KRISHNA CORIOLIS#3: Flute of Vrindavan

by Ashok K. Banker

  They began making preparations at once. It would take some time yet for there was much work to be done and Nanda did not see any need for haste. They also had to be careful to make the move suddenly. It should seem as if the Vrishnis had simply vanished from Vraj one day. They set about planning and preparing for the great migration with the same careful attention and efficiency with which they managed their cowherds and produced the famous buttermilk, curds and other dairy products that made Vraj renowned the world over.

  20

  Crooked Jaw’s team mates did not have any reason to hold back. They knew what they were capable of and after enduring the ignominy of watching their captain being sent to the sidelines by Kamsa, they wanted revenge. They were all bigger and tougher than he was and felt confident they could destroy him easily even in a one-on-one combat.

  But just to be sure, they came at him together, their intention not merely to knock him out of the game but to kill him. He had no way of knowing if this was on Jarasandha’s orders or merely their own death wish for him but in any case, dying was dying, whether it was done on orders or not.

  They were smart, he had to give them that much. And they were experienced warriors, so they didn’t come at him from the front, giving him a chance to flail out at them. Two of them came at him from either side at precisely the same time, forcing him to choose whether to strike out at this way or that. The other two attacked him from behind, also at the same time, one going high, the other low. They intended to ram him and crush him, breaking his bones and smashing his vital organs.

  He stood still and let them try.

  They struck him with the combined force of four chariots striking in a head-on collision. Usually, when his body was this hardened, he felt nothing, merely observed and heard the impact of a boulder he threw or a stone he had crushed, or an iron rod striking his body. He would feel the superficial impact - the vibrations, shuddering, the sound of something thudding against his petrified flesh. But not actually feel anything.

  But this time, he felt it.

  Felt the massive weight of their combined tonnage hitting him. Felt it through his skin as hard as lead sheet, his flesh as rigid as iron, his bones as solid as granite, right into the core of his being. They must have struck him with a combined force of at least a ton of weight. Enough to pulverize anything to ruin.

  He withstood it.

  It was the densest he had ever made his body. He had compacted himself so much he could feel his heart pumping only once every several seconds, the blood barely trickling through his stoney veins. He was almost a block of stone. He had known he could make himself this hard - any of them could, he was sure - but most of the time it was impractical because he required to move about and so had to keep himself somewhat flexible at least. The more flexibility, the less dense his body. The more dense he made his body, the more rigid it became. Right now, he was all but wholly stone, a veritable statue.

  They had not been expecting that. They had expected him to move, to lash out, to try to dodge or escape the impact. They had moved fast, in order to strike unexpectedly as well as to coordinate their timing and hit at exactly the same time. This meant that they had only partially hardened their bodies, more than enough to crush him, but not so much that they could not move or control their limbs.

  So instead of them crushing him, he crushed them.

  The same force of impact that they inflicted upon him rebounded on themselves.

  It was like hitting a stone wall with an iron fist.

  It was a contest between which was denser, stronger.

  As it turned out, he was the smarter one.

  He saw the two who rammed his shoulders break their own shoulders - he saw their arms crumpled and crack open, like wood split by an axe. He saw the petrified flesh and blood within exposed like an iced corpse cut open, marbled veins and gelatinous blood. He saw the white of their bones exposed, snapping, breaking, showing jagged edges.

  The ones who struck him from behind, he could not see them of course. Nor could he feel them strike him. He could feel nothing actually.

  It took him an instant of concentration to reduce his density enough that he could move. At once he felt the piercing thirst that always accompanied severe densification. He felt like he could drink a barrel or three right now.

  Later, he promised himself. Time enough for food, drink and celebration later.

  He stepped out of the tangle of bodies, turned and examined the results.

  All four of his attackers lay on the ground, two with shoulders split open, one with his collarbone shattered into pieces, the fourth with chest and ribcage and lower jaw broken in several places. All the points where their bodies had impacted with his own. All because they had sought to rush him fast and he had stood stone still. Literally stone still.

  ‘Mathura Mathura Mathura...’

  The words continued from his barely parted lips. It was the only thing he had kept up unceasingly through the scant seconds of the attack.

  He looked at the enemy team. They were staring at him with gaping mouths. Never before had anyone downed four of their team mates at one go. Then again, they had never faced anyone like Kamsa ever before.

  He had taken out the entire front line in a single move.

  Now he moved across the first border to the second section.

  ‘Mathura Mathura Mathura...’

  He realized the crowd had gone silent. It was as if the lid of a heavy box had been shut suddenly, blocking off the sound within. The utter silence was deafening. The crowd had probably been watching these games for years. They were so accustomed to watching their own home team win they probably had no conception that it was even possible for them to lose.

  He would show them it was possible.

  The other team members had recovered from the shock of their team mates’ failure.

  Six of them made a wall across the second quadrant, blocking his way effectively. Two more lurked on the edges, as a backup measure.

