by Amish
Veerini walked up to her husband and placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘What are you thinking?’
Daksha pulled back from his wife. Veerini frowned. Then she noticed Daksha’s hands. He was holding an amulet that showed his chosen-tribe, the self-declared ranking within the caste hierarchy that is adopted by young men and women. It was a subordinate rank, a lowly goat. Many Kshatriyas felt that the goat chosen-tribe was so low that it did not entitle its members to be considered complete Kshatriyas. In Daksha’s case it was his father Brahmanayak who had selected his chosen-tribe, clearly reflecting his contempt for his son.
‘What’s the matter, Daksha?’
‘Why does she think I’m a monster? I got rid of her son for her own good. And we didn’t abandon Ganesh. He was well taken care of in Panchavati. And how can she imagine that I would even think of getting her husband killed? It wasn’t me.’
Veerini stayed silent. Now was not the time to confront her husband with the truth. Had he wanted to, he could have saved Chandandhwaj, Sati’s first husband. Daksha may not have got the killing done through commission, but he was complicit by omission. However, weak people never admit that they are responsible for their own state. They always blame either circumstances or others.
‘I’m saying once again, Daksha, let’s forget everything,’ said Veerini. ‘You have achieved all you wanted to. You are the Emperor of India. We cannot live in Panchavati anymore. We lost that opportunity long ago. Kali and Ganesh despise us. And I don’t blame them for it. Let us take sanyas, retreat to the Himalayas and live out the rest of our lives in peace and meditation. We will die with the name of the Lord on our lips.’
‘I will not run away!’
‘Daksha...’
‘Everything is clear to me now. I needed the Neelkanth to conquer Swadweep. He has now served his purpose. Sati will be back once he’s gone and we will be happy again.’
A horrified Veerini stared at her husband. ‘Daksha, what in Lord Ram’s name are you thinking?’
‘I can set everything right by...’
‘Trust me, the best thing to do is to leave all this alone. You should never even have tried to become emperor. You can still be happy if...’
‘Never tried to become emperor? What nonsense! I am the emperor. Not just of Meluha, but of India. You think some barbarian with a blue throat can defeat me? That a chillum-smoking, uncouth ingrate is going to take my family away from me?’
Veerini held her head in despair.
‘I made him,’ said Daksha. ‘And I will finish him.’
‘My Lord,’ exclaimed Parshuram. ‘Look.’
Shiva turned to look towards the dense forests beyond the palm tree clearing.
In the distance, they saw a sudden flight of birds flying off into the sky, obviously disturbed by massive movement. The approaching mass was effortlessly pushing trees aside as it forged through the forest.
‘They’re here,’ said Nandi.
Shiva turned around and spoke loudly. ‘Ganesh, lower the boats.’
Having left a majority of the soldiers onboard, Shiva and his entourage of two hundred were already at the clearing when enormous elephants burst through the jungle. They wore intricately carved, ceremonial forehead gear made of gold. The human handlers of the elephants, or mahouts, sat just behind the beasts’ heads and were secured into their position with ropes. They were covered from head to toe in cane armour, which protected them from the whiplash of the branches that the elephants effortlessly pushed aside. With the aid of gentle prodding with their feet as well as the hand-held hooks called ankush, the mahouts expertly guided the elephants into the clearing. Firmly secured on the backs of the elephants were large, strong wooden howdahs fashioned to extend horizontally from the sides of the animals. Completely covered from all sides, they afforded protection to the people inside. Angled slats allowed access to air and a side door to the howdahs facilitated entry.
Shiva’s eyes were fixed on the first elephant in the line. As it halted, the side door flung open and a rope ladder was flung down. A tall and lanky Pandit clad in a saffron dhoti and angvastram, climbed down. As soon as the Pandit’s feet touched the ground he turned towards Shiva, his hands folded in a respectful Namaste. He had a flowing white beard and a long silvery mane. His wizened face, calm eyes and gentle smile showed a deep understanding of true wisdom. The wisdom of sat-chit-anand, of truth-consciousness-bliss; the unrelenting bliss of having one’s consciousness and mind drowned in truth.
