Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai

by Venketesh, R.

  The old man came towards Ram with a steaming bowl. The acrid reek repelled him. Two soldiers held him while the old man poured it down his half-open mouth. It was a nerve-stunning concoction smelling of pepper and much of the bitter liquid dribbled from the side of his lips. It burnt the sores in his cheeks and tongue where he had bitten himself.

  A minute or two later, the man slowly walked with the straight knife towards him. It seemed like he was in hell – the purest form of it, the seventh circle of it. Two soldiers pinned both his wrists painfully to the ground using their feet. Ram’s groin was desensitized with baths of hot pepper water. The old man had been a castrator for many years and the boy was being trained to take over. They collected twenty coins of silver for each castration and for nurturing the eunuch through the initial stage of convalescence.

  A pillow was thrust behind Ram’s shoulder-blades so that he was in a semi-reclining position. Four soldiers stepped forward. One forced his mouth open with a cloth, which he bit between his teeth. Ram was surprised. He thought the Rana would like to hear him scream. One man clasped him about the waist while two others separated his legs and held them firmly down to prevent any movement. Tight bandages were wound around the thighs and lower abdomen.

  The old man’s expression visibly softened, like a parent who was coerced to force-feed a bitter medicine to his child. ‘Look away,’ the man whispered so that the guards would not hear him. Ram calmed down a little when he heard this trace of sympathy. The old man uttered a muted prayer. He knew Ram was too young to suffer such pain. But this was just the start. He pitied him not for the pain that he was going to inflict, but for the long and traumatic life that lay ahead.

  A muffled cry of distress arose from deep within his throat. Though his mind refused to react, his body stiffened in the realization that it was about to be debased and he began to struggle. But the soldiers’ grip tightened while quietly and the old man methodically went about his work.

  Ram was acutely conscious of what was being done to him. Through a film of tears, he noticed the flash of the blade. His face twisted as he felt a sharp pain tear through his groin. All other wounds on his body paled into insignificance before this fire. A scream now seared his throat like a fire-eater who had taken a breath out of turn. A haze surrounded him. He saw the gates of hell swing open, devour him, then close again. And with one last convulsion he slipped into unconsciousness and merciful oblivion swallowed him.

  There was a deathly silence in the audience. At least one man in the crowd had fainted, after shrieking with horror. He had been quickly taken away. The crowd pretended they did not sympathize with the boy.

  The Rana had been watching Chaula and Ram alternately but intently. The boy’s trauma he could predict, but he wanted to observe her reaction as the drama unfolded. She bent her head downwards but the Rana held her crudely by the hair and turned her face towards her battered lover. She held her eyes shut for she had seen enough. When she heard Ram’s smothered scream, her body convulsed and she retched off the side of the patio. He slowly loosened his grip on her and nonchalantly wiped a few droplets of vomit that had sprayed on his embroidered tunic. She had fainted. ‘The bitch missed the action,’ he murmured.

  When it was over, the castrator’s boy proffered the bloody piece of flesh to the Rana, who waved his hand impatiently. The boy then washed it down and dropped it in a jar of spirit. He poured fine alum powder around the wound to stop the bleeding. The old castrator cleaned his knife all this while. He knew there was much more to do.

  *

  When Ram regained consciousness, his groin felt like it was an anvil being hammered a thousand times every moment. He wished he was on a bier, being consumed by flames, rather than alive.

  As soon as the old man saw he had woken up, Ram was made to walk about the garden for two or three hours supported on each side by the castrators, before he was made to lie down again. Every step he took hurt. He begged God to take away his suffering, to wake him up from this cruel nightmare. He wailed through the night; his voice was barely audible as he begged for water in his sleep. But he was not allowed to drink any liquid for three days, as he was not supposed to urinate. As in any castration, the bandages would be removed at the end of three days, the inserted plug would be pulled out, and the sufferer would hopefully be able to obtain relief with a copious flow of urine, at which time he would be congratulated and considered out of danger. If the surgery resulted in the inability of the eunuch to urinate, the passages having closed, he was doomed to an agonizing death. Fortunately for Ram, the pain in his abdomen had subsided after two days. The old man sent a prayer to the heavens, pleading with God to forgive him for castrating a young man.

  Eunuchs were important for the rulers because they needed strong guards who would not tempt or be tempted in the harem, which is why many young men had suffered castration. Ram wondered why he had not been left to die. He now realized that his life ahead was going to be worse. The old castrator and his boy kept a constant vigil over him in the first week, in case Ram felt death would be preferable to a life without manhood. They knew the shame would not last, and all eunuchs eventually resigned themselves to a life of castration. At least he wouldn’t be a slave. A slave would spend his life wasting away, but a eunuch would have the benefit of three meals a day and a decent bed.

  *

  As the guards escorted him on his way to the prison, he saw the house that was once his and realized it would soon crumble. It had never even needed any repairs earlier. Now, it stood like a skeleton, blackened with soot. His father would have hidden his money beneath the floor, but they must have beaten him to get to it. A strong smell of burnt flesh emanated from the still-smouldering house. Perhaps they had left his father inside the burning house.

