The Mahabharata Secret (14 page)

‘The Pandavas,’ Shukla prompted and asked, ‘There is a legend about the Pandavas?’

‘Yes. The legend says they had come here with Lord Krishna during their exile. They were requested to stay overnight for a wedding. But Krishna was carrying a lot of gold and jewellery and there was no safe place to leave them. So, he placed them in this cave which was later converted into a temple. He never returned for the valuables, though, and, according to the locals, the treasure is still buried here. Some say that you can see the treasure within the cave but when you enter it the vision disappears.’

‘An ancient story about a buried treasure.’Shukla looked thoughtful, ‘Many ancient legends were born out of a need to protect something. What if the story referred to the secret that the Nine hid here? The legend and the temple would have been great ways of ensuring that no one would ever try and look for a treasure that was inaccessible.’

‘Shouldn’t we move on and look at what we came to see?’ Vijay was growing impatient. He nodded to Chunnilal and bowed to the baba, handing him some money. Together with Chunnilal, they walked along a dirt path that led up a slope studded with small rocks and flanked by a stone wall. Where the incline ended, a short flight of stairs led to a second level, where another wall enclosed the remains of the
chaitya
. A mud path bordered by stones led to a brick platform. Where the bricks hadn’t been cemented over during preservation work, their age was evident. Most of the bricks used here seemed to have been the original ones.

On the brick platform stood a circular wall, with an opening to the east. While the inside wall of this circle had a cement face, the exterior was exposed brick.

But what they didn’t expect to see was the structure that lay within the circular wall. It was shaped like a gear wheel and had a gap between the teeth that perfectly aligned with the opening in the surrounding circular wall. The cog wheel was completely cemented all around, with not one brick visible.

Chunnilal, in the meanwhile, had wandered off to one side, gazing into the distance as they took in the sight.

Above them loomed a second terrace, over 50 feet higher, built on the summit of the hill and enclosed by a stone wall. A flight of stone stairs led to this.

‘What’s in there?’ Colin wondered.

‘Let’s check.’ Vijay started for the staircase.

He sprinted up the stairs, and reached a small landing that lay ten feet below the upper terrace. The stone wall that enclosed the ruins on the upper terrace rose from this level. To his right, adjoining the wall, was a stone platform built entirely of brick. Before him rose the stairway with the final stretch of nine stairs. Vijay quickly dashed to the top and surveyed the ruins that lay before him. There was nothing left of the structures that must have stood here centuries ago. All that remained now were the foundations; brick walls that stood six inches above the ground.

Colin and Radha joined Vijay and gazed at the ruins.

‘Was this the monastery?’ Colin asked, looking around.

Radha nodded. ‘Probably.’

To their right, a series of square brick platforms, two feet high, lined the terrace, their purpose a mystery.

‘There’s nothing here.’ Vijay turned back and began descending the staircase, followed by Colin and Radha.

As they reached the foot of the staircase and arrived at the lower level, Chunnilal shared another legend with them.

‘This
chakra
,’ he indicated the cog wheel, ‘dates from the time of the Pandavas.’

‘What do you mean?’ Shukla asked, interested.

‘The design of the
chakra
,’ Chunnilal explained, ‘is based on a game of dice that they played in ancient times. This structure was built for the Pandavas to play dice.’

‘And why would they play dice on top of a hill?’ Colin wanted to know.

‘Because this hill has special powers,’ Chunnilal replied. ‘According to legend, this hill has the ability to imbue people with immense knowledge and learning; so they would be able to play well.’

Colin couldn’t understand how knowledge and learning helped in a game of dice which was based on chance. He opened his mouth to remonstrate but Shukla interrupted him, his eyes gleaming with excitement. ‘I’ll explain later, Colin.’ He turned to Vijay. ‘This is the place. There is no doubt about it.’

‘But where do we look?’ Vijay gestured around him. ‘Everything is cemented over. If there were any signs left by the Nine, they would have been obliterated aeons ago or covered up by the restoration.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Radha said slowly. While they had been talking, she had been walking among the ruins, lost in thought. ‘I think they left us a sign; a very obvious one. Let’s go back to the hotel and I’ll tell you.’

