Fools rush

The Commander-in-Chief, rides his chariot up to his King, the Lord of Hastinapura “A boy, you say? That is no ordinary boy, O King.  He is  Soma, the Immortal. Even the Gods are no match for him in the battlefield. The only choice we’re left with is to keep the tenets of Dharmayuddha aside. Dharma didn’t get us here and it won’t get us past him. The rest is up to you. Our troops await your word“

The King watches the kid, the murderer of his son, with great intent.  Beyond anger,  a sense of wonder and fear that grips him.  Even a war-hardened mind like his finds it difficult to believe that such unflinching cruelty and relentless fury could emanate from someone so young and lovable and innocent.  The boy stood there, right in front of him, with such unnerving calm. His breathing was sure, his movements complete with purpose and  his  countenance considerably darkened, reminded one of the moon during an eclipse.

Their eyes meet for an instant.

The King clenches his fist and raises his arms, high enough for the Prince of Sindhu to see.

Miles ahead, in the middle of a mad chase and a shower of arrows, a charioteer quietly sheds a tear.

——X——

” Loyalty to the Crown.  Loyalty to the Sovereign“

Of all the things his father taught him, these words were the ones he considered most important.Now everything is gone.  He had spent the day here, by his father’s blazing pyre. A little ahead he sees an owl perched on a tree hitherto blissfully asleep, now being heckled and harassed by a pack of crows. Bitten, clawed and thoroughly beat, the owl flees to save its life. Everything he believed in, loved to be true ceases to be, leaving a huge void in their place. Nothing to fill it in but the violent flames of the pyre nearby.

Law is what is we make of it, he thinks.  The world has and always will belong to these conniving thieves  of dignity. The Right and the Just have no place here.  Dharma died a long time ago when they shamed the Mighty Patriarch into disarming using an eunuch and then went on to drill his noble frame with arrows.

Something horrible was growing within him.

 He sat there watching the tree for eons, or so it seemed to him. Darkness fell on the land and yet he had not left the side of his father’s now smoldering pyre; his gaze firmly fixed on the tree.

A menacing hoot fills the woods all of a sudden.  He instantly turns towards the source of the sound. Though his eyes couldn’t fathom what was ahead; heart in heart  his hunter’s instinct tells him that something vengeful was flying towards him.

It was the owl and this was her turn to attack. Her execution was short and immaculately calculated. The blinded birds did not stand a chance against her deadly swipes. He watched the whole thing with great thrill and intent.  The universe had given him his answer.

——X——

The stream of blood covering  his eyes was but a minor annoyance. He had long lost his crown, his shield broken, his mace knocked out of reach. He fumbles over what appear to him be his horses; still, unmoving, bloodied and magnificent even in death.  He reaches out to the nearest object he could reach; the wheel of his chariot.  Ahead lay his protectors or whatever that was left of them, riddled with arrows.

He had rode into the formation far too quick and far too deep for his own good. A tactical mistake.  No matter, he thinks, he’s already wrecked such havoc that the walls of the formation still tremble around him. For each level he moved in, he left behind him scores of bodies. Neither the pinch of pain nor prick of fear distract him. The question of death doesn’t even cross his mind. But beyond all the sugar rush of valor and heightened thrill of slaughter,  the disillusioned bit of his soul; the one that stood witness to his acts, silently  mourned at the pointless of it all.  Where was the joy in such a victory and what sorrow if he fell.

With one heave, he pulls the wheel clean of its hinges. Such brutal strength in someone so young, startle the 8 warriors facing him.  Swathed in blood, ribs jutting out, he stood before them sword in one hand and the wheel as a shield in another.

“To victory” he murmurs  ”To glory!“

——X——

The warrior stood before him holding the garland of severed, blood stained heads.  With great effort, the King raises both his hands and accepts it.  Instantly his joy turns into anguish and then into unspeakable horror.

“What have you done, my friend?”  were the anguished king’s last few words.  ”What have you done!  These are their infants. What have you done, my friend! “

After jealousy, lust, greed, anger and pain, it was grief’s turn now to blind the king’s eyes. Not that he was a stranger to it but for a man to have gambled it all, played it right and yet be cheated out of everything he craved for, appeared to him, plainly cruel.  Soft yet scorn filled words kept ringing in his ears ‘My methods may not appear fair. But I am bound to uphold Dharma at all costs“

This is it.

It ends here, in a muddy, filthy bank of this river. The Overlord of the Kurus, fated to finish like a crawling worm.

Numbness overcomes him at a frightening pace.

Time to die.

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