SoS pre-orders open again on popular demand! Note the special pre-order price for the SoS hardback: offer open till stocks last. SOLD OUT!
Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army in an extraordinary battle. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Hardback Edition/Rs 500 SOLD OUT!
300 Pages/2nd Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400 SOLD OUT!
Click here to read excerpts from Sons of Sita.
Click here to pre-order Sons of Sita within India. SOLD OUT
(AKB Books are currently unavailable to order outside India.)
How to Pay
Thank you for your AKB BOOKS order.
Your book will be despatched by courier within 24 hours. Please allow between 3 – 5 working days for the courier to deliver and ensure that someone is there during working hours to receive and sign for the book. If it is returned, you will be liable to pay an extra charge of Rs 50 for each time the book is re-sent to you.
IMPORTANT: Pre-orders will be shipped when the books are printed as per the announced date. Sons of Sita is delayed and is now scheduled for delivery in April.
Please pay the total sum due into the following ICICI Bank account – only via online transfer or cash deposit into any branch anywhere in India. (No cheques please!) Once you have made the payment, you can revisit this page to fill in the Payment Confirmation Form (below). If you have any queries or comments related to payment or delivery, please leave a comment below.
Here are the details you’ll need for the pay-in slip or online transfer:
ICICI Bank
A/c Holder: Ashok Banker
S/B A/c No: 003801016973
Bandra Branch, Mumbai
IFSC Code: ICIC0000038
Thanks again for your order!
Warmest wishes
AKB Books
AKB BOOKS PAYMENT CONFIRMATION FORM
(Note: Please fill in this form only AFTER payment is made!)
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#5
FOUR
When Luv came sprinting around the outcrop, two pairs of eyes instantly snapped around to stare at him. The two men on the second wagon looked startled to see him. I know that look. They think I’m Kush and can’t figure out how he could have run off in that direction and then appeared again from this direction. He was used to that response. He yelled at them as he sprinted past: “Stay where you are!” They looked too startled to try anything anyway.
Barely had he run past the wagon when he heard the sound of pounding hooves from ahead, around the next spur of rock. A few broken boulders lay on the path, their insides gleaming rusty red where they had broken open after falling in a minor landslide during the last monsoon. Others had been pushed over deliberately to block the path, for this was a popular ambush point on the raj-marg. The sound of hooves and rattling of wagon wheels was very loud by then and he knew better than to run around a blind turn. Instead he swerved and leaped up onto the largest broken boulder. He could smell the iron in the air here, so rich was the vein in the lohit stone. These hills were rife with minerals, good pure ore for making steel.
He stood in the relaxed archer position that Bearface had taught them, waiting.
Don’t call your guru that name, Maatr’s voice said in his mind’s ear, He is Gurudev to you, remember!
Yes, Maa.
The position that Bearface had taught them, the lazy cobra, their guru had called it, was now second nature. He waits, seemingly indolent, swaying lazily, but the instant threat appears, he strikes with lightning-speed.
Luv didn’t know if he moved at lightning-speed, but the instant the wagon came into sight, he let fly. The first arrow hit its mark and the second was flying even before the wagon had rolled fully into view. A man shouted out with pain and tumbled off the wagon, with two arrows sprouting, one from each shoulder – the first had clearly been Kush’s work. The driver screamed like a wounded horse and clutched at the arrow quivering in the meat of his thigh – the head must have struck the thighbone, hence the vibration and the extreme pain. Then the wagon rolled past and the next came into view, and still no sight of Kush.
Damnit, Luv thought, feeling the heat rise in his face, cheeks burning. Where are you?
The men on this wagon were better prepared and better shots. Three well aimed arrows came blurring at Luv and he had to somersault sideways to dodge both. Landing on his bare feet on the rubble of the lohitstone, he felt warmth on his waist where one had nicked the skin just enough to draw a bead or two. He loosed off two quick ones before the men could shoot the second volley, and both hit their marks. Both men dropped their own bows, one grunting, the other choosing the strong silent response.
Then the rest of the grama came into view, riding fast, faster than any grama ought to have been especially on this twisting treacherous neck of the raj-marg, and everything began to move very quickly, so quickly that Luv felt his senses slowing to a crawl as they always did in a fight, the world popping into brilliant crystalline clarity and colour: the veins on every leaf visible, every knothole on the wooden slats of a wagon’s side in view, hearing every grinding creak in a wheel, smelling the raw red odors of freshly spilled human blood mixed in with the pungent smell of horse sweat, man-sweat and the rusty tang of the lohitstone.
The flaps of the following wagons opened and revealed armed men. Burly, hirsute, armoured men in the familiar purple and black of Ayodhya’s inner guard. PFs, or some new extension of the PF regiment – for PFs were meant to guard the inner city, not ride with trading gramas as hired escorts. Whatever they were, whomever they were, there were a lot of them, too many for Luv to simply disarm. He would have to fight them seriously to survive, kill some quite likely. And even then it would be touch and go.
The good warrior knows when to retreat, said his guru’s gruff voice in his ear. The code of the kshatriya means nothing if there is no kshatriya left to fight!
Agreeing with Bearface – sorry, Gurudev – was his mother’s voice in his other ear. Run, Luv, run! You can’t fight them all!
Ji, Maatr, jaisi aagya, he said in his mind as he began the heavy task of fitting arrows to bow and aiming not to maim or disarm but to disable, possibly kill. I would love to run. But not without my brother.
“Damnit Kush, where the hell are you?” he said aloud as he began shooting.
Kush emerged from the wagon to see his twin brother standing on a pile of lohistone landslide, the edges of the outcrop at his back, loosing arrows with concentrated ease. He appeared to be single-handedly battling what looked like at least five quads of armed PFs, even though PFs never ventured armed and uniformed outside the Ayodhya city limits. Clearly this grama was a notable exception to the usual rules.
Which makes sense, considering the cargo they’re carrying, he thought as he sprinted away from Luv and to the other side of the raj-marg, unnoticed by either his brother or the men busy trying to kill him. In three deft leaps and grabs he had climbed a tree and was standing on a near-horizontal branch twice as thick as his own thigh. It would have bent and drooped under a grown man’s weight but it took his own lithe form easily, and he steadied his left shoulder against the trunk, took aim at his first target and loosed. The man took the arrow in the meaty muscle joining shoulder to neck, and it popped out through his collarbone with a small explosion of blood. The man yelped like a pup and dropped the javelin he had been about to fling at Luv.
Without turning to look directly at Kush, Luv cried out with joy. “Kush!” Then added in a disgruntled tone even as he continued loosing and dodging: “Took your time, didn’t you!”
“Had to make a short visit to the royal treasury,” Kush called back, grinning. He continued loosing, and saw his third target drop, roaring with frustration and fury as he tried to clutch at the arrow sprouting from his shoulderblade. Hit the bone, hurts like blazes. That voice was old Nakhudi’s, who always seemed to know how to inflict maximum pain on the enemy without actually killing them. Only male enemies, as she liked to remind them, grinning to reveal her astonishingly white gleaming teeth in her buffalo-dark face.
The fight continued for another few moments, the PFs on and around the halted wagons trying with admirable skill to face an attack on two diagonally opposed fronts with diminishing success. Their leader, an efficient and intelligent-seeming fellow, tried to rally his men to use the wagons as shielding, while attempting to send a pair of quads around to outflank Kush – Luv was bolstered by the outcrop which would have taken hours to cut over and around – but the brothers had them at the deadliest cross-angle two bowmen could take, and the broken stones shielded Luv while the tree and foliage shielded Kush, and while many arrows and javelins were aimed at them, none came closer than a single wayward arrow that thunked into the tree branch between Kush’s big toe and its neighbour.
Then, as fierce fights usually did, this one dissipated like a puddle evaporating under a mid-day sun, and suddenly the captain of the PFs was waving his arms in surrender.
Kush grinned and dropped down from his perch, making his way cautiously towards the halted wagons. He had his eye on some men at the back who might, if still feisty enough, try to fling a javelin or two as he approached. But every one of them and all the others as well had at least one arrow in their arm, leg or back, and one massively built chap who had refused to settle down with just two or even three arrows had four bristling from his extremities, lying on his back and cursing the sky roundly with a raised fist, turning the air blue with his choice of profanities. Kush grinned even wider, making a note of several for future reference. Living in an ashram community as they did, good curses were hard to come by!
Luv had leaped up to the tall broken lohitstone boulder, keeping his weapon trained on the PFs as his brother approached. Kush winked at him as he came and saw Luv shake his head in mock-disgust – complaining about the moments when Kush had disappeared from sight earlier. The PFs quietened as he reached them, holding down their moaning and grunting and cursing as they saw the ‘men’ who had bested them up close for the first time.
Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400
Click here to pre-order Sons of Sita within India. SOLD OUT: Pre-orders closed.
Overseas orders currently unavailable.
The Penguin Books mass market edition is expected to be in bookstores in early 2011.
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#2
KAAND 1
ONE
The heavily laden wagon train trundled noisily through the woods. Sunlight fell in beams through the high leafy branches of the sala trees, some towering twenty yards or higher, illuminating the dust motes thrown up in the wake of the rattling wheels. The forest was rife with the colours of spring, bright bursts of saffron, vermillion, scarlet, russet, mustard decorating the sloping hillsides across which the old trading path wound its way. Smaller animals paused in their foraging and raised slender necks or cocked furry heads to listen as the wagons rumbled past then continued their nibbling unabated, accustomed to the passing of mortals through this neck of the woods. A leopard stretched out upon a high tree branch snarled and bared her fangs silently as she paused in the act of sharpening her claws; long furrows of stripped bark and gouged slashes marked her chosen spot. After she had satisfied herself the mortal noisemakers were only passing through, not stopping, she resumed her energetic grooming, purring with pleasure as the soft crumbly bark yielded to her razor-sharp tips. Below and only a few dozen yards to the side, a mongoose ignored the sound and continued to burrow into a hollow trunk rich with the scent of cobra, disappointed to find only cracked egg shells and old sheaths discarded at the turn of the season. Suspended on the trunk of another tree, a wasp stuck in a drip of oozing sap struggled hopelessly one last time before succumbing to the treacly golden glue that sealed in its life. Cicadas kept rhythm as the forest went about its daily business of killing, eating, defecating, urinating, dying and living. Higher up the sloping hillside, a tribe of langurs dozed in the shade, dopey in the late afternoon heat; from time to time, a squabble or mating duel provoked a babble which then quickly subsided. It was too hot to fight, mate, or do much except wait for the coolness of dusk and the night when the forest truly came alive.
The wagon wheel rims deepened the ruts in the oft used path as they rolled along. Most of the occupants appeared to be coddled within the covered carts, sleeping or dozing. Even the drivers were still and silent, moving only the minimum they had to in order to keep the teams of horses in line. There were almost no arms in view, and those that were visible were tucked away in rust-rimmed sheaths and carelessly kept swaddles. At first glance, it appeared to be a traditional grama – literally, a travelling tribe, for a wagon-train was the traditional collective in which the Arya hunter-gatherer tribes of yore had moved from place to place before the relatively recent era of fixed townships and city-states. But the absence of any women, the complete lack of children, and the heavily laden carts, as evidenced from the exertion expdended by the horses drawing the wagons, as well as the covered wagons and oddly quiet procession, suggested something else altogether. There were none of the usual entourage of brahmins trudging doggedly behind the wagons chanting their shlokas either, which ruled out a religious procession. Vaisya traders returning from Videha to Ayodhya, laden with the spoils of a good season of barter? Perhaps.
At one point the path curved sharply, almost doubling upon itself as it skirted a jagged outcrop of rock protruding from the hillside. At the same time, the trees at the bottom of this little outcrop drew back, providing a roughly semicircular clearing. At some time in the not-too-distant past, two old trees had somehow been uprooted and fallen, cutting this clearing in half in a pattern that roughly resembled an arrow fitted to a curved bow. The trees were rotting and overgrown and intersected the original path in a manner which compelled all travellers to slow and maneuver their way in a zigzag fashion for a few dozen yards. Each wagon and horse rider had to slow down and turn left then right then left again, go around the edge of the outcrop where a particularly enormous boulder jutted out like the fist of the bowman preparing to loose the arrow that was the fallen trees, and then turn inwards one last time, riding in the shade of a brief valley-like enclosure between the sharp rise of the hillside here to the left and the tree line to the right, before coming back upon the original path and settling back into familiar ruts. This slowed the entire train and necessitated some concentration of driverly resources, apart from separating each wagon from the one before and after for a moment or two at each turning point.
When the first wagon completed this minor obstacle course and turned the sharp final left, the driver’s attention was immediately diverted to two figures standing upon the large boulder. The angle of the sun and the high positions taken by the two men made it impossible to look directly at them. They were little more than silhouetted male figures clad in simple dhotis, that much he could see. Both held bows loosely by their sides and bore quivers on their backs, each bristling with a goodly supply of fletched arrows. They wore no swords or other weapons that the wagon driver could make out, nor did they appear to have any other companions anywhere in sight. They stood together, facing outwards in an insolent casual posture that suggested they simply happened to be there on this fine spring day, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, and the arrows fitted loosely to the bows held in the lowered arms were simply things they happened to be carrying.
The driver raised his brows, but neither slowed nor sought to stop the wagon. For one thing, it was very heavily laden, overburdened in fact, and stopping and starting required far too much effort and energy, both on the part of the weary team as well as himself. He did not see anything that occasioned risking that much effort here. The two figures standing upon the outcropping boulder appeared to be simply…standing. If not for their oddly intense faces, he would have raised a gnarled hand and hailed them pleasantly. But there was something in their curiously identical features and stillness that reminded him of a duo of young lionesses he had seen once in the Gir woods, in the moment before they had both pounced from diagonal points, converging upon a magnificent but age-bowed stag. This pair put him in mind of that same relaxed yet powerfully gathered predatory stance. He was an old PF whose ancient war injuries had proved too restrictive for him to continue active service. He had retired on the king’s pension and now hired himself out to lead wagon trains like this one to help earn a little extra from time to time. Like all old soldiers who had seen violence explode, he knew how even the most innocuous gesture could sometimes seem provocative or hostile to a person of another culture. He lowered his half-raised hand and stilled his voice. Better to simply ride past and on. These were strange times and there were strange people afoot.
He clicked his tongue softly and completed the turn with deft ease, the wagon swinging around, rear wheels creaking noisily as it rounded the curve. The stallioni on the fore right of the team, a healthy young brute in his prime who was given to covering every female in sight if given the chance, tossed his head and shortened his steps reluctantly to compensate for the sharpness of the curve, nudged and coerced expertly by the driver. The curve done, he lowered his head and pulled hard, drawing lows of protest from his companions who were in no particular hurry to reach Ayodhya. The young stud moved as if he had an appointment with a female waiting eagerly for him in the capitol, straining at the yoke. The old driver admired his strength and youth without envying him; he had been somewhat of a bull himself in his youth; in retrospect, he preferred the quiet wisdom of age and experience over the brash virility of youth anyday. He was distracted for just a fraction of an instant by the young horses’s antics – long enough for everything to change.
Movement caught his eye on the boulder. He glanced up just in time to see the two figures that had been standing still as statues suddenly stir to action. Both bows were raised, cords taut, and the old wagon rider looked up to see the lethal metal points of two long arrows aimed directly at him. He had a brief instant to think of his great-grandchildren back in Ayodhya and of the toys he had bought for them from the toy mandi in Mithila. He had been looking forward to seeing their faces dance with delight as he drew each new treat out of the jute sack. Those little tykes were his greatest source of pleasure in these last years. But then again, he had seen his share of happy faces. He was not unafraid of dying, nor foolish enough to risk it just to save some rich vaisya trader’s season’s stock.
He clucked the team to a halt, yanking hard twice on the young stud’s reins for emphasis – the fellow was thick-headed enough to ram into the outcrop if not corrected firmly – then dropped his hands, shaking his head to indicate he meant to take no aggressive action.
One of the figures standing upon the boulder spoke. And it was then that the driver had his first real surprise in a very long time. At his age, with his war record and lifetime of experience, he had seen a fair share of unusual situations. But it had been a long time since he had been genuinely surprised as he was now.
Because when the person on the boulder began to speak, he realized what he hadn’t been able to see before due to the angle of the sunlight.
The two bowmen were just boys.
Little more than children.
Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400
Click here to pre-order Sons of Sita within India. SOLD OUT: Pre-orders closed.
Overseas orders currently unavailable.
The Penguin Books mass market edition is expected to be in bookstores in early 2011.
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series – Except#1
arvaci subhaghe bhava site vandamahe tva |
yatha nah subhaghasasi yatha nah suphalasasi ||
Auspicious Sita, come thou near: we venerate and worship thee |
That thou mayst bless and prosper us and bring us fruits abundantly ||
Rig-Veda, Mandala 4, Sukta 57, rca 6
PRARAMBHA
Sita…
Sweet whisper in her ear, myrtle breath upon her cheek. She started awake with a lurch and a gasp. In the hut’s impenetrable darkness, her hands sought out by instinct the looming mound of her belly. Her palms gently massaged the sweat-slicked pot, soothing both herself as well as her sleeping sons. Slowly, by degrees, the nightmarish visions of ten-headed rakshasas, moon-swords and three-eyed devas faded away reluctantly, retreated hissing and snapping to the far corners of the humble hut. She was too middle-heavy to sit up easily; instead, she leaned upon one elbow, head throbbing, throat hoarse from shouting forgotten prayers to uncaring gods. The darbha grass pallet was dampened by her own exudations. She listened idly, hearing only the absence of human sounds. The ashram was asleep around her. The night was peaceful, the forest quiet – or as quiet as a forest could be at night. The very music of the woods told her that all was well, no menace lurked in the dark recesses of the surrounding wilderness, no rakshasas approached stealthily, no mortal or un-mortal foes threatened. Within the center of her being, the twin lives growing steadily – greedily, it seemed somedays – seemed barely to have stirred. She trusted their instincts more than her own now; for they seemed to sense better than she when true danger loomed. One kicked, the other kicked back instinctively, and she felt them both settling back into deep repose. The rhythmic cricketing of insects, droning of cicadas, and hooting of owls lulled her back to sleep. Darkness embraced her like a lover returned from a long war. She fell into sleep and nothingness caught her and began to tug her insistently down towards oblivion…
Sitey.
Her eyes opened, staring up into darkness. That name. Nobody called her by that name, in that tone. Her name Sita modified to the third-person plural, the tense used for royalty or formal addresses. Simultaneously affectionate as well as excessively formal. A name only a lover would use. Nay, not even a lover. Only a husband.
Janaki.
She swallowed, willing her heart to slow, feeling a fresh bead of sweat coagulating upon her brow – she had always had a tendency to sweat a great deal from the crown of her scalp – and it took great restraint to stifle the urge she felt to speak out. Quiet and serene as the ashram was, its occupants were light sleepers, accustomed to living in woods populated by the fiercest predators. Rousing them would take little more than a raised voice, a tone of alarm, or even a strange sound that did not belong: Maharishi Valmiki would be up and at the ready in a trice, broadstaff in hand, a mantra on his lips. Then the devas help any intruder, human or otherwise. So she kept her voice stilled and emotions under control. There were also the twins to consider. At this advanced stage of her confinement, waking them would make sleep impossible the rest of the night, for they would be kicking and ready for action no less quicker than the maharishi. The very fact that they still slept so soundly told her that whatever presence swirled around her this night, it was not a force of evil that intended harm to her. Just as the Maharishi was sensitive to sound, the twins were sensitive to all else.
And that name and that tone. Janaki. Daughter of Janak. Again, an appellation used by one who cared about her.
Rama, she mouthed silently, her heart turning at the use of his name. Is that you?
Maithili.
This one was less intimate, more generic. Woman of Mithila. Yet coming as it did after the other familiar terms of endearment, it was more touching, not less, for its formal generality. She shuddered and covered her face with the crook of her arm, feeling hot tears spill carelessly down her cheeks. The appellation, uttered in the most affectionate of tones, caused her mind to resonate with a deep ringing that issued outwards in concentric waves, seeming to reach to the very ends of creation.
Vaidehi.
Woman of the Videha nation. This last was so generic, so formal, yet spoken in a tone so familiar, intimate, caressing, sincere, that it broke the last reserves of her endurance. The dam burst and she turned her head and cried into the straw, cut ends digging uncomfortably into her neck and arms and cheek; not caring. She heard her own sobs in the stillness and thought with a sense of wonder: Who is that woman weeping so bitterly? Poor thing. She must have suffered some great loss.
My love, forgive me. I did what I had to for our sakes. For the sake of our sons. For the sake of our future.
No! She cried silently in her mind’s echoing chamber. You did it for dharma. As you do everything. That’s all you really care about. Nothing else matters so long as you fulfill your dharma. It’s the way it’s always been with you!
A moment of silence, as if he did not debate her accusation. Then, gently, soothingly:
Yes. But you serve dharma too. In your own way. Surely you see that?
She raised her face at last and screamed into the darkness with the true voice of her heart, audible only to phantoms and miasmas: I don’t want to serve dharma. I don’t want dharma. I just want you.
She waited. But this time no reply came. Only the silent darkness pressing upon her from all sides like an invisible cage shrinking by degrees every passing moment. She felt a sudden rush of remorse then. Regret at having spoken so harshly to her beloved – or to his phantom presence, or memory, or whatever it was that had come to her in the deep watches of the night.
Rama? She asked anxiously. Are you there?
But only the darkness remained. The darkness and the silence.
She lay awake the remaining hours to dawn, till the ashram stirred and the brahmacharyas rose and the daily round of chores and duties began anew. Within the swollen mound of her belly, the twins slept as peacefully as cubs in a den.
He never came to her again, that night, or any other night.
Ten years have passed since Rama did the unthinkable and banished Sita. Now, she spends her days in quiet tapasya in the remote forest ashram of Maharishi Valmiki, even as her sons Luv and Kush grow ever more proficient at the arts of war. To the sorrow of many, they seem unlikely to ever cross paths with their estranged father. Yet destiny works in unexpected ways. Rama’s growing ambitions and his war-mongering advisors motivate him to launch the Ashwamedha yojana. The mightiest Ayodhyan army ever assembled follows the sacred stallion in a campaign of conquest that seems unstoppable…until a pair of improbable obstacles arise. Defying the military might of Ayodhya and the emperorship of Rama himself, two young striplings capture the Ashwamedha horse and challenge the great army. To Rama’s chagrin the challengers turn out to be none other than his own estranged offspring: the sons of Sita! Don’t miss the epic conclusion to the internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana Series!
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series
300 Pages/Limited Signed Trade Paperback Edition/Rs 400
Click here to pre-order Sons of Sita within India. SOLD OUT: Pre-orders closed.
Overseas orders currently unavailable.
The Penguin Books mass market edition is expected to be in bookstores in early 2011.
SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series limited paperback edition sold out on pre-orders!
The limited signed AKB Books edition of SONS OF SITA: BOOK 8 OF THE RAMAYANA SERIES, the long-awaited conclusion to my Ramayana Series, was available for pre-order only via this website. (Don’t waste your time looking for the book elsewhere online or in bookstores as the Penguin mass market edition will only be published in 2011.) The pre-orders closed early due to an unprecedented rush – over 7 times more orders were received than the number of copies being printed! Pre-orders are now officially closed. Thanks to all those who ordered. Please pay the money via cash deposit or online transfer to the ICICI A/c (no cheques please). Please note that this is a Pre-Order: SoS will be despatched via courier only after 15th February.
Excerpts and further information about the book will be added soon. International orders and the limited collector’s edition hardcover will go on sale in mid-Feb when the AKB Books edition is officially released.
A few copies of the limited edition of VoR, GoW and V:S are still available but they’re selling out fast. Visit the AKB Books Order Page.
VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series limited edition copies available!
Happy days! By popular demand, I’ve reopened orders for a 2nd limited edition of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series. The only way to get the book is to order it online right here via this website. The mass market edition by Penguin is expected to be in bookstores around mid-2010. This limited edition is only available for a short time. HURRY! COPIES SELLING OUT FAST!
EVIL NEVER DIES. It only changes form and shape.
Ravana is dead. The asura threat is ended and Rama is on the throne of Ayodhya at last, seeking only to live in peace with his beloved Sita.
But their peace does not last long. An old enemy breaks free of his subterranean prison to convey a shocking message. An army arrives at the gates of Ayodhya, led by a mysterious being bearing a terrible weapon. Gods descend upon earth. And in the end, besieged on every side, Rama makes a terrible tragic decision.
But is he truly following his dharma or is he and everyone else merely being manipulated by the masterfully planned…Vengeance of Ravana!
The long-awaited 7th volume in the Ramayana Series begins an enthralling two-part conclusion to the epic saga. Followed soon by the stunning 8th and final volume Sons of Sita. Available in limited edition hardcover and large paperback versions. Linked to VORTAL:Shockwave and Gods of war.
Click here to know more about Vengeance of Ravana.
Click here to read excerpts from Vengeance of Ravana.
Click here to order Vengeance of Ravana within India.
Click here to order Vengeance of Ravana outside India.
The AKB Bookstore is now open!
Hi there! Welcome to the AKB Bookstore. The one-stop online shop to order my books and have them delivered anywhere across India or the rest of the world. Start by visiting the AKB Books Page to find out more about each title, look at the covers, read excerpts, and choose your edition. Already know what you want? Go straight to the AKB Order Page.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE – Excerpt#5
5
In Which Vhy Tries To Tell Vir About Mikey And The Vortal, Viveka Is Mistaken For The Enemy, Vhy Is Confronted By The Duplicate Mikey, & Viveka Becomes A Prisoner Of War
5.1 Vir
When I came out of Sarla’s hospital room, Vhy was waiting for me. I put my arm around him and hugged him tightly. I could smell Pantene shampoo on his hair- the same brand I used- and Chiclets on his breath. When I released him, I saw his eyes were wet and shiny. He was only 17 after all and he had never experienced a major illness or death in our immediate family—thank God. This was probably very hard for him.
“Bete,” I said gently. “Don’t worry, she’s going to be fine.”
“Papa,” he said. He was the only one who preferred to call me Papa, not Dad. Somehow, I liked it. I had always called my father Papa till the day he died and he had called his father the same.
“Papa,” he said again, and I could see him swallowing hard, as if making a major effort to speak. “There’s something we need to talk about.”
“Bete, it’s late now. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep? I’m going to be here until your Jogi-mama and Sundri-mami arrive. They’re already on the flight from Delhi. You can come in the morning on your way to college, your mother should be conscious by then. We can talk after you see her.”
“No, Papa, it’s important. We have to talk right now.”
I looked at him curiously. Vhy was the dreamer, the most carefree and happy-go-lucky of my three kids. Viveka was the sensible, motivated one. Mikey was the eccentric, rebellious one. Vhy usually became passionate only about movies. He was a junior Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Wachowski Brothers, all rolled into one. He had seen The Matrix 17 times on its first release, God knows how many times on DVD since then. It was his Bible.
With a tinge of concern, I said, “Bete, what is it? Some problem?”
He looked around. Then, without pointing directly at them, he indicated Mikey and Mrs. Mudgal, still seated in the waiting area by the nurse’s desk. His voice was low and urgent as if he didn’t want his voice to carry down the dead-silent hospital corridor.
