The Mahabharata Secret (11 page)

Imran understood. There were five state elections looming, all critical for the ruling political party. That gave this matter a totally different perspective, apart from the more obvious one of national security.

He returned to his office and dialled a number. ‘Pramod, listen carefully. I have a hunch.’ He proceeded to give detailed instructions to the person at the other end of the line and then replaced the receiver in its cradle. He had no idea if his hunch would work. He knew he was grasping at straws. But what else could he do?

Tour Around Jaungarh Fort

‘I really haven’t come been to the fort too often, so I don’t know my way around very well,’ Vijay confessed as he guided the group along the maze of corridors and narrow staircases that led from one room to another, connecting, through narrow staircases, the different levels of the fort, as it climbed the hillside.

They had finished dinner and Vijay had offered to take them on a tour of the fort to take their minds off the puzzle.

The stairways between the levels were steep. Five hundred years ago, the architects of the fort had designed it with the intention of thwarting enemies who managed to infiltrate the outer defences. Pursuit by the enemy on these stairs would be difficult. Each stairway ended in an intersection of four corridors, a design aimed at confusing and delaying an enemy in pursuit. These intersections had doorways leading out of them that were less than five feet high, compelling passage through them by bending; another device to slow the enemy while the inhabitants made good their escape through numerous secret passages and tunnels.

‘Are these secret tunnels still accessible?’ Radha asked excitedly.

Vijay shook his head. ‘Some of them would have deteriorated and become dangerous to enter with the passage of time. I think uncle blocked them all up when he renovated the fort.’

They were now passing through the inner rooms of the fort which had smoothed, plastered walls with large, colourful murals painted on them.

‘Frescoes of scenes from the Mahabharata,’ Shukla observed. ‘Your uncle loved the epic.

Vijay nodded. He recalled his childhood, sitting at his uncle’s knee, listening to stories from the epic embellished with a child’s imagination.

‘That is a portrayal of the Bhagavad Gita being delivered on the battlefield.’ Shukla pointed to a painting that covered the wall from floor to ceiling, with horses hitched to a chariot, stamping and tossing their heads while a man with blue skin clad in armour seemed to be preaching to another man armed with an enormous bow and a quiver of arrows on his back. ‘Lord Krishna, the avatar of Lord Vishnu, delivering the Gita to Arjuna, the archer.’

There were other scenes from the Mahabharata, in the other rooms; the death of Karna—the son of Kunti, mother of the Pandava brothers, and Surya, the Sun God—as he tried valiantly to free his chariot’s wheel from the mire; the famous scene where Draupadi, wife of the five Pandava brothers, is humiliated after she is gambled away over a game of dice.

It was nine o’clock when they finished the tour. Everyone was tired now, especially Vijay and Colin, who hadn’t slept the previous night, and they all retired to their rooms, glad to be able to rest.

For a few hours, the puzzle of the verse was forgotten.

12

Day 6

Jaungarh Fort

Vijay shifted uneasily in his sleep. He hadn’t slept well since he’d first received word of his uncle’s death. It was the same tonight. Nebulous dreams filled his sleep.

He now dreamt of a king carving inscriptions on rocks, going from boulder to boulder, chiselling away until each rock’s surface was fully covered with unreadable squiggles. Finally, nine rocks stood in a circle, like an eye gazing at the sky. And then he found himself watching the scene from above; looking down on the ring of rocks, in the centre of which stood the king, his hands triumphantly raised to the sky. In one hand he clutched a metal disk...

Vijay awoke suddenly and sat up in bed, dazed.

Then it came back to him; his dream,the king,the rocks. The inscriptions and the metal disk.

His dream, he knew, had its genesis in the events of the day: the discussion on Asoka’s edicts, the brotherhood of the Nine and the verse on the metal disk. But, something tugged at his mind, some thought hidden away in a deep recess. He searched hard. He didn’t know why, but that thought seemed important.

Then, it came to him—a line from one of his uncle’s emails.

Follow the edicts of Asoka.

