‘O glorious King, Chanakya comes before you to seek your help,’ said the hideous Brahmin, as he sat down on the seat offered by the majestic and suave Paurus opposite him. Indradutt sat next to Chanakya.
‘Acharya, I've heard wonderful stories about your razor-sharp intelligence, your expansive knowledge, your uncanny ability to predict outcomes as well as your unbounded determination. But aren't you here because you've simply fallen out with Chandragupta?’ asked Paurus, feeling rather grand for being aware of such vital information.
Chanakya put on his best forlorn look and said, ‘There can be no secrets from you, O mighty Paurus. You have eyes and ears everywhere. Yes, indeed I've had a difference of opinion with Chandragupta. But I am not here because I fell out with Chandragupta; rather, I fell out with him because I planned to meet you.’
Paurus nodded sagely. He was sure Chanakya was telling him the truth. Abhaya had revealed that the cause of the dispute between the acharya and his star pupil was the fact that Chanakya wanted to offer the throne of Magadha to him—the illustrious Paurus—and not to Chandragupta.
‘Why should I trust you, acharya? Your machinations resulted in my ally, the king of Mallayrajya, being overthrown by his nephew Sinharan,’ goaded Paurus, hoping to elicit an outburst.
‘Yes, indomitable king. I took back for Sinharan what was rightfully his. In my place, you would have done exactly the same. However, to answer your question— why should you trust me—please call for the visitor who waits outside,’ said Chanakya.
Indradutt asked the orderly to bring inside the acharya's guest. Within a few moments, the orderly ushered in a young man, attired in silken robes, precious gems and all the usual trappings of royalty. It was the newly crowned king of Mallayrajya—Sinharan. He walked up to Paurus, knelt before him, and said ‘O magnificent Emperor, I have no quarrel with you. Mallayrajya was, and shall continue to remain, your unflinching ally. My conflict was with my uncle who had usurped the throne in a treacherous manner. That matter has since been resolved. Please let me have your blessings, O heroic King.’
Paurus was trying his best to maintain his indifferent and impartial manner, but Chanakya knew that he had succeeded in pandering to the king's vanity. If Paurus had been a peacock, his feathers would have puffed out entirely! It was so much easier to handle conceited and arrogant monarchs than the ones who had no pretensions of greatness. ‘Rise, Sinharan. Come and sit next to me,’ said Paurus, completely swayed by events.
‘What is it that you have in mind, acharya?’ asked Paurus, once Sinharan was seated.
‘With over two hundred thousand infantry, eighty thousand cavalry, eight thousand chariots and six thousand war elephants, Magadha remains the most powerful military might in the world. Even the combined strength of the great Paurus and his allies—including Sinharan—will be inadequate to force Magadha into a state of submission. If the magnificent Parvateshwar is to occupy the throne of Magadha, we shall need your might and my cunning,’ began Chanakya.
‘I have no use for cunning,’ interrupted the haughty Paurus.
‘Of what use was your might before Alexander?’ reminded Chanakya gently. ‘Take my advice, magnificent conqueror of the mountains, and you shall certainly be emperor of Magadha.’
‘And Chandragupta?’
‘I've no use for disciples who do not respect their teachers. I've taught him everything that he knows and this is the thanks I get? Let him rot in hell!’
‘All right, acharya, I commit myself to your goals. We shall either take Magadha or attain heaven while attempting to do so!’ announced Paurus grandly.
‘Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die,’ said Chanakya simply.
‘Let him rot in hell!’ shouted Sasigupta, as the news was confirmed. He was seated in the grand hall of his fort at Pir-Sar, in the heart of the Swat valley. He had helped Alexander take the fort and this was the thanks that the Macedonian bastards gave him? News had filtered in that their queen, Kalapini, had decided to stay on with Phillipos—Alexander's satrap in Bharat. He had been informed of their torrid affair some weeks ago by his spies but had imagined that it was one of Kalapini's temporary bouts of sexual insatiability. Her decision to stay on with Phillipos was an entirely different matter though.
He looked across the low beaten-silver table at his new friend and comrade, Chandragupta, as they each took a gulp of maireya from their goblets. The potent brew had started affecting Sasigupta's speech, and his words were slurred.
