by Jyotin Goel
Bheem stared at the vaanar—and suddenly understood. ‘He planned it, didn’t he?’ he laughed. ‘“A return to health is a return to madness . . .” He couldn’t tell me himself, so he pointed me to you instead—showed me how to reach you!’
Saragha grinned. ‘He is as clever as a vaanar. No wonder the immortals raised him to their ranks!’ He chuckled, then grimaced as pain knifed through his shoulder. The bleeding had slowed, though, and the muscle fibres were knitting; a scab was forming, slowly, visibly. Saragha looked at it, his face bleak. ‘We do not have much time, my friend. Ask what you need to know.’
‘The name of the fourth saviour!’ said Bheem instantly. ‘Who is she?’
The vaanar thought a moment, then met Bheem’s gaze with steady eyes. ‘I do not remember.’
‘How can that be?’ Bheem protested. ‘It was you who revealed the existence of the saviours to us, uncovered what was hidden, the names under the arrow mark in the cave!’
‘There are gaps in my mind, things I cannot recall.’ Saragha looked at the agitated warrior sombrely. ‘I am sane when I bleed. Do you know why? To harness the energy needed to repair my body, many doors in my mind are sealed off. The beast of maya prowls behind those doors, kept at bay. When I am healed, those doors reopen and I remember everything. And the beast consumes my mind again.’
One of the sanest faces I’ve ever seen, thought the warrior. But time was running out. ‘I must seek out my companions,’ he said. ‘They may have found a path to the last saviour in my absence. They are resourceful, these maanavs of Kali Yug.’ He rose to his feet and studied the ancient vaanar. ‘My grandsire would not have pointed me to you without reason. You must know a way off the island.’
Saragha did not reply at once. Instead, he lifted himself off the ground and padded up a mound, stopping at its crest. Bheem quickly followed. The lagoon lay before them, its waters touched silver-gold by the sun’s early rays.
‘I would wait some hours,’ Saragha said, amusement twinkling in his eyes, ‘but since you do not mind the wet, you can leave at once.’
‘Swim to the mainland?’ Bheem was not amused. ‘A hundred kos and more? That does not seem like help to me!’
‘A task beyond the mighty Bheem, is it?’ Saragha grinned. ‘Ah, I had forgotten. . . Even after making shore, you would have to track down your comrades. Something of a chore in that ocean of maanavs.’
‘You mock me.’ Bheem’s eyes dropped to the vaanar’s steadily healing shoulder. ‘A luxury, don’t you think, in light of the time that remains to you?’
‘Forgive me!’ The wise face remained amused. ‘Just exacting payment for the vaanar flesh you consumed.’
Despite himself, Bheem laughed. ‘Fair enough,’ he said, holding out his hand.
Saragha smiled and slapped the outstretched hand with his talons curved inward, the old vaanar gesture of friendship. He turned and pointed to the lagoon. ‘Seven tail-lengths below the surface, there is a cave, its entrance marked by a statue of my lord, the Vayuputra. The cave is another mouth of the many-headed Sesha Nag.’
‘What?’ Startled, Bheem looked at the placid, secretive water.
‘The lagoon empties as the tide recedes. The entrance will emerge today when the sun is an eighth past its zenith.’ He turned to Bheem, the amused smile back. ‘I would wait; you will not. So, I wish you farewell.’ He glanced at his shoulder—the wound was healing fast now. Sadness touched the immensely sane face, a foretaste of approaching madness.
Bheem raised his fist to his heart, a salute to the old vaanar, loyal friend and unwitting foe. All at once, he felt an unexpected reluctance to leave the island. The feeling made no sense, however, and, firmly closing his mind to it, Bheem sprinted into the limpid water and plunged below the surface. Seven tail-lengths, Saragha had said.
Vaanar tails were ludicrously long, more than three times the stretch of both human arms. Luckily, the water was astonishingly clear, sunlight filtering down from the surface as if through glass, providing Bheem a breathtaking view of shoals of fish darting through iridescent reefs. He slid rapidly into a blue world, gliding down the side of a submerged mountain, the twin peaks of which were the isles above—and abruptly almost spilled his held breath. For there it was, emerging from behind a colonnade of coral, shimmering in refracted light: the statue of Hanuman. Awed, Bheem swam up to it. Firmly embedded in undersea rock, the statue was an exact likeness of the one in the jungle cave, sculpted with the same meticulous artistry, the tail artfully poised, the eyes startlingly alive. And, again, there was just one element glaringly missing: the mace.
