The indian queens bob haircut (original story) 4

The figure with the blackened sack removed the sack. “Prince Gunasheela!”
Everyone gasped! How could it be, hadn’t Prince
Gunasheela been killed ten years ago by Rakshasaputran? “Yes, my loyal
subjects, it’s me Prince Gunasheelan. Rakshasaputran
held me in a dungeon and declared me as dead. I bided my time because I
always knew my time would come some day. How
could it not when the prognostications of Dheergadarishi of Kadaloranadu
had made that so clear to me. It was Dheergadarishi
who sent a spy to Malairajyam to mobilize a coup against Rakshasaputran
while he was away at war. He also came up with this
ruse for me to take Oviamedhai’s disguise and appear here today without
being questioned or stopped. I am here to humbly fulfil
Dheergadarishi’s prediction. No, no, Rakshasaputran, you can’t escape, ha,
ha, you didn’t think I’d be that easily distracted, did
you?
Foiling the sudden lunge Rakshasaputran attempted in an effort to throw off
his captor, Gunasheelan tightened the noose some
more. The color drained from Rakshasaputran’s face. His tongue hung out of
his mouth like a dog’s, dripping saliva on the
ground.
“No, no, do not kill him, Gunasheela!” It was King Nallarajan who spoke,
“Let us not return violence with violence. It behooves us
to treat him as a disgraced King, and not in any other way. Let our council
of the wise decide the appropriate punishment to be
meted out to him for his crimes against humanity.”
“Oh, great King Nallarajan! All that I have heard about your magnanimity is
true. You are truly one in a million among rulers.
Soldiers, free the King and his generals immediately. Let the kingdoms of
Malairajyam and Kadaloranadu sign a peace treaty for
eternity right this very minute. Let us combine our resources so that we can
face any greater future enemies with our combined
strengths.”
The mood of the soldiers changed at once. To the last man, they all fell to
the ground, and prostrated themselves before the
shaven women first, then towards King Nallarajan whose manacles were
being hastily removed. To misguided men of good
hearts, remorse can come easily, when the light of truth and justice are
shone before them, as Prince Gunasheelan and King
Nallarajan were doing at that moment.
(Note: Thus it was that King Rakshasaputran escaped death on that
incredible day where the future of a nation was recast in a
mere blink of an eye by either the extraordinary play of fate or the
inscrutable will of the divine, and who could tell which it was?
The tyrant was subsequently banished to Mosquito Island, some distance off
the coast of Kadaloranadu. There he languished in
chains for six months before contracting what we now know to be a fatal
case of malarial fever. With him ended one of the worst
phases of Southern India’s otherwise glorious and largely peaceful history.)
4. A Tradition is Born
The miraculous turn of events sent a wave of excitement throughout
Kadaloranadu and Malairajyam. First the war dead were
given solemn funerals. The injured received immediate medical attention.
Then, on the first night of King Nallarajan’s triumphant
return to the throne, fireworks lit up the sky. An explosion of joyous
celebration followed. King Nallarajan and Crown Prince -
soon to be crowned King – Gunasheelan of Malairajyam rode together in
procession through the main streets of Kadaloranadu.
The populace danced in the streets. Melodious music punctuated by drum
beats and trumpet calls filled the air. Feasting went
on nonstop for fourteen days. Cattle and gold coins were given away to the
families of the war dead. King Nallarajan accepted an
invitation for a state visit to Malairajyam during the following month. The
joy of the long-oppressed people of Malairajyam knew no
bounds. They delighted in the knowledge that collaboration between their
two kingdoms would now bring untold prosperity to
their neglected cities, their barren fields, and that their wonderful but
languishing cultural institutions would burst again with
creative endeavors of every description.
The common women of both Kadaloranadu and Malairajyam happily had
their heads shaved to mark their solidarity with and
admiration for the valor shown by the brave companions of Queen
Keshasundari at the Assembly of the Surrender of
Rakshasaputran, as the event had come to be known. The royal women of
Malairajyam, the counterparts to Queen
Keshasundari’s entourage in that former rival kingdom, had their hair cut
off at the neck to mark their respect for the Queen of
Kadaloranadu and there was a tacit decision not to grow their hair until the
Queen’s own hair had returned to its former length
and glory. But to their surprise, and in some cases, delight, Queen
Keshasundari decided she liked her hair the way it was, and
even though she missed the hair garlands and hair jewelry she used to wear
before, she found a new sense of freedom in her
short hair. She explained her decision saying that keeping her hair short was
a way for her to constantly remind herself and her
subjects that abundance and prosperity were never to be taken for granted,
and, after all, had Kadaloranadu not come
dangerously close to losing both?
