‘I need to know!’ snarled Shiva.

Anandmayi frowned at Shiva as if he was mad. ‘He will not be from the Sapt-Sindhu. Neither a Suryavanshi nor a Chandravanshi. But when he comes, he will come on our side.’

Shiva’s inner voice whispered miserably that there was more. Clutching the armrest of his chair, he asked, ‘And?’

‘And,’ continued Anandmayi, ‘his throat will turn blue when he drinks the Somras.’

An audible gasp escaped Shiva as his body stiffened. The world seemed to spin. Anandmayi frowned, even more confused about the strange conversation.

Parvateshwar glowered fiercely at Anandmayi. ‘You are lying, woman! Admit it! You are lying!’

‘Why would I…’

Anandmayi stopped in mid-sentence as she noticed Shiva’s cravat covered throat. The arrogance suddenly vanished from her face. She found her knees buckling under her. Pointing weakly with her hands, she asked, ‘Why is your throat covered?’

‘Take her out, Nandi!’ ordered Parvateshwar.

‘Who are you?’ shouted Anandmayi.

Nandi and Veerbhadra tried to pull Anandmayi out. With surprising strength, she struggled against them. ‘Show me your throat!’

They held on to her arms and dragged her backwards. She kicked Veerbhadra in the groin, causing him to fall back in pain as she turned towards Shiva once again. ‘Who the hell are you?’

Shiva stared down at the table unable to find the strength to even glance at Anandmayi. He held his armrest tightly. It seemed to be the only stable thing in a world spinning desperately out of control.

Veerbhadra staggered back, held her arms tighdy and pulled her back as Nandi held her by the neck. Anandmayi bit Nandi’s arm brutally. As a howling Nandi pulled his arm back, she screamed again, ‘Answer me, dammit! Who are you?’

Shiva looked up for one brief instant at Anandmayi’s tormented eyes. The pain they conveyed lashed his soul. The flames of agony burned his conscience.

A shocked Anandmayi suddenly became immobile. The misery in her eyes would have stunned the bravest of Meluhan soldiers. In a broken voice, she whispered, ‘You are supposed to be on our side…’

She allowed herself to be hauled out by Nandi and Veerbhadra. Parvateshwar kept his eyes down. He dared not look at Shiva. He was a good Suryavanshi. He would not humiliate his Lord by looking at him at his weakest. Sati, on the other hand, would not leave her husband to suffer alone, by not looking at him when he was at his weakest. She came to his side, touching his face.

Shiva looked up, his eyes devastated with the tears of sorrow. ‘What have I done?’

Sati held Shiva tightly, holding his throbbing head against her bosom. There was nothing she could say to alleviate the pain. She could just hold him.

An agonized whisper suffused the tent with its resonant grief. ‘What have I done?’

CHAPTER 25

Island of the Individual

It was another three weeks before Shiva’s entourage reached Ayodhya, the capital of the Swadweepans. They had travelled along a decrepit, long-winding road to the Ganga, and then sailed eastward to the point where the mighty, yet capricious, river passionately welcomed the waters of the Sarayu. Then they had cruised north, up the Sarayu, to the city of Lord Ram’s birth. It was a long circuitous route, but the quickest possible considering the terrible road conditions in Swadweep, the island of the individual.

The excitement in the hearts of the Meluhan soldiers was beyond compare. They had only heard legends about Lord Ram’s city. None had ever seen it. Ayodhya, literally the impregnable city, was the land first blessed by Lord Ram’s sacred feet. They expected a gleaming city beyond compare, even if it had been devastated by the Chandravanshi presence. They expected the city to be an oasis of order and harmony even if all the surrounding land had been rendered chaotic by the Chandravanshis. They were disappointed.

Ayodhya was nothing like Devagiri. At first glance, it promised much. The outer walls were thick and looked astonishingly powerful. Unlike the sober grey Meluhan walls, the exterior of Ayodhya had been extravagantly painted with every colour in god’s universe. Each alternate brick, however, was painted in pristine white, the royal colour of the Chandravanshis. Numerous banners, tinted in pink and blue, had been festooned down the city towers. The banners weren’t put up for a special occasion, but were permanent fixtures, adorning the city.

The empire road curved suddenly along the fort wall to the main entrance, so as to prevent elephants and battering rams from getting a straight run to the mighty doors. At the top of the main gates, a wonderfully ornate, horizontal crescent moon had been sculpted into the walls. Below it was the Chandravanshi motto. ‘Shringar. Saundarya. Swatantrata.’ Passion. Beauty. Freedom.

It was only when one entered the city that it delivered a blow to the precision and order loving Meluhans. Krittika described the city’s organisation best as ‘functioning pandemonium’. Unlike all Meluhan cities, Ayodhya was not built on a platform — so it was obvious that if the Sarayu river ever flooded in the manner that the temperamental Indus did, the city would be inundated. The numerous city walls, built in seven concentric circles, were surprisingly thick and strong. However, it didn’t take a general’s strategic eye to see that the concentric walls had not been planned by a military mastermind. They were in fact added in a haphazard manner, one by one, after the city had burst its seams and extended beyond the previous perimeter. That is why there were many weak points along each wall, which an enemy laying siege could easily exploit. Perhaps that’s why the Chandravanshis preferred to take wars outside to a far away battleground rather than defend their city.

The infrastructure was a sorry indictment of the Chandravanshi penchant for debate as an excuse for action. The roads were nothing better than dirt tracks. There was, however, one notable exception — the neatly paved and strikingly smooth Rajpath, the royal road, which led straight from the outer walls through to the opulent royal palace. The Swadweepans joked that instead of finding potholes on their road, they actually had to search for some stretch of road amongst the potholes! This was a far cry from the exceptionally well-planned, sign-posted, paved and tediously standard roads of Meluhan cities.

There were, what can only be called ‘encroachments’, all over the city. Some open grounds had been converted into giant slums as illegal immigrants simply pitched their tents on public areas. The already narrow roads had been made even narrower by the intrusion of the cloth tents of the homeless. There was constant tension between the richer home owning class and the poor landless who lived in slums. The emperor had legalised all encroachments established before 1910 BC. That meant that slum dwellers could not be removed unless the government created alternate accommodation for them. The minor problem was that the Chandravanshi government was so hideously inefficient that they hadn’t managed to build even one new house for slum dwellers in the last twelve years. Now there was talk about extending the deadline further. The encroachments, the bad roads, the poor construction combined to give an impression of a city in a state of terminal decline.

The Meluhans were outraged. What had these people done to Lord Ram’s great city? Or was it always like this? Is that why Lord Ram had crossed the Sarayu river to establish his capital at far away Devagiri on the Saraswati?