With an effort, the warrior tore his eyes away from the spellbinding figure and focused on the rock face behind. It was covered by seaweed and lichen, any split or fissure hidden by thick, undulating growth. Bheem rooted through a widening area around the statue, but found nothing. He felt his lungs strain, his skull pound; he couldn’t hold his breath much longer. Should he surface and dive again? Or bide his time until the tide receded as Saragha had suggested?
Wait!
There was something odd, not in harmony with its surroundings . . . His eyes scoured the rock face again. There it was, a dancing filament of intense blue, brighter than the surrounding turquoise water. Bheem streaked to it. A thin jet of blue mist bubbled out from behind the shrub-covered wall, painting the water indigo. Bheem ripped away the vegetation covering the rock face, uncovering a cleft in the wall from which the vapour spewed. The warrior smiled.
The breath of Sesha Nag.
The cleft was narrow but he was confident he could squeeze in. He pushed forward—and halted, stopped by a sudden thought.
Saragha—he is not a margdarshak! He could answer a second question—the one my grandsire would not!
Bheem twisted around in the water and propelled himself upward, surfacing forty metres from shore. Saragha was still on the beach—a very different Saragha from the wise friend who, just minutes earlier, had wished Bheem farewell. The vaanar crouched on the sand, holding his head, his tail vibrating, rigid with effort.
‘Saragha!’ Bheem called.
The vaanar raised his head, eyes glazed, face tortured.
‘Who were those four infants, Saragha?’ Bheem shouted. ‘What was my grandsire to them?’
Battling his demons, trembling with toxic shock, Saragha rose to his feet. ‘Your gra . . . grandsire is . . . is . . .’ His strained voice shook, rumbling over the span of water separating him from Bheem, ‘. . . the grandsire of . . . of . . . their grand . . . sire . . .’
And he screamed.
Too late, thought Bheem. I am too late.
The beast had taken over. Saragha snarled and brandished his fist, pounded his chest.
What did he say? ‘The grandsire of their grandsire . . .’
So the infants were the sage’s kin. But Bheem already knew that—Ved Vyas had said as much, claimed them as his own. Saragha had given the warrior nothing more.
Bheem gazed miserably at the demented creature who had been his friend brief moments ago. But the time for pity was past. Ashvatthama and the horrors of Pralay were closing in. Bheem slipped under the water’s surface, swiftly reached the mesmerizing idol below, silently asked for its favour and eased past the cleft into the domain of Sesha Nag.
5
Kumily Police Station
Idukki, Kerala
6.48 a.m.
‘Enough!’
Talwar slammed his fist on the decrepit table, knocking loose a rotted slat. ‘Anger’ couldn’t begin to describe his feelings. Two hours had been squandered, his prisoners pointlessly locked up in a van parked on a dilapidated street in a shabby town. And all because the local superintendent of police refused to wink at that ridiculous law forbidding the incarceration of women at night! At first light, Talwar had stormed past the ‘unprofessional’ official into the dingy police station and commandeered an inner room. There was no time now for ‘human rights’ niceties—the interrogation was intense, physical; Talwar�
��s men softened up the captives, accused them of waging biological warfare against the state, demanded the names and whereabouts of accomplices. And then the scoundrels had had the temerity to spin that risible yarn!
‘An incurable disease from ancient times!’ Talwar glared furiously at the battered man and woman pinned to rickety chairs by his men. ‘The destruction of humankind! Warriors from the past! Couldn’t you do better than that? And why just Bheem? Why not bring in Lord Krishna and the other Pandavs too?’
Unexpectedly, the reporter’s bloodied lips split into a grin. ‘Why don’t you sort that out with him?’
The scientist was smiling too. And his men . . . their jaws had dropped; they were goggling at something behind him. Talwar spun around.
~
He was slumped in a chair in a corner of the office, still unable to believe what he was seeing, eyes riveted to the enormous being who had appeared out of nowhere.
