‘What is your name?’
The man was silent a moment, gaze locked on her. ‘Yadu,’ he said.
She raised an eyebrow.‘Like the ancestor?’
He did not reply.
‘The great progenitor of the Yadava race? The pitr? Forebear of your entire race?’
He said nothing.
She was about to reprimand him for his insolence, then realized there was no need for him to speak – her question had been rhetorical. There could hardly be any doubt that Yadu was the name of the forebear of the Yadava race. It was no different from saying ‘Brahma? Oh, like the four-faced deva?’ One did not need to speak to confirm it. She knew his kind. They were accustomed to facing real threat, real danger, the kind that slithered and crawled and flew and ate man-flesh. They were not intimidated by mere mortal threats.
‘Did you fight in the Last Asura Wars?’sheasked.
He almost smiled. ‘I would have to be centuries old if I had.’
She shrugged. She had met men and women who were centuries old, had heard of rishis who were millennia old. ‘I asked you a question.’
He smiled openly now, and let the smile stay on his face as his only response – the smile of a boy who was asked whether he was a boy.
She sighed, shook her head and waved a hand dismissively. ‘Tell your master I shall attend to his request when I am able.’
He remained standing. ‘He desired to know a specific day and time.’
She frowned. In most other men, she would have deemed this insubordination. Pradyota might not be slaughtering Yadavas left, right and centre but he did not run a loose ship either. But she was not Pradyota’s wife to this man, or to his master. Merely Putana for both. To call her husband’s rank and power down on him would reduce her to the position of Pradyota’s wife again. She would deal with this man on her own terms.
‘Tell him I shall come to his chambers. Tonight at moonrise.’
He turned and began to walk away without another word, without so much as a by-your-leave-lady. Then again, she had already dismissed him.
She watched him walk across the courtyard, past a group of Mohini warriors, saw the subtle way his walk grew shuffling, his posture bowed and bent. His dishevelled appearance and ragged garb all served to give him the appearance of a servant, in charge of some nameless menial task. None of the Hijras so much as graced him with a first glance, let alone a second look. Yet she suspected that were he to face them in combat, he would do more damage than they would expect, let alone believe. Even at this great age.
She shook her head, grinning to herself. As long as Mathura still had Yadavas like that around, it would remain a formidable force in the Arya world.
The moon was well risen and halfway across the night sky when she made her way to the annexe of the prince’s palace. From the lights still glowing in the residential complex of the main place and the fact that Pradyota had not yet returned home, she knew that Jarasandha was still sitting with his flunkeys. There had been a time when Pradyota had been far more than a mere tool of another man; he had desired a command of his own, to be a landowner, and to rule and live free. It was one of the things that had attracted Putana to him at the time. Now he thought the earth and sky and sun and moon of Jarasandha, and all thoughts of his own ambitions had been long forgotten. She had tired of even discussing it with him. There was no point any more.
She paused outside the high wall. No lights gleamed or flickered on the top floor of Kamsa’s annexe. The sentries who ought to be on duty were nowhere to be seen; there were no guards patrolling the grounds either. She frowned. She was aware of the change in Kamsa’s power and stature since Bahuka and his entourage had arrived – which entourage included Pradyota and herself; she knew that Kamsa was considered an impotent figurehead now, merely the limp hand that held the royal seal that sanctioned Jarasandha’s decisions and orders, but she had not thought he was this neglected. To leave a ruler’s private quarters thus unguarded – this was beyond negligence. But she knew that Jarasandha did not make mistakes of this nature. If he had left Kamsa unguarded, it was because he genuinely wished him dead. And what better way to have it done than by one of his own disgruntled or disaffected citizens! If Kamsa had not yet faced any assassination attempts – or at least, no successful ones – it was probably only because the very presence of the Magadhan and his legendary and fearful associates was enough to make any Mathuran want to keep his distance from the royal quarter of the city. But it was only a matter of time before Jarasandha left and Kamsa’s many enemies realized that he was improperly guarded at night.
