The indian queens bob haircut (original story) 2

2. Do the Stars Lie?
Just as King Nallarajan conferred with his advisors as to the right course to follow in this dark and desperate hour, Queen
Keshasundari was being given a bath by a bevy of tearful female attendants.
News of the imminent fall of Kadaloranadu had
reached their ears, and the queen had asked her attendants to remove all
her ornaments and fineries. Her whole body burned,
as though on fire. An attendant gathered her hair, twisted it loosely into a
rope, and knotted it up high on her head. Her heart
shuddering at the thought of the almost certain capture and beheading of
Nallarajan, his generals, and military advisors, the
distraught queen slid into the cool pool in her palace to ease the burning in
her body if not her soul. In his previous conquests,
which were many, Rakshasaputran had been known to perform his cruel
executions in full view of the humbled king’s consorts,
usually over their cries and pleadings for mercy. Even the lotus flowers in
the pool seemed to have sensed the approaching
doom, and had drawn themselves into drooping buds. The water, scented
though it was in everyday fashion with rose petals,
smelt to the queen of blood and the decaying bodies of the faithful soldiers
who had laid down their lives in yonder fields in the
service of Kadaloranadu. Tears filled her eyes and her heart felt as if it
would burst.
With none to turn to, she mentally invoked the royal deity to come to her
country’s succor, for who else could avert the fate that
was about to befall them but Kailasanatha, Lord of the grand and towering
Temple of the Crashing Sea, built by King Nallarajan’s
father and predecessor on the throne, nearly half a century ago. She hoped
fervently that the Deity would hear her plaintive cry
for help over the roar of the sea, where He stood vigil, watching the surf
and foam hurling themselves against the jagged, black
rocks. The bell of the Shiva temple a little distance from her palace sounded
just then. Who could be about at this hour, ringing
bells at the temple? She puzzled over that for an instant, and in the very
next instant felt as though a thunderbolt had struck her.
Surely, this was a sign that all hope was not to be given up. Surely, there
was some way out of this horrible predicament.
Suddenly, she remembered Dheergadarishi, the royal astrologer. She knew
Deergadarishi had not been part of the King’s Privy
Council in the last few days. His failure to predict last year’s devastating
cyclone had made the king wonder about his astrologer
royal’s abilities. Dheergadarishi would have been ordinarily advising the
King at that very moment, but his credibility had been
damaged even more by his seemingly failed prediction of the outcome of this
present war. He had confidently asserted that King
Nallarajan would emerge victorious from this latest siege, but after day after
day of losses, and after the tide of the battle had
turned clearly in favor of King Rakshasaputran, the Kadaloranadu king had
become deeply disappointed with his royal astrologer.
He had therefore not bothered to include Dheergadarishi in his emergency
council. The queen, however, set great store by his
prognostications. After all, he had correctly predicted, as recently as the last
rainy season, both the size of the paddy harvest
and the impending pregnancy of one of her royal companions and also the
gender of her yet unborn child. She had tried to
reinstate the astrologer in the King’s good books again, but the king had
begun to wonder seriously if old age had started to
blunt the astrologer’s instincts and ability to read the signs accurately. He
had, therefore, relegated him to a secondary status.
The palace astrologer and fortune teller was immediately summoned to the
Queen’s chambers. He wasn’t to be found at his
residence but someone claimed to have seen him climbing laboriously up the
hillside where the Shiva temple stood from whence
the Queen had heard the chiming of the bells. They found him there and
gave him the queen’s urgent summons. Dheergadarishi
arrived, breathing heavily from the exertion. He was a heavy man, with a
perfectly round face, who had no hair but for a small
tuft at the back of his head, and whose forehead as well as body were
smeared with holy ash. He carried in his hands, a bundle
of palmyra leaves, a pair of brass dies, and a small copper vessel filled with
cowrie shells. Dheergadarishi himself, puzzled more
than hurt by this cool response from the king, had gone to the Shiva temple
to meditate and pray. In his mind, he was convinced
he had read the omens right, exactly in accordance with the shastras of
which he was an acknowledged master. It was his bell
ringing that Queen Keshasundari had heard while taking her bath.
