Bheem Read online

  4

  Bastar

  22 October 2017

  The canoe scraped the rocky bed of the rivulet.

  ‘We can go no further,’ the boatman said to Aviva, raising his voice so that he could be heard above the rain.

  Aviva nodded and dragged her foot out from beneath the man sleeping on the floorboards under an umbrella, the journalist who had proved so resourceful while scrounging up transport despite the disastrous weather.

  Three days earlier, Cyclone Fatima had blasted its way in from the Bay of Bengal, smashing through Odisha and Andhra Pradesh before barrelling into Chhattisgarh. Somehow, Aviva had managed to get to the district capital, Jagdalpur, but traversing the one hundred and five kilometres of jungle separating the town from the cavern seemed impossible. The storm had swallowed the mud road that the Royce expedition had managed to cut through the forest. Given the magnitude of the havoc caused by the cyclone, with hundreds of villages devastated, no one in a position of authority was willing to respond to Aviva’s pleas for help.

  ‘I am understanding your concern, Madam Fein,’ the district superintendent had said, ‘but you know it is state-wide emergency. Royce expedition is having enough supplies. We will be getting to them in three–four days. Loss of contact is not unusual. Communications etcetera are down everywhere.’

  With effort, Aviva reined in her anger. ‘Mr Shukla, the storm had nothing to do with this. We lost contact with the expedition on the night of the eighteenth—twelve hours before the cyclone struck!’

  The superintendent had nothing to say. Hysterical foreigners, he thought and waved her away.

  The garage that had serviced the expedition’s vehicles was in a shambles, the tin roof blown off, the signboard that read ‘Ismail Auto’ lying mangled against the derelict skeleton of a long-abandoned truck. The establishment’s eponymous owner stood near the damaged walls, steadying a shaky ladder on which his assistant balanced, stretching a tarpaulin across to keep the persistent rain off the vehicles below.

  ‘Not possible, Habiba madam,’ grunted Ismail Auto. ‘No road left. Not even trails! No way into jungle.’

  ‘He’s wrong, you know.’

  Aviva turned. Leaning against the ramshackle fence was a man in an olive windcheater, the hood drawn over his head far enough to provide cover from the rain for the lit bidi clenched in his teeth. Aviva had seen the man earlier, sitting on the windowsill of the district superintendent’s office, watching noncommittally as Aviva pleaded and argued.

  ‘I’ll get you into the jungle,’ said the man, ‘if you let me come with you to the cavern.’

  They discussed the plan over masala chai and bidis at a dhaba. The man introduced himself—Vineet Kumar Sinha, a Delhi journalist, stuck in Jagdalpur covering a story that had already been dissected a hundred ways by dozens of newspapers and TV channels. He was bored out of his skull. Aviva was a godsend—her story sounded different, an unusual wrinkle on the done-to-death cyclone narrative. That was all very well, Aviva felt, but the journalist’s proposed means of transportation was a non-starter.

  ‘Boat?’ Aviva’s hopes nosedived. ‘That’s no good. The jungle rivulets, they’re navigable only in July and August, perhaps twenty days in a year.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Vineet, dragging hungrily on his bidi, ‘but aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘What?’

  Vineet pointed at the road outside, turning into mud in the steady rain.

  ‘The cyclone,’ he said. ‘Bastar has received more rain in a day than it gets all year. Right now, those streams are four-lane highways through the jungle.’

  So boat it was until the rivulet petered out, deep inside the jungle.

  They had travelled light and it took very little time to unload their backpacks from the canoe. Vineet watched Aviva speak to their guide, Madhu, in a language he didn’t understand. The journalist’s Lonely Planet obligingly suggested that the languages spoken in Bastar’s tribal regions were Halbi, Gondi and Bhatri. Not very helpful.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That way.’ Aviva pointed northwest. ‘About two kilometres.’

  Vineet was pleasantly surprised. ‘That’s not very far. How much time do you think?’

  ‘About four hours,’ Aviva replied, shouldering her pack. ‘Should get there before dark.’

  ‘Four hours?’ Vineet exclaimed, taken aback.

  ‘It’s primal undergrowth. Madhu’s going to cut through with a machete. Watch out for leeches.’