She wondered if Kamsa himself realized it. He must.
She was mildly disappointed. She had hoped to meet some resistance on the way in. It had been several weeks since her last active mission and she was itching to engage again. There was also something curiously thrilling about killing her own husband’s guards, no doubt handpicked by him to work in this undoubtedly prestigious royal quarter.
But nobody challenged her, called out or barred her way as she scaled the wall easily, dropped over the side and strolled towards the darkened portal. Somewhere in the shadows along the wall, a feline meow rose plaintively and she saw the shadow of a tail flicking back and forth; but apart from that, nothing. And judging from the insolent way the cat called out and roved the grounds freely, there were no guard dogs around either.
She made her way up the stairs and sensed the emptiness of the house. Not a soul stirred, not a sound disturbed the night. This new annexe had been built far, far back from the main palace. It was almost an outhouse in terms of the overall layout. She knew that itself to be a sign of Jarasandha’s obvious campaign of Kamsa’s humiliation. But its spacious interiors were lavishly decorated and furnished – as befitted a prince regent, if not a king – far more lavishly than the official residence of the captain of the guards.
The bedchamber was larger than her whole house, for one thing. And the verandahs – surrounding the room on two sides in a semi-circular curve that belied the angular corner of the building – were huge. Gossamer drapes rose and fell with every gust of night wind. Moonlight was the only illumination, silvering anything that reflected, shone or glittered. The sleeping area was a dark morass of shadows. She could not tell if anyone sat or lay there, but she could smell him unmistakably. He was here all right.
‘You said moonrise,’ the voice said out of the darkness.
She shrugged, then realized he may not see the action in this shadowy dimness.‘I am here, am I not? What urgent business do you have that you needed to see me alone in your private chambers at night?’ She put a foot out and leaned on one hip to emphasize the undertone of her query.
A shadow stirred among the many shadows around the bed. ‘You chose the place and time, remember? I merely wished to speak with you. You could have elected to meet in the middle of the riding grounds at high noon. You chose here and now instead. I should be the one asking why.’
She smirked.‘So you’re not as stupid as they say you are – and as you look.’
‘I’m very stupid. But I learn something new every day.’
‘What have you learnt about me?’ she asked, challenging him.
The shadow moved again, and this time she was certain he was standing beside the bedpost closest to her. It was still several yards away, but she found herself wondering idly if he was clothed or if, in this warm weather, he slept without his garments on. He was an attractive man.
‘I have a proposition for you.’
She smiled lazily, and using both hands, swept her hair off her face.‘There is nothing you have to offer that interests me.’
He was silent for a moment. The moonlight streaming through the open verandahs altered slightly. Her eyes had adjusted further to the darkness and she could now make out his silhouette. He was standing by the bed. She could not tell if he was clothed or not, but he was definitely not armed. There was a certain way he would have to stand if he was carrying a weapon, any wea
pon. She could tell.
‘Yet you came,’ he said after the pause.
She stroked her hair back, running her fingers through it. She had washed and scented it that afternoon, and it felt sensuous. ‘I am bored. There is nothing for me to do here in your great city. I was happy for the diversion.’
‘What I have to offer is a great diversion. If you choose to see it that way.’
She walked slowly across the chamber. The floor was cool to her bare feet. She stood in front of the verandah, enjoying the soft breeze that gusted in waves. Moonlight lit the lower half of her body. It made her fair skin seem milky white. She thought she could feel the moonlight and that it felt cool, but of course moonlight had no temperature.
‘I think you are mistaking me for my husband,’ she said, her back to him, to the whole chamber. ‘He is the captain of your guard. He is under your command, not I.’
‘Your husband cannot accomplish the task I require done. Only you can.’
She glanced back over her shoulder, a smile of contemptuous irony playing on her lips. Who did this fellow think he was? What a fool! ‘Flattery will get you nowhere. Certainly not me in your bed. Not if I do not choose to play along. I am my own woman. Ask anyone; they will tell you. Ask Pradyota.’
