Rakshas shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It was his haemorrhoids acting up at the thought of the redhot embers. He knew that he was wedged between a rock and hard place. Obey the monarch's orders and have the entire population brand him as the king's pimp—which he was—or disobey the diktat and be sent to the dungeon himself.
Fond of dance, drama, music, literature and painting, Rakshas was a cultured and refined artiste. Being surrounded by resplendent feminine beauty in his artistic world offered him the ability to supply Dhanananda with the most ravishing women of the kingdom. This was the key to his success with the king. The master politician in Rakshas hated open confrontation. Why did Shaktar, the foolish tightass, have to go around stirring things up? Rakshas rose from his chair and reluctantly commanded his guards to arrest the prime minister.
Outside the gates of the royal palace, a solitary figure was standing on a stone ledge spewing venom at Dhanananda. ‘Citizens of Magadha, this tyranny has continued far too long. The imperial thug, Dhanananda, has imprisoned the only minister capable of standing up to him. Are we going to stand here helplessly while we see a guardian of the kingdom—the wise and illustrious prime minister Shaktar—be treated in this shameful manner? How many more farmers have to commit suicide because the tax inspectors of Dhanananda loot their grain? How many more soldiers must die in battle because their armour has been compromised to make wine goblets for the king's pleasure? How many more mothers must cry over the corpses of their violated young daughters? How much longer are we going to tolerate this evil sovereign?’ he cried.
A crowd had gathered. After all, the orator was no ordinary individual. He was Chanak—the most respected teacher in the kingdom—father of the wise Chanakya and a close friend and confidant of prime minister Shaktar. Kings vied with one another to send their sons and future princes to be trained in and educated for princely duties by Chanak.
Inside the palace, guards had seized Prime Minister Shaktar and had whisked him off through a series of secret passages to the dungeons. Rakshas had quietly instructed the lieutenant that Shaktar was to be treated decently and that Girika was to keep his hands off. ‘Tell Girika that I will personally rip off his balls, roast them like chestnuts, and make him eat them for breakfast if he so much as touches a hair of the prime minister!’ he had hissed to the lieutenant.
Rakshas had been contemplating his next move when the commander of the royal guards rushed in and sought a word with the king. The visibly shaken commander nervously revealed the news that a large crowd was gathered outside the palace and was being incited to revolt by Chanak.
Dhanananda flew into a fit of rage. His face contorted and the veins in his neck throbbed to the drumbeat of the guards marching outside. ‘Kill the son of a whore! I want Chanak's head chopped off and displayed along the banks of the Ganges. Now!’ he shrieked. The hapless commander scurried off to obey his whimsical leader's royal edict for fear of his own head being served up on a plate at the dinner table and being sampled by one of Dhanananda's courtesan tasters.
‘He's dead, Vishnugupta. I am sorry for your loss, my son. The king's spies are everywhere. You must flee. They'll be looking for you,’ explained Katyayan, a minister in Dhanananda's cabinet and a loyal friend of Chanak. While in court, he had heard the news of Chanak's slaying and had quickly hurried over to warn Chanak's son, Vishnugupta.
‘But if I flee, who shall take care of my mother? She's too old to go anywhere,’ began the boy.
‘I shall look after her, don't worry,’ said the gentle and assuring Katyayan.
‘And Suvasini?’ asked Vishnugupta. Suvasini was the daughter of the imprisoned prime minister Shaktar and had been Vishnugupta's childhood crush.
‘I shall take care of everyone else if you will simply take care of yourself, Vishnugupta,’ said Katyayan impatiently.
The blank expression on Vishnugupta's face startled Katyayan. There was no sign of either dejection or anguish. ‘Do not call me Vishnugupta,’ said the proud and angry boy to Katyayan. ‘From today onwards the only identity I have is that of Chanakya—son of the noble Chanak!’
It was amavasya—the darkest night of the fortnight—and Chanakya had waited patiently for two whole days to carry out the plan suggested by Katyayan. He had rubbed a mixture of charcoal and oil all over his body until he was jet black. The complete absence of moonlight and his shadowy appearance meant that he could move about stealthily along the unlit banks of the Ganges without being observed.
