The Krishna Key
Rathore laughed. He could visualise the scene as it must have played out.
‘While he was on the ground, a heavy spanner fell down from his Jeep,’ continued Radhika. ‘The driver was a glutton for punishment. He picked up the spanner and came towards me, swinging it menacingly at me. I calmly took aim,’ replied Sir Khanpprivates was swift and strategic. He passed out. I hope he isn’t planning to father any children any time soon!’
Radhika had used the rope to tie up the driver. She had then used the driver’s cell phone to try and call Rathore but before she could get through to him she had been spotted by the police team that had discovered Kurkude’s body. They had wanted to inform Rathore immediately but she had ordered them not to. She wanted to examine Kurkude’s body for herself first.
After an hour of crime scene investigation, Radhika had been forcibly bundled into a police car by Rathore’s deputy and dropped off at the Immuno office. She now had to face the far more difficult job of wording an appropriate explanation to Saini. She turned towards him. ‘First of all, you have my sincerest apologies, Mr Saini,’ said Sniffer Singh, magnanimously admitting her mistake. ‘It has now become evident that you could not have been responsible for the serial killings that have happened. I was following the wrong scent.’
Saini smiled at her but there was sadness in his eyes. ‘You were doing your job, Inspector. I just wish that we could have been saved the running around. There was no way that I would ever have imagined that Priya was the enemy. She was the sweetest, most caring individual that I ever knew,’ said Saini. He did not say that he had found himself falling in love with Priya during the past few days. He silently admonished himself for having let his feelings get the better of him.
‘Do you have any thoughts about what our next step should be, ma’am?’ asked Rathore, looking at Radhika.
‘We can’t let them get away,’ said Radhika. ‘We’ve had Varshney brutally killed in his house. We then saw Bhojaraj murdered on his ship. We’ve also had to deal with the slaying of Kurkude’s secretary—Miss Gonsalves. We’ve now discovered the body of Kurkude himself on the shores of Sukhna Lake. Both Priya—or Mataji or whatever her real name is—and Taarak Vakil must be brought to justice.’
‘We have another equally serious problem,’ said Saini. Radhika, Rathore and Chhedi looked at him questioningly.
‘We do not know what the Krishna Key actually holds in store. It could very well be a DNA sample, but it could equally be a nuclear device or ancient weapon. Irrespective of what it is, we cannot allow Priya and Taarak to get their hands on it,’ said Saini.
‘I know that they are headed to Mount Kailash,’ said Radhika. ‘They thought that I had been knocked unconscious but I was simply pretending to be that way. I figured that it would give me a chance to listen in on their conversation. We have to go after them!’
Saini stared at Radhika blankly. She soon realized that he wasn’t staring at her but at the screen behind her on which Varshney’s note had been projected. ‘Fool!’ muttered Saini.
Radhika Singh was not amused. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.
‘I have been such a fool!’ clarified Saini. ‘The answer has been hovering right before my eyes and I chose to ignore the obvious!’
‘You’ve cracked the code?’ asked Chhedi excitedly.
‘It’s utterly simple. One merely has to read the passage in reverse order, letter by letter, ignoring the punctuation marks and spaces,’ answered Saini. He,’ replied Sir Khansh. b began rewriting the letters from the last letter of the bottom sentence and worked his way upwards, right to left, on each sentence. He soon had a readable paragraph before him:
Redraw numeral swastika, smart but stressed pupils! Keep stats, no animal parts. X on left-top at tip. Lived, laid, relaid in X. Kalash or Kailash it is? Raja surrender. Six are tips in a star. And blue water beside. Shankar elated.
‘Fine, you now have a more readable paragraph but it still means absolutely nothing to us,’ said Radhika to Saini.
‘Ah, but it makes perfect sense to me,’ said Saini, grinning from ear to ear.
