Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai

by Venketesh, R.

Veera suddenly turned the offensive on the Lankans – instead of waiting for them to attack, he began raiding their camps wherever he found them. Every attack would end up killing at least fifty Lankan soldiers and they could capture half as many. Subsequent interrogations of these captives would reveal the whereabouts of the other rebels, and the battle would resume.

  The cohesion and collectiveness of the action that Veera enforced caused immense worry among the Lankans. The tide was turning and people on both sides realized that the scales were tipping. The Lankans had assumed that age had slowed the reflexes of the Pandyan generals. They now knew somebody else was in charge, and it was with him they intended to do business.

  *

  The path was a small one, but heavily used by soldiers on their patrols. Veera’s patrol was walking back empty-handed – they hadn’t found any trace of Lankan soldiers today. They were tired and their silence reflected the weariness of the men. Then came a thicket, and Veera decided they would halt. The soldiers welcomed the break.

  When they had earlier passed the spot, the birds were chattering rather animatedly and the soldiers had had to speak above the din of croaking toads and chirping crickets. Now, the birds were silent and even the frogs did not croak. Alarm bells began ringing in Veera’s mind. For some reason, he was reminded of the temple bells of the Meenakshi temple ringing at midnight to alert the populace that the Vaigai’s banks had been breached. Something was wrong. He could almost smell the enemy lurking behind the thickets and his hand went instinctively to the scabbard.

  Something was amiss. He could feel it. On complete alert, he suddenly shouted, ‘Let’s get out of here!’ He immediately heard a whistle as something rushed through the air. He turned involuntarily – and that split moment saved his life. The arrow, intended for his heart, pierced his arm instead. There was a melee as the Pandyan soldiers rushed in the direction of the arrow, leaving an injured Veera behind with Akshayan.

  The arrowhead was firmly lodged in his flesh, but Akshayan did not pull it out despite the temptation to remove it. He and another soldier quickly carried Veera to the camp. A messenger had gone ahead with news of the attack so the physician had a mixture of herbs ready. Four people had to hold the moaning Veera down while Akshayan held his injured arm aloft. The healer was heating a knife and would wipe off the char every few minutes, then re-heat the blade. Then, in a flash, he pulled out the arrow. Veera winced in pain. The healer brought the knife down on the injury and made the incision wider. The heated blade hissed in contact with the skin and the smell of burning flesh filled the tent. His own scream was the last thing Veera remembered.

  It was easier now that Veera had passed out. The doctor swiftly enlarged the void and removed the small bit of arrowhead embedded in the bone. It came out with a rush of blood. He filled the cavity with a lump of ground herbs and bandaged the arm. It was then that the physician smelt the arrow and shivered involuntarily. ‘Datura,’ he said.

  The arrowhead was finely shaped; it did not have a single jagged edge. It had been smoothened and small holes had been drilled into the metal. The head had then been soaked in a concoction of venom from the datura plant. When the soaking was complete, crystals of poison would have formed inside. A solution of colloidal clay plugged the holes in the arrowhead and the clay would have broken on impact to release the poison.

  Veera did not wake up for three days. As his wound continued to putrefy, its reek filled the tent. Veera underwent the torment of the fever, screaming in delirium, clenching his fists and pounding his bed. He gnashed his teeth as hallucinations crowded his heated brain. The fever raged like a storm, never ceasing and constantly drying the numerous pieces of wet cloth placed on his forehead.

  A man in a delirious sleep, Veera had ample time to dream for days at a stretch. Rivers of blood flooded his dreams and flesh-eating creatures from the netherworld peopled his nightmares. He felt as if he was lying injured on the battlefield. He could hear the howls of glee from feasting foxes in the background. He felt an incredible thirst but no water slaked his parched throat. Vultures hovered around his head and a couple of them could not even fly away, so full were their bellies. In a haze, he could see a human form come close to him as he tried to shout out desperately, Water, water!, but no words came out. The form came closer.