How? How had the giant materialized inside a locked room in the heart of a police station? His own men had been overcome by atavistic fear, meekly submitting when the tattooed brute had disarmed them. In a daze, Talwar had allowed himself to be led to the superintendent’s office, his stupefied mind barely taking in what followed: the superstitious awe with which the local police had treated the giant, the hurried obedience to the monster’s request that the charlatan from the temple, the so-called Leaf Reader, be produced along with four binders of palm leaves. Could it be real, after all? Was this improbable colossus truly the legendary Bheem? The world as Talwar knew it—ordered, professional—had crumbled. Was it also about to end?
‘They end here,’ Arunima Pillai said, translating for the Reader, ‘the lineage inscribed on the four leaves. There are no linked leaves beyond this generation.’
Vineet and Nishi looked at Bheem, shaken. The warrior was unmoved.
‘Names,’ he said. ‘Are there any on the leaves?’
The Reader answered, speaking rapidly.
Arunima nodded and turned to the others. ‘The palm leaves decay gradually and their contents are transcribed on to fresh leaves every two or three hundred years. Often, there are mistakes. The names have been distorted over the centuries. From experience, it is just the first aksharas that are accurate. But the seeker is recognized through other details of his or her life as recorded on the leaves . . .’
‘Then let us begin with the first aksharas,’ Bheem said, plucking the binders from the startled Reader’s grasp. With surprising delicacy, Bheem’s enormous hands turned the fragile leaves. The writing was in an ancient script, a precursor to classical Tamil, but that made little difference to the warrior. Everything that the Reader knew, Bheem knew. The names were indeed completely mangled, unrecognizable. But that didn’t matter—Bheem concentrated on the initial characters.
‘Three names begin with a letter that could be “aa” or “uh”,’ he said. ‘The fourth is unquestionably a “va”.’
‘Valsamma,’ Nishi whispered.
Vineet’s journalistic instincts stirred. ‘What does it say about her?’
Bheem translated as he read. ‘“A woman of five and twenty years is this seeker, from the land of the Cheras.”’
‘Present-day Kerala,’ Nishi said.
‘“Her loved ones shall she lose to a scourge that leaves her untouched. But outlive them long she shall not.”’
They looked at each other, astonished. There was not an iota of doubt—the leaf referred to Valsamma Nambiar. There was much more on the leaf, but Bheem laid it aside and picked up a second binder. He paged through it, stopping at the last leaf that was densely covered by writing.
‘Most of this is nonsensical,’ Bheem said, ‘but there is some writing here that has meaning.’ He pointed at groups of letters, reading out snatches. ‘“A woman of six and twenty . . . From the domain of the Cheras is this seeker’s line . . . She is betrothed . . . With a healer does she work . . . The enemy shall come for her blood that remembers all . . . In a land not of her birth shall she meet her destiny.”’
‘Aneeta Nair!’
They all turned to Vineet questioningly.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ the reporter asked. ‘She was twenty-six. The leaf doesn’t say that she came from the “domain of the Cheras”, but that her line did. Don’t you see? She lived in Bengaluru, not Kerala, but she was a Keralite! “Aneeta” begins with an “uh”-sounding letter. She was engaged, betrothed, and was working with Indian doctors—healers—in Kabul, a land not of her birth, where the enemy came for her blood . . . where she was killed!’
‘You’re right!’ Nishi agreed excitedly.
Bheem nodded and paged through another sheaf. ‘Much of this is also garbled,’ he said, ‘but there is a small portion that is clear enough.’ His sombre voice filled the room. ‘“Reviled is she and shunned in the day, but many seek her in the dark . . . Walk she does in the shadow of a queen, and in the shadows shall she be lost forever.”’
‘Aarthi Kutty,’ said Nishi, her voice hushed.
There was no argument.
One binder remained. The fourth saviour. Bheem picked it up. He studied the last leaf and a frown added new lines to the tattoo on his forehead.
‘A problem?’ Nishi asked.
‘This is strange.’ Bheem looked up. ‘Let us see what you make of this.’ He started reading. ‘“A woman of six and twenty years . . . of Chera lineage, but one who dwells in their land no longer . . . Images does she capture . . . Stories does she tell . . . Die she shall without blood in a violent land not her own.”’
The room went silent.
‘Aneeta Nair,’ Nishi said quietly.
‘But—but then the other one . . .’ Vineet stammered. ‘Who’s she?’