I reached Hastinapur and decided to stay with Vidura. The next day, I met with the blind Dhritarashtra and his sons. Duryodhana said, ‘I have administered Indraprastha well. We don’t need the Pandavas to return.’ I replied that it was
inconsequential whether Duryodhana’s rule was competent or not. A word once given was to be honoured. Indraprastha was to be returned to the Pandavas after thirteen years. The Pandavas had kept their word and it was now the duty of the Kauravas to keep theirs, but Duryodhana refused. I bargained. I said, ‘Give them five villages instead and I will convince them to accept the offer in order to maintain peace and harmony.’ Duryodhana, however, was adamant. ‘I shall not part with a single needlepoint of land,’ he thundered. I countered, ‘Then there shall be war at Kurukshetra. By refusing to honour your commitment you have compromised dharma.’ The dimwit—Duryodhana—got angry and tried to have me arrested! I assumed my omnipotent form and that was sufficient to scare the living daylights out of all of them. War was now inevitable.
‘The answer lies in Vedic mathematics,’ explained Saini to Radhika.
She looked up from the glass of milk and a handful of almonds that she had requested Chhedi to arrange for her. ‘These policewomen!’ thought Chhedi. ‘Most of them are nuts!’
‘Ancient Indian mathematicians had invented what they called the magic square. It’s a 3 x 3 arrangement of the first nine digits excluding the zero. The unique property of the magic square is that any row, column or diagonal of the square always adds up to the same number—fifteen,’ said Saini, drawing the square for Radhika, Rathore and Chhedi.
‘In the centre is a single digit surrounded by eight digits. Notice the one-eight pattern? One digit surrounded by eight digits. The eight surrounding digits represent the four cardinal directions as well as the four ordinal directions. In short, they represent the universe—infinity. If one adds up the eight surrounding digits, one gets forty. Notice that the ratio of the centre digit—five—to the sum of the eight digits that surround it—forty—is a repetition of the one-eight pattern,’ Saini demonstrated. ‘According to the sages, zero is nothing. One is the beginning. Eight is everything. 18, 108, 1008, 10008—and other numbers like these—represent the very beginning to the very end!’ he said. ‘Eight is supreme. That’s why Krishna was the eighth child; he was the eighth avatar of Vishnu; and was born on the eighth day,’ replied Sir Khan matter on the Kaliyuga of Rohini!’
Guessing that the others were too dumbfounded to speak, Saini continued. ‘Another key property of the magic square is that one can obtain the swastika by seeking out the squares that add up to twenty-five.’
‘As you can see, at the very heart of the magic square is the number five. What is a five-sided polygon with equal sides called? A regular pentagon. But here’s the real magic… each interior angle of a regular pentagon is 108 degrees! See the magic of one, zero and eight, yet again?’ asked Saini.
‘Five at the centre of the magic square; five sides of a pentagon; five Pandavas were at the centre of the Mahabharata war, Draupadi had five children, Yayati had five sons, the chariot flag of Bhishma bore five stars, Krishna asked Duryodhana for five villages, and Panchamrut is a mixture of five elements that is used in Hindu worship. Is it therefore surprising that the Americans decided that their most important war headquarters should be in the shape of a regular pentagon?’ asked Saini slyly.
‘And there are five Yadava descendants—Varshney, Bhojaraj, Kurkude, Saini, and Chhedi—of which three are already dead,’ muttered Chhedi morosely, recalling Saini’s private conversation with him on the subject.
‘How does the magic square help us with Varshney’s decoded note?’ asked Radhika, ignoring Chhedi’s interjection.
Saini smiled. ‘Varshney is pointing us to a number. When the four seals were placed together they created a swastika, right?’
‘Right,’ said Chhedi.
r /> Saini continued. ‘Let’s examine Varshney’s deciphered note. Redraw numeral swastika, smart but stressed pupils! Varshney first admonishes us for being smart but stressed out and says that we should look at a swastika—not the symbolic one but the numeric one, from a magic square. Keep stats, no animal parts. He then says that a redrawing by keeping only the numbers and not the animal images may help. In short, what Varshney is telling us to do is to replace the symbolic swastika with a set of numbers while ignoring the animal motifs. X on top-left at tip. Varshney then points us to the specific number within the grid. The value of X on the top-left tip of the swastika is eight.’
Saini paused for a moment before taking the analysis further. ‘Lived, laid, relaid in X. By replacing X with the number eight, the sentence now reads as Lived, laid, relaid in eight. Any guesses for what Varshney is alluding to?’
‘The avatars of Vishnu?’ asked Chhedi. ‘Krishna was the eighth avatar of Vishnu.’