  It was the Buddha, but, strangely, he was twice as tall as a living man. The Buddha loomed over a staring Veera, and smiled, a smile he would never forget: the Buddha had a tooth missing. Veera woke up with a start, sweating profusely. His initial reaction was to look around for the Buddha. When he realized it had been a dream, he knew something was hidden inside the dream for him to decipher.

  The healer was snoring on the side of his bed. Even Akshayan slept, resting on a pole of the tent. The camp was quiet, but Veera’s mind was racing. Driven by the delirium of the vision, an idea, one that had initially cropped up in the recesses of his subconscious, had grown. Veera finally knew how to end this long-drawn-out war.

  *

  He woke up a fresh man and sent for his barber to shave off his beard. Everybody was surprised at Veera’s request for an urgent meeting of the war council so early in the morning. Seated before the war council, the preliminary exchanges about each others’ well-being, accentuated by the worries expressed by the generals on the health of the prince, were completed. Then a silence enveloped the group.

  Veera began talking the moment Ariyan looked at him questioningly. He outlined his plan, the most audacious plan till date. The general was caught off balance. The boldness of the idea and its simplicity struck him. He fumbled around for words – any word at all, either to oppose the plan or to support it – but none escaped his lips. His eyes watched Veera as he continued to speak like a man in a trance. It was almost like somebody else was speaking through the lips of a sick man.

  ‘But we are not thugs, we are noble warriors,’ Ariyan responded, but deep in his heart he was dismayed that he had not thought of the idea before.

  ‘Sir, we are years away from the time when conches were blown and drums were beaten before a war,’ Veera retorted, irritated that the outlining of his plan was being interrupted. ‘I want the deaths to stop – ours and theirs.’

  ‘They will not care about their lives when they realize what your plan is,’ Ariyan said.

  ‘If we are swift, we can do it.’

  Ariyan needed to buy time. ‘I suggest we still send a messenger to the emperor and ask for his consent.’

  ‘We don’t have a month,’ Veera protested. ‘The rains will begin soon. And the rivers will swell up like impregnated bellies and provide perfect cover for the defenders. I need Parakrama to sue for peace before that.’ Parakrama was the Lankan emperor.

  ‘I don’t have the authority to commission this,’ Ariyan weakly protested.

  ‘I think I do,’ said Veera and took out the king’s seal.

  Ariyan’s eyebrows arched at the audacity of the prince. Was he so sure of his plan? The atmosphere became charged with tension. Ariyan looked at Veera and then shifted his gaze to the seal he had thrust forward. There was a heavy silence and people squirmed in their seats with discomfiture. Lesser men would have grovelled at the sight of this royal insignia, but not Ariyan.

  ‘I recognize the seal of my majesty, but if I were to honour it, only I can accompany you on the expedition and risk my life.’ He smiled, and continued, ‘And I doubt you can use a man of my age or for that matter, size. I will not be bullied into risking the lives of my men on a half-baked plan. However, even without this authority that the king has wisely vested in your royal hands, we can discuss your plan as men of war and men with honour.’

  Over the next hour Veera was bombarded with questions: How many men did he need? Did he have any inkling about where the relic was? How did he intend to face his quarry?

  Veera had not known he would be so comprehensively interrogated. He answered the initial questions with a flashy attitude of a know-it-all, but when they began pricking his ideas
to deflate them, his tone became more subdued. He had initially thought he would have the army leaders enthralled with his vision, but he now decided he would be happy if he got out of the meeting without being termed a crackpot. The meeting was adjourned with a compromise: Ariyan would offer full support if Veera came up with a detailed campaign plan. With some feeling of respite, Veera retreated.

  On the way back to the tent, a visibly exhausted Veera was escorted by Akshayan on whose shoulder he rested. ‘How did you come up with that idea in the first place?’ Akshayan asked.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it, Akshayan, I dreamt it.’

  Akshayan was worried. The normally level-headed Veera had come up with a flamboyant plan in his dreams. Was it to draw attention to himself? Would it end with his life and career in jeopardy? ‘Veera,’ he started softly, ‘don’t indulge in anything foolhardy because of Sunanda.’

  ‘What has Sunanda got to do with this?’ Veera turned on him like a caged lion that had been poked with a stick, despite knowing that all his deeds would from then on have the shadow of Sunanda behind them. There was no road he could take to flee from it, nor a place to hide undiscovered.

