4

Blood pounded in Kamsa’s head with the ferocity of a kettle-drum. His vision blurred for a moment and once again he saw the same horrendous vision that had met him moments ago: The sabha hall was filled with fierce kshatriyas and mighty yoddhas, all determined to destroy him and his kin. To wipe out his entire race from the face of the earth. He recognized many of the faces as new aspects of old foes, reborn in this age for the express purpose of decimating and committing genocide upon his true blood-kin. He had met them before, in another city, another age. A place named Ayodhya, where twice before he had bravely attempted to strike a blow for his people’s cause, and had tasted the bitter fruit of their deceitful thwarting of his noble efforts. He had been in possession of a different form himself in that age and place, and been known by another name. It eluded him now, but he knew that his given name in this life simply meant ‘amsa’ of ‘K’, K being the first vowel of that ancient name and amsa being a partial rebirth, similar to an avatar. This was but the newest round of battle in an age-old conflict with the greatest enemy of his kind.

He glanced in the direction of their leader, the one who sat on the Andhaka throne bearing the raj-mukut, the crown of beaten gold that was placed upon the head of the people’s chosen leader, for the Andhaka Yadava nation was a republic in the truest sense of the word.

The being seated there glared down at him with a look of pure fury. He bore the familiar aspect and human garb of Chief-King Ugrasena, he even moved and spoke like him, shouting stern commands that he foolishly expected Kamsa to obey. Kamsa was not fooled by this clever disguise and performance. That old man seated upon the Andhaka throne was not his true sire; that honour fell to a noble being named Drumila, a powerful daitya from the netherworld. Unable to take birth in this age in his true form, he had disguised himself as the chief-king of the Andhakas, Ugrasena, and in this fleshly diguise, he had deceived Ugrasena’s wife Padmavati in younger days, siring a male-child upon her. Kamsa was that child, and he felt the rich, noble blood of his true father raging in his veins now as he did at such times, and he ignored the blathering objections and orders of Ugrasena, a feeble old man who possessed neither the will nor the strength to do what had to be done: Exterminate all enemy. Kill them where you find them, by any means possible. Yet, somewhere within Ugrasena’s incompetent form, there remained a vestige of Drumila and it was to this smriti truth that Kamsa bowed and conceded lordship.

“Fear not, father!” Kamsa said aloud, as the stunned assemblage still reeling from the shock of his bold intrusion and even bolder act of heroism turned to stare at him. “I have slain the enemy in our midst. No more will his deception veil our senses from the true nature of his evil mission!”

He saw Ugrasena blink several times as he absorbed this shouted missive. Beside him, Kamsa’s mother Padmavati, once legendary for her beauty, now a wasted shadow of her former self, covered her face and seemed to weep. Tears of joy, surely, Kamsa told himself. She must be overjoyed at my speed and boldness. His true father Drumila did not respond as Kamsa had expected either: he did not loudly hail his son’s achievement to the assembly or come to Kamsa and press him to his breast in that fierce embrace that Kamsa had craved for so often during his growing years and received so rarely. But that was only to be expected as well; in his human disguise as Ugrasena, Drumila must needs conceal his true feelings for his son. No matter. Kamsa knew his parents were proud of him and that was enough.

He executed a deep bow in the direction of the throne, and raised his head smiling.

The smile faded as he saw the crowd encircling the spot where Vasudeva had stood only moments ago, part to reveal something quite extraordinary.

Vasudeva stood as he had before, facing him. The stupid cowherd that he was, he had neither flinched nor taken evasive nor defensive action when Kamsa had flung the spear. Not that anyone could deflect or dodge a throw by Kamsa easily; but at least the man might have made an attempt. To simply stand there facing death was an act so contemptful it made Kamsa want to spit his mouthful of tobacco on the polished floor in disgust. Of course, such steadfastness might be misconstrued as heroism, a yoddha facing certain oncoming death without so much as flinching. But Kamsa knew better. The man was a coward and so unexpected and stunning was Kamsa’s action that he had no time to react. He simply stood there as the spear, flung by Kamsa with force enough to punch through armour, bone, flesh, gristle, sinew, spine, and emerge out the man’s back – he had done precisely that to other men a hundred times before and knew exactly the force, trajectory and impact of his throw – sped towards him to end his life.

The spear still stood there.

In mid air.

Before Vasudeva.

