Bheem Read online

  Krupa reached for the guru mala around his neck and took it off. A vein pulsed under the skin of his exposed throat. Ashvatthama unsheathed the Rudra sword. It hissed through the air and sliced open Krupa’s throat, an arc of bright-red blood spattering the still face of the asura guru Shukra.

  The human race is an affliction . . . The death of humankind will allow the world to live . . . From death comes life . . . The War of Survival is bitter and long . . .

  The decay was clearly visible now. The asura guru’s body was mouldering under the draining force of Mrityu Gyaan. Krupacharya’s hand rested steady on the asura guru’s forehead despite his lifeblood flowing out from the ten cuts he had suffered as required by the shastra. The acharya was growing weak. Ashvatthama had to lean in close to hear the fading voice struggling to put into words the all-important gyaan being reclaimed from the mind of the dead asura guru.

  Again and again will the forces of life battle to eradicate the blight that is humankind but each time will the humans emerge victorious. Yug after yug will go by . . .

  The blood was gushing out now. Tears streaming from his eyes, cursing his own weakness, Kritavarma held up the dying acharya. He looked at Ashvatthama, hoping the general hadn’t noticed his sentimentality. Ashvatthama’s face was blank, his ear an inch from Krupacharya’s barely moving lips. The voice was a feather now, riding faint breath.

  A blinding white light—that was all Krupa could see. The light was not in front of his eyes, Krupa knew, it was a figment of his collapsing mind. Death was behind that light. He would not succumb. Not yet. Not while the task was unfinished.

  Humans will rule . . . Great cities . . . Towers that reach for the sun . . . But the jungle will have its revenge . . . Infection will leap from the vaanars to the humans . . . The pestilence will spread . . . They will burn in the fires of the plague . . . They will die . . .

  Kritavarma saw hope blaze in Ashvatthama’s eyes. But the acharya’s lips were still moving. There was more . . .

  Four human saviours there are . . . Four who do not sicken . . . Their blood the elixir that will save others . . . For the enemy to die, the Four must not live . . . Warriors must go through the flame . . . through Samay . . . through time . . . Find and slay the Four . . . Before the humans find them and save themselves . . .

  ‘Who are these Four?’ Ashvatthama asked urgently. ‘How will I find them?’

  The lips shuddered.

  Warriors must go through the flame . . . through time . . . Find and slay the Four . . . The names on the wall . . .

  Part 1

  The Cave

  1

  Periyar Forest, Kerala, India

  October 2016

  His mother had warned him not to stray from the path that straggled through the jungle, but even six-year-olds get tired. The small school in Thekkady, Kerala, was two kilometres from Narayan’s village and the walk home took forty minutes. And they had added more books this year—his bag’s straps were chafing his shoulders. So Narayan was tempted when he reached the narrow gully that deviated from the path and snaked into the jungle. The shortcut reduced Narayan’s walk by thirteen minutes—he knew this because he had used the detour earlier, despite his mother’s repeated predictions of doom. He had walked through the gully just a few weeks ago with no dire consequences, not encountering a single creature that was supposed to be lying in wait for disobedient little boys. Narayan, though, was not entirely indifferent to parental admonitions. He decided to run all the way through the gully—the less time he spent off the path the better. He started off, running quickly, and had nearly made it to the end when he almost collided with a monkey sitting nonchalantly right in the middle of the ravine. Narayan stopped. The monkey looked at the boy uninterestedly and went back to gnawing at a jamun it held in its paws. For anyone living near the forest, encountering monkeys was a regular occurrence. Narayan was unfamiliar with the names of the simian species native to his district; he had never heard of the lion-tailed macaque or the Nilgiri langur, but he recognized them by sight. This monkey was different, of a kind Narayan had never seen. It was larger, more confident. Despite the presence of the boy, it displayed no sign of anxiety; unlike its cousins, it showed no inclination of ceding space to the human.

