Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai

by Venketesh, R.

  Despite his illness, the Rana had ordered Chaula to be brought to his bedroom one night. As she cowered in fear he made a couple of eunuchs tear off her clothes. She had cowered in a corner like a doe in distress, covering her nudity with her small palms. All the Rana could do was to leer at her like a hungry lion, but much to his discomfiture, he couldn’t touch her because of the physician’s orders.

  Since then, all Chaula had to do was to while away time in the harem with occasional visits to the temple. There was excellent food and company. Beds of silk and feathers, a large palace to stay in amid a bevy of beauties who filled the air with obscene jokes and bawdy laughter. But she had not smiled, let alone laugh, once, till she had seen Ram fall.

  But the Rana was slowly regaining his vigour, and she knew she would be forced to go to him the day the physician told the ruler he could resume his carnal activities. Chaula had to flee the harem before that day arrived, and in Ram she found an attentive listener. When she finished her story, only furnishing the bits he needed to know, he absorbed the information in silence. He understood the depth of her sorrow.

  ‘Have you never seen your parents after that?’ he asked softly. She nodded and fell silent. Ram sat patiently for a few more minutes and studied her. And then he left without a word.

  Chaula’s mind was working with clarity and a purpose. She appreciated Ram’s compassion because it was a rare commodity in this maddening flesh mart where the Rana had tortured her body and mind, inflicting a savage blow on her spirit. Her hope of escape was almost unattainable, though not impossible.

  A plan formed within her mind: Ram would be her ladder out of this chasm.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE GURUKULAM DAYS

  Sundar asked Veera, ‘If we behave from now on, will they let us back into the palace?’ Veera nodded; he wanted to believe it himself. It would take a long time, he knew, for the occupants of the palace to forget their hooliganism. Just when their futures seemed secure in the bliss of childhood, they had been banished.

  At the onslaught of dusk, darkness dropped like a blanket on the gurukulam. More than the days, the nights made the two princes unhappy. Back in the palace, numerous lamps would take over when twilight fell. Every passageway and corner would be awash in the soft orange glow of flames. At the gurukulam, darkness shrouded the princes, and they began fearing it. Veera could swear that he had seen his grandfather many times, his dress soaked in blood. He tried to brush away the visions as driftings of a timorous mind, till Sundar also corroborated the scene one day. Their collective dread made them allies and they agreed to a temporary truce.

  *

  It took them three months to stop fearing the dark. Sundar went back to his caustic self, needling Veera whenever he could. Though Veera began to adapt to the gurukulam, the only thought that nagged him like a solitary cloud on a clear summer sky was that his schooling unhappily coincided with his stepbrother’s. But he had found a friend for life at the gurukulam – the son of a soldier, who had travelled a long distance to learn at the school. He was called Akshayan – the limitless one. Akshayan attached himself to Veera with a devotion that was barely heard of. He would laugh the loudest when Veera was in a particularly jovial mood, but he rarely spoke when Veera was sullen.

  Initially, Sundar and Veera were buoyed to be with boys of their age, but they soon found their eagerness evaporating by the hour. Rajadityan was a man who relished his job. To him, disciplining a boy and turning him into a warrior was like taming a raging river overflowing through its numerous fords into a stream that flowed silently, yet with the force of a hundred elephants.

  In the beginning, all the boys were made to run twice a day. Every bone ached under waves of weariness. They collapsed by the end of it into a sleep drugged by tiredness. When they had just become used to it, Rajadityan made them run even more. At the end of one such trot, a panting Veera commented, ‘I don’t know if the old man knows warfare, but at least he is teaching us what could be a last resort on the battlefield.’ A moment later, somebody held his ear in a vice-like grip. It was Rajadityan. ‘At least I am ensuring that you run away to fight the next battle.’ His voice softened as he added, ‘The Pandyan kingdom certainly did not expand with shabby skills taught here. Run thirty rounds tomorrow, for the enemy can chase you for longer distances.’

  The guru sought to build their bodies and temper their vigour with training. The fledgling fighters fought with wooden swords and rounded bamboo spears in mock combat. It was a year before they were allowed to handle real weapons, which, too, were blunted. Reconnaissance training included crawling soundlessly through the grass. The reptiles they were scared of earlier now slithered away from them. Given a choice, most pupils wouldn’t have taken refuge in the school. But here they were, studying under a one-man faculty and preparing for a war that could never come.

  A part of the training included physical labour. Veera and his group would laze away and chat when Rajadityan wasn’t looking, but put in an unusual but highly visible diligence into their efforts when he was. But nothing escaped Rajadityan. The teacher nonchalantly said one day, ‘Actual working and acting as if you were working – both take the same amount of energy.’

  They had to wake up much before dawn. Once, to avoid this, Veera pretended to be sick. But it turned out to be worse than waking up early because the guru gave him a herbal concoction which burnt his throat with bitterness right down to his entrails – a very effective medicine, especially against sham illnesses, and Veera prayed that he would never fall sick in reality.

  Within a year, all the boys had fallen into line. They could now do with ease what they had thought not humanly possible a year ago. Their appetite for learning was insatiable and they greedily took in whatever their guru taught them. The boys even hoped for a war so that they could practise what they had learnt.