  Meanwhile, Ariyan’s assistant was praising the regent-general for putting his foot down. ‘You threw out the idiotic proposal and the prince cannot complain because you did it so wisely.’

  Ariyan sighed. ‘I did not throw it out, and in any case that royal imp will come up with a detailed plan by tomorrow.’

  The assistant protested, ‘You are not going to go along with that foolishness. History will record you as a stealer, not a noble warrior.’

  Ariyan nodded his head. ‘There are two reasons why I will have to go along.’

  ‘Is it the royal seal?’ interrupted his assistant.

  ‘No, I can always sidetrack that, but I think this idea has a winning chance. And two,’ he whispered, ‘if I live long enough I have to obey my future king, now that I know who he will be.’

  *

  Veera brushed aside all negative thoughts. A seasoned warrior would have laughed at a plan of conquest arising from the hallucinations of a dying man. Veera needed to ensure the generals would not dismiss him, and he concentrated on the shortcomings of his plan.

  Ariyan spent a sleepless night too. He pondered over the idea. To dent the workability of a feasible plan with trumped-up weaknesses was not how he worked. But would it work where other schemes had failed?

  Sure enough, Veera had the schematics ready by the next day and Ariyan offered his full cooperation. Over the next few days, they charted out a very practical bid to hijack the remains of the Buddha, the remains of the apostle of peace that would so aptly end the violence that engulfed the island.

  When the Buddha died, parts of his body were gifted as sacred relics wherever Buddhism spread. Many kings fought over the right to possess the relics. And they traded hands depending, ironically, on the strength of the sword. The teacher’s tooth and his alms bowl, which were now both in Lanka, had been brought over from India in the ninth year of the reign of the Lankan king Sri Meghavarna. The highlight of the Lankan year was the Esala Perahera festival, when the relic casket was taken in procession accompanied by exotically costumed dancers, drummers and a hundred elephants during ten glittering nights.

  ‘I have made a few inquiries, discreet of course, without alarming the enemy,’ said Ariyan whose undercover agents spread up to the court of Rohana. ‘The relic is in the stupa of Subagiri, a three-day march from here. The area is thickly forested, but mostly unoccupied. There is a small regiment guarding the fort, but if the fort gates cannot be opened then the hill is almost inaccessible. If we cut a path for our army to cross the forest it would take weeks as well as cause consternation among the enemy. There is nothing significant in that town except for the relic and even a baby in his crib would know what we are after.’

  He waited for the dismay on the faces of the others to heighten, before continuing, ‘The operation has to be limited to an assault team of fifty. We would have to climb the hill from the back and enter the fort stealthily. I am told there are no guards on that side.’

  ‘When can we start?’ Veera demanded eagerly.

  Ariyan smiled. ‘A few more days so that we can train the team.’ He had not been surprised when Veera said he would lead the operation.

  The training of the soldiers was planned with this specific operation in mind. They began practising climbing the tallest trees with ropes. But Veera knew climbing a tree would not suffice – the higher they were, the tougher it would be and the more mother earth would beckon them, urging them to fall.

  Veera chose men from a single battalion as their camaraderie could add to the success of the plan. He joined the training sessions in the mornings, and in the evening was huddled up with Ariyan and the war council. An energetic air of excitement and expectation seemed to envelop the entire camp. Only then did it strike Veera that he had not thought of Sunanda for three whole days.

  Ariyan had located an aboriginal group with a traditional animosity towards the Sinhalese. The aborigines offered to show the Pandyan soldiers a mountain trail that would circumvent the hill to a smaller cliff on whose crest the stupa housing the relic stood. It had been decided that a nocturnal attack on the fort would have the best chance.

