Asura- Tale of the Vanquished

by Anand Neelakantan

  63 Childish dreams

  Bhadra

  It is always when everything appears dream-like and life seems to possess a never-ending charm, that foolish thoughts and dangerous aspirations take birth in the minds of humans. Shambuka was intelligent and handsome, but that was no reason for Arasi to think that he should grow up to be more than a washerman. Once such thoughts enter a mother’s mind, that her child is special, nothing can shake them free. She wished her son to be an important official, or perhaps a famous poet, or a great merchant – anything other than a lowly dhobi. I warned her that people like us should not dare to dream. Shiva also tried to reason with her but she remained adamant. Mala joined Arasi in demanding that Shambuka be educated. The women reasoned that we had money and the boy had talent, so why should he be left illiterate? But the boy was eight years old and it was too late. Had he lived in one of the Asura cities, he would have become fairly competent in reading, writing and mathematics by then.

  They kept nagging and finally, against my objections and protests, Shiva relented and decided to find a way to send the boy to school. I did not like the decision, but was fairly confident that no one would teach a dhobi’s son anything, so I was not overly worried. But I had not taken into account the fact that money can break even the most strict taboos. Shiva found a teacher who was almost a recluse, living across the river.

  On the other side of the river Sarayu, lay a thick jungle. With the fowls and beasts, there lived a few ascetics who did nothing other than smear their bodies in ashe, wear skulls and bones as ornaments, and sometimes stand in difficult and acrobatic postures for hours together. Ostensibly they were in search of God, or their inner selves, or brahman, but they were a seedy crowd who did not fit in with the rigid caste system of the Devas and found sanctuary in their reclusiveness. As a rule they were addicted to intoxicants and a few punished themselves in exotic ways. The common people were afraid of this motley crowd and whispered in hushed tones about their mystical powers. I had ventured many times to those parts and had struck up conversations with a few of them. They were surprisingly blind to casteism and I went there for the freedom their company offered. They were the only people who never asked me about my caste and some were even happy to share a drink or a smoke with me. That was my secret world.

  Shiva had found one of the ascetics who could not have cared less about caste purity. He loved his wine from the city and yearned for some herbs to smoke. I was deputed to supply him with his fees, in exchange for his services in teaching Shambuka. I found myself enjoying his company and his herbs. He was a learned man, equally well versed in Sanskrit, Tamil, Naga, Gandharva, and Kinnara dialects, and a handful of barbarian languages. He was also well versed in the Brahmin Vedas, astrology and other sciences. Shambuka could not have had a better teacher. The ascetic only insisted that he be called Guru.

  In one of his drunken spells, he spelt out his earlier life. He was a Brahmin from the land of the five rivers, but had travelled to Ayodhya in his early youth. He had done odd jobs and was on the verge of making it big as a government official, but became disgusted with the caste system, though it gave him privileges as a Brahmin. He was in Ayodhya when Rama relinquished his right of inheritance to respect his father’s vows and had witnessed the meeting of the young Deva prince and the saint Jabali. Jabali had argued with Rama, trying to convince him that there was nothing called God or afterlife or soul, and one had to live this life and enjoy it till one died. But the puritan and self-righteous Rama, had refused to accept all the logical reasoning of Jabali and had left for the forest with his young wife and his younger brother. However, Guru had been impressed by J

  abali and had impulsively decided to relinquish his high paying government job and become his follower. When Dasratha, Rama’s father, had been King, he tolerated all shades of opinion and Jabali was allowed to roam free in the city, declaiming the absurdity of the caste system. But when Bharata, the younger brother of Rama, ascended the throne in the name of Rama, he hunted down any dissenting men and ensured the orthodoxies were kept intact.

  Jabali and his followers had been banished to the other bank of the Sarayu, and soon other men with differing opinions and schools of thought, also found asylum on that bank. Jabali was dead but his traditions lingered on, along with the other conflicting schools of thought. After Jabali’s death, his followers took it as a mission to educate as many as possible, irrespective of caste. But over the years, the iron grip of the system had tightened and only a few dared to become educated. Those who did, escaped from India to the lands across the mountains, to China, or to the lands beyond the seas, where only the merit of a man mattered and not his accident of birth.