“Papa, it’s Mikey.”
“What about Mikey, bete?”
He hesitated for a moment. “He’s changed.”
I frowned. “What do you mean, changed?”
“I mean, it’s like…” he stopped, then started up again, “it’s like he’s not Mikey anymore. Not our Mikey. Like he’s someone else.”
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I’d put it on silent mode to avoid being disturbed while in the hospital, but Anant had told me he would be calling me after he spoke to another couple of specialists about another minor operation Sarla might need.
I was reaching for it when Vaibhav caught my hand and looked at me with an expression of sheer desperation. “Papa, listen to me. I’m telling you, Mikey, our Mikey, he’s gone. That guy sitting over there, he’s someone else. Our Mikey’s been Switched.”
“Switched,” I repeated tonelessly, not sure how to react to this extraordinary accusation. “You mean…”
“I mean, he’s been replaced. And a duplicate put in his place. That duplicate.”
I looked at Mikey, talking quietly, soberly with Mrs. Mudgal. I had seen him calm her down earlier, when she had started to get upset again. He had handled phone calls for me, helped pass on messages to and from the doctors and nurses, got us all snacks and coffee when we needed it…he was behaving so well, I had meant to take him aside later and give him a little hug, to show him how proud I was of how well he was standing up to this crisis.
“Vaibhav, bete, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
He looked frustrated. “It’s the computer.”
I stared at him blankly. “The computer?” What did a computer have to do with anything?
He went on, growing more agitated as he continued talking in a hoarse whisper, still desperate not to be heard by his own brother. “Yes, Mikey’s comp. The other night, I was with—“
He stopped and rubbed his forehead, pinching the skin tightly the way he did when he got upset sometimes. “He was in his room, logged on to some kind of weird internet site. Then he disappeared. Vanished from his chair.”
I blinked. “You were sitting in Mikey’s room and you were both browsing some internet site and then he disappeared?”
“No, I wasn’t there. He was alone in his room. And he just disappeared. Vanished. Poof. Like in a movie.”
“I don’t understand. If you weren’t with him, if he was alone in his room, how could you see him disappear? Did he tell you this? He must have been pulling your leg, bete.”
He looked down for a moment, exasperated. Even as a little boy, Vhy had never blown up or lost his temper right away; he tended to turn his anger inwards. He was doing that now, I could see, struggling with his frustration. I wanted to help him, but didn’t know how. The cell phone in my pocket stopped vibrating. Whoever it was, it must have been urgent, or they wouldn’t have let it ring that long. The crisis over the thrill ride animation had still been cresting when I’d left office. I hadn’t spoken to anyone there since.
Vhy looked up at me again. “The door was open. Someone looked in and saw him sitting there. Then I looked in and he wasn’t there, he was gone. Then I turned my back for a second, just a second, and poof, he was back in his chair again. I’m not making this up, papa. It really happened. Just last night! And today, all this is going on.”
I tried not to sigh visibly. I didn’t know how to deal with this…whatever it was. I tried to be as patient as possible. “Who someone?”
He stared at me uncomprehendingly.
“Vhy, you said Someone looked in and saw him sitting there. I’m asking you, who someone?”
He looked away again, this time I thought I saw a flash of what looked like embarrassment cross his face. What was he embarrassed about? The fact that he was talking gibberish when his mother was in a serious condition in the ICU? I had never known Vaibhav to behave like this before, but he was definitely not himself!
“It doesn’t matter who, papa,” he said. “The point is, Mikey was Switched somehow. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I saw it happen. He vanished, then ten minutes later he was back. But like the way he is now, changed completely. Not the real Mikey. I told Viveka about it, but she didn’t believe me. Now, it’s happened to her too. The maid told me Viveka was in Mikey’s room when Mom went to speak to her, just before the attack took place. Viveka must have been using Mikey’s comp for some reason and the same thing that happened to Mikey happened to her too. She’s not the real Viveka anymore. She’s been Switched too.”
I stared at him. Long and hard. I hadn’t seen Vhy so intense and anxious since the night he’d had a high fever before his ICSE Maths finals, a year and a half ago.
“Vaibhav,” I said, puzzled. “What are you talking about? What is this whole story for? Why are you telling me all these things? And now? Is this the place, or the time? Come, on bete, get a hold on yourself. Your mother needs us to pull together, to stay in control. I’m depending on you and you’re telling me all these stories!”
He sighed with typical adolescent exasperation. I wondered for a moment—just a fleeting moment—if he was on drugs or something. But I dismissed the thought instantly: I knew my children too well. Still, something was definitely wrong with Vaibhav and the only other thing I could think of was that the sudden shock of what had happened had affected him somehow. Maybe…just maybe…I shouldn’t have given him so much freedom, allowed him to watch so many movies without restriction. Maybe, at this time of sudden stress, his movie-addicted mind was unable to cope, and was therefore trying to retreat into some fantastical movie-ish explanation for the very real things that had happened.
“Papa,” he said with a tone of desperation. “You’ve got to believe me. Both Mikey and Viveka have been Switched. They’re not our Mikey and Viveka anymore. That’s why Mom was attacked. By the other Viveka.”
I was trying to think of what to say in response to that when, to my relief, I saw the lift at the far end of the corridor open and Anant emerged. He was looking at his cell phone and then he looked up as he came down the corridor and when he saw me, he shut his cell phone.
He was frowning when he came up. “Vir, I was calling you just now but there was no answer.”
“Sorry, Anant, Vaibhav just needed to talk to me for a moment,” I said apologetically, trying not to sound irritated with Vhy.
Anant nodded at Vaibhav perfunctorily. “Hello, Vaibhav.” He looked at me, “Vir, I have to go home and get some sleep. Major surgery tomorrow and it can’t be postponed. I’ve checked with Dr. Patel again. He’s keeping a constant watch on her, so there’s nothing to worry about. I need you to just chat with him for a moment to discuss the plastic surgery I suggested earlier. If you do it within the first 72 hours, it’s best. That way, there’ll be virtually no visible scars.”
I nodded. “Sure. You’re going up again? Then I’ll come with you.”
I looked at Vhy. “Vaibhav, bete. We’re all tired. I need to speak to Dr. Patel about your Mom having another minor operation. Take my suggestion, go home, eat something—I told the maid to keep dinner ready. And get a good night’s sleep. You’re tired. It’ll do you good. Sleep well. And we’ll talk in the morning, okay?”
He looked at me with an expression that was part-puppy dog who had been kicked and part-Forrest Gump. He seemed about to say something, then glanced at his tau standing next to us, waiting impatiently, and just nodded. I thought of saying something else to him but I couldn’t think of anything. His extraordinary story had left me completely wordless.
Then, he just turned and walked away, not in the direction of the lift which would take him downstairs to the hospital lobby, but the other direction. He walked past the waiting room and I saw Mikey look up and give him a vulnerable look that was wholly unlike our usually sullen and withdrawn Mikey; it told me how much the sudden shock of Sarla’s incident had affected our youngest as well. He was clearly calling out for some brotherly help. But Vaibhav just walked past, ignoring Mikey completely, and went through the door marked Exit. He was taking the staircase. And we were on the 14th floor.
“Vir?” Anant said. “Can we go now? Patel’s waiting for you before he goes on his rounds.”
I thought of going after Vaibhav, of sitting down with him and trying to figure out what was troubling him so much that he had to make up such elaborate stories. Was it the classic attention-seeking device? Or perhaps it wasn’t an attempt to get attention at all, perhaps he had seen something unusual, but his overactive movie-filled imagination had interpreted it as much more than what it was.
But I couldn’t deal with it right now. There were more important things to be done. And I still had to figure out what to do about Viveka—Where was she? What had happened to her? Why had she attacked her mother? I was worried sick about her. I was still trying to come to terms with what had happened, struggling to deal with it one thing at a time. I just didn’t have the mental space to deal with Vhy’s bizarre story.
“Okay,” I said to Anant. “Let’s go talk to Dr. Patel.”
5.2 Viveka
The crossbow in the man’s hand wavered slightly as I cried out. I thought he was going to shoot me in reflex and my body tensed at the thought of that metal bolt piercing my flesh.
He cursed in the same tapori bhaasha, using Marathi and Gujarati swear words combined in a uniquely Bollywood mixture.
“Girl, control yourself. You almost tasted the steel of my bow just now.”
I raised my arms again, anxious not to anger him. “I’m sorry. I just…. I was just…. I mean, I couldn’t help it. When I saw your face…”
He frowned suspiciously, keeping the crossbow aimed at my chest. “What about my face? What’s wrong with it?”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell a man from another world, an alternate Bombay as this obviously was, that he’s the spitting image of a Hindi film star in our world? That too, a very major megastar. Right down to the last bicep in his muscular arms and the lean hard line of his jaw. I almost expected him to start dancing that familiar step, the one where Hrithik presses his hands outwards and jerks his body, and sing, “Ek pal ka jeena…” Because that’s who he was: the spitting image of Bollywood’s current badshah, Hrithik Roshan.
“Don’t play games with me, girl,” he snarled. “I’ve had a very nasty day. And it’s going to get far worse, thanks to your pardesi associates down there.”
He jerked his head in the direction of the battlefield below, indicating the larger forces coming from the North. I stole a quick glance. The army was still massed in lines stretching as far as I could see in this dusky light. They were clearly waiting…but for what? Then I remembered a scene I’d seen in some film—don’t ask me which, okay, I’m not a movie cyclopaedia like Vhy—where the larger army waits for the smaller force to surrender. Some American Civil war saga.
As I glanced down, I saw a horse rider bearing a white flag riding from the ranks of the South army towards the North army. He looked very small and forlorn, but there was no mistaking that white flag—he was a herald, seeking to offer terms of surrender. I hoped his offer was accepted: I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if that great North army actually attacked the measly South one.
Then I realized what this duplicate Hrithik Roshan had just said in his pidgin Bambaiya bhasha.
“Wait a sec,” I said. “You think I’m with those people down there? No way! I’m on my own here. I’m not even from this world.”
“Not from this world,” he repeated slowly. “You speak oddly, girl. Which area of the North are you from? Jogeshwari? Vasai?” He looked me up and down again. “You must be one of those Pawai princesses. I’ve heard tell they will–”
“Look, I just told you, I’m not from the North or the South. I’m from elsewhere. Besides, you’re the one who speaks oddly. What sort of language is that anyway?”
He looked as if I had just insulted his mother. “This is Tapori. The language of my land.”
He used his free arm to indicate our surroundings. “You Northerners come here, invade our land, destroy our homes and now you insult my language too. Tapori is the greatest language in the seven islands. It is the language in which all the great epics were composed.” He sneered like the second, tough-guy Hrithik in ‘Kaho Na Pyaar Hai’, the one who takes revenge on the bad guys for killing the first nice, sweet-boy Hrithik before the interval. “But what would you know about such things, a common barbarian like you!”
Barbarian? me? If he hadn’t had a crossbow in his hand, I would have picked up a rock and slugged him. I settled for putting a hand on my hip, and pointed a finger at him. “Tapori? Is that what you call it? Well, at least you picked a good name. It’s tapori Hindi, that’s for sure.”
He looked at me up and down. As my initial shock at being caught and then at recognizing his famous face wore off slightly, I began to feel afraid again. I was in a strange, hostile land, captured by an armed man who regarded me as an enemy. I had no idea what he might do to me.
“Turn around,” he commanded.
I did as he asked, feeling his eyes move over my body as intimately as a hand on bare skin. Suddenly, I felt almost naked in the cut-off jean shorts. Why the hell wasn’t I dressed in something less revealing than these flimsy shorts? That was simple: I was supposed to be working on my PC at home, not transported against my will to a strange world and taken prisoner by an armed stranger with a crossbow.
“You wear strange garb too,” he said. “I have never seen a Northerner in such garments before. Not even a princess of Pawai. Is it your custom to be as unclad as a common rundi? Or perhaps that is your profession?”
I wanted to slap him for saying I was dressed like a whore. But he was too far away. And it would have been pointless. Besides, he was right. Even in the USA, I hadn’t dressed like this out of doors. It was only because I was working alone in the privacy of my own bedroom that I’d slipped into these shorts and the tee shirt to be more comfortable. Damn. If I’d known I was going to be judged by some filmstar-lookalike in another dimension, I would have worn my boringly conservative churidar-kurta.
He peered at my cut-offs in a way that made me hold my breath with anxious anticipation. I relaxed only slightly when I realized he was trying to read the designer label.
“Pepe,” I said, trying to help. “And the tee shirt’s from Columbia, New York. I did a post-grad course in filmmaking there, after passing out of Michigan U.”
He tried to repeat the unfamiliar words. When he tried to say “Pepe”, it came out sounding like the Punjabi “Papey”. I couldn’t help laughing.
His face darkened with anger. The crossbow rose an inch higher, pointing at my throat. I stopped laughing.
“Silence, girl! We’ll soon see how you laugh when I take you back to my camp for questioning. We know how to deal with pardesi spies like you.”
I held up my hands appeasingly. “Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make fun of you. It’s just that this whole situation is so bizarre.”
He put his free hand to his mouth and whistled three loud, sharp tones. Instantly, a horse came riding back out of the smoky dimness. It came within three yards of him and stopped, waiting. So that’s how he had tricked me earlier: I had heard the horse riding away and it hadn’t occurred to me that the rider had stayed behind! Smart move.
“Hey,” I said in English. “That’s one hell of a neat trick. That horse really responds to you.”
“Girl,” he said curtly. “Stop your barbarian chatter, and get on the horse. I would make you run, but it is too far, and I must be back before the battle commences. Move now!”
“Achcha, baba, I’m getting on,” I said, using Bambaiya Hindi again—or Tapori, as he called it with such pathetic pride. “But if you’re going to order me around, at least use my name. I’m Viveka. Everybody calls me Viv for short.”
“Viveka,” he said, looking at me suspiciously as if revealing my name might be some new trick on my part.
“And you are?”
It didn’t really matter what his name was, but I couldn’t resist asking. I had to know if he had the same name as his filmi counterpart back in our world. If he was the spitting image of a Hindi film superstar in my world, maybe his name was similar too. It would help me figure out how similar or dissimilar things were between the two worlds.
It was eerily similar. Not the exact same name, but close enough to send a shiver up my spine.
“Rikit,” he said gruffly. “Rikit Raushan, son of Rankesh Raushan of Mahim Island. Now, get on that horse before I put a bolt through your unclad leg.”
5.3 Vhy
I reached home feeling frustrated and angry with myself. I should have made Dad listen to me somehow. But he was so worried about Mom. And there were things to be done at the hospital. I didn’t blame him for not believing me—for looking at me like I was some attention-deficit South Mumbai rich delinquent, even though at the time I was so mad as hell, I had felt like shouting and kicking the walls while going down the hospital stairs. No, it wasn’t Dad’s fault at all, from any point of view.
Besides, I knew how freaked-out my story sounded: “Papa, Mikey and Viveka were sucked into some kind of internet vortal and came out as different people.”
But it was the truth. I knew it. Ruchi knew it too. We had seen what we had seen. There had to be a way to convince Dad. Before something else happened.
The maid was still in a state of shock. She was trembling when she opened the door and her eyes looked like she had been crying nonstop. I felt really bad for her. She must have got the shock of her life, seeing Viveka attack Mom like that. Just the thought of it made me feel like someone had shoved a fistful of ice down the back of my shirt. Your sister attacking your mom, slashing her badly enough to put her in hospital. Badly enough to need an emergency operation and plastic surgery.
I tried to control my own feelings and stayed calm long enough to give the maid the night off. She almost sobbed with relief, saying “Thank you, baba, thank you, hah? Mein kal subah-subah aati hoon,” and was out the door in, like, ten minutes. I wondered if she would be back in the morning, then realized I was too tired to deal with one more thing right now.
Then I collapsed on a couch in the living room and zombied-out totally. Like, I lay there for an hour or maybe a year, totally blank. Too much had happened too fast. Was it just yesterday that Ruchi and I were sitting in my bedroom watching ‘Eyes Wide Shut’? Just last night that we saw Mikey disappear at his comp? Then saw him reappear again out of thin air? It seemed like another lifetime.
When I came to my senses again, I got the scare of my life.
Mikey was standing there beside the couch, looking down at me with this really really weird expression on his face.
It shouldn’t have scared me. After all, hey, this was my younger brother, good ole Mikey Hard Rock maniac. Pizza-lover extraordinaire, tech nerd and net junkie, lone wolf and social outlaw.
Except that it wasn’t really him. This was the other Mikey. The one who had come back through the Vortal. Just like Viveka had this morning. The duplicate Mikey.
And if the duplicate Viveka had been vicious enough to put my mom in the hospital, then what might this duplicate Mikey do to me?
He grinned just then, as if reading my thoughts and leaned closer. Close enough to bite.
5.4 Viveka
You don’t argue with a strange ruffian pointing a loaded weapon at you. Even if he does look like Hrithik Roshan in ‘Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai’. I did as he told me. I went to the horse, put my foot in the stirrup and was about to get on when suddenly a sound burst out.
It was the sound of a man screaming. And it was coming from below, from the wadi on the east side of Pali Hill.
Both Rikit Raushan—that name was just too weirdly similar—and I turned to look. The two armies were massed below, facing one another, the Northern one still outnumbering the Southern by at least five times as far as I could tell.
The screaming was coming from the man with a white flag I had seen earlier. When I had last seen him, he was riding toward the Northern army, evidently bringing an offer of peace.
It seemed the Northerners didn’t care much for his offer. Because he was riding back now in the direction of the South, minus one arm. The arm, still holding the pole with the white flag, lay on the ground several metres behind him, the white cloth splashed with bloodstains that were visible even from here.
Rikit Raushan sucked in his breath as he came up beside me, watching the drama unfold.
“Barbarians,” he said. “Attacking an unarmed man bearing a flag of truce. I told the General not to waste time parleying with them.”
We watched the armless rider, clutching his shoulder to try and staunch the blood gushing from it, staining the rump of his horse and leaving a dark scarlet trail on the ground as he rode. He hadn’t reached even halfway back to his own lines when a javelin came whistling through the air behind him, arcing high in an Olympian trajectory. It struck him squarely between the shoulder blades, driving his face down into the mane of his horse.
His horse rode even faster. The momentum jostled him out of the saddle and he hung sideways, hanging from one stirrup. He must have been dead before he reached safety.
Rikit Raushan bristled with rage beside me. “Cowards!” he yelled. “Let’s see how you fare against a man bearing steel!”
He unsheathed a sword and raised it in the air. For a moment, I thought he would charge down the hillside and take on that army single-handedly. Now he reminded me of yet another Hindi film. I had recently seen ‘Fiza’—my mom had dragged me along to keep her company since my dad never saw Hindi films—and it was eerie to see the same jutting jaw, the biceps rippling with tension, the light-coloured eyes burning with fury. The real Hrithik Roshan had only been acting in that film, but his counterpart in this world was demonstrating real passion, real emotion.
It took a great effort on his part to not go charging down the hillside, but I saw him control himself and turn away. Seeing that display of self-control gave me a glimmer of hope. I used the moment to try to appeal to his better sense.
“Listen,” I said, trying to sound as sincere as possible—or as sincere as anyone can sound when speaking in pidgin Bambaiya Tapori bhasha. “You must believe me. I am not a spy. I don’t even know why you people are fighting. I’m here by mistake and all I want is to find my brother and go home again. I have nothing to do with this war of yours.”
He wasn’t listening. Below, the Northern army was sounding trumpets and preparing its first assault, even before the murdered peace-rider had reached the Southern lines.
Even I was silenced for a moment as the entire Northern army gave out one mighty roar and charged forward in a massive charge. It was an awesome sight, even seen from a kilometre away on top of this hill and I couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to actually face those charging hordes. I shuddered. What sort of hellish place had I come to?
“They attack without a parley,” he said beside me, his voice choked with anger. “They butcher our peace-rider. And they mean to leave us no quarter.”
He turned to me, his sword still in his hand. “The Northern barbarians. They outnumber us six to one and will not stop until our homelands are awash in the blood of our innocent women and children. By killing the bearer of the white flag they have announced that they will take no prisoners.”
He put the point of the sword to my throat, eyes blazing. They were the exact same shade and tint as that of his counterpart back in my world. “Then why should we?”
5.5 Vhy
The sight of Mikey, the fake Mikey, bending over me while I slept, grinning down at me in the darkness was scarier than any nightmare.
I almost fell off the couch, clutching at the corner of the coffee table to keep my balance. My heart yammered like the soundtrack in a bad horror film.
The duplicate Mikey backed away at once, until he was standing in the shadows by the wall unit.
That was worse, ‘cause now I couldn’t see his face clearly. And he just stood there silently looking down at me. Like one of those two lions in that movie that Bill Goldman wrote, based on a true story he came across while on a holiday to Africa with his wife, ‘The Ghost and The Darkness’. I felt the hairs on the back of my hand standing on end with anticipation. It felt like something was about to happen; something really bad.
I felt like screaming and running from the house. Like getting away from this spooky guy who used to be my kid brother. But I remembered Mom lying unconscious in a bundle of bandages in that ICU bed, and Viveka who had suddenly turned into a vicious animalistic creature, attacking Mom, leaving her hurt badly enough to need operations and ICUs, and then leaping over a 12-foot wall like Jack Nicholson in ‘Wolf’, if the witnesses were to be believed.
I forced myself to calm down. I took three deep breaths like Van Damme takes in one of his martial arts action movies before he starts his main climax fight, and, getting up from the couch, I walked over to the light switches, forcing myself to move slowly.
Mikey should have blinked when I switched the lights on. Instead he just stood there, staring directly at me. It took me a moment to adjust to the brightness even though I’d been prepared for it, and I reminded myself once again that this person standing there was not my brother. Hell, he might not even be like us normal people.
While my rods and cones did their thing, he moved towards me. I felt he didn’t even move like the old Mikey. The differences were subtle enough that Dad and Mom and Viveka hadn’t noticed them at breakfast this morning, but knowing what I knew, everything he did screamed ‘phony’ to me. Or, as Ruch would have put it, ‘Snatcher’.
My head was woozy and my eyes felt gritty. I must have fallen asleep without realizing it. I glanced at the wall clock and was shocked at how long I’d slept, and at the fact that Dad wasn’t home yet. But the fake Mikey was still standing there and I was still more than a little bit spooked at the sight of him staring at me like a scientist at a lab specimen.
“What?” I said challengingly, the way I would have said it to a guy who was rubbernecking Ruchi a bit too interestedly at a movie hall. “What?”
He shook his head, looking away. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was just seeing if you were fast asleep or just resting.”
I didn’t believe him. I was sure he had been trying to do much more than just see if I was awake. Much worse.
“I’m awake now,” I said. “What’s hassling you?
He was silent for a moment. I lost my patience. “Come on, dude,” I said. “Speak up. What’s your glitch?”
“Vaibhav,” the duplicate Mikey said. “I need to talk to you. About what happened this morning.”
There was another shred of proof: the real Mikey would never have said something like that. He’d have come directly to the point, sub-vocally muttering whatever he had to say, throwing in a lot of hardrock lingo. He would have said something like: “Vhy, man, I need to open a channel with youse. Can we, like, connect?”
I walked to the living room toilet and slid the door open. I left it open as I went in and splashed water on my face. It gave me a few seconds more to come completely awake. “About what?” I said, toweling my face.
He had walked over to the open door while I was washing my face. I could feel him watching me even with my face buried in the towel. “Everything,” he said. “Mom and Viveka. What happened this morning.”
The mention of the attack turned my face hot, as if the water I’d just splashed had been burning hot, not thanda-thanda nal ka paani.
“What about it?” I said cautiously, coming out of the bathroom and glancing either way quickly. I didn’t know what his game was, but I made sure to keep a safe distance from him, just in case he was leading up to a reprisal of Viveka’s attack. Correction: The duplicate Viveka’s attack.
“It’s my fault,” he said.
I blinked at him. Like Govinda in one of his corny comedies, wagging his eyelashes with exaggerated surprise. Except that my surprise was genuine.
“It all happened because of me,” he went on. “I’m responsible for it all, Vaibhav. I caused the whole thing to happen. By opening that stupid Vortal.”
5.6 Viveka
Rikit Raushan’s sword was at my throat.
I could see the naked hatred in his eyes and feel the pinprick of the sword bite into my flesh. He had placed it at a point just beside my artery. I could feel it pulsing against the cold steel of the blade. One flick of his wrist and I would be as good as dead—I doubted there were any hospitals in this world, or doctors on call. The image of the poor peace-rider’s life-blood pumping out from his hacked-off stump flashed in my mind and I swallowed involuntarily. The sword bit deeper into my skin.
“Please,” I said softly, because even speaking made the swordpoint seem closer. “You have to believe me. I’m not from this place at all. I’m from another world altogether.”
I said it in Hindi. Not the ‘tapori’ he spoke but decent North Indian Hindi like my father and mother spoke. The word ‘world’ came out as ‘desh’, which was close enough.
“So,” he said with a tone of bitter triumph. “You admit you’re a pardesi, Northern spy!”
“No!” I said. As loudly as I could manage with a sword pressed to my throat. “I’m not from the North. I’m from right here.” I tried to gesture with my hand. “This was my house. I mean, the place where my house used to stand.”
He grimaced disbelievingly. “You’re a poor liar, spy. The only house that stood here was a lookout point for our fauj. That’s why the Northerners blasted it with their cannons before this invasion. And your own lying tongue betrays you. Only a Northerner would speak your bastardised version of shudh Tapori.”
“It’s your ‘tapori’ bhaasha that’s bastardized,” I said angrily. “I’m speaking shudh Hindi.”
He laughed and shifted the sword from left hand to right in one smooth motion. The man was obviously an expert warrior and horseman, besides his uncanny resemblance to the hottest new superstar in Hindi films. But right now, he viewed me only as a vamp.
“Enough banter,” he said. “I am needed back at my camp to report on the positions of your Northern army. I have no time to waste on your foolish lies.”
“So you’re the spy,” I told him. “And the coward who’s so eager to murder an unarmed woman.”
That shook him. I saw his eyes grow wider and angrier. The swordpoint pressed harder against me, piercing my skin. I felt blood trickling down the front of my tee shirt and shut my own eyes instinctively.
Instead of the stabbing pain I expected, I felt the sword withdrawing. When I opened my eyes again, I saw him sheathing it and turning toward the horse. He pulled a coiled rope off the saddle and came back.
“Come on,” he said brusquely. “We’ll see if you talk as boldly when you’re being questioned by my lieutenants.”
He briskly tied my hands behind my back and pushed me toward the horse. Putting my foot into the stirrup, he shoved me up. Then he got on behind me, clutching the reins with one hand and pressing me forward with the other hand. His hand brushing my bare thigh made me feel underdressed and vulnerable, but there was little point in complaining. He wasn’t even aware that he’d touched me. Besides, I was just glad to be alive.
He urged the horse forward and we began to ride, steadily increasing speed.
We rode a path down the side of Pali Hill, heading toward what would have been Carter Road in my world. Behind and to our left, the sound of the battle rose as the two warring armies clashed with a terrible roar of voices and weapons.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE is a complete fantasy adventure in one book, as well as the first of a series, The Vortal Codex. It is also directly related to my Ramayana Series, Gods of War series, and other series. Signed copies of the limited edition large paperback are available at Rs 400 per copy, delivery by courier free anywhere in India.