  What was that lying near the house, like a bundle of rags? His heart missed several beats. It was his mother. She lifted her head. She had become a crone, not the beauteous woman she once was, aging gracefully. She must have held on to her life just to see him.

  His neighbours had refused to help the family of the offender. They could not as much as give a tumbler of water to this dying woman, who till last week had been their relative and friend. A swirling wind lifted dust off the streets in spirals. The soldiers who held him loosened their grip and he rushed to his mother. His mother recognized him, which by itself was a wonder, considering the broken state both were in. She was dying, and yet she was trying to tell him something. Her voice was only a whisper. He put his ear close to her mouth and listened over the sound of the swirling wind. Her last words were incoherent. But it brought back powerful memories of a childhood joke. Something that his family astrologer had said. Yes, it was about him becoming the ruler of Hindustan. Her last words were, ‘Remember the prophecy.’

  He put his mother’s head on his lap, cradling her, and that is how she died, as if she had been waiting for this moment. Almost immediately, the impatient soldiers pulled him off and dragged him away from his mother’s corpse. His mother’s eyes still were open and her mouth agape, in the process of completing her last word. Her arms were outstretched as if reaching out to her son who was being dragged away. The drift of destiny carried on remorselessly.

  *

  Slowly, he began to come to terms with the nightmare that was now reality. Two months had passed since his castration. Initially, he had found it an immense chore to even lift himself, but then he had to do a regime of exercises, supervised by the old man and his grandson. The young boy, who had become a friend by now, had to stay close and see that the prisoner concluded his drill. Ram accepted his instructions, for the boy warned him his surgery would kill him unless his body adapted itself.

  He never saw the Rana again, but he heard that the number of palace guards had been doubled. Though he worried sometimes about Chaula’s fate, he knew he was no longer interested in her, physically. Within him, he knew that his body had changed. The process of transformation had begun and he would be an entirely different pers
on as the months went on. For lack of facial hair and because of their bloated appearances, eunuchs were distinct. His voice would change to a high falsetto for which eunuchs were scornfully called ‘crows’.

  Early one day, a man came along enquiring about him, but when he saw him he was surprised. He asked, ‘Is this the eunuch to be sold?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded the guard who had brought him along.

  The trader shook his head. He had been asked by the Rana’s agent in the port city of Khambayat to pick up a eunuch for sale. But he had expected a much younger boy or a disobedient Abyssinian who was more of a problem in the harem than of any practical use.

  ‘When was he castrated?’ he asked.

  ‘Two months ago,’ the old man’s grandson replied.

  The man shook his head in dismay. The boy was still too handsome to be allowed into a harem. Eunuchs had to be gelded when they were boys, not when they were on the threshold of manhood. All eunuchs were thought of as ‘pure’, but those under ten years of age were termed ‘thoroughly pure’. They were given as much freedom as if they were girls, and allowed to perform bedroom and bathroom duties of the most intimate nature. Boy eunuchs were supposedly free of any licentiousness, even in thought. But the Rana had insisted that this man be sold into a harem.

  Why does he not want him in his own harem? the trader wondered. He’d heard rumours, but it was dangerous to think of them. He had no choice but to buy him.

  Ram was not dragged along the road as he had presumed initially. Instead, he was given a horse to ride. When the caravan of horses and camels started from his town, he had a feeling that this would be the last time he would see it. On his way out, he saw as many as twenty men in pitiful rags impaled on stakes. Some of the stakes had not yet killed their victims, and vultures were waiting impatiently for them to die. He realized this could have been his fate too. Would he have preferred it? It was because the Rana wanted him to suffer a life of ignominy that he had chosen castration as punishment. In wanting to trap a tortured soul within a defaced body, the Rana had inflicted a never-ending revenge.

  As Ram’s hatred grew, thinking of what the Rana had done to him, it pushed his reason aside. Something inside him began to coil and curve. Then, like a wrist that was turned by a bully and could turn no more, something within him snapped. His hatred encompassed every person who had hurt him. A grim determination formed within his soul. He hated the priest who had turned him over to the Rana’s men, the temple where the priest worshipped, his religion and his fellow men. And he swore revenge on all of them.

  CHAPTER 7

  LOVE

  Long shadows engulfed Veera as he trotted on his Arab stallion towards the river for some much needed solitude. After a whole day spent with the clerks of the palace, he could not take the monotony of accounts or palmyra leaves any more. The stone-paved path polished by centuries of hooves gave way to a rougher trail as the main road petered out into a dust track just wide enough for a man on a horse. Veera had to often bend to make way for a low-lying bough of an overgrown tree.

  Akshayan quietly followed Veera. The wind whispered amid the foliage above, and birds chirped. But for those sounds and the steady trot of the two horses, the woods were quiet.

  Suddenly, the silence was broken by the screams of women, a mass of intertwined voices conveying extreme distress. Veera dismounted from his horse and ran in the direction of the screams. The warrior within him hadn’t lost his touch, even if he hadn’t had much of a chance to show it off. His act of dismounting and the first leap formed a single smooth action. The extended boughs thrashed against his face but did not slow him down. He would have to treat the bruises later. He covered the distance in a few long strides and reached a temple pond amid placid surroundings. One of the temple’s towers had collapsed, and the pond was filled with wilting lotus blooms of the morning and lily buds waiting to bloom in the evening.