Bheem picked up the second sheaf again, reading the salient phrases aloud, ‘“A woman of six and twenty . . . From the domain of the Cheras is this seeker’s line . . . She is betrothed . . . With a healer does she work . . . The enemy shall come for her blood that remembers all . . . In a land not of her birth shall she meet her destiny.”’
The echoes of his voice died away.
‘There’s nothing there.’ Vineet’s hollow voice reflected his crushing disappointment.
‘A nurse!’
They turned. Talwar was on his feet, suddenly in control of himself. He stepped forward, bobbing his head respectfully to Bheem, speaking urgently, ‘Sir, that thing says she works with a healer, a doctor. Kerala is famous for its nurses!’
‘That’s true!’ exclaimed Nishi.
‘But looking for a nurse from Kerala!’ The enormity of the task was obvious to Vineet. ‘There must be tens of thousands!’
‘We could begin by looking for young women with names starting with “a” or “u”,’ Nishi said. ‘And by checking if any such nurses have their genomes already decoded.’
The superintendent turned to one of his men. ‘A list of all graduates from Kerala’s nursing schools with names starting with “a” or “u”,’ he rapped out in Malayalam. ‘Ages twenty-three to twenty-eight. We need it urgently—twenty minutes at most! Is that possible?’
‘No problem, sir.’
The aide headed for the door.
‘Nikka! Stop!’
Bheem rose, towering over the company, staring at the aide. ‘What did you just say?’ he demanded, in perfect Malayalam.
‘K—kozhapam-illa,’ the aide stuttered.
‘Korapamilla?’ Vineet struggled with the word, turning to Nishi. ‘What does that mean?’
Malayalam for ‘no problem’! thought Bheem. Kozhapam-illa!
A phrase from the leaf raced through his mind: ‘From the domain of the Cheras is this seeker’s line.’
And another: ‘The enemy shall come for her blood that remembers all.’
He remembered . . .
. . . an urchin grin so like another . . .
. . . the grandsire of their grandsire . . .
. . . above all, a warrior must trust his instinct . . .
An
d, suddenly, as if a great wind had blown the obscuring thickets away, the path to the last saviour stood open for Bheem.
~
Lakshadweep Islands
The baby was alive—and unhurt! Gratitude swept through Aviva, a wave of protective love for the unborn child so powerful that it shook her, washing away all ambivalence, if indeed any had existed. She would give birth to the child. And fight for its chance to live despite the horrors inexorably bearing down on them all. Aviva’s eyes streamed as she looked up at the serene, wrinkled face of the sage who gazed at her as if he were peering into her soul. Perhaps he was. Incredibly, this was Ved Vyas himself! Nothing was hidden from him—not her anxieties, not her hopes for the future of her child. She felt fragile, as if broken and remade. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Silently, not even attempting to staunch her tears, she listened while the sage recounted all that had occurred while she lay unconscious: their arrival on his island retreat, her struggle with death, the choice that confronted the warrior, his startling decision to save her, his clash with Saragha and his departure—the sage kept nothing from her. Aviva’s mind whirled. Bheem had saved her! Against all reason, sacrificing his vengeance, forgoing his desperate search for the last saviour, giving up on the world! Why? Why would he do that? It was insane! She got up, needing answers, started to demand them of the sage—and stopped. She had remembered in time; she never forgot. There was a choice, the same one the warrior had faced: the maharishi answered but one question. For Aviva, time slowed to a crawl. She looked at the sage who studied her, his eyes glinting with awareness.
Actually, she thought, it’s easy. There’s just one question.
‘The warrior . . .’ she asked, ‘has he learnt the name of the last saviour?’
The sage smiled. ‘He has.’
SERC
At last!
Triumph glittered in Ashvatthama’s eyes. There it was: the spoor he had been casting for, the spy called Talwar. That maanav had been on the saviour’s trail, had lost her and then vanished from the ether himself. And now he had resurfaced. Ashvatthama studied the communiqu? he had intercepted, incoming to the CIG headquarters, New Delhi, and almost laughed. They had made it so simple for him, decoding the spy’s scrambled message. It was Talwar, all right, requisitioning urgent transportation from a place called Kumily in the south of the country to a pair of islands on the far rim of an archipelago in the great ocean. For himself and one other. For the latter, no name had been appended. None was needed. Ashvatthama was aware who the ‘other’ was, knew where he was headed—and why.