Conversion by the sword, baptism in the sand.
“You shall at least die like a man”.
Goliath, to David.
Kamsa was led to the edge of the compound and given a sword. The champion of the Uttara approached. They fought.
Kamsa’s training in the arts of war served him well. After
some preliminary feints, thrusts, and parries, gauging the strengths and
tactics of his opponent, Kamsa attacked, and soon had him at his mercy. Kamsa,
sword raised and prised for the mortal strike, looked around him as saw the
rest of the tribe, weapons at their hips, and beyond them only the gentle rise
and fall of the dunes. He thrust his sword deep into the sand, and said in his
native tongue, “I accept you, my brothers”.
Kamsa became versed in the ways of the Uttara. The man he
defeated, Kura, was the son of the chief. Kamsa, Kura, and Kura’s sister,
Vaisti, spent much time together.
An epic as a short story
Scale
Man – God Kamsa – Krishna
Tribe – State Uttara – Dwarka
Emperor – King Court – Castle
Human – Ideal Peasant – King
Kamsa
is not actually the prince. He is really the son of his nanny, substituted for
the prince at birth and sent to fulfill the tribute.
“I am the man born to be king”
The Uttara were free; they struck their tents, loaded their
camels, and were gone, leaving only footprints.
They travelled to the great market of Jaisalmer, three days
to the north, a sand brown city rising out of the desert like a glittering
flat-topped mountain. It was one of the great meeting points; like Timbucktu or
Constantinople it drew merchants, goods, and wealth from an entire continent
and beyond, and in its streets are heard the babble of a hundred languages all
translated into the clink of gold coins. The streets entering the city are
lined with merchants displaying their wares; textiles and dyed fabrics, spices,
worked metals, perfumes, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, the booty of a
thousand wars and production of entire villages. Nearer the market the crowd
became denser; locals hawking food and beds, prasad and soma. Finally, one
reached the central square, where the market bargained and bartered, the Jain
merchants looked down from the verandas of the mansions and smelled the enticing
scent of commerce and profit.
Inside the haveli is was dark and cool. An inner courtyard
and atrium gave one a view of the pale blue sky and a slight breeze. The outer
walls of the haveli slanted out, sheltering the ground from the sun, and each
window wore a hood, so that direct light would never penetrate. The floors were
cool smooth stone, washed by a woman on her hands and knees every morning. The
house awoke around dawn and bathed in the water from the well, drilled 200 ft
into the earth in the middle of the inner courtyard and giving ferrous and
slightly cloudy water. They drank hot spiced tea, leaves from the hills and
milk from the grasslands. In the afternoon they slept like animals, prostrate
from the heat. In the evening the concluded the business of the day and ate a
meal of curried vegetables and unleavened bread. At night they lit oil lamps
and reclined on bolsters and cushions under the stars. The men recline and
watch the young lightly clad women singers and dancers while drinking deep blue
wine from Rome, or smoking opium from the poppy fields of Myanmar, and playing
games of skill or dice. It was a crescent moon.
In the desert you cannot refuse a man water or his camels
feed.
Kamsa, Kura, and Vaisti played together every day. Kamsa and
Kura were almost the same age and Vaisti was two years younger. Kamsa and Kura
would shoot at targets, competing for bulls eyes,and Vaisti would run and retrieve
the errant shots. They would play a game of hide and seek called stalk, in
which two of them would be assassins and one would be the victim. Sometimes
they would play spy, and concealing themselves, would watch someone all day,
discovering their comings, goings, and habits. This made the privy to many
adult secrets, which they shared among themselves as a bond, amin much giggling
and impersonation. Sometimes they would take a camel and go exploring; Kura in
front and Kamsa in back and Vaisti held between them, carrying a skin filled
with water and lunch wrappe din palm leaves, and go far from the camp, stopping
in the afternoon and sleeping in the shade of the hobbled camel, the three of
them curled around each other, sleeping the calm sweet breathed sleep of
children. They saw antelope and deer and snakes sleeping in the sun, bulging in
the middle with the half-digested remains of a desert rat, packs of wild dogs,
and vultures, soaring on thermal currents, spiralling ever upwards into the
blistering sun.
Kamsa was 14 years old.
Kamsa lived among the Uttara for a year and a half. His
skin, which had been pale in the reflected glory of the court, became dark. He
clothed himself as the Uttara did, ate their food, spoke in the dialect of the
tribe. He never told anyone the secret of his birth, they never asked. They
treated him as a member, he regarded them as his brothers. He had been adopted
by the chief of the tribe; he lived with Kura and Vaisti.