Kamsa stared, blinking several times to make sure his eyes were not still obscured by the blood from his last skirmish with some cowherds who had strayed across the demarcated border into Andhaka territory. Well, technically, they hadn’t strayed, but the heads of their cattle were pointed towards Andhaka territory, so it was obvious they intended to cross over. He had slaughtered the cowherds, and their kine, down to the last suckling calf and mother of both species. Their blood had spattered on his face, obscuring his vision, and it had taken considerable scrubbing to remove the stubborn spatters. Damn enemy blood. Burned like acid too.

But no amount of blinking or rubbing of his face made the sight vanish or change.

His spear stayed there, floating in mid air, inches from Vasudeva’s chest, its deadly barbed tip pointed precisely at the point where the breastbone met the ribcage, that soft yielding centre spot where the spear would have punched through with minimal resistance, bursting through the heart and emerging out the rear of the Sura’s body.

It just hung there, suspended by no visible means. Floating in mid air. Not floating exactly, for it did not so much as move an inch, merely hung there as if deeply imbedded in some solid object.

But I heard it strike! It hit bone and flesh and cartilege with that typical wet crunching sound they always make at this distance and force.

Then again, he was so accustomed to hearing that sound that it was possible he had simply remembered it from previous occasions. The outburst from the onlookers that exploded the instant he flung the spear had drowned out everything else, after all.

He strode towards the Sura chief-king, people stepping back or moving away, wide-eyed, to give him a wide berth.

He saw a man standing beside Vasudeva stand his ground staunchly, alongwith several others he recognized as the Sura’s clan-brothers and allied chieftains. They stared fiercely at Kamsa with the look he had seen so often before. He saw fists clench empty air, muscles tighten, jaws lock, and knew that they were prepared to take him on with their bare hands if need be. They did not worry him; he could take them on single-handedly, even if Haddi-Hathi was not there to back him up, which he was.

Kamsa stared at the spear. He walked slowly around it. He examined it from all angles.

He could not fathom how the trick had been done. The spear simply stood there, embedded solidly in…in thin air!

He took hold of the spear and grasped it. He felt a shock as it failed to budge.

He yanked down upon it, hard.

Nothing.

He pulled it to the left, then to the right, then pushed upwards. His biceps and powerful shoulder muscles bulged, and he knew that were this a lever he was pushing upon, he could have moved a boulder weighing a ton with this much effort.

Yet the spear just stayed there, as immobile as an iron rod moulded into solid rock.

It was impossible.

He looked at Vasudeva. The Sura chief-king’s face was hard, ready for anything, yet not cruel and mocking as Kamsa had expected. Not the gloating glee that a triumphant enemy ought to have displayed at such a moment.

“How!” Kamsa screamed. “By what sorcery did you do this?”

Vasudeva looked at him for a moment with eyes that seemed almost cow-like to Kamsa’s raging senses. The kettle-drums played out their mad rhythm in his blood, pounding his brain with unending waves of agony.

Then, to the sound of a shocked Aaah from the watching assemblage, Vasudeva reached out, took hold of the spear, which came free of its invisible hold as easily as if he had simply picked it up from a wall-stand. Several spectators clasped palms together and cried out “Sadhu! Sadhu!” in reverential tones – for what had happened was no less than a miracle.

And to Kamsa’s continued disbelief and amazement, the Sura chief-king held out the spear upon raised palms, the action of a man surrendering rather than opposing.

“It was not I,” Vasudeva said quietly. “But the great Lord Vishnu who did this. For it is clear that he desires our people to be at peace. Accept this as proof of his grace and a sign of his protection over all those who work to achieve Shanti upon Prithvi-loka.”

The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.

SLAYER OF KAMSA

The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1

Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)

The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!

3

Devaki shrieked as her brother threw the spear at her betrothed. Her planned union with Vasudeva had yet to be formally solemnized yet she already thought of him as her husband-in-waiting. There was no man she would be happier to unite with in matrimony than the chief-king of the Sura Yadavas. The fact that their joining would only help further the cause of peaceful alliance between the two neighbouring nations was incidental to her. She had always been a woman led by her instinct and spirit, and she knew that she would love Vasudeva deeply, indeed had come to feel great affection and admiration for him already after only a few meetings, and that mattered more to her than politics and statecraft.

She had watched with rising horror as her unruly brother stormed into the sabha hall, then proceeded to slight, dishonour, and variously embarrass her royal dynasty as well as their entire clan by his behaviour. To come thus armed and armoured was bad enough, but to bring a war elephant – especially that brutalized and perverted beast for whom she simultaneously felt pity and disgust – was a terrible act, a flagrant slap in the face of their royal guests. When Kamsa had stared at Vasudeva with that peculiar expression, she had thought that perhaps, for once, sanity and sense had percolated into that dense brain.