  This time none of them made a move to rush him. Instead, they watched him warily, stepping this way then that to keep the wall tight yet mobile, showing him that they could match any move he made and block him.

  Which was what he had expected.

  He turned sharp right and sprinted to the side of the quadrant. Because they had all held the line tight to block his way, there was a gap of about three yards at that end. It was unusual for anyone to run fast in the game because of the risk of failing to catch one’s breath with the constant chanting. But he was willing to take that risk. He sprinted right to the side of the quadrant, where the referee stood with his bone horn, saw the look of surprise on the man’s eyes - surprise mingled with more than a little fear, for the man had already seen what he was capable of doing - then swung sharply left, through the gap. The instant he started sprinting they had guessed what he was unto and the players on this side had begun moving to block the gap. But they were slower than he was and only two made it in time.

  He barreled straight into them, aiming for their arms which they had made the mistake of linking together in a foolish bid to block him more effectively.

  He tore their arms from their sockets. The cracking and ripping sounds of the arms being torn out of the hardened bodies was very loud in the stadium. He threw the torn arms aside and continued his run at the same sprinting pace.

  ‘Mathuramathuramathura...’ he chanted nonstop.

  There were ten players holding the last quadrant. All of them had begun rushing towards this end of the quadrant the moment he moved this side. But he dodged this way and that as he came, making them unsure of which way he would go. As a result, their line was ragged and each player was separated from the others by a yard or three.

  He ran straight at the nearest player and grabbed hold of him.

  The man was not expecting a direct assault of all things. But he wasn’t wholly unprepared either.

  He reacted by grasping hold of Kamsa as well.

  Kamsa
had taken hold of the man’s head in a vice grip and now, as the man struggled, he began to choke him while pushing his head backwards. The man in turn had taken hold of Kamsa’s torso and was attempting to crush his softer rear organs on the sides.

  Kamsa hardened his body instantly, and shoved with all his strength.

  The man tried to harden his body but was a fraction of an instant too late.

  Kamsa heard the sound of the iron-hard neck cracking and saw the Magadhan player’s head bend backwards, then topple over till the back of his head touched his upper back.

  Kamsa let the body drop. It fell with a dull thud to the dust of the ground.

  He charged at the next player.

  This man too was somewhat surprised at the assault. It was usual for the defending team to attack the intruder, not for the intruder to do so to the defenders!

  Also, once body contact was made, the two players had to either wrestle one another to the ground till one yielded, or push one another across the border lines.

  Kamsa wrestled the man. The man was very wide across with a thick middle, so he had gone for his thigh instead. Grasping hold of it, he threw his own body backwards, knocking both of them off their feet. The man fell backwards, landing heavily on his back. Kamsa had a much lesser distance to fall and was the one doing the throwing, so could land less impactfully. Still, it was an effort to keep the chant going and exert pressure on the man’s thigh. He climbed atop the man at an angle, grabbing his langot and pulling it to gain purchase. With ordinary wrestlers, pulling the langot was an effective wrestling move because it exerted pressure on a man’s most sensitive parts. But with these men it made little difference. What it did achieve was giving Kamsa a handhold.

  Using the man’s langot to turn around, Kamsa caught hold of the man’s arm and then his thigh again.

  Then he stood up.

  Straining under the weight of the heavier man, he heaved him up like a sack of bricks - or iron ingots, from the feel of him - and flung him across the border line.

  The man roared in fury as he realized his mistake too late. But by then he was already thudding down...across the border line and out of the game. He slammed his fist on the ground in frustration, hurling abuses at Kamsa. He would have gotten to his feet and run back into the quadrant but the referee was standing by and blew his bone horn at once.

  Kamsa turned and saw that the others had no intention of waiting for him to work his wiles on them as well.

  Two of them came at him, taking hold of his upper and lower bodies respectively. Their intention was probably to twist his body in different directions, either tearing him into two pieces, or contort him hard enough to injure him severely.

  Kamsa rolled over the head of the other grabbing his lower body, kicking out at the face of the higher one at the same time.

  The move was not sufficient to break him free of their combined grasp but it was enough to cause them to lose their balance. As each was pulling in a different direction, they tumbled together, their grip on Kamsa loosening slightly.

  Just enough for him to grasp hold of their arms and twist in opposite directions - he spun like a corkscrew in midair, using his purchase on their own bodies against them.

  Both arms twisted at impossible angles, then were turned like wet rags being wrung out to dry.

  The men screamed in pain and shock - even though their bodies were hardened, they were still mobile enough to feel such severe trauma. Blood spattered Kamsa from both sides, splashing his chest and back. It was cooler than normal blood would have been because of the hardening. The more sluggish their bodies became the cooler the blood temperature, the slower the flow.

  Kamsa landed on his feet again and turned to the next opponent.

  He circled three or four of the enemy players as they watched him warily.

