They both swiftly got back into their combat stances and began prancing around in a circle, like gladiators in prehistoric arenas, looking for the best opportunity to strike at the other. So far it looked like a fight between equals. The matth members in the spectators were chanting ‘Naina! Naina!’ She was one among them, their very own fearless warrior.
As Naina and Bala charged upon each other like lions in a raging battle, Vidyut stepped forward and held Naina’s arm. His other hand was on Bala’s massive chest.
‘Enough!’ screamed Vidyut.
A few moments passed, with both sides cooling down slowly.
Bala winked at Naina. She responded with a broad grin.
‘You’re a tiger yaar, Naina’, said Bala folding his hands jovially, as an acknowledgement of her intense combat style.
‘Well you are no less, Bala. No one has ever come back from my aerial flip-kick,’ said Naina, reminding Bala of the crushing blow she landed on his head.
Vidyut was standing quietly with his arms folded, a bit dazed at what he had just witnessed. Purohit ji was smiling at this revelation Vidyut had had about Naina’s martial skills. Balwanta was proud of his protégé who had made even a highly trained ex-military combatant taste blood.
‘Still worried I’ll get hurt out there, sweetie?’ asked Naina, turning to Vidyut. Her lips were pouted innocently and her dreamy eyelashes batted quickly to tease him.
‘God, no! You can come with us. By all means, lead us, dear Durga!’ said Vidyut with a cheery laugh and a sincere sense of admiration.
He had addressed Naina as Durga, the slayer of the demon Mahishasur.
Harappa, 1700 BCE
THE FALLEN DEVTA
‘Because it was not Nayantara in her body! It was a daakini. From Nayantara’s breath I could sense the presence of a very potent and exceptionally evil spirit inside her,’ explained Vivasvan Pujari.
By now the judges seemed to be far from their judicious best. They were growling in anger, thumping the table needlessly, yelling out orders for intoxicating drinks and hurling abuses at each other. The soldiers of the courtroom, who were normally under a strict code of discipline and conduct, were also chattering and pushing one another like drunk ruffians at a low street tavern.
Suddenly, in all this commotion, Vivasvan Pujari noticed something that made him skip a heartbeat. The judgment book! One of the council members was maniacally jotting something down on the holy book of edicts. This was the ultimate register of judgment in the Harappan legal order. Any edict recorded in this highly venerated book had to be carried out within seven days. It was the law Vivasvan Pujari had himself passed. All that was needed to convert the written text into law was the seal. The one-horned bull.
‘Stop that councilman!’ screamed Vivasvan. He was horrified to see a judgment being noted on the book without the hearing being complete. No one seemed to care.
‘Stop writing on that book, you fool!’ yelled Vivasvan Pujari again. No response. The demented councilor was now writing at a furious pace, his face twisted in an evil expression of sadism, his eyes not blinking at all.
Enough was enough. Vivasvan Pujari decided to put an end to this madness. He started walking towards the bench and then broke into a run. He was going to pounce on the high dais of the council and snatch the judgment book before something insane got recorded on it. About ten soldiers, one after the other, tried to stop his advance. Vivasvan Pujari could have crushed each one of them in a matter of moments, but despite all the lunacy around him, they were after all his own people. He was not going to harm them. The devta dodged over and glided under every weapon strike at him. His actions were like a dream, his supple body avoiding every blow in an expert move, without counterattacking even once. The council priests, who under normal circumstances could each take on a dozen adversaries at one time, were now staring at Vivasvan Pujari like petrified dolls. The devta was not going to hurt them. He was only going for the judgment book.
Just as he was about to take his final leap, Vivasvan caught a glimpse of something from the corner of his eye. Sanjna! One of the intoxicated commanders had just dragged in his graceful and beloved wife into the courthouse, his hands towing her by the hair.
That was it.
The devta’s eyes were now bloodshot with fire that could burn down Mount Sumeru. He turned and bounded towards the grossly erring commander. Sanjna was Vivasvan Pujari’s pride, his soul, his promise…his whole world. The devta was not going to forgive this time.