When Kamsa had turned, plucked out a barbed spear from the side-saddle of Haddhi-Hathi and flung it with vehement force at her husband-to-be, it shocked the life out of her and she could hardly help shrieking her dismay.

To her further amazement, Vasudeva made no move to twist, turn, dodge, avoid, or otherwise avoid the trajectory of the missile.

The spears Kamsa favoured were brutal things. Metal heads barbed in an asymmetrical pattern of recurved points, any one of which were sufficient to rip to shreds a person’s flesh and organs, and impossible to remove without further damaging the wounded individual. His aim with these inhumane missiles was so renowned, she had once seen him fling a spear at a grama chieftain in a dense milling crowd and strike the grama chieftain in the throat without touching anyone else to either side.

This time too, his aim seemed perfect. The spear was out of his hands and at Vasudeva’s chest, poised to shatter the Sura chief-king’s unprotected breastbone and destroy his heart, killing him instantly.

Her shriek was echoed by an outburst of like screams and shouts of dismay, male as well as female, from across the crowded sabha hall. The distance from Kamsa’s hand to Vasudeva’s chest was barely twenty yards, and the spear flew that distance in a fraction of a moment, yet in later years, as the legend grew, it would be said by some that the spear had slowed in mid air as if travelling through water or against a powerful headwind, rather than simply across empty stillness.

If such a phenomenon truly occurred or if it was merely a product of the active imagination of those watching, she would never know for certain. For no sooner had the spear flown than a man rushed forward, blocking Devaki’s view. It was Akrur, a close friend and ally of Vasudeva and a chief scriptor of the peace alliance between the Sura and Andhaka nations. Later she would learn that he had attempted to fling himself into the path of the onrushing spear, to take the death that was meant for Vasudeva, but at that instant, all she knew was that his body blocked her view and, as if galvanized by Akrur’s action and the violence that had abruptly exploded into a peaceful event, everybody else began moving as well, further obscuring her ability to see.

She saw only bodies and moving heads, none belonging to Vasudeva. But even above the cacophony of shouts and exclamations that had erupted, she heard one sound clearly. The sound of the spear striking flesh and bone came to her like a half-remembered nightmare that would plague the deep watches of restless sleep for many moon-months to come. This sound she would remember because, with her vision obscured, she sincerely believed that it was the sound of her brother’s ill-intentioned spear shattering the bone and flesh of her beloved betrothed; the sound of widowhood even before her nuptials could be completed. It would haunt her until another, far more terrible sound replaced it for sheer nightmarish horror. But that other sound still lay in the future. For now, the sound of metal flung at great velocity shattering bone and splintering it like matchwood, flesh and fluid resounding wetly from the impact, were a horror beyond all imagining. She shrieked again, and would have flung herself forward, directly at her brother, whom unfortunately, she retained a clear view of, and who stood in the centre of the hall, like one of the many stone pillars marching in even rows to either side, like a general flanked by marching cohorts.

In that instant of panic and terror, she saw him turn his head at the sound of her voice. For it was his name she was shrieking. “Kamsa!” His eyes found her in the melee and locked on her briefly. The malice and glee she saw therein, the sheer lascivious delight at what he had just done, was in such start contrast to the awestruck expression he had exhibited only moments earlier, that she could not help thinking, as she had a thousand times over the years, My brother is no mortal man, he is a rakshasa reborn in mortal form. For even if a mortal man had done such an act, for whatever the reason, surely he could not have such an expression on his face, a look that was more demoniac than anything the most imaginative artists and sculptors could conjure up when recreating scenes from the legendary wars against the rakshasas in the Last Asura Wars or that even more legendary battle of Lanka waged by the great King Rama Chandra of Ayodhya. Kamsa could have modelled for those artists and sculptors yet none would have possessed sufficient skill or art to capture the sheer malevolence of the look his face bore at this moment.

Then the moment passed, and he turned back to look in Vasudeva’s direction, no doubt to gloat over the new murder he had just added to his epic tally. And Devaki wished at that moment she had a spear of her own within reach, for she would have surely flung it at this instant, and to hell with filial loyalty and feminine propriety. Just because Andhaka women were no longer permitted to go to battle did not mean they were good only for the bhojanshalya and bedchamber. A daughter of raj-kshatriyas, she had been trained and schooled in the arts of war as thoroughly as her brother. Better, probably, for she had not been banished from Guru sdiekdckcid’s ashram as a child as Kamsa had been for incorrigible behaviour. But of course, there were no weapons here and even at the peak of outrage, Devaki could not simply murder her own brother, however just her motive under dharma.