  Shambuka listened to all this with eyes wide open and I was disturbed by the strange gleam in them. Later, when I would row him back across the inky black waters of the Sarayu, he would speak of his dream of becoming a great poet who would mesmerize his audience with his dazzling poetry. I kept rowing as the young boy brimmed with life and promise. Then one night, with a million stars as witness, with the cold waters of the Sarayu rippling over the heart of India and the silver moon reflecting in his black curls, Shambuka broke into melodious song. He sang about a world of freedom, a world of hope, of a tomorrow that was never to be. His song dissolved in the breeze that caressed the lowly huts of the poor and curled around the palace towers where the Gods resided in the guise of men. I reached the shore of the Dhobi Ghat when the lights had gone out in most homes. The boy had fallen asleep. With a heavy heart, I tied up the boat and carried the sleeping boy home on my tired shoulders.

  64 The sword of dharma

  Bhadra

  As the days passed by, the boy developed wonderfully. His voice grew rich in its tenor and his verses became lyrical. People began to wait at the Ghat for our boat to return at night. His songs reached the shore before the prow of our boat disturbed the little pool of golden light near the shore where men and women sat listening rapturously to the sweet voice that wafted over the dark, gently rippling water. Every night, as I walked my little boy through the admiring crowd, with his small fingers clasped firmly around my wrinkled wrist, the audience sometimes sung with him, sometimes clapped to the rhythm, or silently wept with him. He sang in Sanskrit, but the emotions that pulsed were universal and the yearnings that radiated were primeval. It struck a chord with everyone who chanced to hear it even once. It penetrated the thick muck of religion, caste and custom that had pasted itself over men’s hearts and instead, appealed to the inner goodness of all human beings.

  As his fame grew, my fear increased. I tried to prevent him from going out of our little caste village, to make him understand that outside, a dark and cruel world was waiting to snap him up, a world inhabited by Gods and their chosen men, who would brook no challenge to their supremacy. But the boy had tasted the sweetness of freedom. He could not be tied to a stinking village of outcastes with the chains of tradition. He was at a stage of life when everything appeared sunny and bright and the future spread ahead infinitely with grand promises. That was the danger of education.

  It gave birth to dreams that had no legs to stand on firmly in the real world. I tried to reason with him, saying that as per the Vedas, we, the outcastes, were not supposed to learn anything other than our caste duties. Not that I knew much about the Vedas, other than what I had heard about from the Brahmin priests, who quoted obscure phrases for no rhyme or reason. Instead, he surprised me with his clear rendition of the Vedas and translated the meaning for me. He challenged me to show him a single verse that sanctioned caste.

  I did not care whether the Vedas sanctioned caste or not. But this was a revelation to me. As an Asura, I had been taught to hate all that was considered holy by the Devas. Shambuka said that his Guru had taught him the real meaning of the Vedas and they were not the monopoly of any single caste or profession. They were a collection of the thoughts of poets who had lived thousands of years ago, who came from varied professions such as fishermen, priest
s, woodcutters, potters, hunters and many more. It was only later that selfish men appropriated the Vedas for their own means and used them as a convenient tool to beat others with.

  Shambuka had become too smart for his own good. I wanted to murder that Brahmin, that disciple of Jabali, who had muddled up my little Shambuka’s brain. Even if all the things he said were true, they were dangerous truths and not to be uttered even in private. And that Brahmin had taught my naïve little grandson to sing it in public. I pleaded with the boy but he remained adamant. I pleaded with the father and mother of the boy, and my wife too, but they were all in a dream world, misty-eyed at the success of their little one in the world. He began to go out of the village and sing. He quoted eloquently from the Vedas and then added spice to his speech with logic and the rendering of folktales. Men and women flocked to hear the little boy’s sweet voice. They crowded onto the streets and showered him with flowers. He became too famous for his own good.