‘Namaste, Panditji,’ said Shiva. ‘It’s an honour to finally meet the Chief Vasudev.’
‘Namaste, great Mahadev,’ said Gopal politely. ‘Believe me, the honour is all mine. I have lived for this moment.’
Shiva stepped forward and embraced Gopal. The surprised Chief Vasudev responded tentatively at first, and then returned the embrace as the open-heartedness of the Neelkanth made him smile.
Shiva stepped back and looked at the large number of men and elephants waiting patiently. ‘It’s a little crowded, isn’t it?’
Gopal smiled. ‘This is a small clearing, great Mahadev. We don’t really meet too many people.’
‘Well, let’s climb aboard your elephants and leave for Ujjain.’
‘Certainly,’ said Gopal as he gestured towards his men.
The howdahs were surprisingly spacious and could seat up to eight people in relative comfort. The carriage with Gopal and Shiva also carried Sati, Ganesh, Kartik, Brahaspati, Nandi and Parshuram.
‘I hope your journey was comfortable,’ said Gopal.
‘Yes, it certainly was,’ said Shiva, before pointing towards Ganesh. ‘My son guided us well.’
‘The Lord of the People has the reputation of a wise man,’ agreed Gopal. ‘And stories of the warrior spirit of your other son Kartik have already reached our ears.’
Kartik acknowledged the compliment with a slight nod and folded his hands into a respectful Namaste.
‘Panditji, is it because of the distance that it takes us a day to reach Ujjain, or is it the density of the forest?’ asked Shiva.
‘A bit of both, great Neelkanth. We have not built any roads from the clearing on the Chambal into the city of Ujjain. We do not really meet a lot of people. But when we do need to travel, we have well-trained elephants that make it possible for us.’
The people sitting in the howdahs had got used to the sounds of foliage crashing and scraping against the outside of the closed carriage. It had been a long and steady ride, due to which their attention was immediately drawn when the sounds stopped.
Gopal spoke up before any of them could make enquiries. ‘We’re here.’
As he said this, Gopal pressed a lever to his left. Hydraulic action made three sides of the howdah, the left, right and rear, slowly collapse outwards. Support pillars on the sides remained strong and held the howdah roof up. Horizontal metal railings ensured no passenger fell out. But none were paying attention to the engineering behind the howdah. They were all transfixed by Ujjain, the city that conquers pride.
The entirely circular city had been laid out within a giant, perfect-square clearing in the dense forest. A sturdy ring of stones, almost ten feet in depth and thirty feet in height, ran around the city; a strong and effective fort wall. The Shipra River, a tributary of the Chambal, which flowed along Ujjain, had been channelled into a moat around the walls. The moat followed the dimensions of the forest clearing. Therefore, the circular city was enclosed within a square moat. The moat was infested with crocodiles. The elephants ambled slowly towards the moat, where much to everyone’s surprise, there did not appear to be any bridge.
Shiva had seen many forts across India with retractable drawbridges across their moats. These moats provided effective defence against the siege engines that an enemy used to attack a city’s fort walls. He expected the elephants to stop and wait till the drawbridge was lowered. But neither did the elephants stop nor was there any sign of a drawbridge being lowered. Instead, there were twenty armed men who stood o
n the raised embankments which ran around the moat. As the elephants neared, two men stepped back and pushed hard on what appeared like cobbled ground. A button, the size of a stone block, depressed into the embankment with a soft hiss. This in turn triggered a part of the ground, just before the embankment, to slide sideways, revealing broad, gentle steps descending deep into the earth. The steps led to a well-lit tunnel which the elephants entered. The Vasudev guards went down on their knees in obeisance to the Neelkanth.
Kartik looked at Ganesh, smiling. ‘What a brilliant idea, dada!’
‘Yes. Instead of building a bridge over the moat they have built a tunnel underneath it. And the door to the tunnel merges completely into the cobbled ground, thus being effectively camouflaged.’
‘The entire ground around the moat is cobbled. This will prevent animal tracks from appearing around the tunnel entries.’