But in her mind, she flung a barb of retaliation no less deadly and far more portentous: Someday, my brother, your reign of brutality will end. And mine shall be the hand that flings the spear that ends it. This I swear here and now, by Kali-Maa, avenger of the oppressed.

Then she pushed her way through the crowd, desperate to go to Vasudeva’s side, if only to offer her lap for his head in his last moment. The crowd did not resist her for everyone there knew what she was to the Sura chief-king and they stepped aside willingly to let her through. She reached the circle that surrounded Vasudeva and looked upon a heart-stopping sight.

Click here to read more excerpts!

The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.

SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!

2

The massive oak doors of the banquet hall flew open as if struck by a battering ram. They swivelled inwards on smoothly oiled tracks and crashed against the stone walls, swatting aside the guards milling about the entrance. Vasudeva glanced up from his meal just in time to see a young soldier’s foot caught by the lower bolt of one door, dragged to the wall, then crushed against the relentless stone with a bone-crunching impact that left the poor fellow’s face white.

The other guards, milling about jovially until now, caught up in the festive atmosphere, responded belatedly joining their lances and challenging the rude entrants. The armored bull elephant that trundled into the banquet hall paid no heed to their shouted challenges. It was armored in the fashion of Andhaka Hathi-Yodhhas, the dreaded war elephants of the Andhaka clan, its head couched in a formidably moulded headpiece bristling with spikes that made it resemble some demon out of myth, its tusks capped with brass horns tapering to spearlike protrusions, and rows of ugly spikes decorating its sides.

Vasudeva had seen the havoc that these Hathi-Yodhhas left in their wake during close combat. His heart lurched at the thought of what destruction even a single such monster could wreak in a confined, crowded space such as this hall. The dried brownish smears on the elephant’s armourplating left no doubt that its aggressive appearance was not merely for decoration. This particular Hathi-Yodhha had seen active combat this very day and had taken lives in that action. Vasudeva prayed silently that they were not Sura lives, then felt mean and small for having thought so. All life was precious, all humanity united in brotherhood. No matter whose blood lay dried upon the armourplate of this Hathi-Yodhha, it was a death he would not have wished upon anyone.

Supremely confident in its strength and tonnage, the hathi trundled forward without heed for the puny sipahis waving their spears before it. Its flailing trunk, pierced with studs, knocked three of the sipahis carelessly to the floor, then it proceeded to pound their prostrate forms with its leaden feet. The sipahis convulsed and screamed, the screams cut abruptly short as the massive grey feet smashed their heads with practised ease, spilling their lives onto the polished marble floor. Gasps and exclamations of protest met this callous life-taking.

The Hathi-Yodhha swung its massive head from side to side, checking for more challengers before covering the last few yards into the centre of the banquet hall. The surviving gate-guards, brave though they were, shuffled aside hastily, their faces blanching at the fate of their companions. Even the lot of them combined could hardly expect to face a battle-ready war elephant, and this, as they well knew, was no ordinary war elephant. This was the feared and hated Haddi-Hathi himself, named for the pleasure he was rumored to take in crushing human bone. It only made things worse that the elephant, like its rider, was on their side. Theoretically speaking at least.

In fact, Vasudeva thought grimly, they had more to fear from their kinsman mounted on the elephant’s back than from the hathi itself.

That heavily muscled figure, clad in blood-spattered brass armor to make himself resemble an outgrowth of the elephant rather than a separate being, was none other than the universally feared and hated master of Haddi-Hathi, Prince Kamsa himself, evidently returned from a new campaign of reaving and ravaging. Vasudeva glanced around to see his aides-de-camp, indeed his entire entourage of clansmen, all reaching instinctively for their swords and maces. They found no weapons: the party had divested itself of its metal implements at the gates of the keep before entering at dawn in accordance with the terms of the treaty. But even so, their faces and clenched fists betrayed their rage at the sight of the man mounted atop the elephant. That man–nay, that beast, for he was more truly an animal than the creature astride which he sat–had left his bloody handprint upon the spotless reputation of every last one of the Sura houses represented here.

Over the last few years, none of these proud clanschief families had escaped the rapacious raids and ruthless violence of Prince Kamsa and his Marauders. Vasudeva raised his hands to quell the muttered noises of provocation rising from his party, feeling the desire for justful revenge that swelled in their proud warrior hearts. He himself, as king and chief justice of the Suras, had grown heartsick at hearing the numberless atrocities committed by the prince of the Andhakas and his White-clad mercenaries. Their exploits far exceeded any conceivable desire for revenge or simple war-lust; their’s was a campaign of brute destructiveness.