  Narayan hooted; the monkey looked at him disdainfully and continued nibbling the jamun. Narayan was in a dilemma: his mother had specifically forbidden physical contact with wild creatures, but he couldn’t see how he could get past the monkey without brushing against it. Going back was out of the question—it would take too long and it was already getting dark. Making up his mind, Narayan moved forward. He turned sideways, facing away as he squeezed past the monkey; any contact with the creature would be against the schoolbag on Narayan’s back. The boy pushed gently, the monkey gave way slightly and Narayan was through without incident—almost. At the very last moment, the monkey flicked its tail, the tuft catching Narayan’s arm. The boy winced. The bristles were as sharp as thorns—they had drawn blood. Still, it was only a scratch and Narayan was past the obstacle. Happily, he sprinted away down the gully without a backward glance.

  ~

  Bastar, Chhatisgarh, India

  April 2017

  ‘. . . extremely effective. The anti-Ebola vaccine has exceeded all expectations. Experts are of the opinion that this could be the greatest medical breakthrough in recent times . . .’

  Arun Kamdar groaned. ‘Another “greatest medical breakthrough”!’

  ‘Aakhir Ebola hai,’ said Aviva Fein. She was quite proud of her Hindi—it was as good as her Sanskrit now. ‘Worth some shouting, right?’

  ‘Ha! You know how many deaths from Ebola in the last outbreak? Three years ago?’ Kamdar clicked the television off. ‘Eleven thousand! Worst outbreak ever! Flu kills more every two weeks!’

  ‘It’s all about research grants,’ Aviva said. ‘Unless you shout, how do you get funding?’

  Kamdar turned around to look at his colleague. The Israeli was always practical.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We call it hungama. Sensation. Without hungama, the public gets bored,’ he remarked. ‘Everything already found, everything already cured, Cora-Pamela!’

  Aviva grinned. ‘Cora-Pamela’. Arun had heard her muttering those names unconsciously and had demanded an explanation.

  ‘A talisman . . . Family thing,’ she had answered, attempting to laugh it off.

  That was hardly satisfactory, and Aviva was obliged to explain. ‘Something my grandmother would say, apparently. And my mother. I never got to ask her . . . she died when I was one. It means “no problem” or “no worries”, my father said, but who Cora and Pamela were is a mystery that will never be solved!’

  Aviva had laughed, a little embarrassed, but Arun had loved the idea and had promptly appropriated it.

  He probably uses it more than I do! Aviva thought, chuckling. That was the great thing about these international archaeological expeditions—people were so friendly and there was such cross-cultural bonding!

  Though just twenty-six, Aviva was already on her third dig outside Israel, all in India. She loved the country—and the fact that she was partly Indian had nothing to do with it. Her Indian great-grandmother had died before Aviva’s mother was born and there had been little Indian influence in her Tel Aviv upbringing. In fact, the only trace of Aviva’s Indian ancestry was the thick mane of black hair that cascaded down her shoulders in startling counterpoint to the intense blue eyes, fair skin and high cheekbones of her father’s Middle-European, Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. But ever since she had chanced upon a Ravi Shankar recording featuring a duet with his virtuoso daughter Anoushka, Aviva had been hooked. Her initial foray into things Indian was almost clich?d: music, yoga, Bollywood. Very quickly, though, her interest deepened. She had dabbled in French and Spanish during her two-year, state-required conscription in the Israel Defence Forces. Her archaeological studies at the Tel Aviv University had necessitated courses in early Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and La
tin. Aviva added Sanskrit to that list and was swiftly drawn in. She volunteered eagerly for a dig in India excavating prehistoric Harappan relics. And the moment she had stepped off the ramp at the Mumbai airport, she had known she was home.

  The Royce Expedition, though, was special. It was Aviva’s work that had indicated the possibility of an ancient temple complex in the dense Bastar jungle. Dr Seamus Royce of the Museum of Antiquities, Dublin, had been enthusiastic; the Indian government had provided financial and logistical support; a multicultural team had been assembled and had rapidly set up camp in the primal heart of Bastar. Steaming jungle, suspicious tribals, primitive sanitation, marauding armies of mosquitoes and leeches—Aviva had never been so happy. There was something here that called to her, something almost atavistic, and Aviva responded to it.

  The satphone crackled.

  Aviva flicked it on. ‘Base Camp,’ she said. ‘Aviva Fein.’

  ‘Aviva, thi . . . is Royce. Anyone else . . . you?’

  ‘Arun’s here.’

