The metal was cold, her hands were shaking a little. In her trance, Aambal was once again standing on the red sands of Chendur’s beach, where they were all waiting for an arrival. She saw once more, facing each other, the two armies in formation. The battle would begin any moment now. She anticipated the stir and murmuring and the shifting from foot to foot in the rows of restless warriors before it came, as she settled into that time. Aambal too stood, like them, ears trained for the call to action. In a clear space between the armies there stood – set apart by their off-white attire – the musicians, physicians, bards and the runners, sturdy women and men, who would carry away the wounded and the dead and carry ahead messages.
Aambal felt as if she was two people, seeing the same thing, one a fragment of a moment before the other. She looked towards the end of the battlefield. Just in front of a row of ruddy hillocks, on a structure that resembled a high lookout tower, Devayani was standing with Ganesha, looking past the warriors to the sea. Aambal followed Devayani’s eyes as they went to Kandhan. Images of the time Kandhan and she had first set eyes on Devayani flashed in her seeing. They had been in the temporary courtroom at the foothills of Pazhani, set up by Devayani’s father. ‘Theivanai’, Kandhan had given her that name when Brihaspati introduced them. As the cold of the cymbals and the seashore passed through Aambal, she remembered how Kandhan’s footsteps had seemed to pass through the air that day into the bodies of those waiting there, making them billow and ripple with impatience. All their tumult had broken and sunk into the sea of silence inside him.
As musicians began to beat out ear-splitting martial rhythms on the various drums suspended from their shoulders or knotted to their waists, swelling the drum beats with the rhythmic stomping of their salangai-ankleted legs, Aambal’s focus stationed itself beside them. The start of the battle would now be ritually declared. And then She would arrive. Aambal had heard of her and was filled with a mixture of curiosity and dread.
The previous evening, a council that included the two supreme commanders, ten commanders-in-chief, ten generals, two unit commanders, the chief physicians, the musicians and the leaders of the runners had met and decided on the battle formations the two armies would take on the morrow: mongoose for Surapadman’s and snake for Murugan’s. And that was how the army units stood; the deadliest warriors were positioned in strategic spots that, as in nature, were points of attack: the fangs of the snake, the claws of the mongoose. The chain of command went from unit leaders to commanders, generals and the commanders-in-chief, ending in the supreme commanders, Surapadman and Murugan, who would not enter the battlefield to fight until all ten of the commanders-in-chief were either dead or routed. Or if there were exceptional circumstances: if a warrior demanded single combat with them; if there was a warrior whose fierceness could not be met by any or all of the opposing side; if either of the bards called one of them in because their cymbals had taken them across time and they saw there a knot that could only be cut by either of the supreme commanders for the battle to move ahead.
Aambal looked around: Matri Dhumi, the commander-in-chief of Murugan’s troops for day one stood at the tip of one fang of the snake army, at the other stood Veera Rakkaga, who was that day’s general. Foot soldiers formed the hood, the eyes, the venom duct, while especially fierce warriors filled the venom gland – warriors as deadly as the poison that would have flowed there in a real snake. The snake army curled along the red sand, in loose curves that would side-wind or coil along the battlefield in response to the attacks that the mongoose unleashed. On the opposite side, the mongoose’s snout was formed likewise by Surapadman’s deadliest fighters. At the very tip of that snout stood his youngest brother, Tarakan, their commander-in-chief for the day; somewhere in the mongoose body was positioned their general, Krauncha.
The drumming paused, then resumed, accompanied by the booming of the gigantic por murasu, the battle drum, and the frenetic blowing of many kompu, small and big. From outside the battlefield, the chariots of the supreme commanders rode up close to the musicians, and they descended to stand next to each other. The drumming stopped and the piercing sound of cymbal beats flowed out over the battlefield. Aambal was one of two bards, one for each side, and it was they who would speak open the battle, wording out the ancient calls to earth, sky, sea, fire and to the space that held everything, including their own words. And to Her, the guardian of this and all battlefields: Mari, the Eternal Witness.
Surapadman’s bard stepped forward first, as custom would have it, for they were the guests in this land. His cymbals sounded short, sharp running beats, asking for attention, more a formality than a necessity, for nothing stirred, no voices sounded. The man was tall, his hair hung in ringlets down to his shoulders, his fair, pale skin glowed in the early morning light. He was, of course, dressed in the ivory-coloured attire of bards. He raised both hands, which to Aambal looked like delicate sepals supporting the flower-like ears of the cymbals, first up to the skies, saluting the elements, then to his chest, saluting the life that filled his words, then the army that stood opposite and finally, the battlefield itself, bending down and touching the cold bell metal to its warm earth. His mouth opened and his voice rang out, “Hail mighty Karthikeya Mahasena, Lord of Chendur, and his valiant warriors, physicians, musicians, runners, carriers and his war bard.”
Murugan smiled. Aambal’s breath caught in her throat. Thennan! Like this? After so many years? When his parents moved across the Vindhyas, he had stopped visiting the kalari where Aambal, Murugan and their friends were being trained by Aasaan, Thennan’s grandfather. But they still had news of him from his grandfather, and then, one summer, when Thennan’s mother, Aasaan’s daughter, came to the kalari, they had heard angry voices, an exchange between the father and daughter. She left the kalari in a rage, swearing she would not speak to him ever again, nor would her children or their father. Nobody knew what had transpired, not even Kuyili’s grandmother – and she was one of the oldest people in the village and their chief. After that, Thennan had disappeared from their lives. And now, here he was.
Aambal looked at Murugan; he nodded. They would recognise that voice anywhere, even if not the body that held the voice. Thennan was looking at them too, his face serious, his eyes going to Murugan and Aambal and then to his king, Surapadman.
Thennan’s voice broke out over the battlefield. The warriors stood straighter, their heads raised to the sky, conversing with whatever forces they believed kept them abled, in rhythm. When he finished, both armies, in a single coordinated movement, raised their weapons skywards and called out to the God of Endings, he who was innocent and butter-hearted. Arogara, they shouted from both sides, arogara.
Then it was Aambal’s turn, she stepped forward, saluted Surapadman and his army, and replicated what the other bard had done: hailed the valour and might of both armies and called down the blessings of those with the authority to bless the warriors. There was no tremble in her voice, though her hand might have shook a little when she struck the first beat. She stopped, bent her head and waited while the soldiers raised their battle cries.
Excerpted with permission from Theivanai: Murugan Trilogy Part 2, Kala Krishnan, Westland.