As he approached the exit where his wife struggled with her head being pulled back ruthlessly by the mad commander, Vivasvan Pujari unsheathed the scimitar of a by-standing soldier. In one swift action he pounced on the commander, with his blade tearing through the shoulder of the fool who thought he could get away after insulting a devta’s wife. A fountain of blood sprayed from the fallen commander’s ripped open flesh. Sanjna was shivering with fright and crumbled into Vivasvan Pujari’s embrace. Even before the devta could utter the first word of consolation and comfort to his beloved partner, he felt a crushing blow at the back of his head. The pain was unbearable and the world started spinning before Vivasvan Pujari’s eyes. Moments before losing consciousness and crashing to the ground, he caught a glimpse of the coward who had attacked him from behind.
Ranga.
The devta felt his skull had been split into two. The pain from the back of his head was agonizing enough to disable even a God. Vivasvan Pujari could hear sounds of cackling men and screaming soldiers. He wanted to get up. In this slow and painful blur he suddenly remembered Sanjna and the horrible episode that had left him unconscious. For a moment he wished it were all just a bad dream. It was not. The ugly chapter was unfolding in reality.
As he fought the searing pain and struggled to open his eyes to locate his beloved wife, he realized his hands were not free. He felt sharp pain in his wrists. His hands were tied behind him. Not with the regular jute rope used for routine prisoners. His captors had used copper chains that were normally deployed to harness the beasts of battle. They knew that ordinary rope would not be able to contain the Surya of Harappa. As the devta slowly opened his eyes, he saw a dozen men looking down at him. The domed ceiling told him he was still in the courtroom.
‘Sanjna….’ he spoke painfully and broke into a cough. His throat was parched. He could sense he had been unconscious for long hours. All he heard in response was coarse laughter of a hundred men. How much he was missing his valiant son Manu at this time. He would have vanquished them all singlehandedly.
‘Sanjna…’ he cried out again. Only laughter.
‘Sanjnaaaaa…’ he yelled with as much strength as his broken body could muster. More laughter.
Tears now broke out from the edges of the fallen devta’s eyes. He could not believe how in just forty-eight hours his fortune could turn so much for the worse. From being the most worshipped devta in Harappa, he had been reduced to a plaything in the hands of lesser mortals. He had always been a believer in the power of endeavor over fate. But was fate ultimately the supreme force?
He then felt himself being pulled up from the back of his neck. An extremely strong and gigantic hand was raising him from the floor in the way a hunter picks up a freshly shot rabbit like his trophy. As Vivasvan was regaining consciousness and also fighting the pain, he once again saw his face. He once again saw Ranga’s face. In his mind, under his breath, to his Gods – Vivasvan Pujari took an oath. He would not die before seeing the death of Ranga. He would kill him with his own hands. And if for some reason he failed to do that, his son Manu would fulfill this oath.
‘Mrit Kaaraavaas!’ announced the drunken priest gleefully.
His pronouncement was greeted with great applause. Every council member, every commander, every soldier and every citizen in the courtroom seemed to be lusting for a violent spectacle. Vivasvan Pujari stood in the center of the courtroom - dazed, hands tied behind his back, bleeding and thirsty. He knew there was no point arguing. This was Sata
n’s gathering.
Confinement in the Mrit Kaaraavaas was the worst incarceration any human could imagine even in the darkest of nightmares. It was a rotting, cold, damp and dark hell of blood, pain, captivity, starvation and torture. The underground prison had been built and administered purposefully. The evolved and peaceful society of Harappa witnessed very few crimes. The classless, spiritual and educated people of this metropolis found little reason or incentive to commit crime. Yet the positive social system that prevented crime was matched equally by the penal framework that punished for it. The Mrit Kaaraavaas was built with a single objective. Deterrence.
The Harappan society believed in equality - wealth for all, opportunities for every citizen, education for everyone and homes for even the poorest. Yet these egalitarian rules did not apply to the prisons. The Dungeons of the Dead were not just punishment in terms of confinement. They were the absolute form of incarceration and banishment. Souls sent to the dungeons were wiped out from the very consciousness of the Harappan society. Even healthcare and medicine did not reach these wretched souls. It was Harappa’s own form of capital punishment. Those sent to the Mrit Kaaraavaas never came back.