The list of war crimes, in utter violation of all Arya warrior codes, streamed past his memory’s eye like a herd of sheep impatient to return to the stockade before duskfall: women kin violated, homes and herds put to the torch, entire families wiped out overnight…yes, the White Prince had much to answer for. But that reckoning would not be here, or now. King Vasudeva kept his hands raised to either side, and his clansmen subsided reluctantly, their faces still dark with angry blood.

Atop the blood-marked elephant, Prince Kamsa’s proud, handsome face turned from side to side, his piercing gray-blue eyes sweeping the length of the banquet hall, briefly and contemptuously scanning the faces of his many enemies assembled here. He lingered briefly on the women, dressed in colourful and enticing festive garb. The leering grin that twisted his face betrayed his utter lack of respect for any regal protocol.

Even Vasudeva felt his jaw clench as the prince stared with rude intensity at an attractive woman amidst the throng of richly clad nobility only two tables down. That was Lady Pritha, Vasudeva’s own sister, who had travelled here from her home at Hastinapura. Her husband Pandu had been unable to attend due to his ill health, but Pritha’s presence was official and was more than sufficient to prove the solidarity of the great Kuru nation. The unbecoming stare that Prince Kamsa directed at her, a leer actually, was offensive in the extreme.

Vasudeva’s own hands clenched into fists as he struggled to restrain his own warring emotions. What manner of beast was this man, that he would storm thus into his own keep’s banquet hall in bloody armor, dash down his own loyal kin-soldiers, insult a noblewoman under the protection of his father’s hospitality? Often had he heard the tales whispered along the length of the Yamuna among the many clans and sub-clans of the Yadava nation. It was said that Kamsa was a rakshasa begot upon his mother Padmavati by a demon who assumed the form of his father Ugrasena. Vasudeva was a man of rationality and science not given to superstition. Yet, looking at those almost translucent greyish blue eyes that glared at the gathered nobles and chieftains with such unbridled hostility, he could almost believe the gossip. Rage and violence exuded from Kamsa like heatwaves from a boiling kettle.

Then Kamsa’s gaze sought out and settled upon Vasudeva himself. And his entire aspect changed so suddenly, it was almost as if he had seen something quite different from merely the king of the Suras.

As if he’s seeing some terrible foe rather than just me, standing here over-dressed in my ceremonial robes, Vasudeva thought. Kamsa took a step back, then another, and Vasudeva thought he saw something akin to…fear?…cross the prince’s otherwise handsome face. Kamsa’s magnificently wrought arms rippled with muscle beneath the chainmail armour he wore.

Vasudeva was caught off guard by the look on Kamsa’s face. What had the feared reaver of the great and powerful Andhaka clan to fear from a simple peace-loving man like Vasudeva?

The stunned silence in the hall gave way to surprised whispering as the assemblage took note of Kamsa’s strange reaction to seeing Vasudeva. At the same moment the Haddhi-Hathi raised his trunk and issued a bleating call that oddly echoed Kamsa’s own mixture of awe and terror. The sound served to snap the Andhaka Prince out of his reverie.

At once, his face changed. The fearful, awe-struck expression dissipated and was replaced instantly by a mask of such inscrutable blankness that it was beyond mere anger or even fury. This expression Vasudeva was much more familiar with. It was the mask a warrior wore when he prepared to launch an attack on the battlefield, severing his normal human self from the battle machine he was about to become.

But it was that glimpse into Kamsa’s naked inner self that caught Vasudeva’s attention. Yes, that look had been unmistakably an expression of fear. He was still pondering the meaning of that expression when Kamsa issued a loud curse, raised a barbed spear, and flung it with a roar of fury–directly at Vasudeva’s breast.

Click here to continue reading excerpts!

The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.

SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores September 2010!

1

King Vasudeva raised aloft the ceremonial sceptre of the Sura nation. The rod, shaped to resemble a cowherd’s crook, was impressively cast in solid gold, studded with precious gems at the curve of the handle. It caught a bar of morning sunlight streaming in from a slatted window high upon the vaulting walls of the Andhaka palace and gleamed. Beside him, King Ugrasena of Andhaka also raised his own rajtaru. The Andhaka sceptre was no less impressive than that of the Suras.

Both rajtarus–the Sanskrit word literally meant kingsrods–refracted the strengthening sunlight, sending shards and slivers flashing to the farthest corners of the great hall. A calico tomcat curled in the south corner closed his eyes to slits and bared his teeth, peering against the blinding gleam of the rajtarus. The well-fed palace cat’s expression resembled nothing so much as a satiated grin.