  The cries were becoming louder, more coherent and desperate. ‘Crocodile’ and ‘princess’ were the two words that registered in Veera’s mind. He took less than a fraction of a moment to realize what had happened. Halfway to the middle of the pond, two hands were thrashing about. The violent thrashing caused the ripples to heave like waves.

  Since the hands were moving, Veera decided that the person still had a minute or two to live. With the momentum he had gathered from the run towards the water, he leapt right into the pond. He skimmed like a fish to the spot and his outstretched hands crashed against a soft body. The force shook the entrapped person but was not strong enough to dislodge her from the watery trap.

  He grabbed the woman by her armpits, his hands encountering and crushing her soft breasts. He tried to pull her but something held her in a vice-like grip. He quickly thought of which weapon he should use if it were a crocodile, and decided on the small curved knife he always carried with him. Veera went underwater and felt around for the pincer-like jaws that were holding her legs. Instead, he touched a clump of soft weeds. She must have inadvertently got her leg entwined within a loop of vegetation. As panic engulfed her and she began struggling, the loop had tightened. It could have been as dangerous as a crocodile, Veera mused. His lungs felt like they would burst and he surfaced for a breath. The screams of the girls on the banks jarred his hearing. He held his head above water, and slipped his right arm around the girl’s armpits and tried to jerk her out at an angle. But the weeds did not budge.

  The thrashing hands stopped moving and sagged in defeat. Veera reacted swiftly. He took out the knife from a scabbard on his waist, let her go and dived in again. The algae dimmed the visibility around him, and Veera had to depend on his sense of touch than sight. With his free left arm, he found the clump of offending weeds. He slashed at them. But each cut, already slowed down by the resisting force of water, was making little headway.

  By the time the last weed was to be cut, it seemed like an eternity since his last breath. Veera longed to surface and take one more lungful of air before returning. But his urgency was increased by the fact that the girl had stopped struggling. In one desperate move, he lashed out at the weed, and at last she was free. She slipped out of his tired grip and floated towards the surface. He immediately surfaced after her, taking what could be his deepest breath ever.

  He now heard shouts of relief and anxiety. He had to swim the twenty yards to the banks with the girl’s dead weight resting on him. When the pond became shallower, he scrambled to the shore with the stagger of a drunk. The girls on the shore immediately rushed towards them, pulling out the girl first. Veera was left to be pulled out by Akshayan. He collapsed on the banks and caught his breath. Akshayan did not even turn to the girl and focused his attention on Veera. It was clear where his priorities lay.

  It took a minute for his pulse to return to normal. As he lay on the ground gasping for breath, he turned to have a look, anxious that his efforts had not been wasted. He nodded in satisfaction. The girl had started moving, shivering uncontrollably as she did so. They had laid her face down on the granite steps on the banks, while two of the girls rubbed her soles and palms one after another. Then they turned her around. One of them pressed her chest and upon finding that a trickle of water came from the fringes of her lips like a stream of spittle, continued to do so.

  Though he tried not to, Veera could not help staring. The others had not bothered covering the girl and her dress had lifted itself from her ivory-smooth thighs. Her midriff was partially exposed and her navel was round and deep, changing its shape as she breathed heavily. Veera noticed her face last. Despite the distress and pain that she had undergone a few minutes ago, her face shone in all its beauty. A name cropped out from the darkest recesses of his subconscious and stood on the tip of his tongue, but he just could not place her.

  Curiosity got the better of him. Much against Akshayan’s protestations, Veera stood up shakily, and observed her again.

  Her hair was in tangles and matted with algae. Her face had turned as red as the rising sun because of her e
xertion and her body shone as the water adhering to her skin reflected the sun’s rays. She was very beautiful indeed!

  One of the girls handed him a towel, her shy head turned away and her arm pointing somewhere in his direction. The towel was soft, like the kind noble women used. As he dried his face first, the smell of jasmine overpowered his nostrils. His dishevelled hair would turn wavy like a lion’s mane when his horse rode into the wind again, but now it was spiky like a porcupine’s quills.

  Once the trickle from the girl’s mouth stopped, the others supported her from the back and made her sit up. Veera needed to get close to her. The girls were trying in vain to remove the weeds from her legs and it distressed her even more to see the green anklet of death. He bent and took out his dagger. He cut the weeds and handed the clump over to the girl. ‘Here is your crocodile.’

  There was a burst of nervous laughter from the others. The girl smiled weakly, realizing how close she had been to meeting her creator. As her expression turned calmer, he again had the strange feeling that he’d seen her before, yet Veera could still not place her.

  None of the girls seemed to be Pandyan. Pandyan women were a shade darker than them. And yet, the girl seemed to be of noble birth. Girls from a royal family rarely went out without being flanked by a covey of comely girls, carefully chosen so that none were more beautiful than the mistress herself. Yet, none of her companions looked plain.

  Silence crept in. The girl whispered something to her friend, who turned to Veera and asked, ‘Our mistress wishes to know the identity of her saviour.’