Warriors Of Dandaka: Kaand 1 Night Has A Thousand Eyes Chapter 13
Pushpak Karnick
14 July 2007, 23:43Kaikeyi was meditating in her chambers when she sensed the footsteps of her maid come to a halt outside the door. The maid was obviously hesitating to come in while Kaikeyi was performing her daily exercises, but the hurried shuffling of her feet suggested that she might be carrying an important message.
“Andar aa jaao,” she called the maid inside.
The door opened softly and the maid tiptoed inside the room. It was a maid from Kausalya’s palace. Kaikeyi sat with her back to the door, but she could readily sense that the maid had not only stepped over the physical threshold, but also a mental barrier, to enter the room. She stood up and faced the maid, who was visibly nervous to be in the room.
“Maharani Kaikeyi, aap … aap ke liye … Maharani … Kausalya … ka sandes hain.” Queen Kaikeyi, Queen Kausalya sends this message to you. The maid stood with her eyes lowered.
Kaikeyi nodded, giving the maid her permission to deliver the message.
“Maharani Kausalya requests your presence in the Suraksha Kaksha.”
Suraksha Kaksha, the defence council room. Kaikeyi could not believe what she was hearing, and so she asked the maid to repeat the message, twice. The frightened maid repeated the same exact words, stammering a bit more each time.
This was strange, she thought. The defence council had never once been convened in the past three years, or maybe more, since the time of the Last Asura War. The recollection brought a bittersweet pang of memories, for the war had brought her closer to Dasa, and the two boons she had extracted then, had turned the whole Arya kingdom upside down. Devi, what is this new calamity on us now?
She sent the maid back with the message that she would be there as soon as possible.
She pulled up a white shawl around her bare shoulders, and picked up her sword as she followed the maid to the inner chambers of the palace. The familiar grip of the sheath in her left hand gave her a step a spring of confidence as she walked barefoot along the avenue canopied with huge mango and banyan trees from both sides. She must have made a very odd sight, a sadhavi, in completely white apparel, striding forward with a sword in her hand. People who passed her on the streets bowed and whispered greetings, for her status as the Second Queen of the Kosala, had been re-established just the day before. Kaikeyi was however, unaware of anyone passing by. Her heart was filled with an unknown apprehension, a fear that her nightmare was not yet over. That this was just a brief respite, a lull before the storm gathered its forces and fell upon them with all its force.
They had not spoken since the court meeting yesterday, she recalled. She had barely had time to thank Kausalya for putting up a spirited defence which swayed the decision in her favour. The debate had taken almost the entire day, and in the end, Kausalya was thoroughly exhausted. Kaikeyi had been escorted to her quarters when the decision was declared, amidst cheerful whooping from the Kekayan crowd (she allowed a small smile), and a stunned silence from the rest of the assembly. Kausalya had kept the guards to her quarters, anticipating some trouble from some disgruntled citizens, but Kaikeyi had sent them back. She would talk to Kausalya, preferably in private, later. But first, the meeting to which she had been called.
“Maharani! Maharani Kaikeyi!” Someone called out her name. Stopping on the steps, she turned back to face a crowd moving towards her. They had been standing under the shade of a couple of trees, and hence she had not noticed hem earlier. Her grip on the sword tightened for an instance, but relaxed after observing that none of the group was armed. They did not look the city bred Kosalans of Ayodhya. Their appearance put them on the eastern frontier, on the border with Mithila.
The group stopped at the bottom of the steps, and a couple of men from the group came forward.
Maharani ki jay ho. She recognized the speaker as a magistrate in one of the civil courts. Hamari ek kathin samasya suljhaao! Please solve this difficulty for us.
Pranaam Munshi-ji, kya samasya hain? She addressed him by his title and asked what the problem was.
“Maharani, we are from the eastern villages of Kosala,” his companion spoke, in the heavy accent of the Easterners. “We have a woman who must be brought to justice. Our magistrate thinks this matter is beyond his knowledge, and hence we have come to Ayodhya. But we have not been able to contact any higher level ministers today. The only answer we receive is that they are all busy, and do not have time to look into trivial disputes.”
Busy? Kaikeyi’s sense of foreboding reached its peak. If all the ministers of the council were busy, she guessed they were in the defence meeting that she was going to right now. So this must be something quite serious.
She hesitated. One one hand, she wanted to reach the meeting as soon as possible. On the other, she had her responsibilities towards the citizens. Hopefully this should not take much of my time, she thought.
Kaho, kya samasya hain? What is the problem? she asked.
The crowd parted to reveal a young woman, her hands tied together with a thick rope. A stout man held the other end of the rope in his hands. Kaikeyi was visibly shocked to see traces of dried blood on her cheeks, and noticed that her hands were also blood stained.
She asked the stout man to remove the ropes bounding the girl. The girl fell down as soon as the knots were opened, exhausted from the long journey. She probably has had nothing to eat too. She surmised that the woman had been treated quite badly on the journey.
“Maharani, the woman’s name is Charulata. She is accused of being instrumental in the death of a woman and orphaning a child. The father of the child, Devadutta, was a captain in the Rakshak clans.” The magistrate began to explain the situation. “Devadutta had two wives, Suchitra and Charulata. Both were childless for a long time. A couple of months ago, Suchitra gave birth to a boy.” Kaikeyi noticed a woman from the group holding an infant in her arms.
“That is when the trouble started,” the magistrate sighed. “Charulata grew envious of Suchitra’s joy and poisoned her husband’s ears, saying that the child was not his at all. Poor Suchitra had a hard time convincing her husband otherwise. Things grew to such an extent that Devadutta, in a fit of anger, killed Suchitra. After learning the truth from Charulata, the remorse-filled Devadutta committed suicide by jumping into the Gomati.” He paused. “Clearly, the woman must be punished for her deeds. But if she goes to prison, there is no one to take care of the child. The Panchayat was unable to solve this problem, and hence we have come to Ayodhya, to seek higher counsel. Please help us Maharani.”
Kaikeyi could not help but notice the irony of the situation. A mere twenty four hours ago, it was she who was standing trial, being accused of the very same crimes of breaking apart the Suryavansha clan and causing the death of Dasaratha.
She looked at the fallen woman. Her hair had fallen on her face as she fell down, and she had made no attempt to move them aside. Kaikeyi noticed the red lines on her wrists, where the thick rope had cut through her skin.
“Charulata,” she went near the woman and spoke to her.
The woman looked up to her, and Kaikeyi saw her face for the first time. She must have been hardly a day older then twenty, though she had aged to forty in the past few days. Kaikeyi saw the tears streaking on her face, some trials dry and salty. Devi knew how long the woman had been crying.
“She has been like this from the day Suchitra died. She has hardly spoken to anybody, nor has she eaten her food. Sometimes it takes three women to hold her down and feed her some milk. Even after that, she throws up most of it. She even tried to kill herself once, so we tied her hands.”
Kaikeyi bent down and looked at the woman in face. Her eyes had a look of desperation. Kill me, they seemed to scream to Kaikeyi. Kill me and let me be at peace.
“No,” Kaikeyi whispered to the woman. “You will not get away so easily.”
She gently lifted the child from the arms of the woman holding him and placed it in the blood soaked hands of the woman.
“Yehi tumhari sazaa hain,” she told the stunned woman. “This is your punishment. I expect he would grow up to be as fearless as his father, the man you loved.”
She then turned around and continued on the stairs, only looking back to see the woman clutch the infant to her breast, as a mother would.