  ‘Good. Speaker mode,’ Royce said. ‘This . . . for . . . two of you. No one else r . . . now.’

  The voice lurched through satellite static. Aviva hit the speaker switch, gesturing to Kamdar.

  ‘Speaker mode, Dr Royce,’ she said. ‘Fein and Kamdar.’

  ‘Aviva . . . appears you . . . right . . .,’ continued Royce, ‘astounding discovery . . . ruins of . . . abitation . . . around a cavern complex . . . apparen . . . a temple . . .’

  Aviva felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. She exchanged an excited look with Kamdar.

  Royce’s voice flickered over the uncertain satellite connection, ‘. . . not go beyond you, for now . . . very . . . citing . . . lime-encrusted statue . . . some sort of ape-like . . . perhaps . . . ancient representation . . . Hanuman . . .’

  The Clarion Building

  New Delhi

  11 October 2017

  Unknown Disease Breakout Traced to Kerala 6-Year-Old

  BY VINEET KUMAR SINHA AND AMITA NAIR

  New Delhi, 10 Oct: The Indian Centre for Disease Control (ICDC) has notified that ‘a communicable disease’ is spreading through Kerala. Initially thought to be a strain of the African Ebola, it wasn’t until June—more than four months after the first case—that it was identified as a completely new virus: Z-6.

  Doctors suspect that a six-year-old boy, who died on 7 Feb just a few days after taking ill with vomiting, diarrhoea and uncontrolled haemorrhaging in a village near Thekkady, Kerala, is patient zero in the Z-6 outbreak.

  The Clarion has learnt that the disease then leapt to the child’s mother, four-year-old brother and grandfather. Relatives attending funerals of the victims carried the virus to other villages and towns. With 117 reported deaths, the outbreak is getting worse.

  It is thought that Z-6 lay dormant for years in animal sanctuaries in southern India. Experts surmise that the most likely root source was an encounter with a deep-forest simian—investigations are being pursued urgently.

  Vineet walked across the newsroom and perched on a corner of Amita’s desk.

  ‘The Old Man okayed it,’ he said, grinning. He slapped the blue-pencilled printout on to a sheaf of papers on which Amita had been working. ‘“By Vineet Kumar Sinha and Amita Nair”!’

  Vineet always enjoyed the plethora of emotions that followed such an announcement: disbelief, delight and everything in-between. The game was going well. She was grateful for the shared byline and gratitude was a very important way station in his carefully mapped seduction trail. Of course, one had to be extra cautious these days, what with all the irrational sexual harassment laws. For a moment, he wondered whether sitting on her desk could be construed as an infringement of something or other. He slid off and consciously stood away from her—no contact, the very model of decorum. And though he had a great view of her cleavage as she bent over the copy, hungrily reading and rereading her name, he avoided staring so that his eyes wouldn’t have to slither away shiftily when she did look up at him. There it was, that upward look, full of promise. It was a done deal; she would make the first move now. There could be no sexual harassment blowbacks. He smiled at her—just managing to restrain himself from winking (another ‘no-no’)—and moved away. Gratitude was the clincher, he thought complacently. Always worked. Another couple of weeks and he could put another notch in his holster (he grinned at his predilection for Wild West imagery). Of course, it was just a minor story: an unknown disease. How many dead? A hundred? A hundred and twenty? Meningitis killed more than that every summer—and in just a handful of districts! The story would be tucked into a corner of the paper, somewhere in the second section. Now, if it had been Ebola, that would have been front-page stuff, real gratitude material. He could have had Amita in bed within twenty-four hours! Shit, why couldn’t it have been Ebola?

  ~

  Thekkady, Kerala

  12 October 2017

  Dr Nishi Agarwal knew she was dead. An hour ago, a mob had rampaged through the derelict panchayat building that served as a treatment centre for the disease. Treatment centre! What a joke, Nishi thought. They had not been able to save a single afflicted villager, not one. The disease had a 100 per cent kill rate. No one emerged from the treatment centre—not alive, not dead. Dead bodies were highly contagious and they had been forced to ban traditional burial. Bodies had to be disinfected and cremated, sacrilegious to the many Muslim and Christian communities of this district. The villagers had taken matters into their own hands, had decided to ‘liberate’ their relatives held ‘captive’ in the treatment centre. They had assaulted the guards and smashed through the protective grills. Nishi and her colleagues had tried to reason with them but had been violently pushed aside. She had crashed into the patients’ cots, her hazmat suit had come apart, virulent body fluids being drained from the patients had spattered over her, entered her eyes, mouth.

