want the heads of the Asaptarishi.’

  ‘Our victory will never be complete unless the Asaptarishi meet with the same fate as every Harappan,’ explained Sura to a shocked Vivasvan.

  ‘This cannot be,’ replied the wounded devta. ‘You will have your kingdom. Your empire will span all of Aryavarta. You will rule almost the entire known world, Sura. Leave the Saptarishi alone.’

  ‘We both know that as long as those tricksters are alive, my rule over Harappa will never be guaranteed. These sages govern the rivers, they d
irect the winds, they speak to the beasts and even the mountains crumble as per their will. No, Avivasvan, we must kill them.’

  ‘Enough, Sura! This is not a discussion that I am willing to indulge in. The Saptarishi are not warriors. They cannot defeat your massive armies. They are simple sages with no interest in the material world. And above all, they are the proverbial sons of the Saraswati. God knows what devastating destruction will strike Aryavarta if we try to harm them,’ explained Vivasvan Pujari, assertively and logically. The truth was that in his heart he loved the Saptarishi deeply. They were the last thread connecting him to the Creator.

  Prachanda knew Sura well enough to know that his king wanted him to be the tough negotiator now. He decided to up the ante.

  ‘And why are you so protective of these sages, O great a-devta? What have they ever done for you?’ taunted the commander of the Asura army.

  ‘Careful, Prachanda,’ replied Vivasvan, without looking up from his plate.

  ‘No really, what affection do they have for you? Would you have been in this pitiable state if they were with you? Would your family have been murdered like dogs if the Saptarishi cared even one bit…’

  Even before Prachanda could complete his sentence, the devta had pounced across the regal dining table, drawn his ominous blade and stuck it against the throat of Sura’s military chief. The blue lapis lazuli handle of his dagger was smeared with his own perpetual bleeding.

  ‘Not a word about the Saptarishi! Not a word about my family!’ hissed Vivasvan Pujari threateningly into Prachanda’s ears.

  ‘My apologies, O mighty a-devta. Prachanda is a fool,’ said Sura politely, as he gently held Vivasvan Pujari’s arm and slowly moved it away from Prachanda’s jugular.

  This is no ordinary man, as I always knew. He is surrounded by thousands of my troops, but he is fearless as a lion.

  The men once again took their seats and Vivasvan Pujari slid back his powerful battle-knife into its scabbard. Prachanda thanked his stars. He knew he had come an inch close to meeting his evil maker.