Click here to browse more AKB Books
Click here to order VORTAL:Shockwave within India.
Overseas deliveries are currently not offered.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE – Excerpt#4
4
In Which Viveka Gets A Balcony Ticket To A War, Vir Gets An Emergency Phone Call At Office, Vhy Hears A Strange Story At A Hospital, & Viveka Is Challenged By An Armed Stranger–Whom She Recognizes!
4.1 Viveka
I had nothing to compare it to, except maybe Hollywood war movies. But not the Civil War. This was more like the opening battle between the Roman army and the Germanic barbarians in Gladiator. Or the war sequences in Braveheart. Except that the detailing and costuming was more like, maybe, Mughal-e-Azam…no, no, not the Mughal era, before that…Like Asoka. Sort of. Except that this was no movie scene or set.
Two armies were facing each other. On the far left, a huge horde was ranged in ragged lines. This one was massive, tens of thousands of men. From my vantage point, they were as small as bugs. And I could see them massed for miles to the North, perhaps all the way to Andheri, or what would have been Andheri in my world.
This huge army was advancing slowly but steadily on foot toward the South. Or South Bombay, as it would have been called in our world.
Less than a mile away was the other army, if you could call it that. A ragged group of opposition that looked pitiful in comparison to the approaching horde. There couldn’t have been more than ten thousand people in this army.
I shivered as I realized I was about to witness a massacre.
Who were these groups? The North Mumbai army seemed to be the aggressors, the South Mumbai one the defenders. That much was obvious.
But I was too far away to make out details of the actual people down there, let alone identify them. The smoke-filled air and the dark, overcast sky also made it difficult to see clearly.
But I thought I saw men as well as women in the two armies. And from the dull reflections, it seemed they were armed with metal weapons, perhaps swords and axes and knives, things like that. Not guns and modern weaponry.
As I watched, the North Mumbai army halted suddenly. Figures riding horses rode before the massed soldiers, obviously giving orders. From the way they arranged themselves in a long frontline facing their destination, I could tell they were preparing for the first assault.
Absorbed in watching this incredible tableau, I took a step back and stumbled over something. A jagged metal object rushed at my face and neck, threatening to injure me dangerously.
Luckily, I caught myself on a broken brick wall, centimetres from the jagged edge. God alone knew what would happen if I injured myself in this world.
I glanced down to see what had tripped me.
It was a shoe. A Nike Cross Trainer, black with two white racing stripes on the sides, curling up in that trademark Nike swoosh.
The sheer incongruity of the sight made me stare at it. Somehow, I didn’t think there were such things as Nike shoes in this world. Or Fountain Pepsi. Or Lays Onion Cream. Or McDonald’s. Or any of the normal consumer culture of our technologically advanced civilization. That’s why the shoe was so obviously out of place.
But there was something else about it that caught my attention. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. In the distance, the faint sound of roaring began. The leaders of the North Mumbai army were pepping up their forces for the attack.
I bent down and picked up the shoe. It was almost mint-new, in perfect condition. Which it couldn’t have been had it lain here long. Which meant it hadn’t been here long.
And it was the exact same design and about the same size as the black Nike Cross Trainers that Mikey always wore.
4.2 Vir
I was in the middle of a ‘rap session’ when the emergency call came.
‘Rap session’ is what we call our brainstorming meetings at Virtual Reality Systems Inc. We had this giant contract to develop thrill ride CGI for a chain of US amusement parks and it was taking up many more hundreds of man-hours and grey hairs than I’d expected. Whenever we were stuck on a problem, we didn’t just sit around and bang our heads against the walls—we called a ‘rap session’ and banged our heads against each other!
Since the average age of our staff is 23, these ‘rap sessions’ are often similar to a Friday night get-together of coeds at a pub. There’s always music playing, food and non-alcoholic beverages floating around, plenty of caramel popcorn, pool and snooker balls clicking together at the four full-size tables, a basketball bouncing off one of the two backboards—one at either end of the office, giant TVs playing DVD movies, other screens showing the current cricket ODI or Olympics or KBC or whatever show people want to watch at that particular time, and general mayhem and madness.
As I said, it’s a lot like a teenage pub hangout, but without the alcohol. And as amazing as it sounds, we do get a lot of productive work done this way. Except when one of our projects turn out to have more glitches than glitter. Those rare times (sigh) when that happens, we just add an ‘e’ to the word ‘rap’ and you can imagine what those sessions are like.
But this wasn’t one of those times. This was a total victory. My Hrithik Roshan team—our workteams named themselves after their favourite celebs, however unlikely—had come up with a set of applications that delivered everything we’d promised our clients, and then some. It was a zinger of a winner and the mood in the office was celebratory. Half a dozen of the Hrithiks were desperately trying to convince me to relax the office rule on no-alcohol during office hours. Their argument was that since the staff at VR works in shifts, the office is working around the clock.
“So, like, Vir, that means it’s always office hours,” said Sajal, a bright young programmer who had dropped out of LSE to come back to India to ride the new IT wave.
“Which means, yaar, that there’s never a time when alcohol is allowed here,” grumbled Geetha, a wiz designer who hadn’t even gone to college yet but intended to do so after earning her first crore.
I winked at them. “You got it!” Raised my mug of chai and said, “But you can get high on tannin too, you know. You should try it sometime.”
They were muttering ominously about a possible mutiny when my cell phone rang. I glanced at it: one of our home numbers. It was our new maid and she seemed hysterical. I had to hold the phone away from my ear, she was talking that loudly.
I left the main office area and went into my cabin. We have an open-door policy at VR, and my cabin is actually just a glass cube, but I shut the door to get as much insulation from the hubbub outside as possible and tried to get the maid to calm down.
Finally, I understood what she was trying to tell me.
“Kya?” I understood what she was saying but I couldn’t believe it.
She repeated it, obviously in tears now.
“Theek hai,” I said. “I’m leaving right now.”
I left the cabin, speaking the word ‘Anant’ into my cell phone. I shook my head at the various people who tried to stop and speak to me. As the phone auto-dialed the number, I scanned the office and found Shoma, my COO. I beckoned to her. She came over smiling, but saw instantly from the look on my face that something was wrong.
“Family emergency,” I said. It was all she needed. She nodded and walked me to the exit. Anant came on the line as I punched the button for the nearest lift. Shoma walked over and pressed the buttons for the other two lifts as well. For the first time in two years since I’d moved into this new office I wished it wasn’t on the 37th floor of the smartest new downtown office complex. It’s only in a crisis that you realize what big barriers space and time can be.
My brother’s voice was friendly and relaxed as always. For all I knew, he was in the middle of some extreme medical crisis right now, but he sounded like he was sitting by a pool with a pina colada in his hand. That’s the kind of calm and nerve it takes to become one of the country’s best neurosurgeons.
“Vir?” he said. Anant’s not known for his loquaciousness.
“Anant, Sarla’s been injured. She’s being brought by ambulance to the hospital ASAP. Are you there?”
His response was instant and unruffled. “Right here, just out of surgery. Where are you?”
“I’m just leaving office, on my way. Can you–?” I didn’t have to finish the question.
“I’ll make sure she gets the best attention immediately. What exactly happened?”
I paused, aware of Shoma standing by, watching me with concern on her face. “Anant, I don’t know for sure. She’s unconscious and I only spoke to the maid. Apparently, Sarla was able to call for an ambulance before she lost consciousness and the neighbour is waiting downstairs to direct the medics up as soon as it arrives.”
The lift came just then and mercifully it was empty. Shoma gestured, asking me silently if I needed her to come along. I shook my head and gestured to her to go back inside, hold the fort while I was gone. She gave me a thumbs-up sign for good luck as the lift doors slid shut. I’m blessed to have a great staff.
As I rode down, my mind raced through what the panicked maid had told me on the phone. She must have been mistaken somehow—but she had repeated herself thrice or more. Each time she had said the same thing.
That Viveka had attacked Sarla and wounded her badly before running out of the house.
But it just didn’t make any sense.
Why would my daughter attack her own mother?
4.3 Vhy
Like, by the time I reached the hospital, I learned from a nurse that Mom was out of the operation theatre and back in a private room. She was still under the effect of the anaesthetic and nobody but Dad had been allowed to go in and see her. But Anant-tau was in the waiting room and he looked calm.
Then again, Anant-tau always looks calm. Even though I hadn’t actually seen him for ages, he had always had that calm in-control doctorish look, as far back as I could remember. He could have played the Michael Douglas character in ‘Coma’, maybe even the Hugh Grant character in ‘Extreme Measures’, or the maha cool Anthony Hopkins playing Dr Hannibal Lecter in the under-production movie ‘Hannibal’, but as usual I’m ranting on about movies galore. What can I say: it helps me chill and I really needed to chill at a time like this.
I had got the news about Mom’s condition hours after it happened. That’s because I spent the afternoon watching a phillum with Ruchi that neither of us really paid much attention to, and after that we just did TP, had a bite, wandered around, the usual stuff. It was only when I came home in the evening that I got the news from our maid Mala, who was still shuddering from the memory. I got goosebumps when she came to the part where she found Mom…I don’t even want to repeat it right now, okay? I was feeling lousy as it is for not being there, not coming home sooner…I knew it wasn’t my fault, then why did I still feel so guilty, damnit?
I took a moment to breathe, trying to calm myself down. For the first time ever, I wished I had listened to Viv’s constant yammering about how yoga helps you control your senses, breathing, vagaira, vagaira…After I was sure I could have a conversation without falling apart, I moved forward again, heading down the corridor and entering the glass-walled waiting room.
Anant-tau was talking to Mikey and Mrs. Mudgal. Mrs. Mudgal is our neighbour; she’s a bit of a gossip and I can’t stand the way she yaks to Mom for ages about celebs. Mom says that it’s because she’s from a middle-class background and she’s embarrassed by her son suddenly becoming famous, but it’s a hell of a strange way to show it.
They saw me and Anant-tau nodded, calling me over.
“Vaibhav-bete,” he said, putting his arm around me and squeezing, “there’s nothing to worry about. Your mom is out of danger. She’s anaesthetized, so you can’t see her for a while. When you do, you’ll be a little taken aback at the sight of the stitches, but really, the bandage looks more scary than the wound, and she’ll be fine within a month or two.”
“A month or two?” I was shocked. “Is it that bad?”
He smiled, but his eyes had that same look that Dad’s have when he’s dealing with a crisis: strong but also hard. “She’ll be home within a week, but yes, the cuts will take a few more weeks to heal completely.”
Mrs. Mudgal had her hand to her chest, and a hankie clutched in the other hand looked damp. She looked up at me and moaned, “Vaibhav-bete, you should thank God she’s all right. When your bai called me, she was so frantic, I knew something terrible had happened and when I came into your house and saw Sarla-ji lying there, I thought she was…”
She covered her mouth as if trying to block her own words, then continued, “So much blood. And those cuts! Hey Ram.”
I glanced at Mikey. He was quiet.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He shrugged as if to say: As okay as can be expected under the circumstances, big brother. The gesture was so Mikey-like, I almost thought for a moment that it was him, my kid brother.
But I knew better.
Anant-tau excused himself for a moment to go speak to someone.
I asked Mikey if he’d go get Mrs. Mudgal some coffee from the vending machine down the hallway. The old Mikey, the real Mikey, would have looked at me like I was nuts and turned the volume on his Discman even higher. But this Mikey nodded and went without a word of protest. Proof.
I checked to make sure nobody else was within earshot, then turned to Mrs. Mudgal.
“Aunty,” I said gently. “Aunty, did you see what happened?”
She shook her head, sniffling a bit into the hankie. I felt sorry for her. She was, like, an old chicken, this was like a shock for her. Major. Watching her struggle to control herself actually made me feel more determined to keep my emotions in check.
“Nahin, bete. Your servant rang my bell. I was on the telephone. I couldn’t follow her babbling, so I came to see. I saw your mother lying there on the floor in the passage, next to the telephone. She was conscious still, and she said she had already called an ambulance, and she was to be taken to Hinduja Hospital because your tau is a surgeon here. Bas, that’s all I know.”
I wanted to shake her, to scream at her, ‘What do you mean that’s all, you must have seen something else? Come on, tell me every last detail!’ Like Russell Crowe interrogating a suspect in ‘LA Confidential’.
Instead, I said gently, “When I reached home, the other neighbours said that they saw Viveka running down the stairs some time before the ambulance came. Did you see her too?”
“Na hi, bete, I didn’t even know who had attacked your mother till the servant told me. I thought it was these gangs who go around to houses in the afternoon and stab the housewife and rob the house. But when I asked your mother, she wouldn’t say who hurt her. And then she lost consciousness.”
“Did you see Viveka?” I paused after I said it, not wanting to say too much. Although I had already heard the whole story from the maid when I came home from college.
Mrs. Mudgal shook her head at first. Then she paused and looked at me through her old-fashioned horn-rimmed glass spectacles.
“Pata nahin, bete, who that person was. But just before the maid rang the bell, in fact just as the bell started ringing, I was sitting in my hall and looking out the window. You know my window faces the downslope of Pali Hill, that empty plot behind our building which is under court dispute for some FSI problem?”
I nodded, willing her to get to the point quickly. I didn’t want the duplicate Mikey to return and hear this conversation. I didn’t know how much I could trust the guy.
Mrs. Mudgal went on:
“So I was talking to one journalist—you know how they are always calling to ask me to comment on Ravi’s success, no? I was talking to her on the phone and I was looking out of the window at the empty plot. And I saw someone, I think it was a woman, jump over our building wall into that plot, then run like a mad person across the plot and jump over the other wall on that side. After that I couldn’t see where she went and the doorbell was ringing.”
She looked at me, a strange expression in her eyes. I could see that Mrs. Mudgal was trying just as hard as I was to make sense of this bizarre incident.
“That could not have been Viveka, no, bete? Why would she be running away like that? And those walls! How could she jump those walls?! They must be at least eight-ten feet high!”
I was about to say something when Mikey returned.
“Coffee, ma’am,” he said maha-politely, offering her a steaming plastic cup. She took it thankfully. Mikey offered one to me too.
I hesitated, then took it. I could always dump it in a trashcan after pretending to take a sip or two. I didn’t want him to suspect that I suspected him.
Neither did I want to continue the conversation in front of the duplicate Mikey. So I just said, “Mrs. Mudgal, aunty, I don’t know how to thank you for taking so much trouble to help my mom at a time like that. I really appreciate it, aunty.”
She flapped a hand at me admonishingly, embarrassed but pleased. “Arrey, don’t say that. It was my duty, bete. What sort of neighbour doesn’t help at a time like this?”
Silently, I thought to himself: And what sort of daughter attacks her own mother and injures her enough to put her in hospital, then leaps over ten-foot walls to escape like a runaway criminal?
Definitely not my sister, Viveka.
4.4 Viveka
I was still holding Mikey’s shoe in my hand when a sound startled me. I realized I’d been hearing it for several seconds but had assumed it was from the battlefield below. Now I recognized it for what it was.
It was the sound of a horse’s hooves, cantering. It grew louder, the rider approaching in my direction. The smoky air and the distant sounds from the battlefield below made it difficult to tell from which direction the person was coming.
I looked around frantically for a place to hide. I couldn’t be sure that the person would be friendly. After all, I was in the middle of some bizarre war zone that only resembled the world I knew in its geographical details. I had no way of knowing who this rider might be.
The broken wall by which I’d found the shoe was around three feet high. There was a pit in the ground beside it, probably caused by the same thing that had destroyed the house itself. I jumped down into this pit and crouched low. I was almost completely concealed by the wall on one side. But if anyone came around the other side and looked down, they would definitely see me. I couldn’t help it; there just wasn’t enough time to search for a better hiding place. Hopefully, the rider was just passing by.
The sound of the horse grew louder and finally the rider came into view. The same wall which protected me from the rider’s sight also blocked my view, so I had to rely on my ears for information. To my dismay, I realized the horse was slowing down, not riding on.
The sound of hooves slowed to a trot, the horse snickering lightly as the rider reined it in. When I was around 10, for about a year or so I had taken riding lessons. Mikey wasn’t born then but Vhy had insisted on doing everything I did back then–my ‘tail’, I used to call him teasingly. I still remembered the two of us riding together at Mahalaxmi Racecourse at dawn, the rich smell of dew-wettened grass in the air and the sound of the ocean across the Haji Ali Causeway clearly audible in the absence of traffic. For some reason, the sound of the horse approaching now reminded me of those mornings that summer eleven years ago. It made me long to be back at home, in my own world again.
The horse snickered again and now it was so close I could smell it. Then the sound of its hooves stopped completely. I thought I heard a voice pitched low, as if the rider was speaking to himself or herself, or perhaps to the horse. My brother Vhy, a movie maniac, would have commented wryly that it was probably Robert Redford in ‘The Horse Whisperer’!
Just the reminder of Vhy’s obsession with movies made me miss him. I wished I had listened to him when he had tried to tell me about Mikey disappearing. He had tried to warn me that something weird was going on–and he was right. But I hadn’t listened to or believed him. Was that just this morning? I could still taste the flapjacks I had cooked for breakfast.
Then the sound of the horse moving came to me again, growing louder as it picked up speed. It was cantering again, and this time the sound was definitely moving away, growing softer. As it faded completely, I heaved a huge sigh of relief.
Climbing out of the pit, I grabbed the broken wall for support. As I pulled myself back up to level ground again, a voice spoke behind me:
“Keep your hands out where I can see them. Reach for a weapon and I will put this arrow through your heart before you can blink. I can put three arrows through a bird before it hits the ground, from three hundred yards, so don’t think you can move faster than me.”
The voice was a man’s. And it spoke in Hindi, but not the shudh Hindi of North India like my parents spoke. This was a strange mixture of Hindi, English, Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi and whatnot. It was like the Bambaiya Hindi that street-wise characters speak in Bollywood movies. The gutter-bhaasha we call tapori.
I understood it well enough to obey. I raised my hands, just like I had seen people do in the movies.
“Good. Now turn around. Slowly, very slowly. Sudden moves are bad for your health.”
Trembling from a sudden wave of heart-stopping fear, I turned slowly to face my captor. Turning seemed to take forever.
When I saw the face of the man who was pointing a crossbow at me, I cried out in shock and disbelief.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE is a complete fantasy adventure in one book, as well as the first of a series, The Vortal Codex. It is also directly related to my Ramayana Series, Gods of War series, and other series. Signed copies of the limited edition large paperback are available at Rs 400 per copy, delivery by courier free anywhere in India.
Click here to continue reading VORTAL:Shockwave.
Click here to order VORTAL:Shockwave within India.
Overseas deliveries are currently not offered.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE – Excerpt#3
3
In Which Sarla Gets An E-mail, Viveka Clicks On A Web Link, Sarla Calls Viveka For Lunch–And Gets A Very Hostile Reaction, And Viveka Finds Herself Gone, Baby, Gone.
3.1 Sarla
People think that being a celebrity columnist is all about attending parties and socializing. I suppose that’s true of most of what they call “Page 3″ columnists these days. But for me, it’s about stating a point of view that hasn’t been expressed before. Making people aware of a new aspect of an important social issue. That’s why I write the columns.
I was supposed to be reading the proofs of my new book, but I had to finish my weekly column first. I know the paper it appears in is a Page 3 rag, but it also happens to be a rag with the largest circulation in the city and if I could subvert it to present the other side of the story, well, why not? At least that’s what I told myself each week when my deadline loomed near and I wondered why I’d ever agreed to work to a deadline for a column in a newspaper which spent more column inches covering parties and fashion than real news.
When Viveka knocked at my door that afternoon, I was still trying to find the Pepsi ad that had sparked off the idea in the first place. You probably know the one I mean: the one in which Shah Rukh Khan takes a sly dig at a Hrithik Roshan lookalike. There was a rumor that Hrithik Roshan was starring in a Coke ad featuring a grossly overweight SRK lookalike, as a rejoinder to the Pepsi ad. I didn’t know whether or not that was true, but the issue raised some interesting questions about celebrity models and advertising ethics and it was just the right kind of balance between the ‘in the news, in your face’ topics that BT liked to cover and which gave me some scope to take the Page 3 types down a peg or two.
In fact, Viveka peeped in just when I’d found the right tape and was fast-forwarding on cue, searching for the ad. I never resented the demands of my kids on my time; it wasn’t because I thought I was a ‘mother first, last and always’ but because my kids were also my best friends.
She said she had a problem opening a file attachment on her comp and wondered if I could help out. I smiled at her. The only thing that interests me about computers is the fact that they make it a lot easier to write and revise text. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just super-efficient typewriters. And of course, e-mail is a miracle drug.
“Try Mikey’s comp,” I suggested. “Your father said he keeps upgrading it so much that it’s probably equivalent to some sort of a supercomputer by now. I’m sure his PC would be able to open your problem file.” From what she’d described about her problem, it sounded like an upgrade problem, I told her, and Mikey’s computer would definitely have the upgrade—or if it didn’t, then nobody else’s would.
She said that was an excellent idea and left. I forgot about her instantly. By then my deadline was looming. I’d already got a polite but anxious e-mail from the sub who coordinated the page, asking if I could send it in a bit early because they had a whole lot of pictures of some beer baron’s new yacht to lay out and needed to figure out how to fit my column on the same page.
I winced when I read that e-mail: rubbing shoulders with a beer baron’s new yacht (and several new trophy girlfriends, I’m sure) didn’t jibe with my idea of journalism, but I reminded myself of the lakhs of readers who would read my “brilliantly presented arguments” and maybe think twice before buying their next heavily sugared and caffeinated MNC cola.
(The quote is from Vir, who made my day when he praised a column I’d written last month on the pros and cons of American movies doing so well in India. Every once in a while, he says something like that which makes me think it wasn’t such a bad idea marrying him.)
After viewing the Pepsi commercial a couple of times, my thoughts fell into place. I only had to touch the keyboard, and my thoughts flowed from my mind down to my fingers and appeared as words on the PC screen.
About an hour later, the column was written, revised and re-revised. I logged on to e-mail it and downloaded my new mail.
There were several new e-mails from my publishers, editors, friends in India and abroad, and of course, the junk mail—“Have Viagra delivered directly to your mailbox!”—that always irritates me hugely. Besides the fact that penile enlargements are not high on my list of priorities.
When I first saw Mikey’s e-mail, I almost mistook it for spam—that’s the correct term for electronic junk mail I’m told. Then I saw his name in the Sender column and relaxed. I clicked on the e-mail heading, thinking it was so like Mikey to e-mail me instead of talking.
This is the mail that opened up. Mikey’s E-mail. Or so I thought at the time.
From: mikeyvats@redmail.com
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: WARNING: DO NOT VISIT THIS SITE
Date: 29 Jul 00 11:18:05 CDT
>>>> This is the website you’ve been looking for:
>>>> http://vvv.vvv.net
3.2 Viveka
Do you wish to enter the Vortal?
I stared at the question on the screen. It looked like one of Mikey’s hacker things. Some kind of security program he had installed to prevent anyone else from accessing his private files. Maybe I had accidentally clicked on something I shouldn’t have clicked on.
I know how touchy hacker wannabes can be: I’ve known my share of them back in the States. So when that weird black screen and the question came up, my first impulse was to just walk away. No point wasting my time trying to crack this or whatever it was. I could have gone to my own comp and See-mailed Steve from there just as well.
But Steve’s film was in this comp. The file. And I didn’t want to lose that. So I decided to just tap a few keys and see if I could get past the security screen. Maybe if I pressed Escape? In my somewhat limited knowledge of computers and their glitches, that was one that almost always worked, so…
So I pressed the button.
And the screen changed instantly. But instead of the program quitting, as it should have, the screen went black again.
Then another line came on. This one said:
Are you willing to pay the Price?
I sighed. I hated this hacker crap. I tapped the button again, several times, then I tried holding down Alt-Control and hit Delete. That should definitely Quit the program.
Instead, the screen went black again for a moment, and then another line appeared:
For the duration of your visit, your soul will be forfeit to the Webmaster. If you agree, proceed.
This time, I actually stopped and took my hands off the keyboard.
I mean, there was something weird about this whole charade. Even if it was one of Mikey’s hacker programs, what sort of question was that? “Your soul will be forfeit”– I didn’t like the sound of that. This may sound a bit strange coming from a Michigan U grad with a post-grad diploma from Columbia U, NY, but I happen to be spiritually self-aware. Not religious, mind you, but definitely spiritual…And the idea of forfeiting my soul, even if it was only a figure of speech, didn’t appeal to me.
I decided to stop right there. Forget the file. I would go call Steve from my comp and when Mikey got home that evening I’d ask him to retrieve the file.
But as I turned to go, I thought I heard a voice whisper: “Viv.”
It was Steve’s voice. I was sure of it. I turned back and stared at the screen. But it still showed only that last creepy statement.
I frowned, trying to understand what was going on. The only logical thought that occurred to me was that somehow I had connected to See-mail and Steve was already online, talking to me. But because of this weird glitch on Mikey’s comp, I couldn’t see him.
As if on cue, he spoke again. “Viv?” he said. “Did you see it?”
“Steve!” I said. It was him then! Damn this hacker program. Then I had an idea. Maybe if I just pressed the See-mail button again, it would make this stupid Vortal thingie go away and…
Without thinking, I reached out and pressed the See-mail button on Mikey’s computer keyboard.
And the screen changed. Snap.
And my whole life changed with it.
3.3 Sarla
I puzzled over Mikey’s e-mail. What website had I been looking for? I didn’t recall asking him to recommend any website to me. In any case, I felt he spent far too much time surfing the Net. Even buying a complete set of all four Harry Potter novels didn’t seem to have awakened his interest in reading.
But perhaps it was something he’d come across in his travels through cyberspace and thought it might be of some interest to me. Probably a literature website? Or a writer’s resource? I doubted that. Mikey wasn’t really the sort to even spend a moment on anything that didn’t interest him, let alone to recommend it to someone else. And there was something about that e-mail and that link that…well, I don’t know what I felt exactly, but it didn’t feel right, somehow.
My cursor hovered over the link and I was tempted to click on it. If only to see what it was that Mikey thought I would find so interesting.
But just then, another e-mail from my publishers came into my inbox. It was the Executive Editor and CEO, David, urging me to finish going through the proofs of my book and courier them back to Krishan, my desk editor, so that they could meet their tight production schedule.
I took his advice. Logging off at once, I turned to the large stack of typeset pages and began poring over them, pencil in hand. As always happens, I gave it my full concentration and everything else ceased to exist for the duration.
When I looked up again, more than two hours had elapsed. Someone was knocking on the door.
I called out to the person to come in. It was Mala, our new housemaid-cum-cook.
“Memsaab, khana lagaa doon?”
I looked at my watch. Was it past 1 o’ clock already? There were still about seventy pages or so left to check, so I decided to break for lunch and finish them in the afternoon.
“Theek hai,” I told her. “Viveka-didi ko bhi bolna lunch will be served in fifteen minutes.”
She went out and I took a minute to freshen up. She was waiting when I came out of the bathroom.
“Viveka didi not there,” she said.
I frowned. I clearly remembered Viveka saying she was home all day today. Something to do with watching Steve’s film.