  ‘Leeches?’

  Madhu grinned and added something.

  ‘And Maoists,’ Aviva translated.

  ‘Maoists?’

  ~

  In the event, it had taken not four hours but three. For a kilometre and a half, Madhu had tirelessly wielded his machete, hacking through the dense jungle. And then, abruptly, he had stopped. The forest had thinned dramatically, ancient trees toppled, undergrowth blown away. This wasn’t the handiwork of the cyclone. Destruction on this scale could only have been the result of the shockwave from a catastrophic explosion or meteor strike. It was almost as if the trees, the vegetation, had come together in a giant suicide pact, and had chosen to die. Disbelievingly, the trio picked their way through the devastation. Then suddenly they stumbled on to a path so clear of debris, so straight, that it almost seemed engineered. It was pitted with craters, forlorn markers of huge trees that had been uprooted and tossed aside like toothpicks. And even though the travellers were half a kilometre from the entrance to the cavern, it was clearly visible through the rain—the path led directly to it. They hurried forward, hoping to see the expedition camp, signs of life . . . anything. Their hopes soared as they neared the cave. The tents were there, erect, untouched by the surrounding destruction.

  ‘Dr Royce!’ Aviva shouted. ‘Arun!’

  Madhu called out to Aviva, pointing at a foot sticking out from under a tent’s closed entrance flap. Vineet, who had been taking quick photographs of everything, was the nearest. He stooped and shook the foot—and it came away in his hand. Just the foot, nothing above the ankle. Vineet screamed, dropping the dismembered limb. For a moment, Aviva stood frozen; then, snatching the machete from Madhu’s hand, she sprinted to Arun’s tent. She barged in—it was empty. On a trestle table next to the neatly made bunk was the satphone—in its cradle, connected to the solar-power charger. She snatched it up, tried to work it; a hiss of static—there was no connection, no satellite circling four hundred kilometres overhead to pick up life-and-death messages. Frantically, they searched the area around the cavern and uncovered six more bodies: all members of the expedition, some with smashed skulls, some unmarked except for broken necks, as if something immensely powerful had picked them up and shaken them the way a dog does a rat. Single, fatal injuries, obviously not the handiwork of the cyclone.

  Handing the machete to Madhu, Aviva snapped open her pack and pulled out a revolver: 32-bore, Spanish, snub-nosed, licensed to Dr Royce who had no idea how to use it. Aviva had fired it twice in the year she had been with the Royce team, both times in the air, once to scare off an elephant that had strayed too close to their encampment, the other time when travelling on the jungle road. A tree had fallen across the road, blocking it. But it was the way the tree lay, just so, that had stirred the hair on the back of Aviva’s neck. Her Israeli military training had kicked in—this was an ambush. She had fired a warning shot and their SUV had edged off the road, past the tree. They were not attacked. Whoever it was, opportunistic tribals or a band of Maoists, had been discouraged.

  Aviva checked the gun quickly. ‘Cora-Pamela,’ she mumbled, and headed for the mouth of the cave.

  Vineet stared after her, petrified. His instincts urged him to head the other way, fast, but he overcame them and followed. So did Madhu, the machete in his hand twitching as if imbued with life of its own.

  From the entrance, the cave sloped gently upward and water flowed out towards the cave mouth, running in little rills along the floor, washing a
round the stalagmites. There must be fissures in the mountain allowing rainwater to leak in, thought Aviva. Strange. There had been no such leakage during the monsoon, just three months earlier. Determinedly, she led the way in. Outside, the light was fading rapidly but within the cave, it was never quite dark, the phosphorescent walls emitting just enough light for visibility.

  ‘Arun!’ Aviva called out.

  There was an echo but no answer, only the sound of water gurgling in the interior halls of the vast cave. There were no bodies here; the stalagmites, the arrow groups on the walls, the recess in the north wall with the ‘Hanuman’ figure—nothing seemed disturbed. Something seemed different, though, and Aviva suddenly realized what it was: the cave was bigger than it had been. A wall had collapsed, revealing a passage that led deep inside, far beyond the original hall. Straining their eyes, the three edged up the passage. Ankle-deep water ran down a natural channel in the middle and they stayed close to the walls, keeping clear of the stream. In caves, cold was a killer and icy cave water could be deadly.