‘What I seek is far more than the pleasures of your body, woman. Will you not understand that?’
Her smile widened. ‘The great prince grows impatient. Will you have me bound in chains and whipped now? Decapitated? Thrown into your dungeon and tortured? What terrible punishment will you inflict on me if I turn down your proposition?’
‘None. You are free to leave at any time. I will not ask you to aid me out of compulsion or force. I respect you too greatly for that.’
She turned around, surprised. ‘Respect me? You? The legendary marauder? The tyrant of Mathura? You are a legend, Kamsa! Your atrocities, brutalities, slaughter, massacres, genocides ... even for one of Jarasandha’s minions, you are quite extraordinary in your reputation for cruelty. What do you know of respecting women!’
‘I respect a matrika. Especially a maha-matrika such as yourself.’
She fell silent. Of all the things she might have expected, this was not one of them. She looked around, alert, but there was no danger, no threat. Only Kamsa, alone. And she did not fear him. The only one she feared was Jarasandha and he was not there; she would have smelt him from a mile away – in fact, she could smell him, and he was not quite a mile away, but about half a mile away, in the main palace complex. This was not some ploy on his part. Whatever game Kamsa was playing, he was playing it alone.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said stiffly. He’s bluffing. He doesn’t know anything, has somehow got hold of some lopsided rumour or idle piece of gossip and is pretending that it means more than it does.
‘I think you do,’ said Kamsa.
He stepped away from the bed, emerging from the shadows, coming towards the light very slowly, one step every two or three sentences, like a wolf moving towards its prey.
‘You are a maha-matrika,’ he said. ‘Specifically, you are the one named Chamunda. But you have also been known by other names. Vaimitra. Halebidu. Krittika. Shakti. Brahmi. Maheshwari. Kumari. Vaishnavi. Varah. Indrani. Kaki. Halima. Malini. Brhali. Palala. Vaimitra. Mahalakshmi. These are only some of your names, some of your forms. Some say you have ninety-two in all. Some say there are more. Sometimes you take the form of seven, aligned together: saptamatrika. Sometimes it is eight: ashtamatrika. Sometimes you pose as the wives of six of the saptarishis, the seven great seer-mages of Creation. Whatever your form or your number – you are many who may appear as one if you will it, or one who appears as many – the choice is yours, as are the forms you choose. On occasion you have been the womb-mother to Skanda, bearing him to life on behalf of his spirit-parents, Shiva and Parvati. Sometimes, you have been Skanda’s adoptive mothers, hence your given title, matrika. Betimes, you have been cursed for posing as his mother. Betimes, you have begged him to adopt you as his mother. In one instance, you emerged from Skanda himself when he was struck by Indra’s thunderbolt weapon, the omnipotent Vajra. You are the embodiment of the feminine force in its purest, most potent form, Shakta Mahadeva’s Shakti. You have many gifts, many powers, many accomplishments. But the one thing you can never be is a mother. A maatr. The one thing you can never have is motherhood. The one feat you can never accomplish is birthing a child. That is why you are ironically called matrika or maatr – because it is the one thing you are not, have never been, and can never be. That is your curse, your identity, your destiny, your true nature. Do you deny any or all these things that I say?’
He had reached her now, and stopped a hand’s breadth from where she stood. The swathe of moonlight had moved again, rising as the moon dipped towards the horizon as its time ended, and it illuminated him partly, his lower body. His thighs were muscular and powerful as sala tree trunks. Layered with slabs of muscle and taut sinew, his torso was bare and hairless. He was as attractive as she had thought, and then some. He reached out and touched her shoulder. It was a gentle touch. His fingers lingered there as his eyes looked deep into her own, asking for permission.