I walked down the corridor to her bedroom. Empty. Then I saw her computer screen with its unusual animated screensaver—she’d designed it herself—and remembered. She was probably still in Mikey’s room, using his PC to read that problem file.
Mikey’s room door was locked. I knocked on it softly. We always knock before entering in our house. That’s the kind of family we are—respect one another’s privacy.
There was no response. Not even a “One sec, mom, be with you in a minute”.
I waited a few moments longer, thinking that she might be in the bathroom or on the phone.
Then I knocked again.
When there was no reply this time, I assumed that she was absorbed in something. Viveka has inherited my intense concentration, just like Mikey, while Vaibhav has Vir’s more easygoing multi-tasking nature. I called out, “Viveka, bete, lunch is ready. Come before it gets cold.”
And I started to walk away.
I had barely started down the corridor when I heard the sound of the door opening. It made a bit of noise, as if she had to fumble with the latch a couple of times before getting it open. Which was odd, because all the latches work so smoothly and perfectly—Vir takes his time but always makes sure he gets the job done first class.
I turned back, and saw a head peeping out from around the door. Her hair was so wild and disheveled, it took me a minute to realize that it was Viveka looking out. What had she done to her hair? It had looked fine when she popped into my room earlier.
“Bete, lunch is ready.”
She started so violently, I got a shock. For a second, when her head snapped towards me, I thought of some wild animal. Like a predator about to attack. I frowned. What was up with her today?
“Were you able to open that file on Mikey’s comp, bete?” I asked.
She stared at me fiercely, with an expression I’d never seen on her face before. “What’s wrong, Viveka? Why do you look so–“
I stopped. She had opened the door a few inches further, and I could see a little more of her now. Her shoulder and part of one leg. She was wearing some dress I’d never seen her in before. I couldn’t even begin to describe it, but it certainly wasn’t the jeans and tee shirt she had been wearing just a couple of hours ago.
And her hair wasn’t just disheveled, it was tangled, wild, as if it hadn’t been combed in days, and as I looked intently at it, I could see that there were actually things caught in it. Was that a fragment of a dried leaf? How could it be? She had been in Mikey’s room all this while, hadn’t she? What was going on?
“Viveka?” I said, unsure now.
She kept on staring at me with that same fierce, intense expression. Her eyes flicked briefly to look this way then that, as if she was trying to…what? Understand where she was? That was what it looked like, but that made no sense whatsoever. She was home, after all.
She continued to look at me with that same predatory expression.
And for some bizarre reason, I began to feel afraid, very afraid. Of my own daughter.
3.4 Viveka
I felt a strange sense of disorientation. The way you feel when you’re travelsick.
Or when you’ve been on the roller-coaster one time too many and have just gotten off and are standing on steady ground at last, your head reeling, your blood roaring in your ears, and your eyes blurry and unable to focus clearly. I wear contacts and sometimes if I spend too much time at the comp, things become blurry and I have to stop and stare into the distance for a while before my eye-muscles relax again.
But this was different from anything else I’d ever felt before.
It was like I was standing still and yet rushing forward at an incredible speed. Like being on the world’s fastest escalator ride, moving so fast that the world around me was a blinding haze of light and color.
This weird sensation lasted just a few seconds. I was forced to shut my eyes and for a moment I thought I was going to puke.
And then it passed.
And the world returned to normal. Or so I thought.
I opened my eyes slowly, my ears still ringing from the after-effect of that…Whatever the hell it was.
And what I saw shocked me speechless.
I felt myself starting to panic, breathing faster and shallower, hyper-ventilating. I turned to look this way then that, trying to convince myself that this was not real, that I was still in Mikey’s bedroom. That this was some kind of bizarre hallucination.
I turned around and then around again, trying to accept the evidence of my senses. To believe that what I was seeing was real. How could I be sitting in Mikey’s bedroom one minute, and then be here the next minute? In this…place…wherever it was, whatever it was?
I closed my eyes and opened them again. Shook my head, looked up and down again, tried to breathe slower, calm myself.
But nothing changed. I didn’t go back to Mikey’s bedroom, to my house. I was still here. In this place.
It was impossible. Yet it had happened. That disorienting sensation, that feeling of flying through space, of being taken. Apparently, it was all real.
It was as if some great force had picked me up physically and flung me through a doorway into another world.
A world where Bombay, Mumbai, the world as I knew it, was no more.
And another world had replaced it. A nightmare world.
3.5 Sarla
How could I be terrified of my own daughter? My ‘biggest baby’, as I used to call her. My sweetest, most well-behaved, obedient, intelligent and independent child of all.
I tried to get a hold of myself. There was surely some logical explanation for her strange appearance and behaviour.
“Viveka?” I said again, still feeling unnerved by the strange way she was staring at me.
I took a step forward, intending to go to her, to touch her forehead. Fever was the first thought that came to my mind. She did look feverish. Almost animal-like with that intense, vulpine look on her face. A hungry, crafty look.
I suddenly found myself unable to walk all the way to her. My feet just stopped. It was fear, I knew now. Despite the evidence of my eyes, my other senses were already screaming to me that this was not Viveka, this was not my daughter standing there before me. This was someone else… someone dangerous. My instincts knew the truth at once.
But my conscious, rational mind couldn’t accept what my instincts were telling me. How could it?
“Bete?” I said yet again, trying to connect with her. If only she would speak, just once. If I could just hear her voice.
She parted her lips. Finally, I thought with a faint sense of relief.
But instead of speaking, she howled.
Really howled, the way a wolf or some other predatory creature howls. Baring her teeth.
And what teeth they were—yellowed and filthy as if she hadn’t cleaned them in weeks. Her open mouth was like the dark maw of some wild animal. I felt the blood drain out of my head. Those teeth, those eyes…the way she howled made my skin creep.
“Viveka?” I cried out. “What is it? What’s happened to you?”
I forced myself to move again, to go towards her, to comfort her and hug her. Help her. I was her mother after all. And something terrible had happened to her somehow, even in the safety of our own house.
The instant I moved, she broke off that awful, soul-scraping howl.
And she leaped right at me. Her hands reaching out like claws, mouth bared like a vixen pouncing on her prey.
3.6 Viveka
I forced myself to breathe normally, to avoid hyperventilating as I tend to do when faced with a crisis. I closed my eyes for a moment, covering my face with my hands, trying to re-boot my consciousness, to start again to understand my situation.
This is what came to me:
One moment, I was sitting before my brother Mikey’s computer back home in Bombay, India. The next moment, I was in a world that was like no place I’d seen before.
No, that’s not quite right. I had seen this place before. It was Pali Hill, the Westward side, with a view of the sea and Carter Road. Or what should have been Pali Hill and Carter Road. It looked totally different but geographically it was the same place. I realized that now, with my eyes closed.
Slowly, my breathing a little calmer now, I uncovered my face and looked around again.
Yes, I saw it now. This wasn’t just Pali Hill. It was the exact same spot where our building stood. It was just that the whole region had changed so drastically, it had seemed like another world at first.
Instead of the mass of buildings and roads and all the other stuff that make up our civilized Bandra suburb, the Beverly Hills of India as some people call it, there was only devastation.
Shells of ruined structures lay scattered around for miles in either direction. They were the shells of buildings and houses, but not the kind that we have in the real Bombay. These were strange, squat constructions, none higher than a single floor.
Even knocked down, burned down, destroyed, I could tell that they were not modern housing, not even modern village housing. These were the kind of stone-pile and wooden cottages that existed in medieval times in India. Even before the Mughal era. And even then, they were not like the typical medieval Indian houses I had seen in history books or museum recreations. There was something essentially different about them, but not being an anthropology or architecture grad, I couldn’t tell right away what that difference was.
But where was the Bombay I knew? It was as if it had never existed!
The tall skyscrapers, the arcing flyovers, the endless causeways, they were all gone.
Instead, fires billowed everywhere, obscuring the landscape with clouds of dark, evil-smelling smoke. The ground was blasted and pit-holed, like a war zone. Large craters pockmarked the land at intervals of a few dozen metres as if there had been artillery shelling or aerial bombing. No, not quite. It was more like the kind of pockmarked landscape caused by cannon fire. I knew this because another one of my Columbia U friends, LuAnn Bowie, was a Civil War re-enactment performer and was always watching movies set during the American Civil War: this landscape looked like the fields of Virginia after General Lee had passed through on his way to Florida.
Except this wasn’t an American Civil War movie, it was real, and I was in Mumbai, India.
Even the sea, the beautiful Arabian Sea that I had a view of from my bedroom window at home, was horribly changed. It was discoloured and covered with a scummy layer, like a stagnant pool in a gutter.
The wind groaned and whistled through the ruins of the structure I was standing in, stinking of odours I couldn’t recognize. It made me gag with revulsion.
Carried on this stinking wind were the sounds of people screaming, gunfire, explosions and God knows what else.
How had this happened? Clearly, Toto, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. But how had I got here? The last thing I remembered was that bizarre screen on Mikey’s PC asking me those strange questions. Something about a portal. No, not portal. Vortal. Surely entering that command hadn’t brought me here? How could a computer programme transport me to…to wherever the hell I was.
One thing I knew for certain: I wasn’t dreaming or imagining this. It was vividly, terribly real.
I looked around at my immediate surroundings, searching for something, anything that could help me make sense of what had happened.
I seemed to be standing amidst the debris of a house. A simple structure, just four brick walls and a thatched roof. More a shanty than a proper house. But from the ruins scattered everywhere, it seemed that this was the kind of house everyone lived in. The splintered and heat-fused fragments of various household items lay in the debris around me—remnants of cooking utensils, clothes, wooden furniture. Simple, crude things, at the level of what you might expect to find in a Indian tribal village maybe, not a 21st century Indian metropolis.
A sound from afar distracted me for a moment. I walked to the Eastern side of the plot. I looked out in the direction that should have shown me a view of Khar-Danda on the left, old Khar and Bandra in front and Linking Road-Turner Road-Hill Road on the right.
Instead, what I saw blew my mind.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE is a complete fantasy adventure in one book, as well as the first of a series, The Vortal Codex. It is also directly related to my Ramayana Series, Gods of War series, and other series. Signed copies of the limited edition large paperback are available at Rs 400 per copy, delivery by courier free anywhere in India.
Click here to continue reading VORTAL:Shockwave
Click here to order VORTAL:Shockwave within India.
Overseas deliveries are currently not offered.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE – Excerpt#2
2
In Which Viveka Does Flapjacks While Vhy Does Whacko, Mikey Puts On A New Personality For Breakfast, Vhy And Ruchi ‘Research’ Snatcher Films, & Viveka Encounters The Vortal.
2.1 Viveka
I heard Vhy coming in to the kitchen and saw him looking around hesitantly. I was making pancakes—flapjacks, as Steve used to call them back in NYC—and the place was full of the smell of roasting batter and maple syrup.
The maid was at the far end, rolling more atta with a belan.
I glanced around. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said, not very enthu.
I turned a flapjack over. Nice and golden brown, just the way I liked them. I waited for Vhy to get his nerve up.
“Viv,” he said. “About last evening…”
“Say no more,” I said without turning around. “It’s our secret.”
He heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s great. I was worried that, you know, you’d get all high and mighty and moralistic like you always do. And last night, you weren’t really in a mood to talk.”
He was right. After I caught him and Ruchi making out in the passage—in the passageway of all places!–I was sort of curt with him, told him I had something urgent to see to and we’d talk about it tomorrow. This was tomorrow.
I finished the flapjack, dumped it on a plate and turned to look at him. A strand of hair had slipped out of my hair-band and it fell over my face. I tucked it behind my ear and waved the spatula at him. He backed off a step.
“Don’t get me started, okay?” I said, waving the spatula for emphasis. “You’re seventeen. Too young to be bringing girls into the house when Dad and Mom are out. Definitely too young to be getting up to adult-like mischief in your bedroom!”
“Come on,” he said, embarrassed to be discussing this with me in front of the maid. Not that Shanti-bai, our Marathi maid, ever understood anything we said. She barely spoke Hindi, let alone Angrezi. “You make it sound like I sneak a different girl into the house every day of the week! Ruchi’s my steady gf. And we were just watching a movie, that’s all.”
I looked at him with squinty eyes, trying to give him the Arnold. “Yeah, sure, and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ is a Disney animated film.”
He grinned. “Can I help it if she has a thing for Tom Cruise’s buns?”
I started to smile at that. Then smelled my next batch of flapjacks starting to get overdone and flipped them over quickly.
“Okay,” I said over my shoulder. “So I won’t be running to Dad or Mom to deliver a full confession about your extra-curricular activities. But the next time you want to bring your gf over and make like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, do us all a favor, ask them for permission, okay?”
Vaibhav pretended to look confused. “Ask Tom and Nicole for permission?”
I swatted him lightly on the shoulder with the spatula. “Ask Mom and Dad, you nut. Now, get the hell out of here before you make me set the place on fire.”
He didn’t leave. He waited a moment while I finished the batch and put them onto the plate the maid held out.
“Sab ko bolna ke naashta tayaar hai,” I said to the maid, speaking slowly and carefully to make sure she understood. I think she followed the general gist at least.
Vhy said, “You know, it’s great your Hindi sounds so desi even now, after seven years in the US of A. Not like those pseuds who go to New Jersey for a week and come back sounding like third-generation ABCDs.”
I glanced at him again. “What’s on your mind?”
He shrugged. “Nothing, really.”
“Come on. I know you, little bro. Something’s bothering you. If it’s about the grope-fest last night…relax.” I made a gesture like I was zipping my lips. “My lips are sealed with Sellotape—no, with Fevicol!”
When that didn’t even get a teensy smile out of him, I knew something was wrong. He shook his head. “It’s something else…It’s about Mikey.”
I frowned. “What about Mikey?”
As I was talking I opened the fridge and took out the butter dish. “Isko bhi rakhna table pe,” I said to the maid. Vhy waited until the maid had left the kitchen before going on.
“Ruchi and I,” he said. “We saw something last night in his room. Something really weird going on.”
I shrugged. “Like what?”
He hesitated. “This is going to sound weird.”
“Try me.”
He was silent for a minute or two. That told me more than anything else. Vhy had always been able to tell me anything. Well, almost anything. But somehow, I didn’t think this was some girl-boy thing he was talking about.
After a long pause, he launched into an explanation of what he and Ruchi had seen. I got the impression he was leaving out some stuff—probably the shenanigans he and she were up to just before she went out of his room—but soon I was caught up in his narration and trying to understand what he was saying.
“So let me get this straight,” I said when he’d finished. “Ruchi saw Mikey sitting at his comp. Then he disappeared in front of her eyes. And then you saw the empty chair, and then saw him come back. Out of thin air. Right?”
He nodded unhappily. “I’m telling you, Viv, it sounds weird, I know. But something happened there.”
I sighed and wiped my hands down the front of my Italian-style red-and-white checked apron, leaning back against the granite platform. It was warm from the heat of the stove. “What happened? He was kidnapped by aliens and then they dumped him back because he was too expensive to feed?”
“I don’t know. But Ruchi and I both saw something else. First there was this thing happening with his computer monitor, like darkness coming out and enveloping him. Deleting him out of existence. That’s what she saw. All I saw was just something black throbbing like a trance-rhythm light sequencer. And the word ‘Vortal’.”
“Vortal,” I repeated.
“Yeah, that’s like a—.” He stopped. “What is a Vortal anyway?”
“A vertically integrated portal…” I saw him looking at me with that ‘huh?’ expression. “It’s a bunch of websites all linked together. Like a family of websites.”
“Oh,” he said. “Like a web ring.”
“Not really but close enough. Look it up, will you?” I paused. “What I do know is this, it isn’t something out of Harry Potter!”
He sighed. I could see from the way he was looking at me, that he thought that I thought that he was pulling some kind of elaborate prank on me.
“I’m not joking, Viv. I’m serious. Mikey disappeared for five whole minutes last night.”
“Vhy, will you listen to yourself? How crazy this sounds?”
He sighed again, pinching the skin between his eyes, an old habit he had when he was tense about something. “I know, sis. Ruchi called me and we talked this morning. Neither of us got much sleep last night. And we both agreed that we hadn’t just imagined it or anything. It really happened.”
I shook my head, unable to decide whether Vhy was pulling my leg or suffering from some kind of delusion. Somehow, despite how crazy his story sounded, I didn’t think either applied in this case. “Look, bro, I know you’re a good kid. But you’re making me wonder if maybe the two of you were doing more than just watching a movie last night in your room.”
Vaibhav looked confused—and slightly guilty too. “What do you mean?”
“You know. Maybe sharing a toke, or a joint, or something?” I almost regretted the words when I said them, but they were out before I knew it.
Vaibhav looked offended now. “Drugs? You think we were stoned?”
I shrugged. “Come on, Vhy. Indian kids these days…”
Vaibhav looked like he was about to deliver a little speech on Indian kids versus American kids. But he visibly controlled himself.
“No drugs,” he said stiffly. “And no alcohol. Or pills. Or intravenous shots or anything. Ruchi and I are 100 percent clean, okay? For God’s sake, you’re my big sister, you should know I hate that crap.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, backing off. “Don’t get all upset. I was just asking.”
“And I answered. No drugs. I saw what I saw. And so did Ruchi.”
I chewed my lip. “I don’t know what to say then, Vhy. I guess you saw something, but maybe you made a mistake or something. I mean, people don’t just vanish into thin air.”
Vhy shook his head. “Come on, Viv. If you don’t believe me, say so. But we saw it. It happened. I don’t know how or why. I just know it did.”
We were both silent again for another long moment, then a voice called from the living room. It was Mom, calling us for breakfast. The maid returned, carrying the empty platter. “Memsaab kehti hai bahut achcha banaya hai. Amriki roti aur chahiye,” she said. Either she had picked up a smattering of Bambaiya Hindi or we had changed our bai since my last sojourn in the US and I hadn’t noticed.
I turned back to the stove. “Vhy, I have to do breakfast, okay? We’ll talk about this later.”
I didn’t turn back to look at him, but I sensed after a moment that he had left. I felt relieved as well as ashamed. Relieved because I really hadn’t known how to react to such a story. Ashamed because obviously Vhy believed that story and I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a worse thing.
So I did the only thing I could under the circumstances: I made more flapjacks. And then I joined my family for breakfast.
2.2 Vir
Halfway through breakfast, I realized that something was wrong with my family.
On the surface, things seemed fine.
Viveka was in and out of the kitchen, trying to show the new maid how to make American-style flapjacks. She had developed this urge to cook since she’d come back from New York. It was part of the whole rediscovery of her ethnic roots she was going through, along with dressing Indian and wearing a nose ring and talking in Hindi a lot.
I had to admit I quite liked the cooking part at least. Viveka was a natural born chef, able to turn out a masterpiece the first time she tried out a recipe. If I didn’t praise her openly, it was because I had learned the hard way that in these post-millennial times, some women considered it an insult to be called a great cook. As in “Just a great cook? Is that all you think I am?” Which wasn’t entirely wrong; after all, Indian men can be chauvinistic as animals. It didn’t make any difference that I was actually the best cook in our house–although I didn’t get many chances to cook anymore since the business took off big-time.
So when Viveka offered me another Amriki roti—I mean, pancake!–I pretended to think for a moment, then said, “Why not?”
She served me the flapjack and watched me smear a knifeful of butter over it, then add maple syrup too—I liked the combination of sweet and salty. I cut a piece with my knife, speared it with my fork and was about to raise it to my mouth, when I noticed her still standing there, watching.
“What?” I said, frowning. That was when I realized that Sarla, my wife, was also watching me. Both women had similar expressions on their faces. Like mother, like daughter.
I put the fork down on the plate. “Whose birthday did I forget?”
Vaibhav rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Dad, tube-light!”
I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to warrant the Garuda-eye stares. “I give up,” I said at last. “What’s my crime, m’lord?” I corrected myself: “M’ladies?”
Viveka and Sarla exchanged a glance. It was one of those typical women’s looks that openly express disdain for the male of the species—these guys!
“Vir,” Sarla said softly. “At least for politeness’ sake, say something about the flapjacks.”
“It’s okay, mom,” Viveka said with extra-sweetness. “If he doesn’t like them, I can understand.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Is that what this is about? My not praising her flapjacks to the skies? God, you women! I’ll never understand you. The last time I praised your cooking, Sarla, you gave me a half-hour lecture about how demeaning it was to a woman to be called a great cook.”
Sarla’s eyes flashed angrily. “You made a statement to the effect that I belonged in the kitchen! Did you expect me to touch your feet for that, patidev?”
“Sarla, all I said was that if you chose to become a cookbook author, you’d beat Martha Stewart hands down!”
“Sure, and the fact that you chose Martha Stewart as some kind of epitome says a lot about–”
I made a time-out gesture. “Bas! Full stop. Let’s not get into that all over again.” I looked up at Viveka, taking her hand in mine. “Bete, Viv. These are the best goddamn flapjacks I’ve ever had in my entire life!”
Viveka smiled. It was a giant, ear-to-ear banana smile, the way she used to smile when she was a toddler and I used to pick her up and throw her up to the skies, eliciting gasps and giggles. Even after all these years, it made my heart glow.
“He called them goddamn flapjacks,” Vhy said teasingly from the other end of the table. “So don’t mistake it for a compliment, Viv.”
Viv ignored her brother. “Have some more, dad!” She started to shovel two more jacks onto my plate.
“Viveka,” her mother admonished. “You’ll make your father fat! Bad enough I have to fight to keep Mikey’s intake down.”
“But he loves them, Ma!” Still, Viveka put the jacks back on the platter. I grinned with mock frustration.
“Women,” I remarked deliberately. “Can’t figure them out, can’t do without their figures!”
This time, both Viveka and Sarla rolled their eyes in despair. “Men!” Viveka looked at the remaining flapjacks as if wondering whether to throw them at me. I prepared to duck.
“Relax, Viv,” Vhy said as he put his fork down. “Mikey’ll be here in a sec. And he’ll polish off the lot. In fact, make sure you have another truckload ready for him! You know how he loves breakfast.”
“And lunch. And dinner. And snack-times. And midnight snacks. Etc. etc. etc.”
She glanced at Vhy and I saw a look pass between them. Something odd. I also noticed that Vaibhav hadn’t finished his pancake and that even his attempts at breakfast-table banter seemed a little forced today, almost as if he was trying hard to cover up the fact that he didn’t feel like bantering.
Viveka broke the eye-lock between herself and brother and called to Shanti-bai to bring the last stack out.
Mikey appeared just then. Whistling. That wasn’t unusual in itself. But he was also neatly dressed in a shirt and trousers—an actual pair of trousers. I put down my knife and fork and stared at my youngest child. I hadn’t even known that Mikey possessed anything but jeans and Tee shirts with pictures of hard rock bands!
“Hi, everyone,” Mikey said cheerfully. He took a seat and looked around the breakfast table. “So how’s everyone this morning? I mean, is it a great day or what?”
Pin drop silence followed. Sarla Vatsal was in the act of pouring tea for herself and Viv. Viveka had sat down to sample her own cooking. Vhy had been trying to get a coffee stain out of Page 314 of the Harry Potter novel he had been pretending to reread while making his forced banter. He was staring at Mikey like he had seen a ghost.
Mikey rubbed his hands together, smiling as if he hadn’t noticed anything amiss. “Flapjacks for breakfast? Smells great, Viv.”
Viveka managed to stutter out a response: “Help yourself, Mikey.”
He nodded and reached for the platter. At that point, I started to relax. Very well, so perhaps Mikey wasn’t his usual grouchy self. So he was dressed unusually neat for a change. Perhaps he had actually discovered how to use a hairbrush at last. And perhaps he had misplaced his trademark Sony Discman and the latest hard-rock CD.
But he was about to eat like a ‘healthy baby’. And that was normal for Mikey.
We all watched as Mikey took a knife and cut himself a slice of a flapjack from the platter. He slid the piece onto his own plate, picked it up with his fork, and ate it.
“Hey,” he said to Viveka. “This is great stuff. You really are a woman of diverse talents, sis!”
Viveka blinked and stopped chewing her mouthful of flapjack. I saw her cast a glance at Vaibhav. She looked almost scared, but that couldn’t be. I must have misread her look. Why would she be scared of Mikey?
Mikey put down his fork, picked up his glass of milk and drank it down without a pause. He dabbed his mouth with a napkin and smiled at everyone again.
“Okay, that’s it for me,” he said. “Busy day. Going over to the library to check out some new books. See you guys later, okay? Bysie-bye, family. Love y’all.”
And as all of us watched in silent stupefaction, he picked up his tote bag and was out of the door.
I was the first to find my voice.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said, addressing myself in the general direction of my wife. “But did that young person bear a passing resemblance to our son, Mahesh Vatsal, aka Mikey?”
Then, before anyone could respond, I shook my head and answered my own rhetorical question. “Nahi, bhai, I must be mistaken. He hardly ate breakfast. He finished a full glass of milk. He’s washed, groomed and dressed like a normal 12-year old boy. He was friendly and cheerful and polite to everyone. And he said he was going to the library, to borrow books!”
I looked around at my family. “That’s not our Mikey. It’s just somebody who happens to look like him!”
I grinned as I said it, meaning it as a joke of course. But the look of utter horror that came over Vaibhav and Viveka’s faces looked real. As if they took what I said dead seriously.
2.3 Vhy
After breakfast, I had to rush to college. We were having a meeting of the Class Reps for our annual inter-college festival. I was Drama and Literature CR for my class, and I had to be there. I caught Viv’s eye as I left the house and she looked away. I knew she was as confused as I was, but hopefully she was starting to take me seriously.
Let’s face it. That guy at the breakfast table this morning? He wasn’t Mikey. Not my brother, Mahesh Virendra Vatsal. He was someone else. Have you seen that old sci-fi horror film, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’? Go check it out. Better still, check out the remake. It’s pretty neat. And there’s a sequel to the remake, called ‘Body Snatchers’ starring that really cute babe who co-starred with Michael J. Fox in ‘For Love or Money’. Which, by the way, is the film that was cogged by apna desi filmwaalas and remade as ‘Yes Boss’ starring Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla…
As usual, I’m totally off the point. Films have that effect on me.
I thought about Mikey all day. Ruchi and I kept looking at each other in Psycho that morning and in English Lit and even in History. Well, actually, I dozed off in History. Making up for the restless night I had after seeing that weird crap last evening. Besides, Babur and Humayun had waited three hundred years for Vaibhav Vatsal to learn all about them, so they could wait a while longer.
Anyways.
After classes, Ruchi and I met in the canteen. Because of the transport strike, there were only Marie biscuits and those really awful teacakes with the tutti-frutti—I hate tutti-frutti, don’t you?—but we didn’t mind because we weren’t that hungry. There was a song playing from the new Hrithik Roshan movie, ‘Fiza’, on the canteenwaala’s music system and I spent a moment trying to figure out the chorus line. What in blue hell were ‘maahiya’ and why would anyone want to call them? Sometimes, I just can’t understand Bollywood films.
After Sampat the canteenwalah had made his usual caustic comment about an unpaid bill and I had done my usual ignoring and we were sitting at a table with steaming cups of chai and a plateful of Marie biscuits in front of us, Ruchi looked at me and said,
“Snatched.”
I blinked at her. “Kya?”