(Note: Centuries later, in tracing the history of the bob, ill informed
historians would attribute it to Western women like Louise
Brooks, while the real truth, if the historians would only care to check their
facts, is that Queen Keshasundari popularized this
look in in ancient Southern India, in a kingdom whose glories have long
since been lost to antiquity. But this is nothing new to
Indians, whose forefathers are the original inventors of such innovations as
the airplane, atomic energy, extra- terrestrial travel,
etc., that are described in astounding detail in their texts going back to
Vedic times, even though later Westerners have been
given undeserved credit for these developments.)
Dheergadarishi was reinstated to the King’s Privy Council. Not only that, the
King offered him all the land he could cover in a
day’s walk. Poor Dheergadarishi, who was of big stomach and heavy breath,
could walk only a distance of 7 miles on that day,
but even that amounted to a huge increase in his wealth. He was not a man
of the world, anyway, and so received this bounty in
true humility, and at his death many years later, he bequeathed even this
modest property to the Guild for Fortune Tellers that
had been set up under his tutelage.
On the morning of the Assembly of the Surrender of Rakshasaputran, the
granite figure of Kailasanatha at the edge of the sea
had miraculously spun itself around by 145 degrees so that it no longer faced
the sea, but instead seemed to be looking in the
direction of the battlefield where Rakshasaputran had been defeated.
Modern day seismologists would theorize an earthquake
may have caused this strange and inexplicable phenomenon, but in
Kadaloranadu lore, the event was unquestioningly accepted
as the fulfilment of the prediction presaged in the poem Dheergadarishi had
sung in a trance in the queen’s chambers on the eve
of the Assembly of the Surrender of Rakshasaputran.
Prologue
Oviamedhai who had been bound, gagged, and thrown down a hill in
Malairajyam by the plotters who had planned the overthrow
of Rakshasaputran, walked for nine days to reach Kadaloranadu. He turned
out to be not a bad fellow at all. The rumors of his
secret mystical powers proved to be totally false. Once they got to know him,
the people of Kadaloranadu saw what a funny and
pleasant man he really was. He received a commission from King Nallarajan
to paint a mural of the Shaving of the Queen’s
Entourage at the Assembly of the Surrender of Rakshasaputran. He recreated
the scene entirely from eyewitness accounts and
the accuracy of his rendering would forever compel breathless admiration
for his fantastic powers of imagination and immense
artistic skills. Each woman’s eyes glowed proudly and brilliantly in the gold
fringed painting created by Oviamedhai, and the
dawn’s light reflected beautifully on their bald pates. Oviamedhai had
outdone himself on this final work of his. He died quietly in
his sleep the day after he completed the last brush stroke on his master work
and received a funeral with full state honors. The
mural, instead of being a scene of the humiliation of the King of
Kadaloranadu as Rakshasaputran would have had it, became
revered as a shrine to the extraordinary bravery of that country’s beautiful
women. In the decades and centuries that followed,
throngs of worshippers lit lamps and left flowers and offerings of rice,
mango, coconut, and bananas at the mural, historians tell
us, which were distributed to the poor and the sick every day.
This priceless treasure of ancient S. Indian art would, alas, be carried off
section by section by future invaders from England, to
eventually enhance the Indian art collections of the British Museum, and
thus forever lost to our great country. After many years,
fearing damage to the delicate vegetable dyes, the Museum authorities would
move the entire mural to a dark, climate controlled,
basement storage area, where it would be periodically inspected by
Indologists but never put on public display again!
Unless some team of ragtag cricketeers comes along to win back our lost
mural through a Lagaan style match against the
Curator’s Eleven of the British Museum, I’m afraid we modern day Indians
are never going to see this extraordinary piece of
artistry by Oviamedhai of Malairajyam.
THE END