The watching assemblage crowding the sabha hall to the limit of its capacity, each lord and lady resplendent in their finery, blinked, then caught their breaths. The sight of the two lieges standing on the throne dais, their traditional rajtarus raised and glittering in the sunlight, presented a startling tableau. To some of the older clanschiefs in the great hall, it was a sight they had never believed they would witness as long as they lived: two ancient enemies, sovereigns of two of the wealthiest herding nations in the great land of Aryavarta, standing together with sceptres, not swords, aloft! Could it be true? Surely it was merely maya? That sight–nay, that vision–could not be real, could it? After generations of cross-border blood feuds, broken only by intermittent outbreaks of war, after so much bloodshed and bitter enmity, after so many failed peace summits and parleys, after so much bloody history had stained the pure soil of both nations, polluting the sacred river Yamuna with the offal of vengeful violence, could peace finally be at hand?

Most of the assemblage, as well as the enormous throng crowding the palace grounds without, doubted it severely. Suspicious frowns creased the faces of many clanschiefs, ministers and merchant lords. Only a few hopeful souls smiled beatifically and fingered their rudraksh-bead rosaries, silently chanting slokas to ensure the fruition of this historic pact.

There were few such personages; the golden age of brahmanism had long since ebbed, and the long-dreaded age of Kali-Yuga was imminent, the dark prophesied age of Iron and Death. Most doubted that this historic pact, wrought after months of anxiety and expectation, would last, or that it would be honoured at all. Yet even the most sceptical of ministers, the most cynical of generals, even the hardened veterans who had somehow survived through the first violent decades of this dark age, prayed as fervently as their brahmin brethren. For while few believed, all hoped. All desired. If it could somehow be brought to pass, if the Devas truly saw fit to grant them this release, then they would accept peace, nay, embrace it, with all the warmth and welcome they could muster.

So, when both kings brought their rajtarus together in an inverted V, touching the gem-studded crooks lightly together, every citizen, high and low, watched with bated breath. Even the calico tomcat, stretching himself in preparation for a foray into the royal bhojanshalya–he smelled the unmistakable, delectable fragrance of sweetwater fish being grilled in the palace bhojanshalyas–paused and turned his head, smelling the sour sweat of hesitant hopes and anxious prayers in the close air.  The rhythmic martial count of the dhol-drums underscored the whole scene, omnipresent in the background, like a giant unified heartbeat, marking the four-by-four count to which all Arya ceremonies were performed.

King Vasudeva’s soft tenor blended with King Ugrasena’s aging gruffness as both kings recited the ceremonial sloka aloud, each line cued to them by whispering pundits seated behind the dais. The sacred flame, symbol of the firelord Agni, flared up brightly as a purohit, one of the many ceremonial priests who oversaw the arcana of traditional rites and customs, tossed a ladle of ghee onto the chaukat. The flames shot up almost to the raised sceptres, licking briefly at the point of their unity. Sunlight above, fire below. It was an impressive and auspicious moment, brilliantly and meticulously conceived and staged by the purohits of both nations. To the dwindling brahmins of Aryavarta, such occasions grew more precious with each passing decade, as the world turned away from the old ways and traditions. For the duration of this ceremony, the pomp and grandeur of Aryavarta, literally the Noble and Proud, would shine as brightly as a beacon fed by the light of brahman shakti itself. The chanting of the two kings rose to a peak, ending with a final sloka that seemed to echo from the very stone walls of the sabha hall. This last bit of theatrical magic was wrought by the brahmins again, strategically positioned at the far walls of the hall, joining in with the chanting of the kings at the penultimate quartet, raising their voices–to match the raised voices of the well-rehearsed kings–until it seemed that the world entire spoke the sacred Sanskrit verses.

||yadrcchya copapannah svarga-dvaram apavrtam||

||sukhinah ksatriya partha labhante yuddham idrsam||

The chanting died away, the omnipresent drumbeats fading away at precisely that instant. Into the sudden silence that followed, the watching assemblage could hear the cracking and snapping of the sacred flame as the purohit fed it incessantly with ladlespoons of the sanctified ghee. The faces of the kings had grown warm from the heat of the flames, a few beads of sweat standing out on the clean-shaven good looks of the young King Vasudeva and the tips of the grey-shot beard of aging King Ugrasena.

Moving in perfect unison, they lowered their rajtarus until the inverted V assumed its correct shape. The crooks of the sceptres dipped directly into the flames themselves, and the purohit ceased his ghee-tossing to allow the sacred fire to quell itself somewhat lest the kings lose the skin from their arms. The beads of perspiration swelled and then rolled down their over-heated faces as both monarchs kept the crooks of their rajtarus held in the fire just long enough to let the heat travel up to their bare hands.