He followed Katyayan's precise instructions on how to locate the banyan tree along the riverbank. It was a sacred tree that would be worshipped on festivals and—aware of this—Dhanananda's guards had hung Chanak's head on the branches of this particular one, knowing that ordinary people would not touch it. Having reached the banyan, Chanakya ignored the oil lamp at its base and started climbing the massive trunk. A foul stench soon guided him to the point where he could see his beloved father's head hanging like a ghoul from a branch to which his single lock of hair had been tied.
Chanakya felt tears well up in his eyes as he saw his father's severed head swinging to the eerie whistling winds. His father's eyes were wide open and there were gaping holes in both cheeks where insects had already started feasting. His mouth was firmly clenched shut, a silent reminder of one of his favourite—and now unfortunately ironic—maxims: ‘A man who opens his mouth too often may end up meeting a tragic end, either from indigestion or execution!’
Chanakya steadied himself, clambered up the branch and swiftly untied the shikha. As gently as possible, he lifted the head, cradled it in his arms and reverentially kissed the crown. His tears were in full flood and rained upon his father's skull. He had not wept until this moment but he silently promised himself that this would be the only occasion on which he would allow himself to cry; Chanakya would make others cry. They would pay for what they had done. His tears would be paid for in blood.
He quickly scampered down the tree and wrapped his father's head in fresh muslin that he had brought with him. He then tied the muslin to his upper torso and jumped into the dark and ominous river. The shock of the freezing cold water took a few minutes to subside and he was soon making his way with firm strokes across the Ganges to the little Durga temple that lay across on the opposite bank.
Katyayan had bribed the royal guards to part with Chanak's body and had secretly arranged for the remains to be transported to the temple grounds. According to Hindu custom, a corpse had to be cremated before sundown, but the circumstances of Chanak's death meant that tradition would have to be given the go-by. If Dhanananda ever caught a whiff of the fact that Chanakya was cremating Chanak, he would not hesitate to send his cronies after the boy.
Emerging drenched from the strong current, he found the priest, a fearsome hunchback clad in a blood-red sheet, waiting for him on the riverbank. He was holding a flaming torch and silently gestured to Chanakya to follow him to the funeral pyre that had been prepared. Wordlessly, he took the muslin containing Chanak's head and placed it along with the rest of the body enclosed in the pyre. He handed over a bundle of burning grass to Chanakya and asked him to circumambulate the body once and to light the pyre thereafter. As flames enveloped Chanak's body, the priest handed him a bamboo and asked him to smash the corpse's head—supposedly an act that would free Chanak's soul trapped inside.
As the flames ebbed, the priest instructed Chanakya to take another dip in the Ganges and gave him a dry set of ochre robes to wear. Bathed and dressed, Chanakya took the small bundle that the priest offered him. It was a parting gift left for him by Katyayan. It contained a small dagger for his protection, fifty gold panas for his sustenance, and a letter to the dean of Takshila University.
Located over nine hundred miles away in the distant northwest, Takshila was the world's first university. It had been established almost three hundred years previously and graduated over ten thousand students each year in more than sixty subjects.
Chanakya began the long and arduous trek
that would take over a year.
CHAPTER TWO
Present Day
The dusty Birhana Road of Kanpur was a foodie's delight at most times of the day. Little roadside shops served mouth-watering snacks—golgappas, aloo tikki, dahi kachori—sweet-and-sour savouries made from the unhealthiest ingredients that one could imagine: deepfried potatoes, refined flour, sugar, and salt. The fullfrontal cholesterol attack did not usually deter gourmands from further exploring the sweet shops that sold laddoos, barfis, kulfi, jalebis, malai-makkhan, gulab jamuns and a hundred other syrupy, sticky and sinful desserts. Traffic clogged the street at all times of the day—autorickshaws spewing thick black fumes, cars, scooters, handcarts, buffaloes, cows, and humans. The air was dirty but exciting nonetheless. Smells of sweat and urine mingled with carbon monoxide, fried food, and incense from the temples that surrounded the area.
In one of the bylanes of Birhana Road was a building that had seen better days and was struggling to remain standing. Inside it, a rickety staircase led to a second-floor flat occupied by Pandit Gangasagar Mishra, Kanpur's foremost professor of history. Freshly bathed and dressed in a simple white cotton kurta-pyjama, Panditji was busy with his morning prayers. He sat on his prayer mat facing east—the direction of the rising sun—and offered flowers, incense and sandalwood paste to the little silver deities that stood inside his mini-temple. Having said good morning to his gods, he walked down the shaky staircase and out into the street.