‘The crime of this Vivasvan Pujari fellow has been proven… and he will be sent to the Mrit Kaaraavaas’ slurred one of the council members, and stopped to take a big gulp from his glass of flower toddy. Half the liquid found its way from the sides of his mouth to his fine cotton robes.
Others in the room found this hellishly funny and a good enough reason to pick up their own glasses of the inebriating toddy.
By now Vivasvan Pujari was clear that there was no point debating with these delusional hooligans. He was also convinced that his fellowmen had been poisoned with a strong hallucinogenic. He had to get out. He had to find a cure. And if the whole city was going insane, it had to be something that they were all exposed to. The food stocks? Didn’t seem likely. The supply came from numerous sources and the distribution was too wide. The meat? No, half the priests were vegetarians. The air? How can that be poisoned? The water? No. All the channels were well guarded.
It all seemed too impossible. Vivasvan Pujari shrugged away the thought.
Had the people of Harappa always been like this? Did they appear kind to him thus far only because the devta saw them from a seat of unquestioned power?
Before he could conclude his thoughts, the continuous bleeding and thirst took their toll on the devta. He once again fell on the ground unconscious.
Banaras, 2017
‘WE’RE FIGHTING FOR ONE THOUSAND YEARS.’
‘Brahminabad?’ exclaimed Vidyut. ‘Are you serious?’
He immediately regretted having uttered the last part of his question. He reminded himself that he was speaking to the mighty matthadheesh. He rephrased his question into a more polite one.
‘Baba, are you saying that the original name of the Harappan site was Brahminabad?’
‘Yes my son. When translated to English it means the Settlement or the City of the Brahmins.’
Vidyut was looking bewildered. He did not know what to make of this information. Dwarka Shastri could see the confusion on his great grandson’s face. It was time to share the whole truth with Vidyut.
‘Why the British officers chose to go with the name Harappa and not Brahminabad, as it was known originally by the locals, is anybody’s guess,’ explained the grandmaster. ‘Also, you said that it was Sir John Hubert Marshall who discovered the Harappan sites in 1921. That is the well-known and well-propagated theory. But do you know that Harappa was actually discovered by another Englishman by the name of Charles Masson eight decades before Marshall started the excavations? He even described it in his writings Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab. So clearly, in 1842 the East India Company, and in turn the British crown, had discovered the presence of the Harappan ruins. Why did they commission an excavation only eight decades later in 1922? What were they doing for nearly a century?’
Vidyut was deeply intrigued at what his great grandfather was telling him. While studying the Indus Valley Civilization back in school and college, he had never thought that the ancient civilization held such significance in Indian history.
‘That is still not all, Vidyut. There was another British mission that reached the prehistoric sites after Charles Masson and before Sir John Hubert Marshall. It was a British officer named General Alexander Cunningham, who along with two engineers named John Brunton and William Brunton, visited the Harappan sites in 1856, one year before the great sepoy mutiny of 1857, or as some call the first war of independence. Guess what these Englishman did,’ said Dwarka Shastri, looking at Vidyut with an amused expression.
‘What, Baba?’ asked Vidyut.
‘What would you expect educated, civilized and resourceful officers of the East India Company and the British Empire to do if they stumbled upon one of the most ancient relics of the world?’
‘I would expect them to preserve the heritage, undertake detailed and careful excavations and eventually gift mankind with a legacy,’ replied Vidyut matter-of-factly.
‘Precisely. But what if I told you that the British did no such thing? What if I told you that after fourteen years of its discovery by Charles Masson, General Cunningham and the two Brunton brothers blew-up the entire city of Brahminabad to rubble and used its hard-baked bricks to lay the stone-bed for a railway line?’ asked the grandmaster, looking straight at Vidyut.
‘What are you saying, Baba? This is unbelievable!’ exclaimed Vidyut.
‘Yes my son. What better way to wipe out an entire chapter of human history? The ancient city of Brahminabad, the first city to be discovered across the Harappan civilization, the most glorious neighbor of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro…today lies crushed and buried under the railway lines between Karachi and Lahore!’