Finally, the royal purohit gave the word quietly enough so that only the kings could catch it, and both lieges broke their stances, stepping around the fire. They exchanged sceptres, each handing over his proof of kingship at the exact same time as he accepted the other’s royal seal. This was handled with surprising ease, considering that both rajtarus were blistering hot by now. The watching assemblage could hardly know that both kings had had their hands anointed with a special colourless herbal paste prior to their ceremony, or that the near-invisible paste obscured the transmission of heat quite effectively.

The sight of the red-hot rajtarus being exchanged and then held aloft, to allow every individual in the hall a chance to see this momentous event, seared itself into the minds of all present. The painstakingly staged ceremony had served its purpose. Then,  with obvious relief, and great smiles cracking their tense faces, the two kings embraced.

The crowd released its breath. Upon the fortified palace battlements, waiting courtiers blew long and hard on their conch shell trumpets. The low mournful calling of the conches filled the air for hundreds of yojanas, echoed from end to end of both kingdoms, calling the most welcome news in over two centuries. Peace. Shanti. Outside the Andhaka palace walls, the waiting crowd, now swelled to several tens of thousands, broke into a ragged roar that almost drowned out the conches. Royal criers rode out through the avenues and streets, pausing at corners to shout out the news in Sanskrit then in commonspeak, officially confirming the details of the peace pact. Stone pillars, carved and ready for weeks, were hastily but ceremoniously erected at strategic spots in the capital city and at crossroads along the national kingsroad, setting down the same details for posterity–or at least as long as stone and wind and rain would allow, which would probably be a millennium or two.

Sadly, the peace pact itself would not last a fraction of that time.

Click here to read the next excerpt from SLAYER OF KAMSA

The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.

SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!

Excerpts from SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis will be posted here next this week onwards. Not sure of the exact date. Excerpts will start from Wednesday 1st September onwards! There will also be a special contest based on a few simple questions related to the excerpts – the prizes will be free signed copies of the book! Be here or beware! (Lol.)

Okay, here goes! Excerpts from Slayer of Kamsa will run for the next several days, starting tomorrow morning 8 a.m. Indian Standard Time (IST). As the chapters are short, I’ll be posting two chapters each day for a week! The chapters will go up each day at 8 a.m. IST. After the excerpts are done, I’ll run a simple contest as usual, and winners will get free signed copies of the book delivered by courier, no strings attached.

Update on The Valmiki Syndrome, my first major non-fiction book, being published by Random House India. While my editor and publisher Chiki Sarkar was very pleased with the finished manuscript and even sent me a thank-you note (shown alongside) on completion of writing and editing, I have since decided to scrap that draft and return to the drawing writing board. Why, you may wonder? After all, the book was written and rewritten several times already (five complete drafts, by my count, not including numerous minor rewrites, additions, deletions, etc), edited line-by-line by one of the most prominent editor-publishers in the country and scheduled for publication in October. The cover was ready, the printer waiting, the sales and PR team ready and eager to launch the book. And it’s true, most if not almost all writers would have yielded to commercial constraints and let the book be published. After all, if the editor and publisher was happy with the book, what was the problem?

The problem was that I wasn’t happy. I felt that while the manuscript ‘worked’ in its present form, and worked quite well, it wasn’t the book I had originally set out to write. There were many things I had been unable to include for various reasons, and many things that had crept in that read very well but which I felt were extraneous to the main argument. Also, I felt the book had become a bit too commercial, too glib.

So I’ve decided to rewrite it from scratch. Throw out the entire final draft that was about to go to the press and start from word one, page one, all over again. I feel this is the only way to get back to the original vision I had of the book, and try to come as close to it as possible. I’ve done this before by the way – I threw out the first draft of Prince of Ayodhya and started from scratch with a totally different beginning, back in 2000. I wrote an entirely different science fictional version of my Krishna series back in 2004-05 (some of you have even read it and given me feedback on it, thanks for that). And of course, I’ve written as many as ten different beginnings to my Mba series before finally settling on the phinal-phinal one, which goes into the publication pipeline in October, by the way.

But this is the first time I’ve scrapped an entire book – after the editor, publisher and entire publishing team were ready to publish and launch the book. I’m doing it in another instance too, by the way, with my old 1994 novel Byculla Boy, which I’ve been rewriting from scratch, again trying to get back to the original vision of the book that I had. I feel it’s the only way to produce the best book possible.

And that is the only goal an author should have, isn’t it? To produce the best book possible, no matter what.