Abruptly, it dawned on him. He knew what had woken him. He had found the second clue! The one that would decode the verse on the disk.

Vijay smiled. They were back on track.

Old Memories

Vijay looked up from his laptop as Radha entered the study, looking concerned. There were papers scattered across the desk and the printer was churning out more paper.

‘What happened? We were wondering where you were. The butler told us you weren’t in your room and we couldn’t see you in the garden. I finally thought of looking for you here.’ She stood by his side, looking down at him. ‘Have you eaten anything? Everyone’s had breakfast already.’

Vijay ran a hand through his tousled hair and shook his head. He had been up since awakening from his dream and had spent the time working in the study. Until now he’d been too preoccupied to give a thought to food. At her words, however, he realised he was hungry. But first he had to tell her what he had discovered.

‘I’ve got it,’ his eyes gleamed with exhilaration as he looked up at her. ‘I’ve got the second clue.’

Radha smiled at him. ‘Come on downstairs. I’ll fix you breakfast. Once you’ve eaten, you can tell us about it.’

Vijay smiled back at her as she left. His thoughts went back to the day he met her, two years ago, for the first time after leaving the country. Vikram Singh had wanted something delivered to his old friend, Dr. Shukla, and Vijay had volunteered to be the courier.

Radha had been a childhood friend but he hadn’t seen her for 12 years. All he remembered of her was a gawky teenager with braces on her teeth, and an attitude. He had wondered what he would find now. He had gaped at the attractive young woman, framed by the open doorway at Dr. Shukla’s house.

Radha had been around when he had chatted with Dr. Shukla. The meeting had ended with him inviting her for dinner the next evening. During dinner, the next evening, he had told her about the start-up he and Colin had founded and had been pleasantly surprised to learn that she was a nuclear physicist working with the Department of Atomic Energy.

Vijay smiled as he recalled that evening. He had enjoyed her company. Ever since his last girlfriend at MIT, he hadn’t had time or the inclination for another relationship. But Radha had been different. Though their relationship hadn’t progressed beyond friendship, they had kept in touch. Returning to the present, he realised that he was hungry and decided to go downstairs for breakfast.

13

AD
500

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

From the moment his secret had been discovered, Pala had known that his life was in danger.

Court astronomer by profession, custodian of an ancient secret by volition, he had succeeded in concealing his true vocation for over 40 years. Until that fateful day that the book, written in stone and lost to the world for almost 800 years, was discovered while digging the foundation for a new fort. The book was whisked away to the Grand Palace and disappeared once more. As if it had never existed.

Only then had Pala realised that someone had made the connection between the stone book and a myth that was thousands of years old. He knew that he had to get the texts and the metal disk to Santhal, a monk and a member of the brotherhood, who lived in a small monastery that lay at the feet of the two giant statues of the Buddha that were being carved into the sandstone cliffs overlooking the valley. This was what had been agreed upon, when he had joined the Nine. Santhal was one of the two members who had revealed his true identity to Pala. If anything were to threaten the secrets either of them was responsible for, they were bound by oath to pass on the secrets to the other.

After leaving the palace, he had made his way through the numerous kingdoms of Western India that had risen as the mighty Gupta Empire disintegrated.

Pala came across three men, who were travelling to the same destination.

By the time he had seen through their deception and understood their motive, it was too late.

The group of four had struck out for the highlands that lay between them and the monastery. They had all agreed to continue travelling through the night and Pala now realised why.

It was a perfect night for betrayal and murder.

The moon lay hidden behind a wispy veil of clouds and no stars shone in the sky. Winter was upon them and in the bitter cold of night there would be no other travellers on the trail.

No witnesses!

Pala had tried to get away. But he was old and they were young and physically stronger. Then, he remembered hearing, at the last town, about caves that had been tunnelled into the cliffs behind the Buddhas, to service their construction. He had tried to conserve his energy, lagging behind the others at times, until they arrived at a gravel strewn gully. While his three companions had sat down to rest and wait for him to catch up he had made his break, striking out among the rocks and boulders, trying to get to the edge of the cliff where he would search for the caves.