  Strangely, it was getting brighter ahead. Perhaps the passage led outside. But daylight had already been fading when they had entered the cave; surely it was dark by now? The light flickered, increasing in intensity as they neared the end of the passage. And the sound of the water was now a steady susurrus. They inched forward and stepped right into an enormous chamber, a cathedral, with soaring columns rising from the floor to a vaulted ceiling a hundred feet above. A roaring cataract plunged down the opposite wall into a small lake below that was the source of the water running through the cave system. Both the cataract and the lake were milk-white, brimming with calcium leached from the rock surfaces. But what held every gaze was the cause of the intense, flickering light: a twenty-foot-high flame crackling in a grotto behind the waterfall, shooting dancing stars on to every surface of the great hall. The eyes of the company adjusted to the dazzle and the marks on the wall facing the flame became clear: four huge arrows arranged in one gigantic group, nearly twenty feet high and thirty feet wide. Just one group, thought Aviva. The number itself must be significant. One group of four. But four what?

  They moved forward, looking around warily. It was Madhu who spotted it: a limp form lying against a mound. They hurried over and found Dr Royce, dead, unmarked, his neck snapped like the others outside the cave. Aviva breathed shakily and gently eased the body down. There was a sudden flash. The archaeologist stumbled back, startled.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ she hissed at Vineet as he lowered his camera. ‘We don’t know what could—’

  And then she saw it: what looked like a human body silhouetted against the flames, suspended eight feet above the ground. For a moment, Aviva froze in shock, then ran towards it. There was no mistake. It was Arun, his eyes open in death, limbs dangling, impaled on the spear-like shaft of a ten-foot-high stalagmite. Vineet and Madhu came up, staring in disbelief. What could it be that had picked up a strong, full-grown man and slammed him down on the stalagmite with such force that the petrified point had smashed right through muscle and bone and was now two feet above the impaled body? Vineet stumbled away, fell to his knees, retched violently. Aviva dashed away the tears that formed. Suddenly her foot struck something—she looked down and saw Arun’s cell phone on the ground next to the stalagmite. She stooped and picked it up; it was stained with the blood that had run down the stalagmite and congealed at the base. She tried switching it on. The battery was low but it came alive—and displayed the picture gallery. A snapshot appeared, hazy behind the glutinous red stain smeared across the screen. Aviva wiped the phone on her damp sleeve and held it close. What is it? The shot was shaky, the picture blurred, but surely it was a human, the frame capturing half the face and the upper portion of a naked, extremely powerful male torso. It was coated in white, streaked as if the colour were dripping off. And was that another figure just behind, partially seen? Quickly, Aviva flicked to the next picture. The shot was still shaky, unclear, but unarguably the same two whitened figures, a little farther away. There were two more pictures, wider aspects, the figures a little more distant. Aviva reversed the sequence and suddenly understood what she was seeing. The two figures had charged at Arun and he had tried to use the flash of his cell phone in a futile attempt to dazzle them, blind them. Aviva was looking at Arun’s killers, the perpetrators of this horrific massacre! She slid the phone quickly into her pocket and thumbed back the hammer of the revolver she still held.

  ‘Vineet, Madhu,’ she said under her breath, ‘we’ve got to get out of here. Now. Get reinforcements—’

  ‘What is it?’ Vineet asked, weakly getting to his feet. ‘W . . . what have you—?’

  Abruptly, a roar filled the cavern, physical in its impact, punching the air out of their lungs, smashing them to their knees. The flame behind the water brightened with the intensity of the sun, blistering, blinding. And then something exploded out of the flaming grotto, trailing a comet’s tail of fire. It arced through the falling water into the white froth of the lake. The water boiled, hissed, billowed great clouds of steam. Aviva, Vineet and Madhu tottered to their feet, the steam obscuring their view of the lake. Then the water stirred, the steam parted and a form struggled to drag itself out, collapsing into unconsciousness on the lip of the stony ground abutting the lake. An enormous, imposingly powerful human male, naked, lime-white from sole to head, not one of the killers but frighteningly similar to those blurred images.