  By now, Crooked Jaw was yelling orders from the sideline, frustrated at being out of the game and watching his team being destroyed by a single man.

  Kamsa grinned at them, and waved to Crooked Jaw who was even more enfuriated and began hurling curses.

  ‘Mathura Mathura Mathura...’ Kamsa muttered.

  He wrestled his way through the rest of the team. It was hard but satisfying work. Every one of the moves Yadu had shown him worked perfectly. It was as if the old Yadava had known precisely how his enemies would attack or respond. He supposed that was true in a sense: there were only so many ways in which a man could wrestle or physically block another man. And of those ways, there were even fewer effective ways to do so in the course of this game.

  Every move Yadu taught him came in useful. Including the more complex, hand-foot combinations that required considerable agility and effort.

  When at last he crossed the enemy team’s home line, the crowd erupted in a huge wave of reluctant admiration and applause. They simply could not believe their eyes. Never before had they seen such a thing done, he learned later. Well, not precisely. They had seen it done only once before, when Crooked Jaw came to play for the Magadhan team. An enemy chieftain - like all the members of the Magadhan team - he had worked his way through Jarasandha’s entire squad of champions just as Kamsa had done today, making mincemeat of them all. It had been even more formidable because Crooked Jaw had not possessed the power to densify his body back then. On the other hand, neither had the Magadhans. This new level of bodily prowess was a relatively recent development.

  But Kamsa had faced an entire team of empowered Magadhans and demolished them. And that must surely count as a greater achievement.

  As he raised his clenched fist, surrounded by the ecstatic team mates, all of whom would now be freed along with their tribes, Kamsa saw Crooked Fist coming towards him, his ugly face dark and furrowed with anger.

  He turned to face him, his team mates moving aside to make way for the giant.

  Kamsa hardened his body, prepared for any attack. The game was officially over, but he knew that sometimes the real fighting began after the game was ended. Especially in army camps.

  Crooked Jaw stopped a yard short of him.

  He glared down at Kamsa for a long moment.

  ‘Mathuran!’ he roared, making the word sound like an insult.

  Kamsa waited.

  ‘You demolished my team!’ Crooked Jaw shouted.

  Kamsa said nothing.

  Crooked Jaw raised a clenched fist.

  Kamsa braced himself.

  Crooked Jaw raised the other fist, also clenched.

  Kamsa waited warily.

  Crooked Jaw opened both fists and joined the palms together in a gesture of namaskaram. ‘I bow to you in grace,’ he said gruffly.

  Kamsa stared at him a moment, unable to comprehend what had happened. Then he understood and felt a surge of laughter bubble up. The giant was acknowledging his victory! It was the highest compliment one sportsman could pay another - or one warrior.

  Kamsa clasped the man’s joined palms with his own hands. ‘Well met, warrior. What is your name?’ If they were about to become friends, he could hardly continue to think of him as Crooked Jaw. And he had a feeling that the man might not take kindly to the name being used aloud either.

  ‘I am Mustika,’ said the giant with the Crooked Jaw. ‘And from this day henceforth we shall be friends and fellow sporting partners.’

  Kamsa grinned. ‘So be it.’

  KAAND 2

  1

  After the attack of the wind-demon and the revelations of Gargamuni, both Yashoda and Nanda no longer lived in constant anxiety. While as parents they could never truly stop worrying about their child, they no longer worried to the extent that they had before. They knew that whatever happened, Krishna would be safe. They had seen proof of that for themselves.

  The planning for the migration to Vrindavan also demanded a great deal of their attention and time. There was also the fact that it was the season for calving and many of their cows were due to drop calves anyday. They were kept busy.

  While Yashoda grew busier, Rohini had no pr
essing demands on her time. So it came to pass that more and more often Rohini sat and watched over Krishna while Yashoda went about her chores. This meant that Krishna and Balarama spent more time together and the boys clearly enjoyed this greatly. They were both at that difficult age where they could walk and were developing their strength and were able to get into mischief more easily. And when it came to mischief, if one was a handful to manage, then both together were impossible!

  Rohini would take her eyes off them for a moment to look at something or take care of something minor, and off they would go, crawling about in the dust of Vraj like serpents on an urgent mission. Or they would get to their feet together, holding on to one another’s shoulders for support, and start walking arm in arm together, like two gopas walking behind their herds.

  Once, Rohini realized they were gone but mistook their direction and went the wrong way to search for them. By the time she corrected her error and caught up with the two rascals, they were halfway across a field filled with lowing cows. Somehow, in the course of traversing that field, one of them had accidently reached out and caught hold of a cow’s tail to keep his balance. The cow had lowed loudly in protect and the boys had laughed in merriment, amused at the reaction. Thereafter, they had both taken to going around and tugging every cow tail in sight. Rohini had completely lost sight of them both by then and was going out of her mind trying to guess where they could have vanished so quickly. She was alerted by the irritated lowing of the cows and peered at the field.