  After training for a week, the assault group began their march on an astrologically auspicious time. They avoided traditional footpaths and dodged the strongholds of the Sinhalese. Veera ensured that the glint of sunlight on a spear or a sword couldn’t give them away. Axemen cleared the path as two tribals led the way. The aborigines had skeletal frames, curly hair and flat rounded noses. Only loincloths covered their nakedness and their stink prevented the legion from coming closer than a few yards. They would not eat with the group and would skin the birds or squirrels they shot down and eat them raw. The soldiers ate a powder mixture in which half a dozen ingredients, including cereals, lentils and dried vegetables, had been mixed. They just wet the mixture with water and rolled it into balls to eat. They longed for some hot food, but fires were forbidden. Only the excitement of the ensuing action kept them on tether.

  After a day and two nights of marching, the group reached a dome-shaped hill. So impregnable was this cliff that the Lankans had not even bothered to build a wall on its side, thinking nature was their bulwark. Veera realized the cliff would be extremely slippery due to the moss and a climber would rarely find a crack to rest his limbs. It would be an impossible climb, and Veera began thinking that his plan was not viable.

  But there was a way out. If they would not have been looking for it, they would have certainly missed it. Rainwater, flowing over the cliff for eons, had left behind a cleft. The narrow gorge split the sheer face of the rock and within, in relative shelter from nature’s vagaries, many a stunted tree grew. It was through this gorge that a man could climb unnoticed. It was relatively easy for the two tribals to climb it first, using the trees and cracks as holds. The first tribal climbed the hill with a rope fastened to his hip. He searched for crevices where he could place his feet and trees that he could hold on to. After what seemed like infinity, the rope shook violently, a signal that the man had secured it on the top. The other tribal was made to climb first, to test the strength of the rope and the dependability of his colleague.

  Just then, a rapid breeze took off from the sea and travelled inland. The trees shook violently in response. The gale gathered strength and the wind brought in tow, like a veiled bride, billowing clouds. A crack of forked lightning added to Veera’s apprehensions. The entire team had been briefed on what they were fighting for and they watched the skies in superstitious awe. Veera moved quickly. The rain would soon begin, and the resolve of the regiment would dissolve any time after that.

  Veera was the fourth to climb and Akshayan followed him. When Veera placed his foot on a small stump, he could hear crunching sounds. He must have smashed a bird’s nest. So this is how these aborigines knew about this crevasse – they come
here regularly to pick up eggs and fledglings.

  A thin mist enveloped them as soon as they had climbed a hundred grasps on the rope, the cold numbing their senses and the fog blinding them. ‘It’s a good sign!’ Veera shouted aloud. ‘If there is a mist, it will not rain.’ But then it struck him; they had climbed into a low-lying cloud clinging to the cliff. The heavens seemed to be favouring their enemy.

  The Lankans must be praying hard, Veera thought. The cloud condensed on the rope, wetting it. Drops of rain began pelting them like pebbles. Veera thought of Sundar, who would be in a much more comfortable position than the other contender to the throne, who was currently hanging by one hand on a slippery rope along a rockface, and began laughing. Akshayan, below him, thought for a moment that his prince had gone mad.

  Suddenly, a soldier – the third after Veera – slipped and fell. Veera could see his body shudder, but the man did not make a sound as he plunged down the narrow precipice. Veera could only hear the sounds of his body battering against tree stumps on the way down. He peered down the cliff his comrade had just fell off, and was struck by a bout of vertigo. He swallowed the bile that rose within his throat and said firmly, ‘We are not stopping.’

  Akshayan looked at him questioningly.

  ‘It would have been the same had it been you or even me,’ Veera remarked.

  The rain seemed to stop the moment he reached the top. He looked at the soldiers with him. Their faces had been smeared with soot from the bottom of cooking pots so that they could mingle with the darkness, but now black streams of liquid soot stained their uniforms. Veera climbed to the top and scrambled over – at once he realized he had a bird’s eye view of the inside of the fort.

  In the darkness, the group found its way to the back of the citadel, the occasional streak of lightning that seemed to tear apart the sky giving them some illumination. Veera led the group, but Akshayan asked him whether it was wiser to send a reconnaissance team first.

  Veera answered as if he was possessed, ‘No, I know the route.’ Guided by an uncanny sense of direction, he led the group to his left where they climbed down a few steps and then right again. They waded in the water that was rushing down the steps towards the stupa.