‘Unless an enemy knows exactly where the entrance is, he can never find a way to cross the moat and enter the city.’
Nandi looked at Gopal. ‘Your tribe is brilliant, Panditji.’
Gopal smiled politely.
As the elephants moved towards the city gates, the passengers noticed large geometric patterns along the walls. They were a series of concentric circles boxed within a single perfect square that skirted the outermost circle. It seemed to symbolise the aerial layout of Ujjain. The circular fort wall of the city was not an accident but the culmination of what the Vasudevs believed was the perfect geometric design.
‘We have built the entire city in the form of a mandal,’ said Gopal.
‘What is the mandal, Panditji?’ asked Shiva.
‘It’s a symbolic representation of an approach to spirituality.’
‘How so?’
‘The square boundary of the moat symbolises Prithvi, the land we live on. It is represented by a square that is bound on four sides, just like our land which is also bound by the four directions. The space within the square represents Prakriti or nature, as the land that we live on is uncultured and a wild jungle. Within it, the path of consciousness is the path of the Parmatma, which is represented by the circle.’
‘Why a circle?’
‘The Parmatma is the supreme soul. It is infinite. And if you want to represent infinity through a geometric pattern, you cannot do better than with a circle. It has no beginning. It has no end. You cannot add another side to it. You cannot remove a side from it. It is perfect. It is infinity.’
Shiva smiled.
A bird’s eye view of Ujjain would show that within the circular fort wall, there were five tree-lined ring roads that had been laid out in concentric circles. The outermost road skirted the fort walls. The remaining four were arranged in concentric circles of decreasing diameter. The smallest ring road circled the massive Vishnu temple at the centre of the city. Twenty paved radial roads extended in straight lines from the outermost ring road to the innermost.
These roads effectively divided Ujjain into five zones. The outermost zone, between the fourth and the fifth ring road, had massive wooden stables for various domesticated animals such as cows and horses. The pride of place was occupied by the thousands of well-trained elephants. The next zone, between the third and the fourth ring road, was for the residences of the novices and trainees. It also housed their schools, markets and entertainment districts. The zone between the second and the third ring road housed the Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras amongst the Vasudevs. The one between the first and the second ring road housed the Brahmins, the community which administered the tribe of Vasudevs. And within the first ring road, in the heart of the city, was the holiest place in Ujjain, their central temple.
The temple was made of black bricks and was what had appeared as a ‘hill’ to Shiva from the Chambal. Entirely man-made, this temple was in the shape of a perfect, inverted cone, with its base in a circle, supported by a thousand pillars running along its circumference. The conical temple was completely hollow inside and rose in ever smaller circles to reach its peak at a height of a gigantic two hundred metres. A central pillar, made of hard granite, had been erected within the temple, to support the massive weight of the ceiling. A giant cupola, made of black limestone, had been placed at the apex of the temple. Weighing almost forty tonnes, the cupola had been rolled onto the top of the temple by using elephants to pull the stone over a twenty-kilometre long gradual incline. It was the remnants of this incline that Shiva had seen at the Chambal.
Of course, Shiva and his entourage were yet to see this grandeur. As the elephants emerged from the tunnel onto the outer ring road along the inner fort wall, all eyes fell upon the vision that was impossible to miss from any part of Ujjain: the Vishnu temple at the centre. The entire entourage stared in wonder at the awe-inspiring sight. Only Brahaspati voiced what everyone felt within.
‘Wow!’
Chapter 7
An Eternal Partnership
Shiva’s entourage had been housed in Ujjain’s Brahmin zone, abutting the central Vishnu temple. After a comfortable night’s rest, Shiva had just finished breakfast with his family when a Vasudev pandit came over and then escorted him to the Vishnu temple. Shiva had a meeting with Gopal in the morning.