“Snatched,” she said again. “Like in the movie ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’” .
I grinned. “That’s what I love about you. The fact that you’re as much a movie buff as I am. I was thinking about that exact same movie all morning. The part where the alien plants grab the humans when they’re sleeping, and duplicate them in these kind of vegetable pods.”
She was nodding enthusiastically. “And as the pods develop, the humans are sucked dry of life. Until finally the pods become exact replicas of the people and take their places.”
We grinned. I put my hand over her hand. Actually, I wanted to do more than just that, but the last time I got caught doing more, when the supervisor asked me what we were doing, I wisecracked, “Practicals!” and it got me a two-week suspension, which was killing, because it meant two weeks without seeing Ruch every morning, so I’ve learned to curb it a bit.
She frowned and pulled her hand away. She did it real smooth-like, but I knew it was her way of telling me to back off, this was not the time or place to get cosy. I sighed and put my hand on a Marie biscuit instead. She did the same.
“But that can’t be what happened to your brother,” she said, dipping a Marie in tea and bringing it out soppy and steaming. “He couldn’t have been ‘snatched’.”
“Why not?” I asked, biting the bait—and the Marie.
“Because there’s no pod.”
I thought about that. She had a point.
“Okay, so what about ‘The Puppet Master’? Remember that one, with Donald Sutherland? Maybe he got this alien parasite attached to the nexus of his spinal cord and brain?”
She grimaced. “That was yucky. Actually. But yuckier than that was the rip off with the slug-like thing that takes over a cop who goes on a killing spree. What was that called?”
“’Maniac Cop’,” I said at once.
She slapped my hand. “Come on! That was another series, about a cop who dies and then becomes a crazy zombie who goes on a killing spree. I’m talking about the one with the alien slug that attaches itself to the back of the cop and then makes him go on a killing spree.”
“Same difference,” I said, dipping my Marie again into my chai. When I pulled the biscuit out again, it was gone, like it had been dissolved by the spraying blood of the aliens in the Alien quadrology.
“You dipped three times,” she said smugly. “I told you a thousand times, never dip more than two times.”
“This is important,” I said, getting up. “We should go research this.” I gestured to her, mouthing the lyrics of the song playing in the background: “Aaja maahiya.”
“Research what?” she asked, puzzled. “How many times you can dip Marie biscuits in chai before they dissolve?”
“No, Michelle-Pfeiffer-with-brown-eyes-and-an-attitude. I mean, this alien movie stuff. We should go do some serious research to help us figure out what’s happening to Mikey.” I added after a moment, hopefully, “If anything’s happening to Mikey. Come on, let’s go.”
Getting up, she stuffed another Marie biscuit in her mouth, and around the crumbling flakes, said, “Where? To the college library?”
I gave her a withering look. “No, yaar. To our library.”
She frowned. Then understanding dawned on her. I always like it when understanding dawns on Ruch. Her face sort of blushes just the way the eastern sky blushes with the coming dawn in a George Romero horror film at the end, while the end credits roll. Really romantic- like. It makes me wonder if the blush stops at her neck or continues all over.
Note to self: Check if Ruchi’s blushes continue below the neck, and if so, how far exactly are we talking about here.
“Oh,” she said. “That library.” We were walking through the quadrangle now, the shouts and yells of the college basketball team echoing off the ancient stone walls.
“Yup. This is important stuff. Got to research it thoroughly.”
She cocked an eyebrow at me, linking her arm in mine as we exited the college. “Yeah, right. And I bet I know which direction your research would like to go.”
I tried to look innocent. “Which way do you mean?”
She gestured at her open collar. “Down this way.”
I flapped my hands at her. “Lawksadaisy, woman! You have a doity mind. Kinna you think of anything but that allatime? Yousa be obsessed with it!”
She giggled. I was imitating five different actors in five different Oscar-winning performances and it thrilled me that she could probably name each and every one of them. Ah, but that was why I adored Ruch so much. That, and her ‘plus points’, of course.
Note to self: Figure out if I adore Ruchi more for her knowledge of movie trivia, or for her ‘plus points’. Addendum to note: Research thoroughly before reaching conclusion.
“So where are we heading actually?” she said as we came out on Mahapalika Marg. There was a morcha passing by, heading towards the Esplanade Court down the road—it was only a small one, the traffic jam was barely a kilometre long. Luckily for us, it was on the other side of the road. Sometimes, I thought, what Mumbai really needed was one giant morcha to protest against morchas.
I shrugged. “Sterling? Regal? New Empire?”
She thought for a moment. “Liberty. The box seats in the back of the dress circle…”
“…have the most privacy. Okay. Liberty it is.” I opened the door of a black-and-yellow taxi waiting on the curb and gestured with a flourish. “Enter the dragon.”
She paused before getting in, placing a hand on my shoulder. For a moment, the mischief left her pretty face and she looked into my eyes with a genuinely anxious look.
“Vhy,” she said. “Something weird is going on with your bro, isn’t it?”
I sighed, then nodded. “Yeah. And I haven’t a clue what to do about it.”
She frowned. “Then why are we going to see a movie? Shouldn’t we go talk to your mom or something?”
“That’s why we’re going to do research.”
She smiled weakly. “As if.”
I looked at her squarely. “You have a better idea?”
She shook her head, then suddenly pecked me on the cheek.
“No kissing until researchers are in the library, lady,” I said mock-sternly. “First rule of research.”
Then I got in the taxi with her and we departed for the hallowed halls of researchdom. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should have been trying to figure out what was wrong with Mikey—if anything was wrong. Instead, I was copping out and going to a movie hall to spend the afternoon making out—ahem, researching—with my gf.
But the truth was, I didn’t know what else to do at the time, yaar. I was a little creeped- out and I didn’t want to admit it and so I was doing the only thing possible—‘avoidance mechanism’, as we say in Psycho class.
It worked pretty well too.
Until later that day, when something else happened and things got really scary.
2.4 Viveka
I didn’t really think much of the breakfast show. Or whatever you call Mikey’s behaviour that morning. True, it seemed very odd that he should suddenly turn over a new leaf. But stranger things have been known to happen.
After I mulled over it, I felt that Vhy was just over-reacting. I know how tough it can be with same-sex siblings. I’d just read a Ph.D. thesis about it by a friend at New York State. She was Susan Ing, a Vietnamese student I’d met while doing my post-grad diploma course in Film Production at Columbia, NY. Of all the places possible, we’d met at an all-night showing of Miyazake films. She was the closest thing to a best friend I had besides Steve.
But then Steve was much more than just a best friend.
Speaking of which. Steve had e-mailed his animated short film to me the previous night. I got his sms telling me he’d sent it, just before the interval of M:i-2 during that big shootout in the research lab. The minute I got it, I apologized to my movie companions—two old school friends I hadn’t seen in ages—ducked out of M:i-2 and came home early, just in time to catch Vhy making out with his well-endowed gf in the passage of our house.
But when I tried to run the file on my comp, it wouldn’t open. I thought the file might have got corrupted or something, so I’d MSNed Steve telling him I was online and to resend it to me via MSN Messenger right now. But by then he was neck-deep in some rush job animating a sugar-free chocobits cereal logo for an ad agency—literally while the creative director of the agency sat beside him, chewing his nails anxiously because the presentation was the next morning—and wasn’t even logged on, which of course I didn’t know until the next day, because after 2 a.m. I crashed out.
Today, when I got to my comp after finishing some chores that couldn’t wait, it was late afternoon. I found his e-mail saying he was resending it in a different format, just in case. But there was something wrong again. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get the file attachment to open.
It was frustrating as hell. Steve had been working for ages on this short film, and had talked my ear off about it, both while I was in New York and after I came back to Bombay/Mumbai, and I knew the final result just had to be way cool. But I’m no comp whiz like Mikey. I can just about use the dumb machine to get my work done, is all.
I would have asked Dad for help. As the head of a software firm, he knows everything there is to know about comps. But he had left for office eons ago. Mom was working on her weekly opinion column when I knocked and then peeped in her room.
From the tapes she was forwarding and rewinding and watching, I figured it was something to do with cola advertising. Mom gets all worked up about social issues and I can’t say I blame her. I was still trying to come to terms with how much India had changed in the seven years I’d been abroad, studying. Going by all the McDonald’s and Coke ads and Domino’s Pizza, it was almost like being in NY, NY again. Except for the state of the roads.
Mom was sweet enough not to mind my intrusion into her work-time. “Try Mikey’s comp,” she suggested. “Your father said he keeps upgrading it so much that it’s probably equivalent to some sort of a supercomputer by now. I’m sure his PC would be able to open your problem file. Besides, from what you’re saying, it’s probably a patch you don’t have—and Mikey will have every patch ever invented, I’d think.”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? “Great idea! Thanks, mom,” I said. And went into Mikey’s bedroom. His computer was already on—I doubt he ever puts it off—and in a few seconds I was accessing my mail again. It was almost scary how fast and smooth his machine was, even when compared to my P-III. I felt a delicious thrill when I saw the icon of Steve’s file.
Crossing my fingers and sending up a silent prayer to Goddess Saraswati as I waited, I double-clicked the file icon when it appeared and…
Bingo!
The animated short began to play almost instantly. The sound was so loud it blew me away at first. Mikey and his hard rock. I turned it down frantically, then relaxed and turned it up a bit again. Only Mom was home, and in her bedroom with the door closed and her TV on, she probably couldn’t hear a thing. Still, I took a second to shut Mikey’s bedroom door.
For the next four minutes and twenty-three seconds, I was mesmerized. The instant the film finished, I replayed it. And then again. And again. I must have gone through it a dozen times before I finally forced myself to quit the program and get up from Mikey’s chair.
I paced up and down for several minutes, excited out of my skull. I decided to call Steve right away and tell him how much I loved the film, how much I loved him, and what a great talent he had. I mean, this was what he and I had spent hours talking about back at Columbia: an animation film that was like the Brothers Quay on ganja but with the solid plotting, cyberpunk craziness and adultness of the best shonen anime. I can’t even begin to describe it actually. You would just have to see it to know how totally brilliant it was.
It was one thing to talk about it; but he’d actually done it! Let the folks at Disney, Pixar or DreamWorks see this and eat their hearts out: Even ‘Dinosaur’ with its $80 million budget looked like an assembly line product compared to some of the techniques Steve had innovated here. And he’d done it alone—taking two and a half years and a shoestring budget. I was certain if he took this to someone like Steve Jobs or David Geffen or John Lasseter, he’d instantly be offered a multi-million dollar contract—and he’d probably refuse it, preferring to work on spec rather than ’sell out’ to mainstream Hollywood. That was Steve, the maverick genius. And my guy. I felt proud and happy for him.
I sat down at Mikey’s comp again, closing down the movie program and clicking on the See-mail icon. That would connect me directly to Steve’s laptop and WAP phone. Wherever he was, he’d get the message, open up his laptop and be able to video-talk with me. It was the next best thing to catching the next flight out, which was what I really wanted to do.
Something odd happened with Mikey’s monitor at that point.
It went completely blank for a second.
Not just blank, black.
Like someone had put the lights out inside.
And then these words appeared on the screen, glowing like monster eyes in a horror movie:
Do you wish to enter the Vortal?
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE is a complete fantasy adventure in one book, as well as the first of a series, The Vortal Codex. It is also directly related to my Ramayana Series, Gods of War series, and other series. Signed copies of the limited edition large paperback are available at Rs 400 per copy, delivery by courier free anywhere in India.
Click here to continue reading VORTAL:Shockwave
Click here to order VORTAL:Shockwave within India.
Overseas deliveries are currently not offered.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE – Excerpt#1
1
In Which The Vatsals Secure A New Residence, Mikey Shows Us The E-mail That Started It All, Vhy Messes Up His Hot And Happening Dvd Date, Ruchi Sees Something Weird In Mikey’s Room, Mikey Does A ‘Hollow Man’ & Viveka Catches Vhy And Ruchi Doing A Tom & Nicole. Actually.
1.1 V R Family
The door of the flat opened slowly, revealing only darkness. The five shadowy figures standing in the doorway stepped forward slowly, hesitantly.
One of them did something with a gadget on the wall and with blinding suddenness, every light in the place came on at once.
“That’s much better,” said Sarla Vatsal, smiling at her husband. At 43, she could still make all heads turn when the hunt went by. In fact, Vir thought as he walked back to her side, she seemed to grow more attractive as she matured. Maybe it was just him, but he thought she looked better than she had when they’d met back in college in the heydays of bellbottoms, afros, disco and dum maro dum. Perhaps it was the fact that she had maintained her figure so well even after three children and had refined her sense of grooming and fashion that added the extra layer of gloss. Whatever it was, he counted himself lucky as hell. ‘Luckier than Dilip De’, as his brother Anant had commented wryly once in his customary laconic-sarky style.
Their youngest son, Mikey, a precocious 12 and currently going through an I’m-a-hacker-cowboy-aren’t-I-cool phase, groaned and slipped on his Ray-Bans. “Dad, next time you try to blind us, give us some warning, please?”
His short stature was accentuated by his wide girth; too many hours of sitting before computer and television screens had made him softer and heavier than his parents would have liked. But even putting on weight was a kind of rebellion for Mikey and despite his excess bulk, he still looked cute, especially when he tried to look mean with his Mohawk punk haircut and multiple earrings in the left ear.
“Shut up, Mikey,” snapped his older brother Vaibhav. “And don’t wear your sunglasses indoors. It’s bad luck.”
Vaibhav or Vhy, as he preferred to be called–as a baby, his stubborn response to everything was “Why?”–was as lean and tall as his younger brother was short and fat. He had his father’s dark good looks and masculine intensity. At 17, he was already starting to fit into the intense ‘hero’ slot. Except that he was much more laidback than his looks suggested: Vhy was the quintessential ‘chalta hai’ guy.
“That’s only for hats, stupid,” Mikey retorted.
Their older sister Viveka sighed. “Will you two stop fighting for once? This is important, okay? Try to focus.” Her Indian dressing–she was in a khadi churidar kurta that showed off her slim but full figure beautifully–was deceptive. She was more foreign-savvy than either of her brothers. Though God help you if you ever questioned her Indianness. A graduate of Michigan State and diploma-holder from Columbia State University, New York, Viv was the classic NRI- returns-to-her-roots icon. And like all desis with return-postage stamped on their foreheads, she was far more ethnic and desi in her tastes and language than either of the boys, with a genuine international outlook. A young Shabana Azmi could have played her in a film version of her life!
Looking at his family, Virendra Vatsal felt he might have actually done something right with his life after all. He had worked bloody hard to climb to the position he was in today. The company he and his brother had started and which he had taken over (after Anant dropped out to concentrate on his medical career) and then built into a thriving independent IT and BPO firm, was his pride. But it was his family that was the true icing on his cake. Looking at them, sharing the same life-space with them, always made him feel that it was worth every midnight deadline and overnight office stay and jet-lagged international business tour.
Overwork had added deep circles beneath his eyes and brought his severe eyebrows closer together in an intense stare but this only made him look more ruggedly attractive, in a way that his wife Sarla described as “Bachchan+Tommy Lee Jones+Al Pacino = mature hunk!”
Now he put an arm around his wife, squeezed tight and gestured casually at the brightly-lit flat.
“So?” he said softly, almost romantically. “What do you think?”
Raising his voice, he repeated the question loud enough for everybody to hear. “What do you all think? Is it home?”
The five of them looked around the flat.
They walked through the corridor, looked into each of the five bedrooms, the spacious attached toilets with gold-trimmed porcelain fittings and king-size bathtubs.
The balconies, every one of which had a great view of the ocean and half the city’s coastline from Juhu on the right all the way to Cuffe Parade on the left.
The furniture which was almost all wooden and designed in that Scandinavian way that looks elegant but is functional too.
The electrical fittings designed to meet the needs of a post-millennial Net-connected family: designer lighting with individually customized settings.
The gizmos in each bedroom: 34” colour TVs with cable, DVD players, 1200-watt stereo systems with hidden speakers, PCs with cable modems and every other gadget an urban Indian family could possibly desire.
When they met back in the huge living room (35 by 42 feet, with a sea-facing glass enclosed verandah at the far end), they all looked a little dazed. Except for Virendra Vatsal who had spent the last 11 months getting the apartment custom-interior-designed and fitted in complete secrecy and was now as nervous as a first-time applicant for an H1B US Visa.
“I thought you just bought an empty flat,” Sarla Vatsal said, staring at her husband.
“Yeah, dad,” Vhy said. “You didn’t tell us you were getting it all done up and furnished and all.”
“I thought he was up to something,” Viv said smugly, smiling at her father. “I told you guys he was up to something. That’s why he wouldn’t let us come and even see the building till now!”
Mikey chewed his gum and adjusted his Ray-Bans and lounged on a beanbag sofa and looked around for the remote to the 54” Thomson TV. He found it but decided against it after a warning look from his alert mother. He shrugged and switched on his Discman instead: the scratchy, tinny sound of Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life” escaping from his headphones was audible to everyone.
“So?” Vir Vatsal asked, seemingly for the tenth time in as many minutes.
“Say something! I spent 11 months and almost every rupee of our savings to put this place together. Was it worth it or not?”
Sarla frowned at him: “Every rupee? You said you wouldn’t touch the long-term savings account.”
He grinned. “I didn’t.”
“You know what?” Vhy said slowly, turning around as if trying to absorb the essence of the whole flat from where he stood. “I think it’s the coolest place I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” He added: “Not just homes. The coolest place. Period.”
“I don’t know about cool,” Viveka said, arms crossed over her khadi kurta, frowning intently. “I think it’s way beyond cool. I’d go for awesome. What say, mom?”
Vir Vatsal, grinning with relief at his children’s comments, looked anxiously at his wife.
Sarla Vatsal frowned in a way that was exactly like her daughter Viveka. She tilted her head to one side, exactly like her son Vaibhav often did when thinking. And she pretended to chew her lower lip, the way her youngest son Mikey always did when concentrating.
And then she raised both her hands, the silk saree’s pallu draped over the left and brought her palms together with force, producing a sound that echoed like a bullet through the flat. And then repeated it over and over again with increasing frequency and impact.
Her children joined her in the standing ovation.
Sarla Vatsal gestured to her husband between rounds of applause.
“Author! Author!” she said, the way an audience does after viewing a great play or concert.
Vir Vatsal, the author of the performance in question, grinned with relief.
When they stopped clapping, they all came and hugged and kissed him warmly.
“Papa, it’s phenomenal,” Vaibhav said. “Really amazing. You’re maha cool!”
“Great work,” Viveka said, planting a lipstick mark on his left cheek. “Now this is what I call great design sense.”
Sarla Vatsal pinched his right cheek and punched his shoulder. “You rascal, Vir,” she said. “I can understand keeping it a secret from the kids. But how could you not tell me what you were up to? For eleven months? I was beginning to think you were having an affair!”
He looked at her solemnly. “I was.”
She blinked.
“I was having an affair with you,” he explained. “But I was married to this flat!”
They all laughed at that.
Vaibhav said, “Hey, where did Mikey disappear to?”
They looked around. Their youngest brother was nowhere to be seen.
Vir laughed. “I think I can guess where he is.”
He led them down the corridor to the bedroom with the black door and the skull-and-crossbones sign with the words “Enter At Your Own Risk” painted in bleeding red paint. He opened the door and went in. They all followed him.
There was Mikey. At his new PC, already on the Net, surfing through an MP3 site for clips of the latest Billboard hits.
“Hey, dad,” he called out without looking back at them. “This cable modem is okay. But can’t it go any faster?”
Vir Vatsal looked at his wife and grinned. “He likes it too,” he said. “That makes it official!”
And that was how the Vatsals got a new home.
And would probably have lived happily ever after.
But then the e-mail came.
1.2 Mikey
So you see? It all started pretty cool. Like, we had this great new house, Dad’s IT firm’s share price was in the stratosphere, Viveka had just got accepted by MIT, Vaibhav had a new girlfriend even though he hadn’t told mom and dad about it yet and I had these terrific new toys to fool around with. Life was “Smooth,” like Rob Thomas says.
The first couple of months were really Wow. We were planning to go to Florida in the Diwali vacations, like, you know, do Disney World and trash the place. Have a blast, basically. I hadn’t made any new friends in the new building, and maybe that’s why I started spending more time on the Net. Wouldn’t you, if you had such a cool new PC and cable modem? Vhy prefers watching movies with his gf, but he’s a moron, even if he’s my bro.
Besides, I didn’t need friends. I had all the friends I needed on the Net. There was Sally in New Jersey, Zac and Par in Sweden, Stu in Alaska… a whole bunch of great people. ICQ was my life.
I don’t even remember who first forwarded the e-mail to me. Was it Joe in Wichita? Or Evvy in Frankfurt? I don’t know.
All I know is that I was at this really great Shockwave-enabled horror movie site that showed you a haunted house and let you go through the rooms and all kinds of stuff. And while I was logged on, the ‘You have new mail’ thing began flashing so I checked it out.
And there it was: A chain letter. Except that this one was different. I knew it even then, at the start. And I should have done what I always did – drag it to the commode icon and drop it in the loo. But I didn’t. Maybe it was the title in the subject line that got me. Or the fact that I was looking at that haunted house site and listening to Uriah Heep’s “Fallen Angel.”
Whatever.
But I made the fatal mistake of reading that e-mail. And I was basically hooked, even though I didn’t realize it at that time.
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: WARNING: DO NOT VISIT THIS SITE
Date: 28 Jul 00 16:49:14 CDT
From: NetWizard243
>>>>>Hi, friend. Please pass this message on to as many people as you can. This is
>>>>>a matter of life and death okay. This is not a joke. It’s serious stuff, guys. If
>>>>>you ever come across a link to this site, don’t repeat DON’T click on it. It
>>>>>will take you to a website that is not normal. I mean, it’s not even really a
>>>>>website. It’s some kind of weird crap. Maybe it’s black magic. I don’t know.
>>>>>But do not visit it, or type it into your URL address bar or click on any link that takes
>>>>>you there. It’s really bad karma. Trust me.
>>>>>http://vvv.vvv.net
1.3 Vhy
Looking back now, I guess I feel guilty. As Mikey’s older brother I should have been looking out for him. Sure, we fight all the time and I hate his choice in music and movies and stuff and he hates my choices. But we’re still brothers after all. And I should have seen it happening and stopped it.
Mikey has a tendency to get carried away. That’s his nature. But this time, it wasn’t wholly his fault. I see that now. Although at the time I blamed it all on him, the truth is, there was something supernatural about that e-mail. Even now when I look at it, it has a weird kind of draw.
Like, even though it’s shouting out don’t visit that site, what you really feel like doing is do visit the site. You know. Like the little warning on DVDs and LDs that says “Contains full frontal nudity, simulated sex and profanity. Not suitable for children.”
Which red-blooded teenager can resist renting that movie?!
And telling a nerd like Mikey don’t do something is like challenging him.
So naturally, the first thing he did after reading that e-mail, without even thinking for a second about it, was to click on that link and go straight to the site.
Even then, the whole thing might have stopped right there and then. If it hadn’t been for Ruchi. That’s my gf. My parents were out of the house (they had tickets to ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ that night) and Ruchi came over to watch a DVD with me. And there was this really hot scene in the movie and I got a little carried away too, I guess.
And when I tried to put my hand on her… Well, you should see her and you’ll know why I got carried away in the first place.
Ruchi constantly gets teased in college for her looks. All the guys call her ‘Twinkle Khanna plus’.
The first part is because she does sort of resemble Twinkle: those wide, slightly sad eyes and slightly hooked nose and clean-cut Punj features. As for the ‘plus,’ that refers to a certain part of her anatomy. To be precise, as Thomson and Thompson say in Tintin comics, the precise part on which I had my hands at the time, precisely. Excuse me if I’m drooling while I do a mental replay of the scene! I’m only thinking about her ‘plus’ points!
But hang on; let her tell you how it happened. Precisely.
1.4 Ruchi
Hi, I’m Ruchi. I don’t know why I’m here, but I’m a part of it, so it makes sense. Sort of. I think. Actually, nothing makes sense about this whole scene at all. But it happened. I know. I was there.
I have this problem with my parents. They’re really conservative. You know how it is: Indian girl isn’t supposed to go out with a guy until she’s married. It sounds 18th century, but a lot more parents are like that than you’d think. Wearing jeans and a tight top to college is one thing. Wearing a guy on your arm to a date is something else altogether.
So, actually, what happened was that I was still refusing to let Vhy (that’s what everyone calls Vaibhav, BTW) intro me to his parents. Because, basically, once they knew, maybe they might want to talk to my parents. And that would have been The End. Phillum Samapt.
But somehow I let him talk me into going to his house that evening, while his parents were out seeing some play or whatnot. I had heard so much about the new house for the last two months, I was maha-curious. So I thought, okay, just pop in, see a movie, eat some home-delivery, and vamoose.
Actually, it started that way. He called me when his parents were leaving and I came over. He showed me the flat. It was stupen. Amaz. Phenom. No words. Like a movie set. After I finished ogling, he took me to his bedroom. Put on the DVD. And we started watching ‘Eyes Wide Shut’.
Now, I’m not that kind of a girl, okay. I haven’t let Vhy go much beyond kissing me even. Actually. And for the first part of the movie, while we drank fresh limes and sat on his really comfy sofa (his bedroom is massive), all was well. It was the whole “Hum tum ek kamre mein bandh ho” scene from ‘Bobby’ and it was cute, sexy and very exciting.
Then the hot stuff started. I’m talking about that orgy scene. If you’ve seen it…well, if you see it in a group in a theatre, it’s nothing much, actually. But when you’re alone in your bf’s bedroom, alone in the flat (or so we thought) and the AC’s on, and you’re maha-relaxed. And you’re ogling Tom Cruise’s back-he has a really sexy back, and his buns… Stop me!
So then Vhy started nuzzling, okay. Then he was kissing, okay. Hand on my thigh. Okay. Really close to me, close enough to feel his heart going thud-thud. Okay.
But then he started getting carried away. And so did I. I’ll admit it frankly. I got carried away too.
Don’t ask how far, okay. This isn’t a Shobha De novel.
But pretty carried away.
Like at one point I remember, he was whispering in my ear: “Don’t worry, don’t worry, Ruch, I’ve got Durex.”
That was his mistake. And my saving grace.
The fact that he didn’t say ‘condom’ or ‘contraceptive’ or whatever. He said ‘Durex.’ And the image of those ads where all these foreign couples are doing it-on the kitchen table, the bed, the sofa, with that dan-dan-dan music going in the background. And the chutti bai going all blush-blush-red-red with embarrassment when she finds a discarded pack on the ruffled bed.
Just his saying the name made me remember my father switching the channel when the ad came on, and how embarrassed my mom looked. It made me remember my parents.
And that broke the spell. And that’s when I shoved him away, got up, adjusted my blouse, and stormed out of the room. And walked straight out the front door.
Except that it wasn’t actually the front door. I was, like, new in this flat, and more over-heated than day-before-yesterday’s pizza and I just went through the first door at the end of the corridor, thinking it was the way out.
It was his kid brother’s bedroom. Vhy had told me he was out for the evening, everybody was supposed to be out. But he was right there. Sitting at his PC.
And something totally weird was going on. Actually.
1.5 Vhy
Actually.