It had worked for a while. Desolation and silence, twin sisters in the darkness, had aided him as he left the gully, and in the frosty night air the sounds of pursuit had been carried to him, enabling him to evade the others. But he knew it was just a matter of time; he would tire and his younger companions would soon realise where he was headed.

In the pale light of the veiled moon the rocks and boulders sketched shadows on each other, standing silent and grim like mourners at a funeral, as Pala furiously hunted for refuge.

Panting from his exertions, he finally found the entrance to the caves and clambered down a roughly hewn tunnel. It soon opened into a cave, barely four feet high so he had to stoop and walk. There was no light and Pala hunted around desperately, blindly, looking for a place to hide the contents of his leather satchel. His arms and elbows bled from scraping against the walls but he ignored the pain, intent on his purpose.

They might kill him, but they would never discover the secret he carried!

At one end of the rocky chamber was a smooth wall of sandstone which, he guessed, was the back of one of the Buddha statues. There seemed to be no crevices or niches in which to hide the contents of his satchel.

He heard the sounds of men scrambling down the tunnel and saw the glimmer from their horn lantern light up the cave with an eerie glow.

As the three men emerged, Pala knew he was going to die in this cave. There was fury in their faces; they had thought he would be an easy target.

One of them grinned at him. ‘You thought you could outrun us and escape?’ The leader chuckled, but the sound was devoid of humour.

Pala never saw the blow coming.

As he turned to face the man, something sharp and hard struck him on the side of his head. In the cold air of the cavern he felt something sticky and hot flow down his cheek. It was his blood, he realised, as his head exploded with sudden pain.

Pala sagged to the ground.

His last thought, before the darkness enfolded him, was that he had failed in his mission.

One of the men knelt down and rummaged through the contents of the dead man’s satchel. It contained books of bark, bound together in the manner that was prevalent in northern India. He handed the books to their leader who leafed through them helplessly. None of the three men could read much more than their own names.

He threw the texts down in the dirt in anger and stamped on them, unmindful of the destruction he was causing.

His voice was hoarse with rage. ‘We went to all this trouble for these strips of bark? The way he kept the satchel close to him as if he was guarding it with his life, I thought there would be something more precious in there.’

‘Here, what’s this?’ The man peering into Pala’s bag pulled out a metallic object. It was in the shape of a circle, made of solid metal. He handed it to his leader. The metal was black but definitely not tarnished silver. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. One side of the circular slab was blank and smooth with a matted black finish. The other side had circular grooves with markings and inscriptions that he couldn’t read.

He did not see any value in it and flung the disk at Pala’s corpse.

‘Curse the son of a dog!’ he spat. ‘We have nothing to show for our efforts.’

‘What do we do with the corpse?’

‘Leave it here. This cave isn’t in use any more. We’ll go back up and roll a boulder over the opening. No one will ever know.’

The three men made their way back up the tunnel, to the surface, and searched for the largest boulder. They finally had a huge one plugging the entrance, burying Pala’s body and the contents of his satchel with him.

Little did they know that they had just buried the truth about one of the greatest ancient secrets of the world; a truth that would lie buried with Pala for the next 1,500 years.

14

Present Day

Day 6
Jaungarh Fort

The little group was assembled in the study again. They were all eager to find out about Vijay’s discovery. Warm sunlight flooded into the study through the huge bay windows.

Vijay narrated his dream to them. ‘What struck me was the fact that the king in the dream carved nine rocks. I realised that I was dreaming about Asoka and his edicts. When we read the verse yesterday, we naturally assumed that it referred to the Nine Unknown Men, describing them. But uncle, in his third mail, urges me to follow the edicts of Asoka, saying they will lead me on a voyage of discovery. It occurred to me that perhaps the verse referred not to the Nine themselves but to the nine edicts of Asoka.’

‘So what we should be looking for are nine locations where Asoka placed his edicts.’ Colin took up his train of thought.