16

Day 6

Gurgaon

‘They went to Bairat?’ Farooq’s face twisted into a frown as he contemplated this piece of news. ‘And you tell me this now?’ There was anger in his voice, but he controlled it. It wouldn’t do to lose his temper now. Not, at least, with the man who was on the other end of the line.

‘How does that matter?’ The voice was curt and seemed to have sensed Farooq’s mood. The point is why did they go to Bairat? They are on the trail of something.’

‘What’s there at Bairat?’ Farooq looked at Imtiaz, who had been typing at his laptop ever since he had heard the word Bairat. He had googled the word and come across the same information that Vijay and his friends had.

‘If there are ruins from the time of Asoka at Bairat then there must be a link to the Nine.’

Farooq shook his head. ‘It doesn’t make sense. The topography is all wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Remember the description of the cavern? It was in a hill surrounded by forest. Bairat is in Rajasthan. It’s a desert out there. No evidence of a forest even 2,000 years ago. And the text spoke of a single hill with a cave at its foot that led to the cavern where they found the secret. Bairat is surrounded by hills.’

‘They wouldn’t waste their time going there if there wasn’t something there.’

‘I’m not saying there’s nothing there. All I’m saying is that this isn’t where we’ll find it. It’s not the hiding place.’

‘In any case, you’d better go and see what there is to be found at Bairat.’ There was a click and the caller hung up.

Farooq stared angrily at the telephone receiver in his hand. With a visible effort he recovered his composure and looked at Imtiaz. ‘Get the men and equipment ready. We leave in 10 minutes.’

Devious Clues!

Radha stood facing the rest of the group. They were gathered in Vijay’s room at their hotel in Jaipur.

‘It occurred to me when I walked around the cog wheel,’ she began, picking up the metal disk with the verse inscribed on it. ‘Look at this disk. And then try and recall what you saw at Bairat.’ She held up the disk with its inscribed face turned towards them, so they could see the inscriptions.

It struck them immediately.

‘It’s the structure at Bairat.’ Colin slapped his forehead.

Vijay groaned. ‘What idiots we are!’

Radha grinned. ‘While you guys were going on about the Mahabharata, I counted the number of teeth on the cog wheel at Bairat. There were twenty-seven in number; exactly the number of teeth in the cog wheel on this disk.’

‘So this cog wheel has a link to that gear like structure that Chunnilal claimed was used by the Pandavas to play dice.’ Colin summarised and threw up his hands. ‘Devious clues!’

‘I think there’s more,’ Radha continued. ‘Both the cog wheel and the outer circle on this disk have gaps corresponding to the gaps in the structure we saw at Bairat. However, when we align the inscriptions to get the verse the gaps in the outer circle and the cog wheel are not aligned. What happens if we align the two gaps?’

‘But the key locks the disks in place,’ Colin pointed out. ‘The only way to get the circles to move is to take the key out.’

Radha removed the key and rotated the cog wheel, so the gap in the wheel aligned with the gap in the outer circle.

There was a soft click.

‘What happened?’ Colin squinted at the disk.

But nothing seemed to have changed. Radha frowned. She picked up the disk from the table to study it closely and gasped.

The metal slab had split into two parts; the slab that contained the outer circle and the first and last lines of the verse had separated from the slab that had been affixed below it and which contained the cogwheel and the hollow for the key.

‘Amazing,’ Shukla murmured in wonder. ‘I did not see the joint between the two slabs. Whoever created this slab possessed amazing workmanship; or amazing technology.’

‘More likely workmanship,’ Vijay remarked. ‘Technology over 2,000 years ago? Kind of like the story of the nine books written by the Nine.’

Radha carefully separated the upper portion of the slab from the lower one and placed the part with the gear wheel on the table.

Inscribed on the slab, enclosing the gearwheel, was a circle with a gap at its lower end, aligning perfectly with the gap in the teeth of the cog wheel. Around this outer circle were randomly scattered circles, squares and rectangles etched into the dark metal.

Colin saw it first. ‘It’s a map of Bairat.’

‘And the squares and circles around the gearwheel are the locations of the ruins on that terrace,’ Radha finished.