That’s like Ruch’s favourite catchword. She uses it like my daadi—bless her soul—used to use ‘Hey Ram’ or the way Americans seem to love to inter-marry the foulest abuses with variations of J.C.’s name.
Actually, this, Actually, that. Actually…? Actually!
Sometimes, when we’re having a bit of a tussle over something, I can get really irritated by her using that word. But this time, she was totally justified.
I was coming out of my room, heading for the front door—because obviously I thought that’s the way she had fled—when I heard her gasp behind me. I turned and saw her standing there, at the door to Mikey’s bedroom, looking in. She had this expression on her face; I don’t know how to describe it.
It was like she had seen a T-Rex lumbering toward her.
She backed away, all the way to the wall of the corridor, banged her head against the wall, just a bit, not really hard. And stopped dead.
“Ruch?” I said, going to her. “Look, I just got carried away, okay. You don’t have to go just because—.”
I still hadn’t caught on to what was going on. But then she turned and grabbed my hand so tight, I knew at once something was off.
“Vaibhav,” she gasped, saying it the way she does when she’s really upset, or emotional. “Your brother…he just…I mean, actually…actually…”
I stared at her, then at the door to Mikey’s bedroom. It was still ajar. I looked at Ruchi again. “Actually what?”
She opened and closed her mouth, like a fish in a bowl. “He…actually…actually…”
See what I mean about the ‘actuallys’? They can totally get on your nerves!
I patted her shoulder, comforting her. Then went to Mikey’s door and pushed it open slowly. I looked in.
There was Mikey’s comp, the monitor displaying the usual dozen-odd browser pages, e-mail clients, direct messaging clients, etc. Probably chatting with fifty different people at the same time, using fifty different handles himself! That was Mikey. The room smelled of stale pizza, spilled cola, and the usual group of Mikey smells. Except for something else. A strange, pungent odour that I couldn’t quite place.
I poked my head all the way into the room and looked around. “Hey, bro? You here?” I was hoping he had been sitting securely in his room all this while. It was one thing to watch Eyes Wide Shut with my gf in the privacy of my room, behind closed doors. And quite another to have my kid brother sneaking around, listening at keyholes—or worse, looking in. Shudder. Or Yucks! As Ruchi would say.
But Mikey wasn’t like that. He wasn’t into things like eavesdropping and peeping through keyholes. Nah. He was glued to his comp, and if he’d gotten up for a minute, it was probably to answer some unavoidable call of nature or to fetch the next pizza or can of cola. Right now he was probably in the loo.
For a second, out the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the image on his monitor change, as if a screensaver had come on, and I glanced back it. But it was the same as before—more or less, I guess. No screensaver, just a bunch of browser pages and chat thingies.
I turned back to Ruchi. She was staring goggle-eyed at me.
“He’s not here,” I said. “Probably in the loo.” Or in the kitchen, getting himself another can.
She put a hand to her mouth. “He was sitting at his comp when I looked in, Vhy. Sitting there. Actually.” She said it once more, just in case I hadn’t got it the first time round: “Actually!”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, more than a little irritated now. I was still flushed from our little, ahem, grope-fest. “He probably stepped out just now.”
“No!” she almost shouted. “I mean just now, just this minute. He was sitting there. And then he wasn’t!”
I stared at her. “He wasn’t?”
She nodded so vigorously, I thought her head might fall off. She started to add something, and then thought better of it for some reason, but I clearly saw her lips move to form the first syllable of, what else, “Actu–.”
There was a sound behind me. I turned and looked into Mikey’s room. He was sitting there at his desk, typing away at his keyboard feverishly, tapping and clicking on his mouse like a net-nerd in the heat of an online auction for Re 1 air tickets. I frowned. He looked like he hadn’t moved for hours.
“Hey, Mikey?” I said, puzzled.
“Yeah,” he said after the usual long Mikey pause to allow time for my words to penetrate through his thick fog of net-nerdiness.
“Where were you just now? Like a moment ago?”
“Here,” he said shortly. That’s Mikey, my bro, man of few words. Few spoken words.
“No, I mean, when you got up and left your comp just now, where were you? In the loo?” He couldn’t have been out of the room, obviously, because Ruchi and I were standing right here. “Or the balcony?” Though that sounded stupid the minute I said it—why would Mikey go to the balcony?
He turned slightly, just enough so I could see his partial profile. In the light of the monitor he looked a bit less chubby than usual—probably the angle or the light. “Never got up. Never went anyplace. Sitting right here for the past hour and a half.” He paused. “Since the pizza arrived.” He added after a moment: “Get the door, will you? And get a life.”
I shut Mikey’s bedroom door slowly. When it clicked softly, Ruchi flinched.
I turned and stared at her. I was starting to understand why she was so freaked.
“Ruchi….When I looked into the room just now…Mikey…He wasn’t there just a minute ago, right? He wasn’t sitting at his desk, right?”
She shook her head. What had she said when I found her in the passage? “Just now, just this minute. He was sitting there. And then he wasn’t!”
And now he was sitting there again. As if he’d never gotten up at all—and he even said he hadn’t gotten up. And I didn’t see why he would be lying—or how he could be lying. I was standing right here when he re-appeared again at his comp, after all. I would have seen or heard something if he had come from the bathroom and sat down at his desk.
Which left only one explanation: Mikey had disappeared from his chair, and then reappeared moments later.
Actually.
1.6 Ruchi
Actually, that wasn’t the whole story. After we went back to Vhy’s room and sat and talked about it for a bit—and I mean, talked, okay, no hanky panky stuff—I told him to stop and rewind.
“Which part?” he asked, puzzled.
“The part when you looked into Mikey’s room and saw his comp. What was on his monitor?”
He shrugged. “The usual thingies. Net stuff.”
I shook my head. “I saw something else. Actually.”
He frowned, with a trace of irritation. “Like what?”
I shivered. “I don’t know. Some kind of interface. It was all black, with white lettering and red lettering, but it wasn’t like the usual html page, you know what I mean? It was like, I don’t know, a video playing.”
He turned to look at the door of his room, thinking. “Maybe it was a video. He plays a lot of heavy metal and punk rock videos while chatting; some of those are really whacked stuff.”
“Maybe,” I said reluctantly, “but I think this was something else. I saw a word, big letters, Portal, I think…no, with a V. Yes, actually, V.”
“Vortal?” he asked, crinkling his forehead the way he does when he’s getting one of his migraines.
“Yeah! Actually! Vortal, that was it. What is that anyway?”
He rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, massaging it. “I don’t know…I’ll ask my Dad later.” He shook his head. “Anyway. When you saw this Vortal thingie…where was Mikey?”
I remembered and shuddered again. “That was when I saw him…you know.”
“Disappear?”
I nodded, swallowing. Suddenly I realized my throat was parched. “He was there when I looked in and I was just going to say I was sorry for barging in like that, and then, he just…vanished…actually…and that’s when I was left looking at monitor and saw that word.”
“Vortal,” he said, tonelessly. After a moment, he said, “Was it like, a very dark screen, blinking very fast, almost like a hypnotic rhythm…?”
“Exactly! You saw it?”
He shook his head, rubbing his face. “I don’t know. I thought I saw something when I was looking around his room, but when I turned back…” He sighed. “Listen to us. This is crazy. It’s impossible. I mean, we couldn’t have seen what we saw. Mikey couldn’t have vanished and then reappeared like that. There must be some kind of logical explanation.”
“Yeah? Like what?” I sounded angrier than I meant to, but it was so like Vhy to just brush me off. If he hadn’t seen Mikey not in his chair and then back in his chair again, we probably wouldn’t even be having this conversation, and that realization bugged the hell out of me.
He looked up at me like he was angry and sad both at once. He saw that I was bugged and backed off. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
We talked some more and then I saw the time and had to vanish myself. I was going out of his room, and he stopped me and took hold of me and kissed me, real tender-like, and said, “Sorry I got carried away before.”
When he’s nice like that, and gentle, it really makes me melt, like ice-cream on a hot sunny afternoon. So I kissed him back. And he kissed me back again. And before I knew it, we were like, melting together. Never heard the front door opening, footsteps, nothing.
The next thing we know, someone was clearing her throat like, so loudly, she sounded like she was gargling Wokadine—I know, because I had to gargle that horrid iodine-tasting stuff when I had a bad throat last summer and it was like yuckville.
Vhy and I broke it off right away, and looked around, wiping our mouths guiltily.
His elder sis, Viveka, was standing there, one hand on her hip and eyebrows raised .
“Hi, guys,” she said. “Having fun?”
She sounded p’d off.
I left Vhy to make the lame excuses. And left. Haven’t been back since.
VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE is a complete fantasy adventure in one book, as well as the first of a series, The Vortal Codex. It is also directly related to my Ramayana Series, Gods of War series, and other series. Signed copies of the limited edition large paperback are available at Rs 400 per copy, delivery by courier free anywhere in India.
Click here to continue reading VORTAL:Shockwave
Click here to order VORTAL:Shockwave within India.
Overseas deliveries are currently not being offered.
EPIC ENDING: Vengeance of Ravana and Sons of Sita conclude The Ramayana Series
As many of you already know, about a year ago I realized I had to publish the last two parts of my Ramayana Series before allowing my Mahabharata and Krishna series to be published.
My reasons are explained in an introductory essay included in both the books, which are titled VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series and SONS OF SITA: Book 8 of The Ramayana Series.
These two books shall be collected later into a hardcover omnibus volume titled KING OF DHARMA: Part 4 of The Ramayana Series completing and concluding the series definitively. There will be no further volumes in the Ramayana Series.
However – and this is crucial – the story itself continues directly in The Krishna Coriolis and is also connected to my other series which began with Gods of War, VORTAL: Shockwave, the upcoming comic series Sword of Dharma, the upcoming ITIHASA and INDUS RISING series, and of course, my long-awaited WiP (Work in Progress), the Mba.
To know how and why, you will have to read the same introduction I just mentioned. Those of you who have been familiar with my original EPIC INDIA LIBRARY plan which I outlined way, way back in 2001, even before Prince of Ayodhya was published will know that this is all part of that great concanetation. 
VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series
was available for pre-order in an exclusive signed & personalized, limited-run hardcover edition upto 15th November 2009. Pre-orders are now closed. The mass market paperback edition will be published by Penguin.
Vengeance of Ravana: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#5
FOUR
Bharat saw the sword turn at the very last instant.
His mace was already deployed, held in an overhand grip and swinging downwards and to the right, aiming for his opponent’s right shoulder. It was impossible for him to stop the momentum and swing it again in time to thwart the oncoming sword thrust. Nor would the bulbous head of the mace make contact with its target in time to prevent him, Bharat, from being pierced. His opponent had gambled his own right shoulder, possibly more, on delivering this thrust; Bharat’s mace would meet its mark and certainly wound, maim, disable, perhaps even permanently cripple the man. But not quickly enough to prevent him from sticking Bharat in a vital organ. For by turning that blade at the last instant, he was aiming precisely at the fleshy area between Bharat’s ribs and hipbone. And from the angle at which the blade was aimed, the point would enter Bharat’s flesh just below his lowest rib, penetrating sharply upwards, deeply inwards, slicing through his liver. A fatal wound. All the vaids in Ayodhya would not be able to save him from succumbing to that one. Bharat had seen enough men stuck in the liver to know their fate from just the shade of blood that seeped out: rich, liver-dark blood, fecund with the body’s densest nutrients and life-energy.
All this he realized in the flash of an instant when he glimpsed the sword turn: it unreeled before his mind like a long scroll abruptly unfurled, the permutations, combinations, possibilities. It all added up to one simple conclusion, reached almost instantly: Bharat was a dead man.
Even as his veteran warrior’s instincts flashed this conclusion on the unrolling reel of his thoughts, the prince of Ayodhya still found himself admiring the audacity of the move.
It was a bold, impudent action: the man was willing to have his own shoulder, possibly even his collarbone and part of his rib cage, shattered by a direct, brutal blow from a twenty kilo mace. All in order that he might despatch Bharat with a fatal wound. Even in that split second it took him to size up the threat, to weigh the possibilities and outcome, Bharat found himself admiring the man’s gumption. A mace blow to the shoulder was nothing to shake off; it would be far more painful than Bharat’s own wound, if considerably less life-threatening. In short, the man had won the fight. He had put himself out of action, but he had finished off Bharat. No question about it at all.
Or at least, he would have done so. If he had been able to follow through on his bold action.
To the men watching the fight–several dozen of them, all burly, powerfully muscled macers and swordsmen, all sweaty and mud-caked from their own sessions in the fighting field, for they had been at it since before dawn–there was no conceivable way that Bharat could avoid the lethal sword strike now. Several of them winced, grimaced or otherwise failed to conceal their distaste at the sight of a fellow kshatriya suffering such an awful blow, that too their own prince as well as their guru in warcraft–even as they admired the swordsman’s brilliant last-second twist and turn. None of them, certainly not Bharat himself, had seen that sudden twist of the sword coming, or deemed it possible. But that was because no hale and hearty soldier willingly risked certain bodily harm to his own person, possibly even permanent disability, merely to despatch a single opponent. It was one thing to be brought down by a superior opponent; it was a completely different thing to bring down an opponent by a manoeuvre that caused grave bodily harm to oneself. If this had been a battlefield bout, after wounding Bharat fatally the man would have been down on the field, gravely injured, unable to move or fight thereafter. For him, the battle would be over, possibly even the war. There was no point to such a desperate manoeuvre. It was not the way of a kshatriya.
It was the way of an assassin.
A fanatical attacker with one mission and one only: to slay his opponent. Whatever the cost.
That was the reason why the attacker didn’t care about being injured, crippled even. He was here to die anyway: to sacrifice his life in order to achieve his mission, to kill Bharat.
All this happened in the blink of an eye: the turn of the blade, Bharat’s grasping of the inevitable consequence of this tactic, the watching crowd’s realization of the same deadly fact, and Bharat’s realization of what this implied.
And then the blade struck. Flesh.
Bharat’s flesh.
Pierced. Blood. Spurting. Skin. Tearing. Pain. Blazing. Muscle. Crying Out.
Time fragmented into shards, like shattered glass frozen at the instant of explosion. A stream of water being poured from a skinbag into a horse trough seemed to stay suspended in mid-air. A bird in flight, overhead, glimpsed from the corner of Bharat’s eye, seemed locked into immobility. A horse neighing and starting to buck, froze motionless. The wrangler pouring water into the trough, staring wide-eyed, mouth parted to reveal gawky, misshapen teeth. A bar of sunlight, reflecting off the armoured shoulderpiece of one of the mace-men watching from the sidelines, seemed to halt before touching the ground. Motes of dust dancing in the bar of sunlight, a horsefly, particles of bloodspray–my bloodspray, he realized with a distant, dim detachment–hung in the stunned silence of the moment, and Bharat felt the cocoon of pure, perfect warlust grip the universe itself in a tight godlike fist, slowing down time to a crawl, freezing nature herself, until he felt as if he alone could move through this silent tableau at will, slicing sunlight into strips if he desired, piercing a drop of water with the tip of a blade, sending an arrow whirling into the eye of a bird…felt in this sacred moment of moments as if he ruled time, gravity, and all forces of nature, and was master of atoms and elephants alike, lord of creation–and destruction.
It was sorcery, pure and simple.
Yet it had not been achieved by the recitation of any ‘magic’ mantra. Or by the infusion of any potion, the recitation of any spell, the casting of any runes.
It was a feat he had acquired mastery of through fourteen long years of hardwon practice, combat, warfare…fourteen long, hard, bitter years. Even more, if you counted the years of training under Maha-guru Brahamarishi Vashishta in the gurukul as a young boy, the adolescent years of constant practice in the palace courtyard and fighting fields. The years he had spent struggling to keep pace with, match, and then outmatch the undisputed champion of Ayodhya, winner of every individual event in every sporting contest he participated in, his own brother. Rama. And struggle he did, not because he resented his brother’s inherent superiority in all warriorlike activities and sport, but because he desired to be Rama. To see the same light in his father’s eyes when he looked at the eldest of the four sons of Dasaratha. To hear the crowd roar as deafeningly as it roared for Rama. It was not that Maharaja Dasaratha, or anyone else, loved Bharat, Shatrugan or Lakshman any less than they did Rama, it was simply that they adored Rama more than they could possibly adore any other being. The irony was, so did Bharat himself. How could he not? Rama was perfection incarnate, or as close to it as it was humanly possible to be, and yet call oneself human.
And so he had striven to become more than human. In all things, but most especially, in the realm of the warrior. Not just on the playing field, but on the battlefield.
And in these past years, since Rama’s exit into exile, as Bharat had resided at Nandigram, preferring to manage the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom of Kosala from that humble village rather than from the great seat of political power that was Ayodhya, he had had occasions innumerable to hone those skills, to polish the edge of that blade into perfection. For the time for playing fields had passed with the passing of Rama into exile. And Ayodhya had entered into a new age, a darker, more daunting age of constant threat, fears, doubts, internal strife, external assaults and more physical threat and challenge than was usual for an apparent time of peace. It had been the hardest fourteen years of Ayodhya’s existence, even harder than the time of the Last Asura War, because the threat was not as obvious and externalized as it had been then, it was an insidious, internalized, constant and unceasing stress that had at times threatened to tear apart the very fabric of this great city-state and the kingdom at large. The enemy within.
And it was that same enemy that had now struck at Bharat again.
In that instant when the blade penetrated Bharat’s flesh, he slipped instantly into this private space, this shell of invisible armour he had designed and crafted himself over the past near-decade and a half that he had acted as regent of the kingdom in Rama’s stead, withstanding everything a king could be expected to endure, and then some, all without even the privilege of wearing the crown whose thorns pierced his head. He had learned how to do this and had done it over and over again, to great effect. In a way, he was known for it. And feared. They called it “Bharat’s Wall”, and kshatriyas who had watched him fight, even Shatrugan who had watched him at such times, spoke of it afterwards in reverential, glaze-eyed terms, as if wishing they could attain such a lofty level of skill themselves.
And now, as Bharat moved as easily as a bird through smoke in the extreme superstate of awareness that he attained at such instants, he saw that same glazed look on his opponent’s face. For the man had come so far, achieved so much more than what the other assassins before him had achieved–the closest before had merely been able to fire an arrow from a rooftop ten yards away the last time–and had executed a move so brilliantly conceived and executed that even Bharat had been admiring it ruefully only a moment ago.
But now, the man knew, and his face reflected this knowledge, he had failed.
Bharat moved through the silence like a knife through silk, cutting time and space as easily as that polished blade sliced fabric, and felt the tip of the sword pass through the outermost layer of the skin over his ribcage, scraping agonizingly against and scoring his lowest two ribs–a tiny spurt of blood, a searing heat as the tight band of muscle was severed at that point–and emerged without having penetrated through the flesh itself, without having attained its intended goal, his vital organ.
And the man’s eyes had widened, his mouth opened wide in dismayed snarl, even as he realized he had been thwarted. Impossible. Undoable. And yet. And yet.
The moment unfroze. Time unlocked. Gravity reclaimed her rightful power.
And Bharat let the hand carrying the mace complete its trajectory, the weight of the heavy weapon, specially customized, engraved and tooled for him according to his precise specifications based on years of mace-fighting experience, carrying his arm into an angle impossible for any human body to sustain, and he felt the agonizing wrench of his right shoulder dislocating from its socket, a sensation like hot knives tearing their way out of his shoulder, screaming to break free. The mace lost its momentum and slumped, thumping the assassin lightly on the muscled bicep of his arm, hard enough to hurt and leave a bruise for days, but not hard enough to smash bone and rend flesh. Then his hand, already falling to hang limply by his side, lost its grip on the handle of the beautiful hand-crafted weapon, made in a tiny hamlet near Nandigram by an old PF veteran with only one arm and one functional eye, and the companion of many combats fell with a dusty thud to the ground. The assassin, who by rights ought to have been sprawled on the same ground with a shattered shoulder at least, remained standing, staring in disbelief at Bharat. For all his shrewd ingenuity and boldness in that manoeuvre, the one thing the man had not come prepared for was the possibility that his target would risk a move as bold, as audacious as his own, and allow himself to suffer injury in order to accomplish his mission: to survive.
The assassin had turned his blade, risking being maimed or crippled, in order to deal Bharat a fatal wound.
Bharat had countered his attempt by turning his mace, a far heavier, unwieldier, and more difficult weapon to manoeuvre in such a fashion, and had knowingly dislocated his own shoulder, in order to avoid the assassin’s fatal strike. It had been a breathtaking counter-move, the more so for the speed with which Bharat had seen the unexpected threat–an assassination attempt by a familiar practice partner in the middle of a practice bout–had sized it up precisely, and had then executed a counter-manoeuvre that perfectly thwarted the attempt. It was one the kusalavya bards would be reciting verses about in wayside ashramas for decades to come.
The assassin had failed. His blade had merely nicked Bharat’s skin and scored his ribs lightly, a mere trifle for a kshatriya of Bharat’s veteran status and record. He had suffered worse injuries during practice sessions, which this was supposed to have been before his opponent turned out to have a different agenda.
Bharat had succeeded and though his shoulder screamed agony at this moment, he knew he had no time to waste. The other warriors, alert enough to have seen exactly what had happened, and to have reacted instantly–even now they were leaping the rope ring and swarming to Bharat’s aid–were too far away to be of real use in the few instants he knew he had left to act. Shatrugan was at their head, bellowing a cry of rage and vengeance as he sped with frightening swiftness, dust churning in the wake of his bare feet, his javelin held menacingly low by his side, his eyes wide and furious, his teeth bared and flashing in the early morning sunlight, sweat-oiled muscles working powerfully, for he had just finished his own session with another practice partner. But they would all be too late, much too late. For such matters were decided, like all truly important matters usually were, in the space of a blink of an eye. Already, Bharat sensed, the assassin’s sword was moving again, turning now to the most inevitable next target: not Bharat himself, for that horse had fled already, that opportunity lost, but towards his own naked throat.
Bharat turned and with one smooth motion, grasped at the man’s wrist. But both men’s bodies, naked except for grimy once-white langots, were slippery with sweat and dust, and his grip slid inches upwards, to the man’s forearm. Bharat’s intention was to twist the wrist, break it if possible, and cause the sword to fall. Instead, his hand slipped up to the forearm and succeeded only in shifting the angle of the blade by an inch or so.
The man’s sword, instead of penetrating his throat dead centre as intended, slashed it diagonally. Close enough to serve its purpose. The result was instantaneous. An explosion of blood from the abruptly severed artery splattered Bharat and then Shatrugan, who reached them only a moment after, and the man fell to the ground, already shuddering in his death throes. Bharat tried to bunch his arm into a fist and failed, feeling only a sense of helpless agony in the disabled limb. He had wanted the assassin for questioning and that was impossible now. The man would be dead in moments with that wound.
Shatrugan and he watched helplessly as the assassin bled to death, his blood spreading to stain the dust of the fighting field. Shatrugan knelt down to examine the man more closely, in case he may bear some clue to his identity or affiliation – unlikely, but still worth giving a once-over. The other kshatriyas who practised routinely with them daily, their closest and most trusted war-comrades, stood around, watching. Several of them spat in disgust. The assassin was well known to them all, had caroused and drunk and fought beside them on a dozen occasions over the last year and a half; this had been a long-planned and meticulously executed infiltration and assassination attempt. Only the new buck-toothed novice to the royal syce came running to gawk. Others on the practice field, after a brief pause to take in what had happened, continued as before. This was, after all, not the first time this had happened. Ever since Rama had gone into exile fourteen years ago, Bharat had experienced his share of assassination attempts. There were always people who blamed Bharat for Rama’s banishment; not entirely incorrect, since it had been for Bharat’s sake that his mother Kaikeyi had demanded that Rama be banished. But once he had settled in at Nandigram, making it clear that he had no intention of seating himself on the throne until Rama’s return from exile, the attempts had reduced in frequency and had finally ceased. If anything, over time, he had come to earn the respect of Rama’s supporters, who held up his example as the story of the ‘perfect brother’, whatever that might mean. And in time, even those supporters had begun to attend him at Nandigram, accepting him grudgingly as Rama’s regent.
But since Rama’s return from exile, the assassination attempts had begun again. This was the third in as many days. And it was certainly not the last.
He bent down, wincing at the sharp knife of pain in his shoulder, picked up the fallen mace, and was about to turn away when Shatrugan called out softly.
He frowned at the expression on his brother’s face. “What?”
Shatrugan glanced around briefly then moved his head closer to Bharat, close enough so that only he could hear him. “He’s an Ayodhyan.”
Bharat stared at him, trying to think through the implications of that simple assertion.
He did not ask Shatrugan how he could be so certain of the fact; the how of it was less important than the fact itself. It meant that the people of Ayodhya – or some of them at least – wanted Bharat dead. Which in turn meant…he didn’t even like to speculate on what it meant. It was the legacy of fourteen years of infighting, politicking and a messy mix of resentment, accusation, allegation, commercial rivalries, old tribal feuds and internal dissension.
Shatrugan held out something, an amulet of some sort dangling from a black thread.
“This was around his neck.”
Bharat didn’t touch or take the charm, merely glanced at it. Even so, it sent a chill through his body. Despite the warming morning sun, the throbbing heat in his shoulder, the searing rakes where the blade had scored his flesh, he still felt a chill when he looked at the iconography of the little amulet. He had seen its like before, if not this exact same design. It was based on ancient symbols from an earlier age; an age before civilization, cities and sanatan dharma. This particular combination of symbols was easy enough to read if unusual. It merely inverted the usual honorific of the Suryavansha Ikshwaku dynasty, piercing it with a ragged blade. The meaning was crude but clear: Death to the Dynasty that rules Ayodhya. Death to Bharat and Rama and all their bloodline.
He realized he had been wrong. The assassination attempt was not directed at him alone: it was directed at his entire family, clan, and by extension, the entire nation-state that they governed and protected. It was only one part of a far larger mission of total annihilation.
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series within India.
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series outside India.
Vengeance of Ravana: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#4
THREE
The traveller reached the top of the rise and paused.
The view was breathtaking. Ayodhya the unconquerable lay spread before him like a bagful of precious gems carelessly strewn across the lush green carpet of the Sarayu valley. The river herself wound her way sinously around the natural hillocks and rocky banks upon which the city’s architects had built their structures, integrating their city planning with the natural lay of the land.
At a glance, the city itself seemed as much a part of the vast valley, as if it had always existed, and always would. It was the Arya way to build and live in harmony with nature, for all things were the fruit of Prithvi Maa, and only by her gentle grace and forbearance could mortalkind survive on this realm. Yet even judged by that standard, Ayodhya’s city planning and architecture were a sight to behold; a melding of man-made aesthetic and natural beauty that made one want to gaze for hours.
The traveller did not have hours to spare.
Already he feared he might be too late. It had been several days since Rama and his entourage had returned to Ayodhya. He had set out within moments of the end of the war of Lanka, knowing full well that speed was of the essence, but the Ayodhyans had travelled by Pushpak, and even his swiftest walking stride could hardly match the blurring speed of the celestial vehicle. Now, he fretted that he might have arrived too late, that the fateful decision that he sought to prevent might already have been taken, and events set into motion that could not be undone. He prayed it was not so, that his long arduous trek had not been in vain. For the event he sought to prevent would alter not only the course of his own life, that of Rama and those near and dear to him, but the lives of all presently alive, mortal and otherwise. Its impact would be felt at the end of the farthest corridors of history, in unimaginable ways at inconceivable future times. He used the brief moment of respite that he had allowed himself now to send up one final prayer that he might yet be in time to prevent that terrible turn of events.