It was obvious that Panditji had been a handsome man in his youth. He had aristocratic features, a broad forehead, and an aquiline nose. He was extremely fairskinned but rather short. His short stature, however, was misleading—like Napoleon's. The hair on his head had fallen off almost entirely, and Panditji preserved the few remaining strands lovingly by combing them across his head from left to right.
The next thirty minutes would be occupied in a brisk walk down to Motijheel Chauraha, where a tea vendor with the rather unexciting name—Banarsi Tea House—would keep Panditji's tea ready and waiting. Panditji's manservant had often complained that he could make better tea at home but Panditji liked the morning walk as well as the bonhomie of the tea stall where he was part of the regular morning crowd. He would then stroll over to his newspaper vendor two shops away, and buy his day's information fix. Another thirty minutes later he would be back home, retiring to his living room where he would spend the next two hours poring over newspapers from all over the country. His newspaper vendor had developed a network through which newspapers from Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai could be supplied to Panditji each morning, in addition to the local Kanpur and Lucknow ones.
‘But Panditji, why do you read so many papers?’ the lad had asked curiously one day. Panditji had answered, ‘Because I need to know everything that happens in the country. How else can I rule it?’ The boy had not replied, shaking his head in disbelief.
By ten in the morning, Panditji was ready to receive his first visitors of the day. His secretary, a sharp Keralite—Menon—had arrived and was sorting out Panditji's mail. The professor of history had another, even more important, facet to his life. He was the president of the Akhil Bharat Navnirman Samiti—abbreviated to ABNS by journos who could never quite remember the entire name. Panditji had launched the political outfit several years earlier and it had grown from a fledgling struggling non-entity into a mainstream political party that few could ignore.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said Menon, efficiently handing a one-inch-thick dossier containing the day's relevant papers to Pandit Gangasagar Mishra. ‘Morning, Menon,’ said Panditji, ‘at what time have you asked Chandini to meet me?’
‘She'll be here by eleven, sir. She's bringing the Opposition MLAs who wish to defect,’ said Menon, smiling. He knew that the day was a momentous one. It was the day that the ABNS would topple the existing state government of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state—and the key to holding power in New Delhi—and instal its own chief minister. The man behind it all was an unassuming Pandit who drank tea at Banarsi Tea House every morning and liked to call himself a history teacher.
His close acquaintances knew that Pandit Gangasagar Mishra was not interested in teaching history. He was interested in creating it.
Gangasagar was born in 1929 in Cawnpore—the anglicised name for Kanpur—a sleepy town nestled on the banks of the river Ganges. Kanpur had originally been Kanhapur, named after Kanhaiya—another name for Krishna, the hero of the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. The British came along and decided that Cawnpore sounded better after they turned the town into a garrison with barracks for seven thousand sepoys. The sepoys mutinied in 1857. Quite possibly they didn't like the new name.
Gangasagar's father—Mishraji—was a poor Brahmin who eked out a living from teaching at the local government-subsidised school on the banks of the river. When his son was born, his third child after two daughters, he decided to name him Gangasagar—as vast as the Ganges. Gangasagar's mother was a simple woman, perpetually struggling to meet the most basic daily needs of the family. Ganga, however, was her pet. In a society that treated sons as assets and daughters as liabilities, Ganga was the single item on her balance sheet that squared off the dowry that she would have to pay for her daughters’ weddings. She would smilingly forego her own meals just to ensure that Gangasagar was well fed.
As per Hindu custom, Brahmins were usually in demand during the fortnight of shraadh, when wealthy families would feed them and clothe them in memory of their ancestors. One of Mishraji's wealthy patrons was a trader—Agrawalji. Little Ganga always looked forward to eating at his house during shraadh. There would always be unlimited quantities of sweet rice pudding along with the meal. One day, as they were eating at Agrawalji's house, Gangasagar asked his father, ‘Father, shraadh is all about remembering one's ancestors, right?’
‘Yes, son. By feeding Brahmins, one symbolically feeds the spirits of the departed.’
