Chankya's Chant (3 page)

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.

T
he 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: deep-fried 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 fair-skinned 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.