  Then it happened. It was inevitable, so I was not shocked. The boy was confronted on the royal highway by a group of priests who did not wish the lower castes to pollute the highway. The boy refused to move and challenged them on the very authority which they themselves used to condone such an atrocious thing. Enraged, the head priest rumbled forth some obscure Sanskrit verses, which he imagined would intimidate this low caste rascal. The boy, with his head full of the knowledge his Guru had imparted, challenged the priests with accepted interpretations of the verses as well as his own version. By the time the news reached me and our family had rushed to the spot, a huge crowd had gathered to watch the debate. The crowd cheered whenever the boy opened his mouth to render a melodious verse in Sanskrit.

  The crowd had forgotten all the taboos assiduously built by the Brahmins about who should use the public road and when, and who could or could not touch whom, along with all the other complicated rules of the caste system. They jostled together, polluting each other and getting polluted by touch and sight, just to hear Shambuka sing. The boy questioned the rituals and the sacrifices, just as his Guru had taught him, and he challenged the idea of caste and the supremacy of one human being over another, based merely on the accident of birth, as the crowd cheered him on.

  The high priests of the kingdom were getting more and more agitated as the boy continued to question them, not using the rational atheistic arguments as the master of his Guru, Jabali, would have done, but using the verses from the Vedas and the Upanishads. He recited verses from the Vedas and then translated them into Prakrit for the common people on the street to understand.

  The crowd howled and cheered madly as I grew more and more uneasy with every passing moment. Shambuka asked the questions which everyone on street had always wanted to ask, but had never dared to. He asked for the truth and I, from the vantage of my advanced years knew what the fate seekers of truth had always met with. With growing trepidation I watched the army surround the crowd. I could sense a change in the mood of the crowd. The cheering grew less and less in volume and slowly died altogether. There was tension in the air but the boy seemed unaware of what was happening around him. In the thick silence that enveloped thousands of impotent, cowardly men and women, his voice rose in a sweet melody.

  A chariot came in fast and stopped at the corner where Shambuka stood in a trance, reciting the Vedas loudly and sweetly. From the chariot, King Rama stepped down. The priests ran to him and whispered something in his ear. He became uneasy and shook his head. He looked as if he was pleading with his priests, but the head priest, a dark, fat man with an immense torso, angrily demanded something of the king. The King’s shoulders sank as he heard what his priests were telling him. He moved forward as if to wake Shambuka from his trance. The crowd waited with baited breath. But the fat priest moved in-between and saved the great King from such a polluting touch. Shambuka also sensed something and woke from his trance. He looked bewildered at the sight before him. The boy became afraid and started to cry. The crying broke the spell. He was no longer a great poet and singer who could move men to tears. He was just a small boy of fourteen, a mere untouchable, a black Asura and a non entity. He looked at his King and protector and made a deep bow. Rama again looked helplessly at his priests, who angrily pointed at the boy, shouting.

  The King raised his hands to shut up the Brahmins and asked the boy, “Son, who are you?”

  “I am Shambuka, son of Shiva,” the boy murmured.

  “What caste are you?”

  “I do not have a caste, nor do you.” The boy looked into the eyes of the king.

  “Is it true that you are an untouchable?”

  “I am not untouchable, nor is anyone else.”

  “Are you an atheist?”

  “I am a firm believer in God, who is within each one of us. I am God and so are you.”

  “Who granted permission for a Shudhra to learn the Vedas?” Rama was getting angry now.

  “Do the birds need permission to fly? Do the fish swim on someone’s authority? Learning, for humans, is like swimming for fish or flying for birds.”

  “You arrogant fool! Do you know the punishment meted out in our kingdom to the lower castes who are arrogant enough to break their caste dharma?” The head priest barked at Shambuka.

  Rama looked at the priests, pleading. He had the same look on his face when his wife’s purity was tested by fire. He knew what the boy said was true, and his eyes betrayed infinite compassion for the small boy whose soul-stirring song rose above the murmurs of the crowd. He looked at the priests again.