‘True, but the avatars of Vishnu are ten, with the tenth one yet to appear. No, Varshney is referring to a specific place, and the only one that I can think of is the Somnath temple—so very close to Dwarka,’ said Saini.
Before I left Hastinapur, I decided to have a word with Karana. ‘You are supporting a man who has not kept his word. I know you to be a righteous,’ replied Sir Khan—is Saini and Radhika person, Karana. Why not end your support to Duryodhana? It would force him to rethink and we would all be saved a terrible war,’ I said to him. Karana respectfully told me that Duryodhana had stood by him when the rest of the world had forsaken him. He could not and would not abandon Duryodhana in his hour of need. I then told Karana the secret of his birth and that he was actually a Pandava—that, too, the eldest. He was entitled to the Pandava throne, as well as Draupadi as his wife. Karana knew that I was telling him the truth and I could sense the struggle within him, but he remained firm. ‘A word once given is not to be broken. I have
promised my permanent loyalty to Duryodhana,’ he said. ‘If it means fighting my own brothers, so be it!’
‘I thought that the swastika denoted Mount Kailash. Where does Somnath come in?’ asked Radhika.
‘The Somnath temple was created and destroyed eight times,’ explained Saini. ‘There’s a fascinating legend that surrounds the origins of Somnath—known as Prabhas Patan during Krishna’s times. It’s the very place where Krishna breathed his last. It’s believed that the first temple was constructed by Soma—the moon god—in gold, and hence the name Somnath. The next one was built by Ravana in silver, and the third one was built by Krishna, in sandalwood. If we were to set aside the legends, we’d have to acknowledge the well-established historical fact that King Bhimdev of Anhilwad built the first temple at the present site—in stone—and this one is said to have existed before the beginning of the common era.’
‘So the one built by Bhimdev is officially counted as the first?’ asked Chhedi.
‘Yes,’ replied Saini. ‘The second temple was built by the Vallabhi chieftains who were Yadavas. This temple was probably constructed in the seventh century.’
‘What happened to it?’ asked Rathore.
‘In the year 725 CE, Junayad—who was the Arab governor of Sindh—sent his armies to destroy the temple. Thereafter, the Pratihara king Nagabhata II reconstructed the temple in the ninth century. This third temple was a substantial structure built from red sandstone,’ said Saini.
‘Ah. So this was the one that was destroyed by Ghazni?’ asked Chhedi.
‘Precisely. In 1024 CE, Mahmud of Ghazni, in what would be central-east Afghanistan today, attacked Somnath, after crossing the Thar Desert. After looting all the riches of the temple, he destroyed most of it—including the main Shiv lingam,’ said Saini. ‘The fourth temple was then constructed by the Paramara king, Bhoj of Malwa and the Solanki king, Bhima of Anhilwara, sometime in the eleventh century.’
‘Who destroyed that one?’ joked Chhedi.
‘Actually, no one,’ replied Saini. ‘The wooden structure had to be replaced due to wear and tear. King Kumarpal of Pali replaced the wooden structure with a stone one—so that would have been the fifth temple.’
‘I’m assuming that someone razed the fifth temple,’ said Radhika blandly.
Saini smiled. ‘Unfortunately, yes. In the year 1296, the temple was once again desecrated and eventually destroyed by the Turkic Afghan, Sultan Allauddin Khilji’s army. According to some accounts, Raja Karan of Gujarat was defeated and was forced to flee, while fifty thousand “infidels” were p and placed two fingers under the angle of BEncut to the sword. The Delhi Sultanate captured over twenty thousand slaves. Mahipala Deva—the Chudasama king of Saurashtra—rebuilt the temple in the early part of the fourteenth century and his son Khengar installed the Shiv lingam around fifteen years later. This was the sixth Somnath temple.’
‘What happened to it?’ asked Rathore.
‘Well, in 1375, the temple was attacked by Muzaffar Shah I, the Sultan of Gujarat. Somnath was plundered again by Mahmud Begda—another Sultan of Gujarat —in 1451. The final blow fell in 1701, when the temple was destroyed by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. He built a mosque on the site of the temple. Around eighty years later, another temple was built at a site adjacent to the mosque, jointly by the Peshwa of Pune, Raja Bhonsle of Nagpur, Chhatrapati Bhonsle of Kolhapur, Queen Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore and Patilbuwa Shinde of Gwalior. This was the seventh temple.’