Thankfully, Chiki Sarkar of Random House India, who is a visionary editor in her own right and who has been a part of The Valmiki Syndrome project since it was just a germ of an idea, has been more than sympathetic and understanding, and despite trying hard to convince me that our final draft was good enough for publication (and failing), has now agreed to give me the extra time and opportunity to rewrite the book to satisfy my own high expectations.

Will I succeed this time around? I think so. I’ve spent enough time with this book and done enough work on it to know what’s wrong and how it can be set right. And I’ve done this kind of overhaul enough times in my four-decades-long writing career to know it can be done and often results in the best work of all. So here I go again! Wish me luck. And oh, just by the way, The Valmiki Syndrome will not be in bookstores this October as originally announced. I’m not sure when it will be out – perhaps late 2011, probably even sometime in 2012. I’ll keep you updated once I finish the new, final version and Chiki Sarkar accepts and approves it! Which would be sometime early next year.

Until then, you’ll have SLAYER OF KAMSA to read, my only publication in 2011, and a very slim book at that, but even so, well worth the exclusivity!

This is the cover flat (the full cover including the back, spine and front laid out flat) – the text blurbs have yet to be added on the back cover as well as the spine text, publisher logos, ISBNs, etc. The book is scheduled to go to press in mid-August so I hope to receive my copies by end-August or first week September, probably just a day or three before you start seeing them pop up in your neighbourhood bookstore. Less than a month now to the start of my long-awaited Krishna Coriolis series! It’s been in the writing stage since 2004 and as you know by now, it tells the life story of Krishna while also overlapping with some incidents of the Mahabharata. In fact, the Harivamsa of Vyasa which provides us with most biographical information about Krishna is a part of the Vyasa Mahabharata itself. When I realized back in 2004-05 that my Mba retelling was growing too huge to fit into one series, I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great Krishna-Dweipayana Vyasa and split the Krishna story into a separate series. And here it is now.

Excerpts will start around mid-August, probably 16th August, to whet your appetite for the book’s release in September. Mark your calendars and keep in touch!

For those of you – “you few, you happy few!” – who’ve bought and read the exclusive limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of VoR and have ordered the exclusive limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of SoS, this may not be reason to jump up and down, which is bad for your joints anyway. But for the vast majority of Ramayana Series readers out there, I’m sure you will be happy to see why I chose to rescind my own earlier decision to end the series at six books and chose to continue it in these two additional volumes. I can’t promise that the answers I provide in these two books will please everyone. Indeed, they may please no one. Because the point of writing these books is not to please or displease, it’s simply to complete the mental journey I embarked upon when I began writing Prince of Ayodhya and finished that first book way back in the year 2000, long before any publisher was willing to even look at such a manuscript, let alone publish it. Today, I have journalists, readers, editors, booksellers, publishers and others who keep writing to me and telling me that I’m responsible for a wave of resurgence in Indian mythology. I really don’t give a damn about any resurgence or the commercial ramifications of making mythology “cool” as one editor put it. What I do care about is the wealth of great Indian literature that has been ignored by the world for so long in favour of other mythologies and legends of the western hemisphere and that deserves a wider readership and exposure.

As I’ve always said to anyone who praised me for the series: This is not about me. It’s not my story alone. It’s our story. Our history in fact. I’m proud and happy to have been the one to retell it in my humble and flawed attempt. But I’m not anyone special or talented for having done it, just a product of a great culture and people that share one of the world’s finest storytelling traditions. In my opinion, the finest.

The show has already passed beyond mere television excellence to become a cultural icon. After a slew of awards and near-iconic status for its principal creators and performers – Jon Hamm is like today’s Gregory Peck, a star and legend in his own right – Mad Men is now inspiring a slew of books on the era, all linked to the series. The best among them seems to be Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America by Natasha Vargas-Cooper. The author was interviewed this week by New Yorker Magazine and I found her insights into the show as well as on the period to be fascinating. Here’s an excerpt:

“Mad Men,” which returns to AMC this Sunday night, is a television show that sometimes thinks it’s a novel—in particular, a John Cheever novel. Like Cheever, the Draper family lives in Ossining, New York, and their colorful address—42 Bullet Park Road—is an allusion to one of the author’s novels. The literary references don’t end with Cheever. The characters on “Mad Men” read almost as much as they smoke, drink, and cheat. Bert Cooper extols the virtues of Ayn Rand, Don Draper broods over Frank O’Hara’s poetry, and the secretaries at Sterling Cooper furtively pass around an “unexpurgated” copy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” warning each other not to read it on the train because “it’ll attract the wrong element.”

Read the full interview with Natasha Vargas-Cooper at The New Yorker website.