‘D—d—do you know, Ch—Chandragupta, that y— you and I actually have the very same name? Sss—sasi m—m—m—means m—m—moon, and sss—so d—does Ch—chandra. We're b—b—brothers!’ said Sasigupta, banging down his goblet so hard that the maireya splashed out on the silver tabletop. Chandragupta, who had only consumed a few sips, was stone sober. This was an excellent opportunity to stoke the fire of rebellion.
The grand old fort at Pir-Sar was rich but gloomy. It had been a terrible winter during which Alexander had decided to take Pir-Sar once and for all. As a boy growing up in Macedonia, Alexander had been narrated the story of his illustrious ancestor, Heracles, who had marched as far as Pir-Sar but had eventually been unable to capture the fort. Alexander was determined that he would outdo Heracles and become a historical legend. Besides, capturing Pir-Sar would help neutralise the threat to his supply lines, which were painfully stretched over the Hindu Kush to Balkh. The fort of Pir-Sar lay north of Attock in the Punjab, on a mountain spur above narrow gorges in a bend of the upper Indus. The mountain was gifted with a flat summit irrigated by natural springs and was certainly broad enough to grow adequate crops. Pir-Sar could not be starved into submission.
Had it not been for Sasigupta, Alexander would never have been able to capture it. At his suggestion, Alexander had reinforced a neighbouring spur to the west. Using this as a base, Alexander had asked his men to bridge the ravine along the northern face of the fort—which happened to be the most vulnerable side as revealed by Sasigupta. After three days of intense battle, which included massive boulders being flung down upon the Macedonian army by soldiers within the fort, Alexander and Sasigupta had finally succeeded in hauling themselves up over the last and final rock face as the rest of the Macedonian army went about massacring fugitives. Alexander had erected victory altars to Athena and Nike and then pursued his onward journey to battle Paurus.
Pir-Sar had been critical to his success because it had established Alexander's reputation for invincibility. More often than not, it was people's awe of his immortality and tenacity that preceded him in further conquests into Bharat.
Sasigupta stammered ‘I h—h—handed over th—th— this f—f—fucking f—f—fort and the r—rest of Bharat to the Macedonians on a p—p—platter and the p—p— pieces of sh—sh—shit reward m—m—me by f—f—f— fucking the queen of the Ashvakans?’ The Ashvakan queen, after all, was a living female deity that the fierce tribal warriors sought inspiration and guidance from. Sasigupta was their commander, but their source of strength was Kalapini.
Wise men think all they say, fools say all they think. Chandragupta could almost hear Chanakya mouthing the words into his ears. Chandragupta measured his words carefully and after some deliberation he spoke. ‘Sasigupta, you're my friend. I have a plan, if you're interested.’
The fierce, independent, strong and resilient Afghans who inhabited the rugged mountains along the Kabul River derived their name from their ancestors who lived there—the Ashvakans. They were Indo-Aryans who specialised in breeding and training horses—known as Ashva in Sanskrit. Their strength in battle as well as their skill in riding horses was in demand from all sides— Persia, Greece and Bharat. Sasigupta was their leader. He had altered the course of Alexander's campaign in Bharat by switching sides—having originally fought for Darius on the Persian front.
Sasigupta was a ruggedly handsome man. Tall and muscular, with a stomach a taut as a drum, he had extremely fair skin and green eyes. His long chestnutbrown h
air was intertwined with lengths of silk and was tied up in a conch-shell-shaped knot towards the front of his head. His rich beard and warrior moustache gave him a military bearing. His high turban embellished with rubies was a dark midnight-blue and covered his knotted tuft. It matched his flowing woollen robe of the same colour. Strung around his neck were strings of pearls. He wore a thick crimson sash around his waist in which was tucked a diamond-handled scimitar. He was indeed a formidable example of male beauty.
His masculinity was a gift from his ancestors who had instituted a special ritual known as the Ashvamedha Yajna. A strong horse would be prayed to by the king and would then be left free to gallop through various lands with the king's army following in close pursuit. Chiefs of the lands that were wandered into by the horse could either submit to the king or choose to fight. If defeated, they had to accept his suzerainty.
