Chankya's Chant (8 page)

‘I wonder whether this one really needs a Takshila education,’ whispered the admissions director to the dean as Chanakya left.

Chanakya’s awry front teeth, his gangly limbs, his blemished and cratered face, his charcoal complexion and his patchy skin caused him to stand out as the most ill-favoured of Takshila. Princes and sons of nobility, most of whom placed a premium on being aristocratic and handsome, filled the university. Chanakya’s raw intellect and audacious opinion on almost every subject did little to win him friends.

One day, when he was walking from his dormitory to his classes, he yelped in sudden pain as one of the blades of dry
kush
grass growing along the riverbank pierced his right foot. He mechanically lifted up his foot and pulled out the thorny blade of grass that had ventured to challenge him. Having pulled out the thorn and washed away the blood in the river, Chanakya bent down to examine the offending turf. He began uprooting clumps of kush and hurling them into the river.

‘Look at Chanakya, friends! He harangues us with accounts of how he will destroy the enemies of the country and look, he cannot even suppress mere grass that attacks his foot!’ shouted one of his classmates. Chanakya remained absorbed in the problem before him and ignored the jibes. He continued to pull out the wounding blades of tough kush, oblivious to the laughter and merriment around him. Several minutes and handfuls later, though, he realised that he was not going to be successful in eliminating the adversarial weeds using as unrefined a method as this. He made a mental note of what needed to be done and hurried to class. ‘Defeated already!’ crowed his compatriots. ‘If that were real battle it would have ended without bloodshed. Chanakya would simply have laid down his arms before the enemy,’ suggested a young prince. Chanakya had nothing to contribute by way of retort.

The next day, Chanakya’s classmates were surprised to see him carrying a pitcher containing a clouded solution. While his compatriots hurried along, Chanakya drizzled the whitish liquid over as wide an area of the turf as possible. Some more sarcastic remarks followed. ‘This is Chanakya’s new battle strategy. If you can’t defeat the enemy, give him milk so that he can become even stronger and decimate you effortlessly,’ said one. Another remarked caustically, ‘No, no. You don’t understand… this is kush grass, revered by our Vedas. Chanakya is making offerings to the grass so that he may please the gods and they, instead of him, may do the dirty work of annihilating the adversary.’ As usual, Chanakya did not offer any explanations.

The next day, the boys were shocked to find that large patches of the grass had disappeared. ‘Hey Chanakya! What was in that milk you sprayed here yesterday?’ asked one of the boys, curiosity piqued.

‘The kush was too abundant and vast for me to destroy, so I figured—if my enemy’s enemy is my friend— what is this kush’s biggest foe? The answer was fungus and ants, both of which attack the grass and feed on it. What I poured yesterday was not milk. It was sweetened whey, my friends. The protein in the whey caused the fungus to grow and the sugar content attracted the ants,’ explained the canny youth to his disconcerted companions who were even more surprised to note that Chanakya had brought with him yet another pitcher of whey and was repeating the previous day’s procedure.

‘You’ve already killed the grass, Chanakya. What’s with the second pitcher?’ enquired one of the preceding day’s mocking sons of nobility.

‘A debt should be paid off till the last pana, and an enemy destroyed till the very last trace,’ reasoned the unrelenting Chanakya for the benefit of his new admirers.

‘It’s unfortunate that the concept of
Bharat
—the common abode and cultural heritage of us Indo-Aryans —has been subjugated by petty rulers and kingdoms. Our scriptures, traditions, culture, prayers, and deities are common. Why is it, then, that we refer to our homes as Magadha, Gandhar, Kashi, Kuru, Kosala, Mallayrajya or Panchala? Why don’t we say that we’re citizens of Bharat? It’s this fundamental divisiveness that will bring about our downfall in the future,’ debated Chanakya while tilting his head so that he could partially align his face with that of his host. He was in Sage Dandayan’s hut on the outskirts of Takshila. The sage was a yogi and had been standing on his head for the past few days, hence the valiant effort by Chanakya to adjust his own visage with that of the upside-down yogi.

In the past six years, Chanakya had not only excelled at every subject in his curriculum at Takshila but had also been on the merit list each year. His stellar academic performance had earned him the position of
upacharya
— teaching assistant—in his favourite subjects, political science and economics. The meagre but adequate income from the job had allowed him to repay the debt to his guru, Pundarikaksha, in accordance with his sentiment that ‘a debt should be paid off till the last pana’, although Pundarikaksha had joked that the interest was still due and payable, not in cash, but through the realisation of a united homeland.