  She was dead. Or would be very soon.

  Just two months earlier, she had turned thirty, a rising star in epidemiology. She had volunteered for this, to work in the field, not in the lab. It had been a struggle convincing her parents; she had even agreed to seriously consider marrying Ashok (whom she had been seeing for two years) when she returned, if only to get all of them off her back. Nishi had flown in, organized her team, quickly set up the Thekkady centre. They had reinvigorated the terrified villagers, given them hope. They had thought it was Ebola, hoped that it was—there was a vaccine now.

  It was not Ebola, there was no vaccine, no cure—she was dead. A wave of fear swept through her; she tried to suppress it. Could she achieve the calm stoicism of the woman who had been diagnosed with the affliction just yesterday?

  ‘I know of this already,’ the woman had said in chaste, cultured Malayalam. ‘We’re doomed . . . all of us. In three years, we’ll all be dead. Each one of us. The world is moving beyond humankind. It’s written on the leaves . . . They’re never wrong.’

  Her equanimity, though, was based on irrational belief, something a scientist could hardly subscribe to. Nishi wiped herself carefully with disinfectant, aware of the bleak futility of her actions. She saw her staff, her nurses, look at her terrified, most of them exposed too. She had no words for them, no hope to give them. Oh god, why couldn’t it have been Ebola?

  2

  The Forest of Always Night

  3004 Years Earlier

  They were mad, of course. All of them, thought Bheem. But the old one was the craziest. He had said he was an aide to Hanuman! Did they really expect Bheem to believe that this greybeard was over a thousand years old, that he had fought in the Great War alongside Ram and Laxman and helped set aflame the mighty towers of Lanka? Was he supposed to swallow all that? It was ridiculous!

  The vaanar’s eyes twinkled. ‘You don’t believe me,’ he said, his voice rumbling like a log on gravel. ‘Old Saragha is senile, hmm? Wanders in the mind?’

  Insane, agreed Bheem. But he didn’t voice that thought. He wasn’t going to say that to the gre
ybeard, not when he was surrounded by the vaanar’s acolytes. A seasoned warrior knows when the odds are against him.

  Like a cobra, the old one’s tail lashed out and hissed past Bheem’s face. By the time the warrior reacted, the tail had flashed back and now stood like an iron rod in front of the vaanar’s face. Protuberant jaws snapped open, fangs bit down. The tip of the tail was ripped open but what oozed out was not blood. The greybeard loosened his jaws. The tail moved away, a separate thing from the vaanar, and positioned itself over a thorn bush. Black-red fluid leaked from the wound—just a drop. It fell on the bush and hissed and steamed through the thorns. The bush wilted, dissolving like salt. A plume of black smoke rose from the suddenly bare ground, the exposed soil grey and ashen. Bheem stared disbelievingly at the smouldering ground.

  ‘The venom,’ the vaanar said, mildly. ‘It killed millions of us. I did not die. I don’t know why. I continue to live. I don’t know why . . .’

  Bheem looked at Saragha. The warrior wasn’t laughing now. Toxic blood no longer seeped from the gash—even as Bheem watched, scar tissue rapidly covered the wound, a hard scab forming, stiff fibres of fur sprouting.

  Then the forest moved. Branches swayed, leaves undulated like flags and came down in a shower, torn from their stems. Bushes were ripped apart, vines flailed and thrashed like whips and the jungle shuddered with the groans of dying trees, massive trunks crashing to the ground, roots clawing the air like the hands of drowning men. The vaanars shouted and leapt off the battered trees. Bewildered, Bheem looked around at the growing carnage. It was a storm, it had to be a storm, for only a tremendous storm could bring down those huge trees, uprooting them like weeds. But there was no wind. The thick jungle air was completely still. Not a fold on Bheem’s loincloth had been disturbed, not a hair on the vaanars’ bodies ruffled.