  One day, when the boys’ attention wandered in class as the guru droned on, he rebuked them, saying, ‘What you don’t listen to today could save your life on the battlefield tomorrow. You are delving into the art of death. There is no second place. Either you are skilled or killed.’ He had their attention for the rest of the day.

  The princes surpassed their classmates in most activities, perhaps because they were born in a thousand-year-old dynasty with royal characteristics in their blood. The real competition seemed to be between the two of them.

  The sword and the bow became an extended element of the boys’ arms. A sword extended a man’s hand by three feet and an arrow was a far-reaching appendage that extended their reach by a hundred. The guru delved into the history of the implements of war. ‘Men who lived long ago must have fought with bare hands and then sticks. Then, as time went on, the realization came that the enemy should be confronted from as far away as possible to reduce personal harm. The last great improvement from conventional handheld weapons was the bow and arrow, the spears and the catapults. All are based on the same principle of throwing. One day,’ Rajadityan said, ‘man will develop arms that can spew fire and fly from a catapult inside a fortress miles away.’

  The boys had a laugh. The guru joined them, though he knew it was going to happen. It was logical for a warrior to see how his line of business would change in a few hundred years.

  The boys had to learn how their weapons were made. ‘Only one who can handle a weapon correctly can return from the battlefield alive, and only one who knows how to make a tool can handle it,’ Rajadityan insisted. Bows were made with superbly flexible bamboo sticks over an inner core of harder bamboo and wood. The bows would then be wrapped in the skin of a freshly killed goat. As the skin shrunk, it wrapped itself around the segments, binding them for eternity. Arrows had to be crafted with minimum resistance to air. If they were out of shape, all their momentum would be lost and their writhing in the air would make them fall miserably short of the mark.

  As the days sped by, the boys began to look more masculine. Hair sprouted below their nostrils, where it made them proud, and elsewhere
too, where it shamed them. Their boyhood was over. They were no longer the children they were when they came to the gurukulam. Their bodies had grown, but so had the rivalry between Veera and Sundar. Their mutual hatred now veered on the outskirts of murder.

  The horses came in the third year. Horses had fascinated the Pandyans and Vikrama had sent some fine horses from the royal stables to the gurukulam. Nobody except the princes had even touched a horse before. The students were taught to gallop, trot and ride abreast. The boys learnt to shoot off the bow and to ride and then they learnt to do both together.

  They were also taught battle strategies in their third year. ‘What we don’t know is always more than what we are enlightened about. Sometimes, the best thing is to have four strategies and be ready to drop all of them and fight as your head allows you to,’ Rajadityan told them. Their guru had painstakingly created a clay model of a battlefield and the boys were asked to identify the best spot to intercept an attacking force and attack it. The model had a landscape in miniature, from mountains to rivers and swamp. Rocks made up for the hills, wet soil made the swamp, sprouts of mustard rising from seeds thoughtfully sown three days before were the forests. Rajadityan said, ‘This is not a choice that will be available to you in real life. This is a bird’s-eye view.’ He asked them to choose the best location for a battle. Veera chose a region between the swamp and the hills. With his back to the hills and the enemy’s to the swampy terrain, the enemy would have no place to retreat. Their elephants and chariots would get bogged down. It would be a massacre.

  ‘But if you had to retreat, you would have to climb the hill backwards,’ Rajadityan pointed out.

  ‘I will not retreat. With me, it will be a fight to the finish,’ Veera boasted.

  ‘Tactical withdrawal is not cowardice. Sometimes the man who runs away lives to fight another day,’ the guru corrected him.

  ‘But what about history? What will it say about a coward?’ Veera protested.

  ‘History is written by the victors, and those who prevail till the end.’ Rajadityan finished the conversation with finality.

  The boys were asked to design a battle strategy to prevent the enemy from winning. Whereas Sundar’s plan could effectively stop the invader at the gates of Madurai, the guru noted with satisfaction that Veera’s would not even let the invader land. His plan was to use a hundred bullock carts laden with straw set on fire, which would rush at the enemy’s ships as they landed but not a moment sooner – presumably when the invaders had offloaded their horses, vehicles and supplies at midnight. Rajadityan watched the progress of his protégés with an indulgent expression. His pride showed on his face.

  It was in the third year, too, that Veera discovered the power of poetry. He had previously believed that poets were a tribe of inactive men who did not toil. Now, he realized, if you were capable of writing poetry, you could be happy even with very little work. Veera sang his songs to the tune he had set and Akshayan accompanied him on the flute, which was perpetually tucked on his waist.

  While Veera discovered one of man’s creations – poetry – the boys in general discovered one of God’s best creations – women.

  *

  Across the river, where the boys bathed every evening, the village girls would bathe too. Whenever the boys walked to the river, they usually paused near the riverside to view the near-naked nymphs thrashing in the water on the other side. The boys would hoot loudly, announcing their arrival, and the girls would quietly shrink back to their villages. But the river was nearly a hundred feet across, and with the assurance of flowing water in between, the usually inhibited girls became emboldened. They began returning every hoot with a louder one. But the boys’ brush with the opposite sex did not just end there.