Pundarikaksha had introduced Chanakya to the insightful yogi, and Chanakya enjoyed visiting him at his hermitage every once in a while. Dandayan liked the bright young man who seemed to have an opinion on almost every major issue. ‘Solitary candles remain centred on their own flames until one applies heat to the vessel that holds them. In the face of a common enemy—heat— they coalesce into a single candle,’ revealed the inverted sadhu, his long grey locks and beard forming a pool around his head on the floor.

The sacred ash-smeared yogi continued nonchalantly, ‘Unlike the sun which awakes in the east and falls asleep in the west, the Hellenic star has arisen in the west and is travelling eastwards. The fair-skinned god eradicates everyone and everything that confronts him. Your real enemy is not Dhanananda, O learned offspring of Chanak, but the Macedonian divinity whom they call
Alexander the Great
!’

‘What shall I do, guruji? My anger towards Dhanananda has not abated. How can I disregard my objectives?’ asked a perturbed Chanakya.

‘Chanakya. One does not need to pluck fruit from a tree that is about to be chopped down. The fruit will fall by themselves. Focus on the bigger purpose and the rest of your manifesto will follow as a matter of course.’

Chanakya’s fame and reputation as a teacher grew. Students vied with one another to be in his class. Every once in a while, Chanakya would break away from learning-by-rote and allow his students to ask him rapid-fire questions which he would answer in his most witty and penetrating manner with little regard for political rectitude.

‘Acharya, you’re the most learned of teachers. Why shouldn’t you become a king?’

‘Honestly speaking. I don’t mind that I’m not king. I just have a problem that someone else is.’

‘Acharya, what is the reason for secrecy in government?’

‘If citizens don’t know what you’re doing, how on earth can they possibly tell what you’re doing wrong? That’s why secrecy is essential, my boy.’

‘Acharya, why do people seem to get away with not respecting the law of the land?’

‘If we want people to have respect for the law, then we must first make the law respectable, son.’

‘Acharya, isn’t the king actually a servant of the people?’

‘Correction. In order to become master, a ruler must
profess to be a servant
of the people.’

‘Acharya, how can the prime minister reduce the king’s burden in times of crisis or panic?’

‘Why do that? Rulers must be allowed to panic. They need to be kept busy with lots of crises. It’s their measure of achievement!’

‘Acharya, is it the sacred duty of the king to always speak the truth?’

‘Hah! The king doesn’t need the truth. What he most needs is something that he can tell the people, dear lad. After all, a good speech is not one in which you can prove that the king’s telling the truth, it’s one where no one else can prove he’s fibbing.’

‘Acharya, which are the freedoms that should be guaranteed to a citizen by the state?’

‘Hmm… let me see. It’s well known that a hungry man is more interested in four pieces of bread rather than four freedoms.’

‘Acharya, why should Brahmins like you be involved in politics?’

‘Politics is far too serious a matter to be left to politicians, son.’

‘Acharya, is war the only solution to political differences?’

‘Wise pupil, politics is war without bloodshed and war is simply politics with bloodshed.’

‘Acharya, don’t citizens have the right to know how their tax revenues are being used?’

‘Dear me. No, no, no. People don’t want to know how tax revenue has actually been spent. Does any worshipper ever ask the temple Brahmin what happened to the ritual offering made to the gods?’

‘Acharya, isn’t good government about acting on principles?’

‘Absolutely. Government is about principles. And the principle is, never act on principle.’

‘And are principles greater than money?’

‘Remember one central tenet, lad. When anybody says, “It isn’t the money, it’s the principle”, they actually mean that it’s the money.’

‘Acharya, what’s the ideal amount of time that should be spent by the king’s council debating an issue?’

‘Well, if you don’t want the council to spend too long over something, make it the last item on their agenda before refreshments.’

‘Acharya, should a king go to war to uphold law and justice?’

‘The king should always be on the side of law and justice, as long as he doesn’t allow it to come in the way of foreign policy.’

‘Acharya, what should the punishment be for a prime minister who keeps the king ignorant of happenings in the kingdom?’

‘My son, kings are ignorant not because prime ministers do not give them the right answers but because they do not ask their prime ministers the right questions. And here endeth the lesson!’

The witty repartee and humour masked an inner melancholy and sense of desolation. Chanakya had left his mother in Magadha on the mere promise of Katyayan. Was she in good health? Would she be missing her son?

How would she be coping with the loss of both husband and son? Over the years, he had tried to send several messages to her through various merchant caravans and wandering bards. No reply had ever come back. It could mean either that the messengers had been unable to locate her... or worse.