“Dheergadarishi,” said the queen, “night is here, and we hear that it is only
a matter of hours before Rakshasaputran’s
bloodthirsty hordes will penetrate our meager defenses, to enter our palaces,
to plunder, to pillage, and to rape. Such a dark
hour as this, our Kadaloranadu has never witnessed. What do you see in the
stars, Deergadarishi? Do you see the death of your
king? Do you see the humiliation of your queen? Do you hear the wails of
the widows? Do you hear the terrified cries of the
children? What is to come? What are we to do? Is there any way to protect
our honor other than by way of suicide?”
Dheergadarishi asked leave to sit down on the floor before the queen, facing
the west. Then he cupped the brass dice tightly in
the palm of his right hand and rotated his cupped palm in front of the
queen, first in a clockwise direction, then the other way.
Then he flung the dice on the ground. Eyes closed, he asked her to call the
number. “Nine,” said the queen.
Now Dheergadarishi dipped his hand into the copper vessel and produced a
handful of the cowrie shells. He threw these before
the queen, and bid her to only count the ones that had fallen with their
cracked sides facing up. “Nine again,” said the queen.
Dheergadarishi drew a palmyra leaf from the bundle he had brought and ran
his eyes quickly over the secret script inscribed on
it.
Dheergadarishi said in a clear voice, “Oh, great queen, providence continues
to smile on this great land of ours. No harm can
come from the confluence of nines – the nine planets are speaking to us in
whispers. Victory for Kadaloranadu is certain.”
This was like music to the queen’s ears, but a small part of her did wonder
if the astrologer were slowly losing his grip. She was
about to address a question to him, when she saw him assume the lotus pose
and begin breathing deeply, his eyes closed. Then
he seemed to fall asleep. In this state he remained for half and hour, then
his breathing subsided. He entered first a trance-like
state, and then a deathlike state whereby his breathing seemed to have
altogether stopped. His tuft stood erect and pointed
straight upward like the tapered husk of a peeled coconut. The minutes
turned to hours. As dawn began to break,
Deergadarishi’s voice was heard faintly. It seemed to be coming from deep
inside a well, and not from the lips of the stiffly
seated but soundly sleeping Deergadarishi.
The voice sang:
“Six of a tamed heart and six again
Can undo what twenty thousand demons have wrought
The dweller of the dungeon
by fate’s fickle hands
Shall the mountain throne attain
Men can die by the touch of snakes,
If not their venom
Victors shall die with the salt of blood on their lips
The vanquished shall live to taste the salt of joyous tears
All is settled as the spinning planets spell
When Kailasanatha stirs at the edge of the roaring waves
Hence, look to the morrow
Without sorrow.”
Except for the last two lines, the song made no sense to the queen or to any
of her attendants. Presently, Deergadarishi awoke,
and rubbing his eyes asked what had happened. The queen, who composed
beautiful poetry herself, repeated the song she had
heard.
Deergadarishi smiled. Just then the sound of trumpets was heard from the
distance. An attendant came running into the queen’s
chambers.
“May this tongue rot that has to bring you this wretched piece of news. The
King’s Council has decided to surrender! The fort is
to be turned over to Rakshasaputran immediately!”
Deergadarishi smiled again and rose to his feet. Everything was going
exactly according to his prognostications! Then he walked
backwards, facing the queen until he had reached the door. Then he turned
sideways, quickened his steps, and was quickly out
of sight. Despondency engulfed the queen’s chambers. Wails were heard
from the chambermaids. Then they began beating their
chests as though a royal death had occurred in the palace.
3. Humiliation
Rakshasaputran sat on a makeshift throne in the middle of the battlefield.
Behind him fires still burned here and there, their thick
smoke rising into the orange sky. The sun was rising. Before him, head
bowed, stood King Nallarajan and his generals, all of
them bound in chains. On one side stood Queen Keshasundari, accompanied
by her attendants. On his other side stood his
twelve trusted generals.
“Oh, great king,” mocked Rakshasaputran, “you have shown wisdom in
choosing to surrender. But you have choices yet to make.
Pray, how do you and your vanquished generals choose to die, by this sword
whose hunger for Kadaloranadu blood is still not
satisfied, or by being trampled under the feet of my elephants who want to
celebrate their victory by stomping on the heads of
you and your entourage?”
King Nallarajan said nothing and fixed his stare at the ground before him.
He couldn’t bear to look at the tearful queen and her
screaming attendants.