He took up his stout staff, worn and battered from the long walk, and numbed his mind to the ache and pain from his bruised feet. They were unaccustomed to such travel, for the past year had seen him engaged more in meditation and contemplation rather than physical activity, and his body, so long abused by harsh living and the numerous injuries, scars, old wounds and fresh marks of a violent existence, had only just begun to soften and grow accustomed to the peaceful ascetic life when he had risen to undertake this mission. He had pushed it hard these past several days, walking constantly with only the barest minimum of rest, sleep and frugal nourishment. Roots, herbs, a fruit or two…he had eaten little, grown even leaner than whip-thin, and he longed for a good hot meal and a pallet to rest his weary head.
But there was no time for eating or rest.
He had work to do. Vital work. A Queen to warn. A King to appeal to. And, if his foreboding was right, a kingdom to save–perhaps even an entire civilization.
And to achieve any of those, he had to reach on time. Before that fateful decision was made. Before the die was cast whose rattling echo would haunt the halls of itihasa for millennia to come.
If he reached even an instant too late, then this breathtaking view of great, noble Ayodhya would be worth no more than a mouthful of ash. Ayodhya herself, the unconquerable, would finally fall. Not to an army of asuras, or even mortal enemies. But to the greatest enemy of all. The enemy within.
He gripped the staff tightly, marked the progress of the narrow winding pathway down the side of the steep slope that led downwards to the raj-marg on the north bank of the river, and began to descend.
As he descended, the sun appeared over the eastern rim of the valley, sending blades of golden light across the perfectly blended amalgam of mortal and natural aesthetic achievement that the world knew as the capitol of the Kosala nation, home of the Ikshwaku Suryavansha dynasty, seat of the sunwood throne. Sunlight glittered on the tips of the Sarayu’s wash, caught the wings of butterflies traipsing through the North bank woods where a certain crown prince had once whiled away youthful hours in daydreaming and kairee-munching, blissfully unaware of the years of toil and violence that lay ahead. It caught the tips of blades of new grass shoots emerging from the rich alluvial soil of the valley where a nest of baby kachuaas swarmed blindly, tiny mottled shells clattering over one another as they sluggishly fought their way toward food, light, water, survival. With the new day, the struggle for life and survival had begun anew.
The traveller strode toward Ayodhya.
As the traveller completed his descent and reached the raj-marg, turning his aspect and his feet in the direction of the city’s looming first gate, a figure crouched upon a high branch on the far bank of the river watched him curiously. It had observed the stranger from the moment he had appeared over the rise and stood, contemplating the view, for if there was one thing that the being that crouched upon the tree did exceedingly well, it was to watch, to observe, to spot what most others might fail to notice, or notice too late. He knew that the sentries posted by the city did an exceedingly good job of patrolling and defending the outskirts of the city and its environs, and that they were especially alert in these warlike times, but even their garuda-sharp eyes could not cover every inch of terrain at once, and their disciplined quad-sweeps could be bypassed by a shrewd intruder or two–not for long, but it was possible. The watcher did not brook martial discipline much, particularly the variety favoured by humans; he had found that most conflicts were won by a combination of shrewdness, stealth, and ferocious explosive force applied at the least expected time and place. He had enough first-hand experience to know whereof he spoke. He also had enough first-hand knowledge of the wiley ways and methods of foe that fought not by the Arya rules of war nor cared for the kshatriya code of conduct. He did not know of any such foe still extant, but that was beside the point. He had made a vocation of watching and observing, and old habits died hard, especially among his species.
That was what found him here this morning, and every morning, routinely patrolling the outskirts of the city in a route so random and individualistic that it was perhaps more effective than the regularly timed quad-sweeps of the Ayodhyan defense system. It was this idiosyncractic loping through the trees–for that was his preferred method of ambulation–in a zigzag pattern completely unpredictable and unique to each new day, that had brought him this glimpse of the traveller on the rise. The traveller presently vanishing into the dusty haze that overhung the raj-marg in the wake of his swift progress. The watcher made no attempt to follow the traveller, or to seek out the nearest quad of PFs making their methodical sweeps of the area–he scented there was one not three hundred yards away, working their way through a thicket on the same rise the traveller had descended from only moments ago. He knew the traveller would be accosted in moments by either the PF regiment permanently stationed on the raj-marg or the bristling gate-watch who were ever-vigilant under the command of newly elevated General Drishti Kumar. It was not the traveller himself that concerned him now; it was the reason for the traveller’s visit.
As it so happened, he knew the traveller. Not personally, for he had never had occasion to meet the man face to face. But he had watched him fight alongside his lord and lady for years in the forests of Janasthana, during those harsh years of his lord’s exile, watched him risk life and limb countless times in the service of Rama’s war against the rakshasas of the region. Watched him fight fiercely, despatch any number of the brutal creatures that had plagued Rama and his companions since the feral cousin of Ravana, Supanakha, had maddened her cousins and their clans into declaring war against Rama after he spurned her. Yes, the watcher had watched as this man, this traveller now come to Ayodhya, had fought as fiercely, brutally, bestially, as any rakshasa himself, driving fear into the hearts of even his own exiled fellows. For while they fought to live, to survive, this one had fought as if driven by some inner demon, a rakshasa of his own making, and inflicted more violence and harm upon his foe than was necessary to simply survive: he fought to decimate, to destroy, to eliminate completely.
Of course, that was in the past. For the watcher knew that this man had parted ways with Rama after the battle of Janasthana, and had heard that he had dropped the sword and taken up the cloth, so to speak, turning from the physical rigors of warriorhood to the spiritual rigors of priesthood. He had heard of the immensely disciplined tapasya undertaken by this former bandit and bearkiller, of the enlightenment he had received while meditating within a nest of fire ants–a story that was fast becoming a minor legend in some parts–and of the life of peace and philosophy he had taken up with enthusiasm thereafter. But all this had been received in bits and pieces, and he had not paid much attention to it, being somewhat preoccupied with an war to wage, and a considerable army to manage, several armies as a matter of fact. And he had never liked and trusted the man himself back when he was a warrior in Rama’s camp of outlaws and exiles in Janasthana, had felt the intrinsic distrust and burning hatred of any human who had made a practise of slaying creatures of the land. Bearkiller, the traveller had been at one time, long before he joined Rama’s ragged band of exiles, and his face had borne permanent testimony of ravages wrought by a much earlier attack by one of the same species that had lent him his name and earlier reputation. The ugly face-altering scars that disfigured his visage were now mostly concealed under a dense growth of beard and an unruly head of hair. The muscular body that had displayed the scars of countless conflicts as well as earlier encounters with the furry nemesis that lent him his nickname was now covered with a red ochre garb that flowed from head to foot; along with the wildwood staff he gripped in one hand, it lent him the appearance of a tapasvi sadhu quite convincingly.
But the watcher was not convinced.
To him, the man that he had first heard called Bearface, later, Ratnakaran, and now Valmiki, was not one to be trusted entirely. He did not trust his motives, the extreme alteration in his appearance and vocation, or his reasons for coming here to Ayodhya now, at this particular juncture in time and history.
So, while he had chosen to let him pass, to be dealt with by the PFs and gate-watch, he intended to race back to the palace ahead of him. To alert his lord, Rama.
Yes, that was what he would do, must do.
His mind made up, the vanar named Hanuman uncurled his long muscular tail from the branch on which he had sat perched, contemplating, until now, and with one supple surge of his powerful muscles, propelled himself from that sala tree to the next. In moments, he was a blur loping and swinging through the trees, moving not unlike the smaller, less-muscled simians that his kind were often mistaken for by foreigners, yet with a sinuous grace and sheer power that no monkey could ever emulate, moving faster through the trees than most land animals across the ground.
As he raced through the trees, startling squirrels and confusing birds by flitting past them even before they were able to burst into flight, the sun crested the top of the craggy northeastern ranges and shone its golden beam into the valley of the Sarayu, sending its message of warmth and brightness into crannies and crevices, stirring sleeping reptiles and compelling creatures of the earth to emerge blinking sleepily in the light of a new day.
Click here to continue reading VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series within India.
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series outside India.
Vengeance of Ravana: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#3
TWO
He fell up instead of down. It felt so natural, it took him a moment to realize what was happening. But his senses already knew what his mind had yet to comprehend.
The weight of the earth, the incessant loving tug of Prithvi maa, keeping her children close to herself, was gone. In its place was another pull, drawing him up to the sky. He looked down, and saw the courtyard far below, receding fast. He saw the balcony on which he had stood a moment ago, diminishing at astonishing speed, then the top of the palace, gleaming quietly resplendent in the moonlight, the Seer’s Tower beside it, then the palace complex whole, and then the entire royal enclave…soon the city itself was falling away far below, reduced to a sprinkling of fireflies upon a green patch surrounded by darkness. The speed at which he was falling–if falling was the right word–was astonishing. He felt the wind rushing past, drumming in his ears, felt the night grow colder around him, enveloping him in its dark embrace, his unclothed skin giving up its hard-won warmth reluctantly.
He looked up. And saw the sky. But it was not the sky he had seen above the palace only moments earlier. That had been dark in the usual natural way, a deep midnight blue, almost the exact shade the royal artists used to euphemistically portray the colour of his black skin, a smattering of cottony clouds drifting majestically, backlit by a resplendent moon. That had been placid, peaceful, almost langurously lazy.
This was something else altogether: a carpet of boiling, raging black smoke–an ocean, really, for it stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. He turned his head and saw that the moon, his other namesake, had been banished beneath the ocean of roiling cloudwaves. As Rama meant black, and Chandra meant moon, so Rama Chandra could be interpreted to mean black moon or dark moon. And so his mother had teased him as an infant in arms, singing lullabies to him of her own casual composition, weaving the words ‘dark moon’ into the homespun lyrics. He had carried those lullabies and the memory of her love and warmth and maternal perfume with him through some of the darkest nights of his life. Yet it was only now, for the first time, that he saw a true dark moon, submerged beneath the ocean of clouds, yet still blazing luminously, like a gleaming silver coin caught by a ray of sunlight at the bottom of a murky pool. It seemed to pulse sporadically, like a heart filling and emptying with pale white light instead of blood, and even through the raging cloudstorm-ocean, its light illuminated everything, searing through the dense frenzy of the smoke waves. As he looked directly at it, it blazed now, like a maddened jeweled eye set deep in the flesh of the forehead of some vengeful deva. The air, Himalaya-cold now, made his skin prickle apprehensively. He shivered and brought his arms closer to his body, clasping them to his bare chest. It made no difference to the pace of his falling–rising–which was so rapid now that he could barely look up without blinking, so great was the force of wind buffeting him. It roared in his ears like the ocean on the shores of Lanka.
He glanced down again, and saw that the lights of Ayodhya had vanished entirely, and the very bowl of the earth itself lay revealed beneath him now, like a dark ball veined with emerald and sapphire threads thickly intertwined. His breath, smoking now as it left his shivering lips, caught in his chest to see it so far removed. Surely even garudas never flew so high. Far in the north, he could glimpse the peaks of mountains as well, and he was much higher than the loftiest peak now…and still flying upwards at tremendous speed. Except, he was not actually flying. There was no conscious volition in the act, nor was he doing anything to make this miracle of flight possible. Unlike Hanuman, who could pound the ground, take a mighty leap skywards and shatter the protective shackles of Prithvi maa, he had no power to soar bird-like. He was simply falling, it was just that he was falling upwards instead of down.
He sensed a change in the pace of his falling, a slowing down. It felt like the opposite of falling now, for at the very end of a fall, the earth seemed to rush up to meet you, flying at you like a rushing mass. But as best as he could make out, the cloud-ocean, boiling and raging with purple and gold veins showing through the morass of smoky chaos, seemed to be approaching slower than before rather than faster. A moment later, he was certain of it–his pace had definitely slowed. Shutting his eyes momentarily from the wind, now cold enough that he could feel the prick of icy particles needling his naked skin, he heard it change from a roaring whirlwind to a growling giant, then fade out gradually to a numbing silence. He opened his eyes again to see the approaching closer as he reached the end of his descent–ascent? He felt himself slow until he was almost floating. He opened his arms, bracing himself for impact even though a part of him knew no impact was forthcoming. With an eeiry absence of sound or sensation, he saw his body execute a perfect somersault, feeling no pressure of the earth’s pull–or cloud’s pull, either–and as gently as a feather touching ground, he saw his bare feet come to rest upon the dark purple-black cottony surface of the cloud ocean.
He released a long deep breath and continued looking down for a moment. The substance beneath his feet had no substance to speak of. It was like standing on ground wreathed in dense ankle-depth fog, except that he could feel no ground beneath his bare soles, only a vague sensation of cold wetness. Like standing on dew-wettened grass? No. It was more like the sensation of placing one’s bare foot on the surface of a pond of cool water, feeling the water slap against the sole of the foot, yet holding the foot in mid air so it did not immerse itself into the water. Yes, that came closer to describing how this felt, except that he was standing with all his weight on both feet, and even so, he was not being pushed down through the skin of the water, was in fact, impossibly, able to stay suspended, standing on water–or a cloudbank filled with it.
He took a step or two, mentally bracing himself again, and confirmed it. He could even sense the upsurges and downsurges in the mass of smoke-wreathed fluid through the soles of his feet–for these were monsoon clouds, he felt certain, even though monsoon clouds this pregnant with rain should not have been able to rise this high above the land. Yet the whole thing was incredible. How was he able to walk upon the belly of a cloud? To traipse upside down on the underside of a monsoon cloud, looking up–down?–at the earth itself, far, far below, faintly illuminated by the light of the dark-shrouded moon, a silver-limned orb now hanging suspended in a vast pit of darkness. He had arrived here by falling up, like a wingless bird. Even the unbearable cold, for he could hardly imagine how frigid it must be at this height, had grown bearable somehow; he felt a chill wind wafting across his bare chest and limbs, but he was neither freezing nor severely inconvenienced. It was as if he had simply acclimatised. Even more curious, he was able to breath and move as normal, as if he was on any earthly surface. It was impossible, a dream surely…or a nightmare.
Then he looked around, and saw the shapes coalescing around him, across the seascape of cloud for as far as the eye could see, an army of writhing, threshing, frenetic forms locked in the ugliest dance of all. After a lifetime spent locked in the frenzy of that same mad dance, he knew at once what it was. He was looking at a theatre of war.
Not just any war.
The war of Lanka.
His war. Against the rakshasa hordes of the lord of asuras. The war he had fought to regain his abducted wife Sita.
He was standing on what seemed to be a hillock of cloudy mass, elevated over the rest of the cloud-field. Several yards below him, ranged on every side for as far as his eyes could see, ghostly shapes thrashed and writhed and engaged in mortal combat. His heart clenched as he recognized familiar companions, fallen foes, and identified enough familiar details to know that this was indeed the battle of Lanka taking place once more, this time fought by ghostly replicas of the original combatants but otherwise perfect in every detail. Rakshasas and vanars, bears and rakshasas, and in the distance, even a silhouetted Rama and Lakshman, arrows flying from their two bows as if from a single arrow-machine, raged in blood-lust. It was unnerving, unsettling, to see the carnage that had cost him so dearly repeated once more. The blood and gore and ichor might be vaporous, the figures mere simulacra, but the action and the memories it evoked were all-too real, and awoke terrible dread in his heart. He heard himself moan softly, agonized.
A soft chuckling reverberated in his left ear. He swung around, startled and ready to lash out, bare-handed if need be, prepared for anything except the apparition that appeared.
A man stood beside him. Not a rakshasa with ten heads and legendary sorcerous powers. Not the king of asuras, conqueror of devas and yaksas, terror of the three worlds. Not He Who Makes The Universe Scream.
Not Ravana.
The man who stood before him was no rakshasa or asura. He had two arms, two legs, two eyes, one head…he appeared normal and mortal in every way. He was well-built in a way that clearly indicated he was a kshatriya by profession, well-developed musculature and sharply indented angles that suggested an active and vigorous lifestyle. His bristling oiled moustache was matched by unruly long hair, tamed by a wooden clasp behind his head. He was clad in a simple yet well-woven dhoti and anga-vastra. Even at first glance, there was something about him that instantly caused Rama to associate him with the specific sub-varna of kshatriyas called rakshaks. A sense of coiled power in those heavily muscled limbs and torso, coupled with a relatively less developed lower body suggested that he was more suited to house guarding and site protection than the leaner, more wiry physique suited to the rigors of long travel required of any serving soldier. At best, he could be a mace-wielder, but he lacked the exaggerated shoulders and back muscles that macers were known for. No, Rama thought, all in the space of the time it took him to take in the stranger’s appearance, this was almost certainly a rakshak.
“Who are you?” he asked, on his guard, but not adopting a fighting or defensive stance. There was no sense of threat from the man, no suggestion of impending violence. Still, he was prepared for any sudden move, any sign of treachery. “Where is Ravana?”
The man smiled. There was something not unpleasant about his features, something vaguely familiar, like a family resemblance. He arched his thick eyebrow, his broad, high forehead creasing with a trio of horizontal lines. “After all we have been through together, do you still not know me?”
Rama frowned. He glanced down briefly at the war raging below–or above, depending on your perspective. It was still in furious progress. “I don’t understand. What is this place? How are we able to witness events that have gone before. Why have I been brought here? I heard a voice…Ravana’s voice…it summoned me…” He indicated the ghostly conflict raging around them. “What is this? Sorcery or illusion?” And, with a sudden ferocity that surprised even himself: “Who are you?”
The man’s face re-composed itself into a conciliatory expression. “Patience, Ayodhya-naresh. All will be revealed.”
The man turned and walked away, up the sloping side of the cloud-hillock on which Rama stood. Rama saw now that the hillock rose sharply behind him to ascend upwards into a mist-wreathed darkness. He looked upwards, where the convex bowl of the earth had been only moments earlier, and saw only darkness wreathed in mist. He looked back and saw that the ghostly images of warriors had vanished, leaving only an undulating ocean of dark monsoon cloud, pregnant and heavy with the promise of rain. Apparently, the stranger intended to take him someplace higher up, up some kind of cloud-mountain the top of which was obscured in the strange mist that had sprung up unexpectedly, that was curling around Rama’s ankles and feet now. Rama remained where he was, surprised, and more than a little chagrined. He did not like what he felt; did not want any of this. It felt strange, like a dream that was surreal, exotic, enticing, yet with a constant sense of dread, of mortal threat, lurking behind the strange exoticity. The man stopped when he realized Rama was not following him, and looked back. He was already several yards up the mountain.
“Come,” he said simply. “You do wish to know, don’t you?”
Rama hesitated. Then shrugged. He had awoken to a voice, the voice of his dead arch-enemy. It had summoned him. On the dead rakshasa’s command, he had leaped off the balustrade of his palace verandah. Instead of falling to his death on the tiled courtyard, he had fallen up, to a realm made entirely of clouds. He was looking over a re-enactment of the battle of Lanka, perfect in every detail to his eye. And now a strange man, a rakshak perhaps, was asking him to walk up the side of a cloud-mountain. He may as well follow this madness through to the end, go where this stranger took him and get to the bottom of this mysterious waking dream. He began walking.
The man waited for him to catch up, deferred to him when he approached, making it clear that he was not seeking superiority over Rama, was if anything, being suitably humble before the king of Ayodhya. They walked together across the impossibly solid cloud-field, the slope rising steadily above. They reached the place where the mist curled and clung, obscuring view of what lay beyond and above. He paused. The man paused beside him. He looked back, down, wondering at the battle scene he had seen. He hesitated, not afraid, for fear was a warrior’s most loyal companion, but considering. What sorcery was this? It was like nothing he had heard of or experienced before, there was something totally alien about its nature and deployment. What purpose had the ghostly vision of the Lanka war served?
He looked at the face of the rakshak. The man looked back impassively, yet not unkindly.
“We must go on.” His voice was deep and resonant, and pleasant to the ear. It was the voice of a man whose life had been spent in service to persons such as Rama, a raj-rakshak, a royal guard. Again that sense of maddening familiarity danced at the periphery of Rama’s memory, but he could not place the man, or why he seemed so familiar.
“What lies beyond?” Rama asked, the mist swirling around his feet. It felt neither cold nor wet, simply like a gentle breeze nipping at his ankles.
“The answers to all your questions,” said the man.
Rama stepped forward, into the mist. The man walked beside him.
Together, they passed through.
Click here to continue reading VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series within India.
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series outside India.
Vengeance of Ravana: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#2
PRARAMBHA
ONE
Rama.
Blackness. As impenetrable as a caul over a newborn’s eyes. As dark as his name which meant black, and was given to male infants darker complected than the average dusky skinned Arya male. In his case, so dark that the royal artists often used a deep shade of midnight blue to distinguish his skin, back in the days when things such as portraits had been an insignificant yet inevitable part of his life. Back when he was still a prince, a yuvraj, carefree and happy in the first flush of youth. Before life had turned upon him like a hunting hawk upon its handler and ripped that casual innocence to shreds.
Awaken, Black Prince.
Crow feather. Night shade. Shyam rang. Or his favourite, Kisna. Although Kisna, or Krishna as it was pronounced in commonspeak by those unschooled in Sanskrit highspeech, was as likely to be used for a girl as a boy. Unlike Rama, which was always unquestionably a masculine name, he didn’t know why. Nor was he the first of his name: there were at least three previous Ramas in the Suryavansha Ikshwaku dynasty. And any number across the Arya nations, for dark complexions were common across the length and breadth of this land of the relentless sun.
Enough. I bid you rise…NOW.
A hand not made of flesh and bone grasped him in a vise and hauled him back to consciousness.
He woke, choking, gasping for breath, and leaped to the floor. Reached for his sword. Missing. His bow, arrow, rig. Likewise. His clothing, also gone. Weaponless, naked but for a langot, he spun on the balls of his feet, keenly honed warrior senses alert to attack from any front by any foe.
He was in his bed chamber, the king’s bed chamber, no less. For he was king now in all but name, and after the coronation on the morrow, the title would be his as well. Although it was and perhaps would always be, his father’s bed chamber. It was larger than he had recalled it, certainly far greater in span and length than his own princely chambers back when he had resided here. Although, after 14 years of forest exile, constant battle and rough living off the land, even a woodsman’s hut would seem comfortable. This…this was beyond luxurious; never a poet, he had no words to describe it now.
Marbled floors gleamed by the light of moonshafts falling through latticed windows. Alabaster columns marched down the length of the chamber like stolid sentries perpetually on guard. Statuary cast in ebony, ivory, jade and softwood depicted a variety of devas, auspicious animals, and Ikshwaku ancestors in a variety of postures, every detail precise and perfect. The fingers, arms and necks and anklets of the kings and queens among them glittered with real ornaments of precious metal and stone, kept polished and pristine over centuries. Immense portraits and epic landscapes adorned the vaulting walls, some aspiring to the ceiling a dozen yards above. Richly brocaded tapestries hung in cul de sacs. The lush carpetting yielded to his bare feet like a velvet invitation. Everywhere he turned, seeking, scanning, darkly majestic furnishing gleamed with exquisite artistry and lavish care. The entire vast chamber was redolent of the woody perfume of sandalwood, his favourite aroma.
Yet it was empty, every yard of it. He completed a full circuit of the chamber and stood, puzzled. He had not imagined it. That grasp that tore him away from his dreamy meanderings had been as real as any rough hand laid on his flesh. So had the voice. He stood there in the moonlight, breathing silently. A gust of night wind parted and raised the gossamer curtains, and dried the cooling sweat upon his muscled chest. And slowly, like a debt returned too slowly over too long, it came back to him.
There had been a dream much like this, on a night very similar, a long time ago. Before Lanka. Before the abduction of Sita. Before the rakshasa wars, the exile, the marriage, the battle of Bhayanak-van…before the day, that Holi day, when his life had changed forever, wrenched from its course like a river denied its pathway to the ocean.
A dream of Ravana. Warning him. Threatening. Mocking.
Abruptly, a terror rose in his blood. He spun on quicksilver feet, and in less than a breath’s span, was at the side of the bed he had left only moments ago.
Sita.
The bed raiments were strewn on the side where he had been sleeping. Unaccustomed as he had been to the caress of such fine cloth for so long, he had pushed them away impatiently before falling asleep. But on the side where she had laid herself down, they were gathered and overlapped, and now all he could see was the raiment itself.
A dark dread lay on his heart like a stone. He reached out, willing himself to be steady, and plucked a loose end of the gathered cloth in his hand. Gently, he lifted it, and pulled it away from the bed, bracing himself to find nothing more than a rumpled space where she had lain, still faintly warm with her heat. Gone. Again. Taken.
Instead, he found her. Lying curled beneath the bedclothes like a bird nursing a broken wing. He caught his breath at the sight of her, unable to believe his eyes alone. Still holding the blanket in one hand, he reached down with the other, and gently touched the crook of her arm. He could smell the musky odour of her body, feel the heat gathered beneath the blankets. She stirred in the throes of deep slumber, moaned softly, but did not turn over or rouse. Too exhausted, at the end of her tether. His heart went out to her. If only he could have reached Lanka sooner, if only the war had been less complicated, if only he had used his brahman shakti from the very outset…But he had done what had seemed right, and what had been had been.
He started to lower the cloth then stopped. He watched her a moment. His heart stuck in his throat to see how thin she had grown over the weeks of her captivity, how pale and bony. Bird like. Yet, watching her thus, her faced stripped of all self-control in the langour of sleep, there was something about her face and aspect, an inner glow that belied all the recent hardship, defied the preceding years of tortuous existence, the blood-smirched struggle for survival that had been their way of life for fourteen long years. A proud dignity that still shone on her features, which could not be hidden. It made him want to take her into his arms, to embrace and love forever. She was still the strong, indomitable woman he had fallen in love with and married, those many years past. Neither exile, nor hardship, nor war, nor Ravana had broken her. Nothing could. A bird with a broken wing…indeed. But a Garuda among birds.
He lowered the raiments, replacing the blanket as nearly as he had found them. She had always liked to cover her head while she slept, a habit he could not brook. He would feel suffocated to sleep thus, yet she could not sleep otherwise. And now, he thought with a faint smile as he stepped back from the bed, she could certainly afford to cover herself and sleep thusly; in the finest silks and velvet coverings in the whole wide world.
But not for long.
He spun around, scouring the chamber. After the life he had lived, the things he had seen, there was little that could unnerve him, and yet, some part of him could not accept that this was happening. Ravana is dead. I killed him on the battlefield of Lanka, in full view of both our armies. He sliced the air with his open hand, in the manner he had learned from a dark-skinned fighter from the Kerall waterlands who had fought with him in the wilderness of Janasthana. He could leap twice his own height in the air, and strike with a sword in a full circle before touching ground again. But there was nothing to strike here, no foe to defend against.
“Show yourself,” he snarled, almost beneath his breath.