‘What’s that there?’ Vijay pointed to a small hollow in the shape of a parallelogram that lay directly above the gear wheel. ‘All the other shapes are etched as outlines. Why is this three dimensional?’

Almost before he had finished speaking, the answer came to him. ‘It’s a trapdoor.’

‘But where is it located?’ Colin scratched his head. ‘We looked everywhere.’

‘It’s in a spot that is on the opposite side of the gaps,’ Radha pointed out.

There was silence for a few moments as everyone thought hard. Then, Colin spoke up. ‘I think I know where,’ he beamed.
‘Let’s go back there and I’ll show you.’

17

Day 6

Bairat

Vijay stood and gazed upon the hill that was now shrouded in darkness. There was a half moon in the sky that cast a pale glow upon the trees, rocks and shrubs around.

‘Let’s go.’ Vijay strode purposefully towards the hill. He pulled out a portable lamp from his bag. A powerful beam of light swept up the hillside, cutting through the darkness and illuminating the cobbled path.

He beckoned to the others, ‘Let’s see what the Nine hid out here.’

They climbed up to where they had seen the cog wheel earlier in the day. ‘Okay, so where’s the trapdoor?’ Vijay looked at Colin.

Colin produced the metal slab with the gearwheel. ‘Okay, this is how I see it. This is the only shape that isn’t a circle, square or rectangle. It is a parallelogram. Why? All the structures here with straight lines as edges have only right angles. No parallelograms. The only thing I can think of that would justify the parallelogram is that the trapdoor is located at a different elevation than the cog wheel.’

Understanding dawned on Vijay. He swung the beam of light to illuminate the raised platform on the small landing that lay between the two larger terraces.

They marched up the stairway to the mid-level terrace and studied the platform. It was built using the same bricks that were found in the ruins of the
chaitya
below them and the monastery above.

Vijay trained the light on the surface of the platform.

Nothing there.

‘Now what?’ Radha wondered.

Vijay reached into his bag and pulled out another lamp. ‘Here.’ He handed it to Colin. ‘This will help you guys to look around as well.’

He returned to his scan of the platform and the others joined him.

Suddenly, he froze as a familiar symbol among the bricks jumped out at them in the light of the torch. It was the only decoration on the bricks.

A nine-spoked wheel.

They looked at each other in excitement. This had to mean something.

‘This could be a marker for the trapdoor,’ Shukla suggested, looking a little doubtful. ‘But I don’t know how reliable it is. Remember, this platform, along with much of the ruins, has been restored. Where is the guarantee that this brick with the wheel was put back in its original position during the reconstruction?’

Vijay now had his nose to the platform as he ran the lamp along the surface.

‘You sniffing out the trapdoor?’ Colin chuckled.

‘Looking for anything in the brickwork that will indicate where the trapdoor lies.’

Slowly, they covered every inch of the surface but found neither crack nor joint in the brick masonry.

‘You were right,’ Vijay admitted to Shukla. ‘It looks like the reconstruction obliterated any sign that may have existed, or maybe even the trapdoor itself. Otherwise wouldn’t the trapdoor have been discovered during the reconstruction?’

They looked at each other glumly. What chance did they have of finding a 2,000-year-old clue in ruins that must have been restored less than 50 years ago?

Radha took the lamp from Colin and shone its light on the brick with the wheel, peering at it curiously. Something had struck her as odd about the sign.

Of course! All the bricks on the platform were rectangular. All, that is, except the brick on which the wheel was inscribed.

The brick with the sign was circular in shape.

What did that mean?

She voiced her observation.

Two lamps were trained on the circular brick now and the little group stared hard at it, trying to fathom what this meant.

‘There is another possibility,’ Shukla spoke up. He was sitting on the platform, off to one side.

All eyes turned to him.

‘Perhaps this brick was put here to indicate a spot.’ He traced the outline of the brick with his finger. ‘It could be that there is something hidden underneath it.’

Vijay nodded. They had been looking for an entrance of some sort, a trapdoor among the bricks that made up the surface of the platform. But what if the brick marked a spot where something was hidden?

He produced a chisel and hammer from his bag. Handing the lamp to Colin, he gently chiselled away at the circumference of the brick, dislodging the mortar around it.