  The guru had been lecturing on the ethics of war one day. He had been disturbed often by quite a few yawns from droopy-eyed boys. He knew yawns were as contagious as the pox and one sleepy student could have an entire gathering yawn till they almost dislocated their jaws. The teacher did not construe a yawn during the lecture as a silent protest against boredom. To him, it meant the boys had not got enough sleep. If they had not fallen flat after the routine he had set for them, it meant something in the night held their interest.

  The boys’ first brush with sex had actually come a few weeks earlier. They had crossed the river on a sandbank and walked into the forest to look for honey and perhaps a rabbit they could roast on the fire. Veera had a stick in his hand, which he swung at any bush or blade of grass. When they heard strange sounds ahead, they paused behind a copse, their training in silent movement coming to use now.

  The girl seemed of peasant stock. She was plain but her dress was scanty enough. There were no prizes to guess what was within. The man was obviously a soldier. He hurriedly pulled her by the arm into a thicket. The boys stayed still until the two crossed the path in front of them, and then followed them into a small clearing. The girl took off her clothes and beckoned the man to come to her. The boys stood transfixed, watching the unfolding scene with curiosity.

  Involuntarily, each boy found his groin stiffening. They did not even blink as they watched the developing spectacle. The man grunted as they rutted and in the panting he did not notice the gasps of wonder the boys let out. She gave a scream of pleasure as he collapsed, and then dozed off. The girl got up and wiped the sweat off her thighs. It was then that she noticed the boys. A mixed feeling of embarrassment and amusement came on her face and she fled, leaving the sleeping soldier behind.

  *

  The village boys explained that their houses were communal, and everybody had to sleep in the courtyard in the centre. There was no privacy for married couples and many couples sneaked out for a romantic rendezvous in the open, in the groves of trees that could shield them.

  Observing the couples became a regular feature from then on. Soon the gurukulam boys had identified other amorous locations, clearly visible from the flattened grass. Most couples scampered home before midnight and the boys returned to their beds and spent the rest of the night propped up on their elbows discussing the details. They had even given nicknames to regular entertainers. The boys went to sleep an hour or two before sunrise, when their bodies could no longer combat sleep. The boys obviously overslept and were roused by the crow of the rooster.

  Once, when they returned well past midnight, their whispered words died on their lips. Rajadityan was sitting patiently, waiting for his wards. Their feet were rooted to the spot. But Rajadityan plainly said, ‘Go to sleep. We shall speak of this tomorrow.’ The boys could only imagine what would happen to their posteriors in the morning.

  True enough, the guru woke up in a fit of rage. In a voice full of bitterness, he admonished the boys, ‘Beware of the night, young men. Men go mad in the dark. They suspend their morals and forget their fears of society.’ He tied them to palm trees for the entire day, the penalty he had decided for his protégés till their spirit triumphed over their lust. As the sun rose on the horizon, the heat parched their throats. They squealed when rats came close by. Insects attracted by the rotten fruit that had fallen down crawled up their legs. The punishment was more comfortable when the sun went on the other side of the horizon and the trees protected them from the scorching sunlight.

  Sundar and Veera were tied to adjacent palm trees. Sundar turned to him and groaned, ‘My legs are hurting.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Veera pacified him. ‘It will be okay.’

  ‘Do you think we can go back to the forest tonight?’ Sundar questioned, hope writ large on his face.

  ‘I only hope the old man doesn’t come back and tie us to the sunny side of the tree now.’

  *

  Prince Vikrama would at times arrive unannounced. Sometimes, he would stop by with a retinue of soldiers. He would send a man to buy food for them and the boys were then invited to join the feast with real soldiers who regaled their awestruck audience with tales of war. Vikrama noted on one such visit that the gait of the two princes was very
familiar. He thought to himself, Where have I seen that gait?, until he realized it was his own. Their role models had changed, he noted with a tinge of pride. They were the sons he would never have. They had come as potter’s clay, moulded to take their places in the largest empire in this part of the world. He thought with satisfaction, The empire will be in safe hands.

  Vikrama came to visit them just before leaving for Lanka. ‘When I come back you will have returned to the palace as men,’ he told them with pride in his voice. He would miss them immeasurably. His brother was an administrator, whereas he had been trained as a warrior, and like all warriors, he felt no peace unless he was at the front – a man who was wary of peace and weary without war.

  Veera asked him before he left, ‘Why do wars happen? Can’t everybody live in peace?’

  Vikrama answered with a wisdom that came from someone who knew the real value of peace, ‘If there were no wars, there would be no kings. We would have to cook up excuses to go to war then.’

  ‘But aren’t the Lankans our friends? They have been so for centuries. Even our crown of pearls was in their safekeeping from the marauding Cholas.’

  Vikrama replied, ‘In statecraft, there are no permanent allies or enemies. When you need to take another step, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in a friend’s territory or a foe’s.’

  Veera realized then that land, and the wealth that sprang from it, was what led to wars. It was like sex. A man did not copulate with his wife only once, even if he did not lust for other women.