The simple grandeur of the massive Vishnu temple became even more apparent as Shiva approached it. It was built on a circular platform, of polished granite stones that were fixed together using metal. Contiguous holes and channels were drilled into stones and then molten metal poured into them; as the metal solidified, it bound the stones together in an unbreakable grip. Although expensive, this technique ensured strength as compared to the stones being bound together by mortar. There were no carvings on the platform at all, in keeping with its simplicity. In fact, statues and carvings would have been an unnecessary distraction given the marvel of engineering that the structure itself was. Steps had been chiselled all along the sides of the circular platform so that visitors could approach the great seventh Vishnu, Lord Ram, from all directions.
A thousand cylindrical pillars made of granite stood atop the platform, their bases buried deep. Lathe machines powered by elephants had achieved perfect evenness and uniform solidity in the pillars, which allowed them to efficiently bear the weight of the conical spire on top. The massive black-stone spire looked as smooth from up close as from a distance. Each stone block was of the same dimension, fitted in perfectly and polished smooth. A giant cupola made of black limestone had been placed on top of the spire. The Vasudev pandit remained silent as he watched Shiva climb the steps of the temple in wonder.
As he entered the main temple, he noticed that the spire was completely hollow from the inside, giving a magnificent view of the giant conical ceiling that enveloped a cavernous hall. This temple, unlike the others that Shiva had seen in India, did not have a separate sanctum sanctorum. The inside of the temple was an open, communal place of worship. The ceiling was ablaze with paintings in bright colours depicting the life of Lord Ram: his birth, his education, his exile and eventual triumphant return. Large frescoes on a prominent wall were devoted to the Lord’s life after ascending the throne of Ayodhya; his real enemies, the wars he waged against them, his intense relationship with his inspirational wife, Lady Sita, and his founding of Meluha.
A giant pillar made of white granite stood in the centre of the hall. It was almost two hundred metres high, extending all the way to the top of the conical spire. Shiva was aware that granite was amongst the hardest stones known to man and extremely difficult to carve; hence he was surprised to see the detailed carvings on the pillar. They were giant images of Lord Ram and Lady Sita. Dressed simply, with no royal ornaments or crowns, they wore plain hand-spun cotton, the clothes of the poorest of the poor. These were the garments worn by the divine couple during their fourteen-year exile, most of it in dense jungles. Even more intriguing was the absence of Lord Lakshman and Lord Hanuman, who were normally included in all depictions of the seventh Vishnu. Lady Sita held his right hand from below, as if in support.
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��Why has the worst phase of their life been chosen for depiction?’ asked Shiva. ‘This was when they had been banished from Ayodhya, when Lady Sita was later kidnapped by the demonic King Ravan and Lord Ram fought a fierce battle to rescue her.’
The Vasudev pandit smiled. ‘Lord Ram had said that even if his entire life was forgotten, this phase, the one that he had spent in exile along with his wife, his brother and his follower Hanuman, should be remembered by all. For he believed that this was the period that had made him who he was.’
Gopal stood close to the base of the central pillar. Next to him were two ceremonial chairs, one at the feet of the statue of Lady Sita and the other at the feet of Lord Ram. A small ritual fire burned between the two chairs. The presence of the purifying Lord Agni, the God of Fire, signified that no lies could pass between those who sat on either side. Many Vasudev pandits stood patiently behind Gopal.
Gopal bowed to Shiva and joined his hands in a respectful Namaste. ‘A Vasudev exists to serve but two purposes. The next Vishnu must arise from amongst us and we must serve the Mahadev, whenever he should choose to come.’
Shiva bowed low to Gopal in reciprocation.
‘Every single one of us present here is honoured,’ continued Gopal, ‘that one of our missions will be fulfilled within our lifetime. We are yours to command, Lord Neelkanth.’
‘You are not my follower, Lord Gopal,’ said Shiva. ‘You are my friend. I have come here to seek your advice, for I’m unable to come to a decision.’
Gopal smiled and gestured towards the chairs.
Shiva and Gopal took their seats as the other Vasudev pandits sat around them on the floor, in neat rows.
Ganesh, Kartik and Brahaspati had set off on a short tour of Ujjain, accompanied by a Vasudev Kshatriya. Ganesh was deeply interested in the animal enclosures in the outermost zone. Specifically, the elephant stables.