‘So you too shall die one day?’ asked Gangasagar sadly.
Mishraji smiled. All parents desperately wanted their children to love them and Mishraji was no exception. His heart swelled with pride to see his son's concern for him.
‘Yes, Ganga. Everyone has to die someday, including me.’
Gangasagar looked crestfallen. Tears welled up in his eyes as he took another gulp of the wonderfully sweet rice pudding seasoned with almonds and raisins. Mishraji's heart melted. He tried to alleviate the obvious grief that he seemed to have caused his son. ‘Why do you want to know about such things, Ganga?’
‘I was just wondering, when you die, will we still be able to come over to Agrawalji's for rice pudding?’
Mishraji managed to scrape together enough money to send Gangasagar to a slightly better school than the government-funded one at which he taught. He asked Gangasagar to be always on his very best behaviour. He couldn't afford any other school in Kanpur.
On his very first day at the new school, Gangasagar's teacher asked him to stand up and answer some questions. The supremely confident Gangasagar was happy to oblige. The older students winked at each other, expecting a furious interrogation.
‘Who was the first president of America?’ asked the headmaster.
‘George Washington,’ replied Gangasagar.
‘Very good. History tells us that he did something naughty in his childhood. What was it?’
‘He chopped down his father's cherry tree.’
‘Excellent, Gangasagar. History also tells us that his father did not punish him. Any idea why?’
‘Because George Washington still had the axe in his hand?’ asked Gangasagar as he sat down.
Within a few months he was grading papers for the headmaster and was his favourite pupil. School was about to break for Diwali vacations. Exams had just concluded and Gangasagar was helping his headmaster mark examination papers in history—his favourite subject. He laughed at the ridiculous answers proffered by some of his classmates.
‘Ancient India was full of myths whic
h have been handed down from son to father. A collection of myths is called mythology.’
‘The greatest rulers were the Mowglis. The greatest Mowgli was Akbar.’
‘Then came the British. They brought with them many inventions such as cricket, tram tarts and steamed railways.’
‘Eventually, the British came to overrule India because there was too much diversity in our unity. They were great expotents and impotents. They started by expoting salt from India and then impoting cloth.’
One of the more difficult questions related to Chanakya, the wise guru of Chandragupta Maurya. The question was ‘Explain whether Chanakya's treatise on political economy—the Arthashastra—was his own work or whether it was simply an aggregation of previously-held views.’ One of the bright but lazy students had written, ‘Only God could know the answer to this particular question given that Chanakya is dead. Happy Diwali.’
Gangasagar wrote in the margin, ‘God gets an A-plus, you get an F. Happy Diwali to you too!’
It was to be Mishraji's last Diwali. Life had dealt him exceptionally harsh blows and the stress had eventually taken its toll. At the age of fifteen, Gangasagar was left fatherless with an ageing mother and two sisters, both of marriageable age. He knew that he would need to drop out of school, forget about college, and find work. His first port of call was Agrawalji, his father's patron who had always treated Gangasagar kindly.
The mansion of Agrawalji was located in a wooded and secluded corner of Kanpur, along the bank of the river Ganges. The ten-bedroom house stood on a tenacre plot with a private riverbank where ten Brahmins performed sacred rituals each day to make sure that the Agrawal family remained constantly blessed with good fortune for the next ten generations.
Agrawalji's father had made the family fortune during the cotton boom of 1864 and had become one of the most famous figures in the Kanpur Cotton Exchange, the nerve centre of cotton trading. During the American Civil War, Britain had become disconnected from its usual cotton supplies and had turned to India to meet its cotton requirements. Cotton speculation became hectic and frenzied, and trading would continue till late hours of the night while merchants would await information on international cotton prices prior to closing their trading positions. Senior Agrawal loved the speculation. Unknown to most people of that time, however, he was no speculator. He owed his wealth to a simple technology known as the Morse Code. The wily market operator had employed two gentlemen, one in New York and the other in Tokyo. The employee in New York would relay cotton prices using Morse Code to the employee in Tokyo who, in turn, would relay the prices to senior Agrawal in Kanpur, also in code. The result was that the senior Agrawal knew the prices almost an hour before the others. Sixty minutes of pure arbitrage each day was the secret to the immense Agrawal fortune, not mindless speculation.