‘Why hasn’t anybody objected? Why is all this not spoken about more openly?’ asked a stunned Vidyut. ‘And more importantly, why did the British officers destroy a world treasure in the first place? What did they have to gain from it?’
Vidyut had no idea that a dark conspiracy spreading over centuries and continents lay at the heart of something that appeared to be just an archaeological find about a forgotten people.
‘Better than asking what they had to gain from destroying Brahminabad, is asking what they had to lose if they let the ancient ruins be discovered,’ said the old matthadheesh.
‘Consider this Vidyut, several of our ancient scriptures describe rishis and ascetics performing holy rituals and hard penances on the banks of the Saraswati river, supposedly the major river whose tributary was the Sindhu or Indus. Numerous kingdoms of Vedic ethos have been described as flourishing on the mighty river’s shores. But none of our history books ever mention this. Agreed the Saraswati vanished from the face of the Earth. But why did it vanish from our books and writing? Billions of dollars are spent the world over to uncover ancient relics, monuments and legends. Then why has the Saraswati been discarded into the dustbins of history?’ Dwarka Shastri continued. ‘Is it just coincidence?’
After a moment’s pause Dwarka Shastri said, ‘the forces that wanted to bury the truth behind Harappa are the same as the ones that want the world to forget the Saraswati.’
‘Just being a devil’s advocate here Baba, but could that be because there is no real scientific evidence of the Saraswati’s existence?’ asked Vidyut in a straightforward manner. While he was getting more and more intrigued, he was not going to let go of reason even for a moment.
‘That is not entirely true Vidyut. Well-known writer Michel Danino propounded in his 2010 book The Lost River that the dried riverbed of the Ghaggar-Hakra was actually the Saraswati river, and that it was the Saraswati that sustained the Harappan civilization and the entire Bronze Age. More recently, the government of Haryana has renamed the tehsil (province) of Mustafabad in its Yamunanagar district to Saraswati Nagar, where an underground stream, strongly believed by geologists and archaeologi
sts to be the mythical Saraswati, has been discovered.’
‘This is amazing, Baba. One is forced to wonder why such initiatives are being taken only now. What have we been doing for nearly two centuries?!’ exclaimed Vidyut.
Dwarka Shastri laughed. Vidyut could make out his laugh carried both sarcasm as well as gloom.
‘Not two centuries Vidyut. We’re fighting for over one thousand years,’ replied the grandmaster.
Another few hours passed and besides further narrating the tale of Vivasvan Pujari, the Saptarishi, Priyamvada and Manu, Dwarka Shastri unveiled several lesser known facts and mysteries about Harappa. Each one of them pointed towards one clear conclusion. Some very influential and powerful force was trying to hide the truth and profound significance of the ancient civilization. Finally, the grandmaster told Vidyut the mysterious story of 1856, Brahminabad.
There was a knock at the door of the matthadheesh. ‘Hmmmm…’ Dwarka Shastri gave permission to enter. Sonu walked in hesitantly, clearly nervous in the great matthadheesh’s presence. But he also had a mischievous smile on his face, which he was trying in vain to hide.
Sonu folded his hands and bowed in reverence to the grandmaster. He then turned impishly to Vidyut and announced, ‘Vidyut dada, you have a visitor.’ Vidyut noticed that Sonu was going red in the face, and was trying very hard to control a giggle.
‘A visitor…? How can I get a visitor? Except for Bala no one even knows I am here,’ replied Vidyut. He was in deep conversation with his great grandfather and did not want to be disturbed. There was much left to be learnt and discovered. The painful and gripping tale of Vivasvan Pujari and the last days of Harappa was only mid-way. Neither did Vidyut entirely know how he was connected to it. The mystery behind the Aryan invasion was still not fully uncovered. Why the Saraswati Civilization was named the Indus Valley Civilization and why the British officers conspired to undermine the discovery was yet to be discussed. But most of all, Vidyut was still grappling with what his great grandfather had said about the statuette of the priest-king being that of his own. This was not the time Vidyut wanted to get up and receive a visitor.
Harappa - Curse of the Blood River Page 13