When Alexander first tried to subdue Sasigupta and his ferocious combatants, he knew that he had finally met his match. In a letter to his mother, Alexander wrote,‘I am in a land of a lion-like brave people, where every inch of ground is like a wall of steel, confronting my soldiers. You have brought only one Alexander into the world, but each man in this land can be called an Alexander.’ Alexander had thought it prudent to win over Sasigupta and his untamed champions rather than fight them. His decision had not proved wrong. Sasigupta not only helped him acquire Pir-Sar but also provided thousands of cavalrymen to serve in the Macedonian army, for a price of course.
‘You have thousands of cavalrymen serving under Phillipos. Get them to revolt. Let them refuse to serve a master who defiles their goddess,’ suggested Chandragupta. The idea had been Chanakya's, but Chandragupta was quite happy to pass it off as his own.
‘But Phillipos might order executions in order to enforce discipline,’ countered Sasigupta.
‘That's precisely what we want him to do,’ remarked Chandragupta smiling at his new friend.
Phillipos's fortified military camp lay quiet at this hour. All four gates to the massive rectangular raised enclosure were sealed shut for the night. The perimeter of the camp, protected by a ditch three metres wide and two metres deep, consisted of a very high palisade constructed from sharpened wooden stakes. Sentinels stood on guard at multiple points around the fencing while duty sergeants took frequent rounds to check that sentinels were not dozing off on the job.
From the main gate in the centre of one of the two shorter walls ran the principal road of the camp, eighteen metres wide, bisecting the camp into two long, rectangular halves. Running at ninety degrees to this avenue was a subsidiary road, fifteen metres wide, which effectively quartered the camp. At the intersection of these two thoroughfares, at the centre of the camp, stood its largest tent—that of the commanding general, Phillipos. In close proximity to Phillipos's tent stood those of his immediate subordinates. Beyond lay rows and rows of barracks shared by the enlisted men, two hundred and twenty men to an acre.
The entrance to Phillipos's tent was illuminated by two massive flaming torches that were fastened in the ground on either side of the entry flap. Two expressionless Hoplite sentinels, holding six-feet-long spears with sharp iron heads fixed on shafts of ash wood, guarded the tent zealously. Their faces did not register or react to the sounds that emanated from within as Phillipos made hectic love to his newest conquest, the Ashvakan queen, Kalapini.
The loyal Macedonian guards could hear in the distance a low rumble that seemed to get louder every few minutes. Although they were curious about the distant roar, their training prevented them from moving away from their duty-roster-designated spots. Every few minutes their attention would alternate between the moans from within the tent and the growling from the camp's invisible horizons.
Phillipos's guards, who were on duty at the sole westfacing entrance, did not realise that their master's tent was on fire until the heat from the blaze seared the hairs on their necks. They turned around quickly to respond to the startled cries from within but fell backwards as a volley of arrows caught them in the back. As a naked and frightened Phillipos ran out, followed by an equally nude Kalapini, the gathered Ashvakan cavalrymen surrounded the Macedonian satrap, caught hold of him, tied his hands behind his back and blindfolded him. Meanwhile, another lot covered Kalapini with a blanket to protect her modesty and threw her into the arms of a mounted horseman who immediately galloped away towards the camp exit.
‘Filthy son of a whore!’ shouted the men angrily at Phillipos. ‘You thought you could get away with banging our queen and executing our comrades? You shall die for this!’ Phillipos struggled desperately, trying to free his hands from the ropes that cut into his wrists. He tried to explain that his relationship with Kalapini was one of mutual love, but the fierce Ashvakan warriors were in no mood to be lectured on the subtle differences between rape and fornication. The news of Phillipos being attacked by the furious mercenaries of Sasigupta spread like wildfire among the Macedonian troops. They rallied to the defence of their general but were no match for the enraged tribesmen. A Macedonian commander managed to break the cordon of Ashvakans surrounding Phillipos. He lunged forward to liberate Phillipos, wrapped his arms around the general and started furiously cutting away at the ropes that bound Phillipos's hands. Before he could release Phillipos, he coughed blood into the satrap's face as a javelin brutally pierced his lungs from behind.