Where I am now, your weapons and fists can no longer harm me. Yet I can do to you and your’s as I desire. Perhaps I shall start with your wife…
“Craven!” He started to cry out but choked back the shout. He did not want to wake Sita if he could help it. He must draw the bodiless intruder away from her. He drew upon the steel-edged self-discipline that had earned him his formidable reputation, using a pranayam breathing pattern to calm his ragged nerves and soothe his battle-weary muscles. Old guru Vashishta had taught him that yogic breathing pattern; in another lifetime, it now seemed. A happier, youthful time.
Coward, he hissed silently, knowing that he did not need audible speech to be heard by his tormentor. Why do you hide from my sight and seek to taunt me with words? Face me like a warrior if you dare.
A sound in his head, like a chuckle with a hundred echoes.
No.
Not a hundred.
Ten.
Only ten.
If he listened closely with his now fully attentive mind, he could even catch the nuances of those ten different voices, voices he knew so well now from hearing them up close on the field in the crystalline hyper-awareness of battle.
At that moment, the saliva in his mouth began to taste of the coppery tang of blood and he knew then that this was no nightmare; it was indeed Ravana speaking. But how? And more importantly, why?
Why do you think, King of Ayodhya? We have unfinished business.
He spun around on the balls of his feet: This time the voice had seemed to come from just behind his left shoulder. He had even felt the faint heat of voice-breath upon his bare skin. But there was still no one there. No one that could be seen by mortal eyes.
But even the invisible one could be cut by steel if struck at a certain moment, when a particular one of those ten voices was speaking. He did not know how he knew this; he just did. If only he had his sword. He missed it, his constant companion through all his struggles. How could he have let himself be parted from it? Then he recalled. Sumantra had insisted on taking it away, and when he had protested, the aging minister had simply held up the sword in both palms, showing it to Rama. And he had seen, really seen, what a state it was in: blood and gore and bodily fluids and materials had dried and encrusted themselves along its length so many times over that they formed a scabby coating. The hilt was cracked and bent, its jewels long lost in the heat of one of a thousand encounters. The blade was chipped and marred in a hundred places, barely retaining any vestige of its former honed perfection–the once-lethal blade was now little more than a macabre souvenir. That sword, he had realized in an onrush of commingled pride and sadness as he met Sumantra’s heart-rending gaze again, told the history of his struggles more eloquently than any court poet. But now its work was done; it needed to be repaired, and rested, perhaps retired. Not unlike himself.
Except that, unlike the sword, he was still on call, still required to serve. He breathed, drawing energy from the air, in the way that tapasvi sadhus in the deep aranya drew sustenance from the air alone. Breathed and waited.
Finally, as if realizing that he would not be baited into leaping and flailing about, the voice spoke again, and this time, because he was listening intently, he heard the unmistakable inflection: that doubling of tones, like ten men speaking at once yet not quite precisely in unison.
Outside.
He needed no further explanation or command. He moved toward the verandah and exitted the royal chamber to find himself upon a patio lined with flowering plants and stone statuary intertwined with vines and creepers. Here beneath the open sky, the nightwind caressed his naked skin, a vetaal’s lifeless breath. From the vantage point of a royal view, he scanned the sleeping capitol city with a glance. Countless house lights still flickered, even though it was long past the midnight watch, and faint sounds echoed and carried even from the farthest reaches of the great city-state: his people, Ayodhyans, all working to prepare for the grand coronation tomorrow, a few perhaps still celebrating the return of their king.
There was nobody in sight.
Jump.
“What?” he asked, startled. His voice would not carry inside to Sita from here.
Do you still wish to face me like a man? Like a warrior? Then do as I command. Leap from the balustrade.
He let his teeth show, flashing white in his wine-dark face. Do you mistake me for a fool now, Lanka-naresh? Have you forgotten that I brought you down upon the field of battle? Do you really think I will leap to my death at your bidding?
A sound of impatience clicked in his mind.
Mortal unbeliever. If I wanted to kill you by stealth I would have done so at any time I chose. The fact that you yet live is proof enough that I have bigger plans for you than a quick blade in the dark–or a short fall to a brain-crushing end.
Now it was his turn to chuckle scornfully. “Why should I–?” he began then stopped. Why should I trust you? he was about to say. But the question was an absurd one. He could not trust the lord of rakshasas at all, of course. And yet. And yet. He sensed the asura spoke truly; what he said was beyond dispute. Simply luring Rama to a suicidal fall might serve a lesser being’s thirst for revenge. It was not Ravana’s way.
And yet, there was some game here that he could not fathom. Starting with the most startling question of all: How could Ravana be speaking to him if Ravana was dead?
There was only one way to find out.
He leaped up to the balustrade, the action as lithe and easy as it had been in his youth, despite his wounds and aches, despite his hardships, despite everything. What he had lost in age and agility, he had made up for in experience, skill, and the constant relentless use of his body and mind, like a well-used bow grew easier to string and draw over time.
He looked down. The king’s chambers were at the top of the main palace complex, and the drop that lay below him now measured easily a hundred feet. At the bottom lay the closely set flagstones of the innermost courtyard, each a quarter ton of solid rock hauled by elephants all the way from the Karakoram principality. The lights of mashaals gleamed dully on the buffed stone, and he glimpsed sentries patrolling diligently, in larger numbers than was usual owing to the presence of so many high personages tonight, most of all, their long-awaited king and queen. The night wind carried the scents of the city, sometimes pungent, sometimes intriguing. The perfumes of Ayodhya, dressing to celebrate her king’s return.
“Jump?” he asked. But it was a rhetorical question. He knew the voice that gave the command would not explain or provide reasons: it was a voice accustomed to being obeyed by armies, that spoke to devas and asuras in the same level tone. Jump, it had said. And he grinned wolfishly and decided he would obey. Whatever mystery lay here, it was clear he would not resolve it without taking bold action. As the moments passed and the voice did not speak again, he knew that he had no other choice, no other means of learning what Ravana meant, except to do as he bade and follow this nightmare through to its very end. He resisted the urge to glance back into the chamber where Sita lay asleep. He would not weaken his resolve. Better to draw the asura away from her. Reaching a decision, he nodded once to his invisible foe, inhaled sharply, spread his arms like a bird about to take wing, and sprang out from the balustrade, his strong legs carrying him yards out into the empty darkness, high above the solid ground, his body arching like a diver leaping into oceanic depths.
He hung suspended in the air a moment, then slowly, inevitably, began the long quick fall to the courtyard.
Click here to continue reading VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series within India.
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series outside India.
Vengeance of Ravana: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series – Excerpt#1
VENGEANCE OF RAVANA
Book 7 of The Ramayana Series
by Ashok K. Banker
//Raghupati Raghava raja Ram//
//pattita pavan Sita Ram//
//Sita Ram Sita Ram//
//bhaj pyare tu Sita Ram//
Traditional Folk Song (Favourite bhajan of Mahatma Gandhi)
SAMAPTAM
Raghupati.
Through the haze of smoke from the burning towers of Lanka, dimly glimpsed. Upon that battlefield, carelessly littered with the corpses of friends and foes alike, he stood, grieving. For even in victory had he lost so much; such were the bitter fruits of war. The shouts of his jubilant soldiers rang out all round him, yet to his ears they were overwhelmed by the remembered cries of anguish and torment of those that had fallen upon this field. Vanars, bears, rakshasas…it mattered not if they were his enemy or his ally. All who had died had died for him, one way or another. That was all that mattered. All this, this brutal hacking of limbs and sundering of bones, this mad dance of soldiers, this epic bloodshed, this immense decimation of life, was on his command, and therefore, on his conscience.
Raghava.
He walked the battlefield, taking stock of the fallen. All these lives cut short, some in their prime, all before their time. All these…so many, too many…brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, blood-kith and blood-kin. His siblings at arms. For no less were these fallen united to him than were his own brothers back home, Bharat and Shatrugan. No less were they related to him by blood than Lakshman himself, partner in all his travails and exile, shoulder that stood beside his shoulder through thick and thin. So what if these vanars and bears and rakshasas had not been born of the same mother as he, or of the same father, or even of the same species? Born apart, they had come together to die today for him, and in dying, bonded with him in the eternal brotherhood of blood. These mangled and broken bodies had been living, hoping, longing, loving creatures, with homes and families of their own, which they had left, to dedicate themselves to his cause, to travel long yojanas to this foreign land across a hostile sea, and now this alien soil was soaked through with their honest blood. And this blood was upon his conscience.
Raja.
Now, he would return to his homeland, proud and triumphant, lauded in victory, to be crowned king of Ayodhya. No more a prince in exile, or at war. A king in name and deed and title. His name added to the long list of Suryavansha Ikshwakus, his portrait hung beside those others in the hall of ancestors, his statue carved and polished and raised in the public avenues and places of honour, his name given to a thousand thousand newborn whose mothers would pray for them to be as Rama was, do as Rama did, to become…
Ram.
Yet, was he deserving of this victory, this pride, this praise? This kingship, even? The tales that would be woven around his exploits, the poems composed and sung of his adventures in exile, his feats as a warrior, his triumphs against the evil rakshasas, his incomparable accomplishments and wondrous feats of chivalry? Like so many other warriors before him, reluctant and unwilling to embrace celebrityhood, his story would grow larger than his life itself, in time would come to seem more real than the sordid gritty reality, and eventually, would march firmly into the annals of legend, then myth, and finally, into race-memory.
“Raghupati Raghava Raja Rama…pattita pavana Sita Ram!”
The sound rose to a roaring, counterpointing the numbing silence in his veins. He came out of his reverie like a traveller emerging from mist and saw the entire host of his army’s survivors assembled before him, before the walls of Lanka, still a formidable mass, their ragged voices joined in this new chant, something he had never heard before, yet seemed so oddly familiar. Vanars and bears, and rakshasas even…not all of the rakshasas, for he could see several kneeling sullenly or glumly by, driven to their knees by their vanar or bear captors, unrepentant and hostile in their failure…but those brothers of Vibhisena in spirit who were jubilant in their relief at being rid of Ravana’s yoke at long last. A great multitude of voices raised in ragged, heart-rendingly cheerful harmony, filling the smoky skies above Lanka with this hypnotic chant, this near fanatical hymn of praise…
“Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, pattita pavana Sita Ram,
Sita Ram, Sita Ram, bhaj pyare tu Sitaram.”
The same two lines over and over again, as if the poet had been so overwhelmed by adoration that he had no motive left to seek lyrics to follow, or inclination to compose those lyrics.
Hail to thee, Rama, Lord of the House of Raghu, Savior of the fallen, Hail to the divine union of Sita and Rama, Beloved are you both, Sita and Rama.
The lilt of the lyrics and the monotony of the melody gave it the quality of a bhajan, a couplet chanted in praise to a god. Was that how they percieved him? As a god? He scanned the sea of upturned faces, bloody snouts and furry heads, and saw wet adoration in those animal eyes, mirrored and repeated in every single visage, vanar and bear alike. To the periphery of his host, huddled before the crumbled walls of Lanka, the survivors of Ravana’s army stood herded together. He saw even their bestial aspects raised towards him. The expression on most rakshasa snouts was a sullen, morose, even hostile aspect. Yet there was a certain grudging admiration visible even in that mottled and beaten crowd, an awe that went beyond any mere fear of captivity. And sweeping the vast assemblage again with battle-weary eyes, he saw that what he euphemistically referred to as adoration or admiration was no less than an acknowledgement of godliness. It was the same look one saw on the faces of devotees at a great teerth-sthan, one of the sacred pilgrimage spots. Yes, many of those assembled saw him as something akin to a god. It would be ingenuous of him not to see that; not to recognize the glistening admiration in those grape-dark eyes for what it truly was: the awe of a crowd of believers given sight of their deity. Even as this realization seeped into his tired senses, the vast host, their numbers so great as to make the vast field resemble nothing so much as a field of kusa lavya grass, swaying gently in an autumn breeze, reached a peak in their chanting.
He scanned the landscape from left to right, attempting to take in the sheer vastness of the multitudes assembled–a great host, despite their terrible losses in battle–carpetting the hills and valleys and fields of Lanka for miles in every direction, a veritable ocean of waves dipping their crests to show respect for the approaching shore, and as they sensed him responding at last, looking upon them, their haunting chant yielded to a moment of such utter silence that he thought his heart itself had ceased beating.
As one, in drill-perfect unison, they straightened their battered bodies to stand on their hind legs, a measure of supreme respect among both vanars and bears, and raised their snouted, furred and dusty faces to him, their dark wet eyes glistening in the slanting evening light. On straightened knees with lowered brows, hoarse voices stilled at last after days of yelling war cries and crying havoc, they observed him, and waited.
In the silence that fell, he heard a bird twittering somewhere, calling the end of day. He felt the benediction of a soft cool ocean breeze wafting in from the west, redolent of salt and the exotic odours of a thousand yojanas of open sea. He felt a strange absence of feeling spread through his being, like the sensation one experienced just before falling fast asleep, when the body and mind hovered momentarily between wakefulness and deep unconsciousness. He stood on that precipice, and teeming multitudes waited to hear his words.
A great hand fell upon his shoulder. Gently, despite its great strength. The voice that spoke in his ear was as quiet as that hand was gentle.
“Command them, they are your’s. As are the earth, sky and sea, and everything in it. You are the master of the world now. Rule it as you see fit.”
The voice of the bear king Jambavan was sonorous and gruff as ever. But the tone of sad wisdom was new. Perhaps, he thought, the war had taken its toll on the ancient one too, dimming his penchant for eccentric proclamations and whimsical asides. Or perhaps it was the gravity of the moment that the bear lord tempered his speech to suit.
He turned to look up into the eyes of the lord of rksaas. During the time of battle, he had seen those same eyes blazing like coals in obsidian, promising fire and delivering death. Earlier, in their numerous counsels, he had seen grace, wisdom, empathy and a sense of knowledge so deep and infinite, he had felt he could ask any question and the answer would be there, in those eyes. Now, he saw in them a mirror image of the same adoration he saw in all those lakhs of vanar and bear and rakshasa eyes staring up at him from the field of battle. A look of fierce admiration and pride, an almost deifying adoration. It was the look a soldier gave a king after a successful end to war, as well as the look that a worshipper gave to his deity after a lifetime’s wish was fulfilled.
He wondered if he deserved such a look, such adoration, such deification.
“Lord bear,” he said softly. “I barely know how to console myself. How do I console these who have sacrificed so much for my cause? What do I say to explain the terrible cost of this great conflict?”
Jambavan’s face fur rippled in a diagonal pattern that began somewhere east of his left ear and traversed across the top of his mountainous head ending somewhere in the vicinity of his nape. The effect resembled nothing so much as a strong wind ruffling thick elephant grass on plainsland. The berry dark eyes glistened with sympathy, but the parted jaws promised no mercy. “Heed well my words, youngun. I will say this only once, so treasure it and scroll it and do not make me repeat it. The price of war is the prize of war.”
And the bear stepped back, silent, turning his snout away to gaze at a flight of geese flying overhead as if they had suddenly grown more interesting than anything transpiring on earth. Rama blinked, taking in the words so eccentrically given, tersely spoken, yet so dense and rich with meaning.
The price of war is the prize of war.
He blinked again, this time to dispell the sudden wetness that plagued his vision. And suddenly found the courage to speak. He found a little strength to straighten his stiff back, to raise his head and put his chin forward, to return their show of respect with a gesture of his own, for among vanars and bears, actions counted more than words. Yet words he gave them as well. Words that carried to the furry ears of even the farthest vanar or bear, through the whispering relay system that they had perfected under Nala’s supervision. The only effect, to his ears, was a faint sussuration following on each of his words, like a wind blowing through a leafy grove.
“Comrades,” he said. “All we have accomplished, all we have achieved, all we have endeavoured towards, all we have struggled, and fought, and strategized, and maneuvered, and battled, and bled, and sacrificed for, is upon this field. It is our dignity, our honour, our pride, and our dharma. At this hour of battle, with the tide turned, with the enemy vanquished, the master of the land fallen, the siege broken, the fortress overrun, any army could be expected to wreak havoc, to ravage and forage, rape and pillage, partake of the spoils of war. But we did not fight this war for spoils. At this time, any army in history would be forgiven a few transgressions, a few excesses, a few just rewards for the bitter struggle we have all endured these past days and weeks. The rules of war condone such excesses, overlook such transgressions, forgiven such acts. Yet that is not why you fought this war. At this point in a war, any invading conqueror would be expected to slice up and divide the territories he has conquered, to parcel them out to his generals, his comrades, to any he pleases who may have pleased him before. Yet that is not why I fought this war. You and I, we made a pact. To come to these shores and plead for peace. To sue for a quick and bloodless resolution to this needless conflict. To beg for the safe return of my beloved Sita. It was Ravana’s choice to deny us that peace, to abjure a resolution, to mock our pleas. We could all be forgiven, you and I, if we razed his kingdom to the ground, if we put every last one of his citizens to the sword, if we ravaged his queens and his concubines, if we speared every rakshasa cub in Lanka, if we cleansed the world of the rakshasa race forever. We could do all these things, and indeed, I am sure that after the grevious losses we all suffered this day, there are many of you who desire this end, who crave it…I will not deny that a part of me craves it as well…The basest, most vengeful part of me…”
He paused, looking at the snouted faces of the Lankans by the broken walls.
Their faces were filled with dismay and terror now. Gone was all hostility, all sullenness, all reluctant admiration. In their place was naked terror, panic at the thought that what he had just said might actually come to pass. He sensed the vanar and bear armies swivel their heads and eyes, looking towards Lanka, towards those walls, those bestial warriors, those towers that had caused them so much pain and death and suffering these past days. And he knew from the very stench of their rage that he had spoken their heart’s deepest emotions aloud.
“Yet we shall do none of these things,” he said quietly. The relay took his words like the wind and passed them down the lines, rippling miles North to the far reaches of the vast assemblage.
“For these are not the reasons why we came here to fight this war.”
He paused again, straightened his head, and took a step forward. He raised his arms to either side, palms upwards. The interlacing of myriad cuts and nicks and wounds across his weary muscles screamed in response, for the blood had long since dried over them, and some of the caked wounds and hundreds of tiny scabs tore open as he flexed those overused muscles again. He ignored the pain, which was as much his brother too. And held the stance. The setting sun caught his body in its embrace, and its soft saffron warmth was like a careless blessing from a gruff god.
“We came here for a reason, and that reason is accomplished. Our work here is done. Now, it is time to show Lanka, the world, indeed, to show generations to come that while war itself is undesirable, warriors can still adhere to dharma. Let us pledge here and now, with our Lankan enemies present beside us, that we shall work together to rebuild every loosed brick, every shattered beam, every broken palace, hovel or hut, and to raise a new Lanka from the ashes of this tragedy, a Lanka that will put war behind it forever, and turn her face towards the new sun of peace. Let us pledge this now. Let our pledge and the execution of it be a testament to our pride and honour and dharma. And a monument to all those of our beloved ones who fell here on this soil. I do not command this of now, for with this war done, I have no authority to command you anymore. I merely ask this, request it, beg it if you will…Join me in showing Lanka, and all the ages to come, that yes, we came, we fought, we conquered…And then we rebuilt. We restored. We rehabilitated. We took nothing, but we gave everything. And by so doing, we gained the greatest riches possible, the most precious spoils of war, that which every soldier secretly craves but rarely hopes to ever acquire…the love and forgiveness and admiration of our enemies. I ask you this in honour of my fallen foe, Ravana. I ask you this in the memory of everyone fallen in this conflict. I ask you this in the name of dharma.
“What say you?”
The silence that followed after the last whispering passage of his last words had been transmitted through verbal relay through the seemingly endless ranks was deafening. He could heard his heart pounding steadily, like a drum beaten by a drummer tolling a dirge. He could hear the distant high-pitched lowing of greybacks far out at sea. He could hear birds in the skies wailing for the lost day. And the sun slipped one final time to touch the rim of the horizon, hanging there as if reluctant to take its sight off him, as if waiting to hear the response of his armies, as eager to know the effect of his words upon them as he himself was.
The answer came with a roar so resounding it shook his body and caused his very bones to tremble. It was accompanied by a stamping of their feet that made the earth beneath tremble as well, the grasy knoll reverberating as if stricken by a repitition of the earth-moving wrought by Ravana’s asura maya on the first night of their landing. The wind of their shouting made the hairs of his hands and his nape stand on end. It was greater than the war chants they had yelled in battle, greater than the screams of the dying, more determined than the shout of fealty they had pledged to him back at Mount Mahendra when the armies of Hanuman had first assembled before his sight. Hail Rama Husband of Sita.
“JAI SIYARAM.”
The sun slipped beneath the rim. He thought he felt it smile one final time before it passed from that part of the world. He smiled as well.
Click here to continue reading VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series within India.
Click here to order VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series outside India.
Have you got your Vengeance of Ravana pre-order offer?
AN EXCLUSIVE PRE-ORDER OFFER for VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series has just been sent out to all those who previously ordered signed copies of my books!
Have you received your offer?
This may be your only chance to get a signed limited-edition copy of VoR!
Vortal: Shockwave November’s BOTM (Book Of The Month), please book your copy now
AN ACTION-PACKED FANTASY ADVENTURE FROM THE AUTHOR OF RAMAYANA SERIES, VERTIGO & GODS OF WAR
It all began when Mikey Vatsal accidentally discovered that new site on the Internet.
The one that asks you to forfeit your soul to the Webmaster before entering.
And which opens a quantum doorway that takes you to infinite alternate versions of our world.
Each time a person opens the Vortal to go through to another world, another person get shifted into our world, to maintain The Balance.
Now, the Vatsal family is locked in a life-and-death struggle to close the Vortal and restore our world to its normal state. 
But they seem to be facing a few obstacles.
Several billion of them in fact.
VORTAL: Shockwave, a fantasy adventure that marks the first in a series (but is a complete story within one book), is available to purchase directly from me. All copies are available at the printed MRP of Rs 400 each, and will be signed and inscribed to anyone you desire. Delivery by courier is free anywhere in India.
NOTE: VORTAL: Shockwave is available ONLY via online order from me directly, ONLY for the month of November, and ONLY within India! Book now!
Gods of War is in bookstores – I’m not! :-)
So, it’s finally here. Almost a month and a half after it’s official publication date: 15th August as listed on the Penguin India website, Gods of War is finally in all Indian bookstores. In fact, I received word on Monday, but waited till Thursday to confirm it. And I’m hearing from people everywhere that they’re buying copies, for themselves as well as for friends or relatives. So it’s already selling!
Now here’s the downside: There are no readings, signings, launch events, or any kind of promotional activities planned for the book. I was in touch with Penguin India from end-July, the first time in my career that I’ve even remembered the release date of a book before it happened! Venues were booked, events were planned, and I was taking an active part in the planning. But due to the constant delays, venue bookings were cancelled and finally, now, with elections looming and Penguin having a dozen other book launches already lined up in October, and Diwali around the corner, it looks like there will not be any promotional events or activities for Gods of War.
I’ve done what I could to make up for it: By offering signed copies at MRP weeks ahead of the book being available in bookstores. Those are sold out now and it’s time for me to return to my writing. I’m sure Penguin never meant for things to work out this way, but here we are. In the end, it’s all for the best: I had no events or PR for my past 3 books, not counting the Ramayana hardcovers which also came out unheralded, and those of you who have been tracking my career know that the media rarely bothers with me, or I with the media.
So this it. Moving on now… to the next book. And the others after that!
Picture of window display, Crossword Kemp’s Corner, courtesy Dr Ranjit Mankeshwar – thanks, @qtfan ! )
NOT A RUPEE LESS, NOT A RUPEE MORE! (with apologies to Lord Archer): Buy a Signed Copy of GODS OF WAR at the printed price – delivery free within India!
UPDATE: SIGNED COPIES of GoW will only be available here till Wednesday 30th September. Stock almost over.
Those are pics of a few of the signed copies received by the early birds, those who took advantage of my offer right away.
The orders are still pouring in by the dozens daily. Barely managing to keep up with them!
In a few days, once the present batch of copies are sold out, I’m going to have to discontinue this offer – because it’s too popular! If I continue at this rate, I’ll be a professional autographer and bookseller, not an author.
But until then, I’m keeping the offer open. And if you can find a better offer anywhere, then take it. Because it’s not possible to top this:
The printed MRP (Maximum Retail Price) of Gods of War is Rs 300/-. That’s what it would cost you to buy a copy of the book in any bookstore. For that amount, in a bookstore, all you’d get is the book. By ordering directly from me, you get a signed copy, personally inscribed to yourself or to anyone else you wish, for the exact same sum of Rs 300/-. Delivery is free to any location within India! There are no other charges.
What are you waiting for? Email me at akb DOT readerswrite AT gmail DOT com and book your order now: Mention your full postal address+tel.no. in the email and I’ll reply with details of how to make your payment. You could be holding a signed copy of the first edition of Gods of War within a couple of days!
WANT SIGNED COPIES OF MY OTHER BOOKS? READ ON
If you look at that last picture on the left, the one right at the bottom, you’ll have to squint hard to spot the copy of Gods of War. It’s there all right, lying on its side on top of a sideways copy of Vertigo, which itself is on top of the entire paperback set of my Ramayana Series. For a limited time, I’m also offering copies of Vertigo, all three hardcover volumes of the Ramayana Series, and the paperback copy of Prince of Ayodhya (the other five paperbacks are currently undergoing a reprint and are out of stock with me). All for the printed MRP, delivery free anywhere in India! And of course, your copies will be signed by me personally, and inscribed to yourself or anyone you please.
So if you’ve been wanting to gift someone a signed copy of Prince of Ayodhya, or the entire set of Ramayana Series hardcovers autographed by me, or purchase a copy of Vertigo, apart from Gods of War, then now’s the time to order them. Email me at akb DOT readerswrite AT gmail DOT com with your full postal address+tel.no. and I’ll provide you with details of how to make the payment. And you can have the books in hand in a day or two!
PS: I’m unable to deliver any of these books at cost price outside India. For deliveries abroad, I’m afraid you’re going to have to use the AKB Books Bookstore where only the international edition of Gods of War is currently available. But if you wait a few months, the rest of my books will also be listed there. Meanwhile, you can always order the Indian editions and have them delivered to a friend or relative in India, to be collected later! This may be your only chance to get signed copies after all.
GoW still MiA
I know, I know. The revised and updated publication date of 15th September (originally 15th August) has come and gone, with no sign of Gods of War in a single bookstore across India.
I’ve been receiving emails, tweets, direct messages, emails, comments and status updates, wall notes, and even a few smses and phone calls from readers wondering what’s up.
I have no idea.
This time, I know the book is printed – I’ve sent out close to a hundred copies myself so far, with as many more orders in the pipeline. (Last month the delay was because the book wasn’t printed on time, I was told.) I’ve also been reassured by Penguin that the book would be published on 15th September and would be available in all bookstores.
Now, I find that not only is it not available anywhere, people asking for it at bookstores are meeting blank expressions as sales staff claim they have no knowledge of such a book and have no idea when it will arrive.
Sigh.
I have no comment to offer and nothing to say about it. I’m just reporting the facts as they are.
Meanwhile, you all know you can continue to order signed copies directly from me at the printed MRP (shipping free to anywhere in India) right here or visit the bookstore to order a copy of the AKB Books international edition for overseas delivery.
Available only from me directly. 
Available only from me directly. 