Kamsa was then 16.
There
was news of a giant caravan, laden with riches, approaching from an oasis two
days away. A raiding party was quickly organized and sent to intercept the
train. Kura and Kamsa were selected to lead the party.
One’s
experiments are confined by the available materials.
Many pages on the history of
the Uttara tribe. Not good, omitted.
Societies,
when resources have firmly defined possibilities and have grown to maturity,
generate splinter groups, colonizers, rebels. This partition is natural.
Plot Summary (in chronological order)
Jayesh rules Dwarka, a petty kingdom in India, at an
unspecified historical time. He must pay a tribute to the emperor (by
suggestion, a Mughal). One of the forms this tribute takes is that the heir
apparent must reside in the emperor’s court util he reaches the age of
succession.
Jayesh’s wife is pregnant. They are no longer young, and do
not want to give up their child. One of the palace servants is also pregnant,
with a similar due date. When the children are born, they exchange the babies.
The servant, not wishing to be separated from her child, is sent along to the
emperor’s court in the role of wet nurse to the prince.
Kamsa, as the child is named, grows up in the imperial
court, never knowing he is not the real prince. He receives a Mughal classical
education while retaining the cultural habits of Dwarka. He studies the arts of
war as well as philosophy and law. He is much impressed by the glory of the
imperial court.
When Kamsa and Akayla (the true prince) are 12, Jayesh
breaks peace with the emperor, does not pay the tribute, and establishes Akayla
as the crown prince. Kamsa’s nanny hears of this and sends Kamsa off with a
trader, telling him the secret of his birth, that he is actually her son
(fathered by the king?) and switched at birth with Akayla.
Kamsa flees with Al-Haroun, concealed in a bale of silk. On
the third day the caravan is ambushed by a group of pirates called the Uttara.
After being discovered in the booty, Kamsa is adopted by the tribe.
Akayla is cruel, autocratic, ostentatious, and hugely unpopular.
Many believe that he is an imposter.
“What happened to the true prince, held by the emperor in
tribute?”
“He was killed by the emperor himself.”
“I heard he escaped.”
“He is not Akayla in any case.”
Kamsa has never told the Uttara of his birth or past. One
day, when the Uttara are in the market, selling their plunder, Kamsa is
recognized. Propelled by the will of the people and the military might of the
Uttara, Kamsa ascends the throne of Dwarka.
Kamsa’s character is shaped by dualities. He feels great
affinity with the common people, regards them as his brothers, and expresses
his love through democratic egalitarianism. The people perceive him as the man
born to be king and express their love for him through a total allegiance to a
hierarchical class system. Kamsa is a reformer and uses his popular mandate to
implement his enlightened program of social equality. However, in doing so, in
destroys his political base, the hierarchy which determines that he is king.
Kamsa is also limited by his inability to discard the
imperial structure in which he was raised. His belief in the “benevolent dictator”
and “philosopher king” co-exists with his knowledge that he is not truly the
man born to be king, his pure idealism can only be sustained on the basis of a
falsehood, he is not really who he is supposed to be. This is a dangerous
secret, and he uses all his cruel and regal powers to protect it, subverting
his social and political program.
The fundamental contradiction in Kamsa’s nature is an inability
to perceive differences in scale. His ruling is based on an imperial model,
having enormous wealth and power at the disposal of the king, yet he rules a
petty principality, with limited means and resources. His social philosophy is
base on a small tribe, without history, yet he rules over tens of thousands of
people living in an ancient social framework.
Thus, the basic problem is a problem of scale.
The solution is the story itself, a tale of epic concerns:
political, social, historical, religious, cultural, geographical, taken from a
miniature episode in the great epic the Mahabharata, and expressed as a short
story.
However, all this is merely a prelude to the story of the
Mahabharata. The story in the Mahabharata is this.
Kamsa is a wicked tyrant. There is a prophecy that the son
of his sister shall slay him. To protect himself, Kamsa systematically kills
his sister’s children at birth. However, by a miracle, one of his nephews, Krishna,
is born and is immediately transported to a village, where he grows up minding
the cows, playing the flute, and seducing the girls of the village out in the
fields.
Krishna eventually kills Kamsa and takes over the throne.
There are two interesting parallels:
Krishna goes from being a commoner to being king, but this
is totally correct.
In the Gita, Krishna reveals to Arjuna the secret of scale.
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