‘What is it you want of me?’ she asked, and heard the breathless excitement in her own voice. Gone was her posturing sarcasm, the preening irony, the caustic wit. She was intrigued, aroused, seething with something she had not felt for a very long time – long before Pradyota, long before any man, back when she had shunned the race of men entirely, and had been a creature of the forest and the earth, burning ghats and crossroads, springs and riverbanks, caves and mountain crags. Back when she had been simply maatr. When all women had been maatr and there were no other women but maatr.
He lowered his hand upon her chest.‘To begin with, I wish to see for myself if the legend is true.’
‘Which one is that?’ she whispered.
A cloud was passing over the moon. She could see the shape and body of the cloud eating away the patch of moonlight that illuminated him and the floor around him. It was moving quickly, consuming him with darkness.
‘The legend that you carry a cache of poisoned milk within your body, the milk of the Churning itself. The Halahala.’
She swallowed. There was no way he could know about that. Someone far superior must have told him. But she would play along for now, partly to see what happened next, partly because she found the prince attractive. She had never felt this nervous, this excited, with any mortal man before.‘How will you know that for sure?’
The cloud began to cover him completely but in the last patch of moonlight, she could see the white of his teeth gleaming as he smiled.‘There is only one way for me to be sure.’
The cloud consumed the moon and the darkness consumed them both.
five
Once as a child, Kamsa had tasted a potion being mixed by the royal vaid. He did not know what it was until much later – it was snake venom in the process of being turned into anti-venom. A noxious concoction. He had deliberately consumed it to attract attention to himself. His father had been away at another of his endless campaigns of conquest, and had returned three days ago, only to sequester himself within the queen’s private chambers. Kamsa did not know exactly what they were doing in there for so many days and nights, but he had an idea and it infuriated him.
He was even more incensed by the fact that his father had not yet come to him. He felt ignored, unwanted, fatherless. It brought back some ancient memory from his birth when he arrived into the mortal world aware of his true nature and of the true nature of the creature that had sired him upon his mother. Coupled with that awareness had been the knowledge, terrible in its immutability, that his true father would never spend a single moment with him for as long as he lived. He knew this because that father, the rakshasa who had actually fathered him, had told him so, taking cruel pleasure in imparting this heart- breaking piece of information to his just-birthed son.
‘You will never see me again, mortal
-spawn,’ he had sneered derisively.‘Live your wretched life in the prison of your mortal flesh!’ And he had roared away like the wind, leaving only a dust-whirl that spun in the empty courtyard, frightening horses and passing courtiers.
So when Ugrasena returned yet again from another battle, or war, or campaign of conquest, or whatever the hell he had gone for that time, and ignored his son yet again, Kamsa had decided that if even his mortal father did not acknowledge or care for him, he would show him. He would show him! He had seen the concoction the royal vaid, his father’s own physician, had prepared to administer to some unfortunate courtier who had stepped on a cobra, and had picked it up and drunk it whole.
He remembered the unspeakable sensation to this day: the noxious mixture had the consistency of raw egg white and the taste of ... a taste like nothing else he had ever tasted before or since to compare it to. And it had scorched his insides like pure rage distilled in liquid form. It had taken him a week to recover from its effects. But to everyone’s surprise but his own, it had not killed him. The thrashing he received from his father when he was fully recovered almost did, though, because back then, Ugrasena was a very different man, a hard king for hard times, to quote his own favourite phrase. Kamsa had forgotten the thrashing – one of several he received in his childhood and youth, worsening in intensity and frequency as he grew, until his father’s transmogrification into a proponent of ahimsa and non-aggressive governance, his new favourite phrases – but remembered drinking the snake anti-venom till today. And he remembered how it had made him feel after he drank it.
But this, this was far beyond that potency!
This was poison in its highest form possible. The Halahala itself, if the legend was true. And he had no reason to disbelieve the legend. Narada had no reason to lie, and even if he had lied, what was the worst that could happen? This fluid that Kamsa was now suckling and swallowing could be mere milk. In which case, he was merely being a good boy and would grow up to be big and strong some day!
KRISHNA CORIOLIS#2: Dance of Govinda Page 15