  They stared at the prone figure, frozen, terrified.

  It was the weight of the gun in her outstretched hand that snapped Aviva out of her trance. Levelling the weapon, she edged closer. The being didn’t move, the watery lime dripping off his still face, revealing an intricately tattooed sun. But what was that on his wrist, increasingly visible as the lake-lime thinned? Another tattoo? Yes, it was, a few markings, aksharas, characters, of what looked like the ancient Brahmi script. Aviva looked at them, instinctively deciphering. The letters came together; it was a name, a legendary name, one that had echoed down the centuries.

  The archaeologist’s eyes widened, her breath hissed out and almost involuntarily her lips formed a word: ‘Bheem.’

  This is not death. Or is it? I feel no pain. I feel . . . the ground under my body. Water around my feet. And . . . there is someone else. I did hear my name . . .

  Bheem’s eyes remained shut but a sharp sense of his surroundings burnt into his brain. The impression wasn’t visual but his mind had instantly registered levels of danger, estimated distances, calculated angles.

  Possible opponents . . . A female . . . Five hands away . . . A weapon . . . And two males . . . A blade . . . Distance: twelve hands . . . Thirty cords . . .

  Bheem lay on his face, inert, silent.

  A warrior gives no warning. The combat-trained Aviva realized what had happened only when she found herself flat on her back, looking dazedly at the spear-like stalactites pointing menacingly at her from the soaring roof of the cavern. A hand like a plank slammed into Vineet. He hit the ground hard, diaphragm paralysed, lungs clawing for air. Madhu’s brain had ordered his hand to raise the machete but the neural impulse had barely begun its journey from brain to hand when Aviva’s mangled revolver crashed into his wrist, breaking it. The machete dropped from nerveless fingers. An iron grip seized the back of Madhu’s neck and lifted him up as if he were a marionette. A single jerk would break Madhu’s spine like a reed. He would die the way Dr Royce and the others had—unmarked.

  Three down.

  Bheem’s senses reached out. He heard murmuring water, tasted dank air, smelt fresh leaves and decaying flesh. Nothing moved. He dropped his gasping captive and looked at his hapless victims.

  Maanav jaati, thought Bheem, bemused.

  Human like him, but puny, much smaller than the warrior race to which he belonged. As the greybeard had foretold, Bheem’s mace hadn’t survived the flames of Samay. But he didn’t need the jewel to tell him that these three were not hostile. Their weapons had been brought to
bear in fear. They were terrified and even a foot soldier in the Pandav army could have seen why: the body on the ground with its head tilted at an impossible angle; the gruesome, impaled thing dangling from the stalagmite. They marked the passage of Ashvatthama.

  ‘Ko dinadk adyah?’

  Aviva stirred. Had she heard a voice? She wasn’t sure. Somehow, all she could focus on were the stalactites above. She smiled. They were beautiful—a meteor shower frozen in the act of falling.

  ‘Ko dinadk adyah?’

  Aviva snapped out of her daze and jerked around. A mistake. The cave whirled and bile rose in Aviva’s throat. She closed her eyes, breathing raggedly. Someone had spoken . . . in what sounded like Sanskrit, but with an accent she’d never heard before. She was concussed—that’s what it was. Hearing things.

  ‘Ko dinadk adyah, Avivafein?’

  Aviva’s eyes flew open. It was the being, the enormous man. He was speaking! In Sanskrit! Asking what the date was! But . . . but . . . had he called her by name?

  ‘Dinadk, Avivafein?’

  Madness! But Aviva felt compelled to answer.

  ‘D—dvaavimshatihi,’ Aviva stammered, her befuddled mind dredging up the Sanskrit equivalent of ‘twenty-two’. She struggled for ‘October’ but gave up. ‘Uktoobur,’ she ventured in colloquial Hindi. This was crazy!

  Bheem could feel his mind pulsate with immeasurable knowledge. ‘October,’ he murmured in English. Then seamlessly switching to Hebrew, he asked, ‘What year?’

  Aviva gaped. Multiple languages! Who was this man?

  ‘2—2017,’ she stuttered. And then, politically correct as always, reflexively added, ‘CE, Common Era . . .’