The camp was thundering with the sound of hoofbeats as Ashvakan horsemen rode through the main avenue hurling flaming bunches of grass into tents. Several quarters were already ablaze as confused Macedonian soldiers ran outside only to be hacked mercilessly to death.
A few yards away, standing atop a small hill, a band of horsemen observed the flames in the Macedonian camp and listened to the shouts and cries of the men who were being slaughtered. Mounted on a muscular grey Kamboja steed, Sasigupta looked at Chandragupta who was seated on an Ucchaisrava stallion, white and of immense muscular beauty. ‘I'm not sure whether we did the right thing, Chandragupta,’ said Sasigupta, thoughtfully stroking his beard. ‘This is not in the Ashvakan tradition of a formal call to arms. This is bloodshed without honour!’
‘My dear friend, Sasigupta, where was the honour when you fought for Darius? Where was the honour when you sold yourself to Alexander? Face the truth— Ashvakan bravery has been more about commercial interest than honour. What's happening now is probably the most honourable thing that you've ever done— raising your sword against an alien invader and protecting the dignity of your queen,’ said Chandragupta, fully briefed by Chanakya on how to deal with such last minute change of heart.
Chandragupta signalled to his expert archer whose all-metal arrow had been following Phillipos's movements for the past few minutes. Upon receiving a nod from Chandragupta, he pulled back on the taut hemp string that held his massive multilayered bamboo bow in shape, ensured that the target was momentarily stationary and released his feathered missile. It whizzed past Chandragupta, countless trees, the camp perimeter, Macedonian soldiers, and Ashvakan cavalrymen, before it met its mark. The sharp tip pierced the skin of the intended victim and drew blood. Thirsty for more, it plunged deeper until it could find a beating heart or pumping lung to lodge in. The arrow wound to his chest succeeded in rupturing his lungs, rapidly flooding them with his own blood, effectively drowning him in his own plasma. As his heart continued to pump, his blood was forced up through his airways and spurted from his mouth and nose. His eyes rolled back and he fell backwards desperately wishing that his life would end soon—and it did. Phillipos was dead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Present Day
Menon was reading the morning newspaper aloud to Ikrambhai. Major Bedi, looking relaxed after six months of incessant electioneering, sat in Gangasagar's living room sipping tea.
‘With a working majority in the Lok Sabha, the chairman of the victorious alliance shall meet the President of India at 4 pm on Tuesday to stake claim to form the new government. This was decided unanimously at a meeting of the
alliance partners. The chairman's name was proposed by the ruling party and was seconded by Pandit Gangasagar Mishra, the president of the ABNS, one of the largest alliance partners of the ruling party.’
‘Hah! The largest, not one of the largest!’ exclaimed Ikram as Major Bedi smiled. His formula of having no formula had worked. He took the newspaper from Menon and continued reading. ‘The ABNS, with sixtyfive MPs from Uttar Pradesh, is the largest constituent of the coalition after the ruling party, which won two hundred seats. The coalition has received letters of support from several smaller parties and now has the backing of around three hundred MPs, much more than the two hundred and seventy-two required for a basic majority in the Lok Sabha. The chairman of the alliance shall present a letter to the president providing details of the re-election of the prime minister—the former defence minister—as leader of the ruling party's delegation to Parliament. He's also expected to hand over letters of support received by his party from its coalition partners. The president is likely to extend an invitation to the alliance to form the next government at the Centre. The oath-taking ceremony is likely to be fixed for Friday at Rashtrapati Bhavan.’
‘It's good that the total number of MPs supporting this government are three hundred,’ said Ikram.
‘Why? Because that puts them at twenty-eight more than the halfway mark?’ asked Menon.
‘No, because it puts them thirty-seven short of the halfway mark if the ABNS decides to withdraw support!’ said Ikram, chewing on his paan contentedly while Bedi chuckled.
He sat in the first row—next to Somany's victorious Prime Minister—watching the scene unfolding at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The President was administering the oath of office to Chandini. She was saying ‘I, Chandini Gupta, do swear in the name of God that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established, that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India, that I will faithfully and conscientiously discharge my duties as cabinet minister and that I will do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law without fear or favour, affection or ill will.’