‘And the eighth?’ asked a wondering Radhika.
‘More than a hundred and sixty years passed before Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel—India’s first home minister—took upon himself the responsibility of reconstructing the temple at the original site,’ explained Saini. ‘The mosque was shifted to a nearby site and the praanpratishthha—the ceremony invoking God—was performed in the temple by the first President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad, on 11 May 1951. This was the eighth—and current—temple. Varshney knew that we would find the number eight at the top-left tip of the swastika and this was his clue signifying that our search needed to be at the Somnath temple—a structure that had been built, destroyed and rebuilt eight times.’
‘Er, I’d like to say something,’ said Chhedi hesitantly.
‘Yes?’ asked Saini.
‘Mount Kailash is located above Lake Mansarovar,’ began Chhedi. ‘I was there last year. At one time there were eight monasteries that were built as strategic points surrounding the lake. Chinese forces destroyed most of them when they overran Tibet, but now the monasteries are being rebuilt. Couldn’t Varshney have been referring to the eight monasteries of Mount Kailash?’
‘You may be absolutely right, Dumpy. Based upon what you’ve just said, it could be either Somnath or Mount Kailash,’ Saini granted. ‘In fact, Varshney alluded to the fact that it could be either, with his line, Kalash or Kailash it is?’
‘Kailash refers to Mount Kailash but what does he mean by Kalash?’ asked Chhedi, reasonably.
‘Simple,’ explained Saini. ‘The Somnath temple—like any other Shiv temple—has a kalash—a metal pot with a large base and small mouth that is large enough to hold a coconut on top. You can see this kalash atop the present Somnath temple too. When Varshney says “Kalash or Kailash”, he is simply reaffirming our own doubt that the location of the secret could be either Somnath or Mount Kailash.’
‘But what does the remaining part of Varshney’s note, Raja surrender, mean?’ asked Radhika. ‘How is that part of the note connected with Somnath?’
‘Varshney is probably referring to the worst attack that Somnath witnessed—the one by Mahmud of Ghazni,’ said Saini.
The fact of the matter was that even though Karana had been loyal to Duryodhana, he continued to be treated terribly in the Kaurava camp on account of his supposed low birth. When Karana declared that he would ensure victory for Duryodhana, the elder Bhishma mocked him. ‘You couldn’t save Duryodhana from the Gandharvas when the four of you went after the Pandavas! It was the Pandavas that saved you from the Gandharvas! Remembe
r also that it was Arjuna who prevented you from defeating King Virata!’ A furious Karana roared at Bhishma, ‘You have achieved nothing in life. You didn’t even have the courage to get married. I refuse to fight under you!’ Bhishma retorted that he was relieved that he would not have to tolerate Karana in his ranks. I heard about this later and consoled myself that such infighting would play to the advantage of the Pandavas.
‘Can you run a search for Zakariya bin Muhammad bin Mahmud on the internet for me?’ asked Saini, turning to Chhedi.
‘How does one spell the name?’ asked Chhedi, beginning to type the search request into his tablet.
Saini spelt out the name for Chhedi and, turning to Radhika, said, ‘Zakariya was a Persian traveller and wrote a book titled Asaru-l Bilad wa Akhbaru-l’ Ibad, in the thirteenth century,’ said Saini. ‘Translated, the title means Monuments of Countries and Memoirs of Men. He has provided a vivid description of the Somnath temple and the destruction of it by Ghazni.’
‘Ah! Here it is,’ said Chhedi, searching the relevant extract on his tablet. ‘Zakariya says that Somnath is the celebrated city of India, situated on the shore of the sea, and washed by its waves. Among the wonders of that place was the temple in which was placed the idol called Somnat. This idol was in the middle of the temple without anything to support it from below, or to suspend it from above. It was held in the highest honour among the Hindus, and whoever beheld it floating in the air was struck with amazement, whether he was a Musulman or an infidel. The Hindus used to go on pilgrimage to it whenever there was an eclipse of the moon, and would then assemble there to the number of more than a hundred thousand.’
‘Continue reading the extract,’ said Saini. ‘He will go on to describe how rich Somnath was.’