  In answer to this question, Shambuka broke into a Sanskrit song from some obscure Upanishad that said death was nothing but a temporary address change for the soul, and just as a man changed his clothes when they were old and tattered and bought new clothes, the soul too, sought a new body. I should really have had a word with that Guru who had taught such nonsense to my little boy. When would people learn the simple things – that death was the end and if you died, your body rotted and dissolved in the soil.

  The fat priest, now raised his voice and told the crowd, “This Shudhra, this arrogant untouchable, has dared to break the most important of caste rules. Not only has this Shudhra dared to become literate, he has gone to the extent of learning the holy Vedas. And he is misinterpreting what is written in the Holy Books. There is only one fate that awaits such arrogant hotheads.”

  He looked at King Rama with the air of a man who has said what he knew to be right and now the responsibility to act on those words had shifted to the others. A tremor passed through the crowd. The soldiers closed into a tight circle, with their swords drawn, spears pointed towards the crowd, waiting for any idiot who was foolish enough to move. A crow cawed, punctuating the thick silence. I trembled at the thought of what was coming. Rama had his sword drawn now. Shambuka’s cheeks were wet from his tears and his little, innocent face wore an expression of someone who had tried his best and failed. He looked tired beyond his years. I could hear the thump thump of some women washing dirty linen far away, which gave an eerie rhythm to the hot, sweltering day. It as if someone or something had begun a countdown. When I had counted fourteen thumps, Rama’s mighty sword came swishing down and severed the head of my little grandson.

  The show was over. The crowd dispersed to their homes, some excitedly talking to each other, others going about their business as if nothing had happened. I pushed towards the place where Shambuka lay without his head. Rama’s chariot flew past, cutting the thinning crowd in two. Soldiers pushed men and women out of its way to ensure a smooth passage for the fleeing king, to his palace. I wanted to jump in front of the chariot and pull the man down from the lofty pedestal he clung to; drag him down through the mud and grab his bleeding sword, the sticky, red one that had severed my little boy’s neck, and thrust it deep into his heart. Instead, I stood feeble and whimpering, gaping at the disappeared man in his speeding chariot, immersed in my messy grief.

  As I stood watching helplessly, the chariot disappearing in a cloud of
dust, it suddenly veered to the left and stopped. Soldiers ran to the royal chariot and a commotion developed. I dragged myself there to see what had happened. For a moment, I wished that Rama has been assassinated, but then I ruefully remembered that such things as natural justice exist only in the wistful imaginations of idealists. I was too old a dog to be tempted with that kind of bone.

  Rama stood before a distraught Arasi and Mala, embarrassment and anger written clearly on his face. The women had blocked the King’s path. Animal screams came from the mother’s mouth as she tore her hair in despair. Mala beat her breasts with a violence that surprised me.

  “Why did you kill my little one? What were you afraid of? You. . .”

  Soldiers rushed to push away the women from the path of the God. But Rama stopped them with a flick of his hand. “Mother, your son broke the sacred rules of the land and as King, I had to protect the dharma.”

  Arasi spat on the ground and viciously barked at the King, “Sacred laws. . .dharma. . . If your dharma needs to be protected from a little boy, by killing him, if dharma is afraid of a few Sanskrit words uttered by a child, think if you can, you ruler of this sacred land, what sort of dharma you are protecting and whose hands hold the strings that control you. . .”

  Rama stood speechless, his Brahmin aides glowering at the little, dark woman who had asked questions which no one else had even dared to think about. I pushed my way towards the scene, but before I could reach the spot, the soldiers had whisked the women away. When she was being dragged through the street by her hair, Arasi cursed her King with all the rage of a helpless mother whose only child had been killed, “You will pay for this Rama, you will pay for this. You may be a champion of some smritis that treat the helpless, the poor, the weak, and women, like worms, but mark my words. . .never again. . .never again. . .will you know what happiness is. There is a dharma, the law of the natural world, that is bigger. . .stronger than all these verses. That dharma will come for you…” She kept screaming but the curses grew fainter and fainter and slowly died away as the soldiers dragged her away from the King.