99 Palms: Horn OK Please
Read 99 Palms: Horn OK Please Online
Authors: Kartik Iyengar
99 Palms
Horn OK Please
Kartik Iyengar
Edited by Devyani Kalvit
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Copyright © 2014 by Kartik Iyengar.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Kartik Iyengar
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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental. The collaborators hold the moral right for their contribution.
Superstar – Horn OK Please/ Kartik Iyengar. -- 1st ed.
ISBN 978-0-9963777-1-3
To you, dear reader, thank you for downloading ’99 Palms’. I promise you a fantastic read. If you like it, I’d be grateful if you could spread the word about it.
Kartik Iyengar
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Is it dusk or the dust storm that shrouds the daylight? It is close to evening as the sun makes a hasty retreat towards the horizon. Everything is of the color of blood – the sky and the soil. It reeks of flesh and blood.
I am on the battlefield, I can see everyone and everything, but no one can see me. I am an apparition. I am inside a dream.
This is the bloody Kalinga war. With every passing hour thousands of innocent humans are getting butchered with no mercy as the mutilated bodies keep piling all around. Even more number of limbs and heads already severed from the bodies lay scattered all over.
The air ricochets the screams of agony and pain amidst the clang of swords, daggers, spears and shields. Flaming arrows shoot through the sky as the bloodied battlefield witnesses the dance of death and destruction. Thousands of soldiers fight against each other as the elephants rage through the battlefield, tossing soldiers all around who fall to the ground with dull thuds. The sound of skulls getting crushed, hearts being ripped out from chests, rolling heads and mutilated limbs decorate the earth.
Emperor Ashoka is on a white horse, ripping through the battlefield, bloodied trident in hand as he gallops through the battlefield. He is shredding through foot soldiers as his mighty trident quenches its thirst for blood. His eyes thirst for blood as the Devil seems to have taken over his soul. His bloodshot eyes are filled with murderous rage. He is a crazed out megalomaniac, a demon possessed, who seems to be enjoying the macabre dance.
Sword in hand, he wipes his brow with his right arm as a clay tablet attached to his chest armor becomes clearly visible. It has inscriptions in a language that is unknown to me. The symbols on the clay seem to cover him in a cloak of evil magic that not only seems to bring out the beast in him but also makes him invincible.
And then there is a flash of light. I can see Emperor Ashoka walking through the streets of Kalinga as a woman screams at him. She looks helpless as she holds her son’s dead body in her trembling hands. She wails as she laments her son’s death. King Ashoka’s head hangs in shame. He stares at his palms. There is blood on his hands. He has committed this sin. His heart is exploding and his brain is on fire. I can feel every bit of his confusion, anger, pain, fear, frustration and remorse.
This has clearly set his mind in turmoil as he clenches his fists and hits himself on his chest, trying to control the pain within. The impact breaks the clay tablet pinned to his chest armor. I see him fall to the ground, down on his knees. The shards of the clay tablet lie on the ground as he falls at the feet of the wailing woman, begging for her forgiveness. The woman walks away, dead son in her arms, sobbing inconsolably as smoke bellows from the burning huts all around.
And then the shattered remains of the tablet catch my eye. As I genuflect and examine those pieces, the inscriptions are visible. There are very specific objects showing up one by one, interrupting the dream as all this plays on. There is trident, a lotus, the Swastika symbol, a mongoose, a water jug and Stupas. I also see a bowl that contains bananas, papayas, avocados, chestnuts and potatoes. There is the unmistakable English alphabet ‘R’ scribbled all over my dream.
I see a flash of light again and now I am inside a humongous cave that seems to have abysmal beginning and end. The room glows eerie green. There are countless book filled shelves all around. I can hear the sound of gushing water over my head. Flame torches light up the room.
I feel a damp palm touch my shoulder as I turn around. I see Emperor Ashoka in royal regalia. I can see the angst on his face as I look at him. Tears of blood stream down his cheeks as he shows me his bloodstained palms.
He looks scared. The clay tablet is there again, intact, attached to his chest armor. Somehow the broken pieces have bonded together to preserve its existence. Am I in the past or the future, I am not able to decide. He points at the books all around. Thousands of books inside the vast cave that seem to hold some secrets long forgotten, lost in the sands of time.
Suddenly, he grows old right in front of me and turns to dust. Horrified, I look at the ground where he stood. I see pieces of the broken clay tablet. I look up again, I see shadows walking towards me. Nine of them, they seem like apparitions as they surround me inside a circle.
They do nothing but stare at me as they close in on me…they are trying to tell me something. I don’t understand a word. They finally zero on me, lock me in an embrace of darkness. We become one and I let out a silent scream of pain. No words come out of my mouth…
I wake up. I am bathed in sweat. That was just a dream.
My strange, recurring, painful dream…
***
CHAPTER ONE
Roses are red and violets are blue,
You’re about to know the truth that’s known to very few;
A secret so bizarre, a place so unknown,
From the heart of Emperor Ashoka, seeds of it were sown;
Greed makes us do anything, we’re all the same,
We get into sticky situations, got no one else to blame;
It goes round and round, the complicated warps of time,
One has to wait for sure before everything looks fine;
That we’d stumble upon a secret, how were we to know?
That we’d see the great treasures, to the places that we’d go?
Yes, money makes the world go round, science is a religion,
And it’s all for a greater good, all things said and done;
Emperor Ashoka, two sides of the same coin he was,
From a sinner to a saint, a rebel with a cause;
He’s guided us, his instructions are carved on rocks, fellow,
They’re Ashoka’s Major Edicts, 14 of ‘em for us to follow;
It was all there in 99 Palms, the ancient manuscripts of lore,
As we go in search for Paradise, the lost city of yore;
It’s all hyper science, like research books on steroids,
Dark secrets about meta-materials, chirality & colloids
Strange powers & dark arts, enough to please Satan,
Some secrets better remain secrets, damn the greed of man;
If smiles and Imagination makes you say ‘Cheese’
Drive on, as that is the philosophy behind Horn OK Please…
***
Channel @ Radio HOP: Wanted Dead or Alive, by Bon Jovi
They call me Chief Redbull, I am the narrator of this story. I and my friends, Derek, Goose and Hound had been on the road for months on end. Right from the misty mountains in the North to the wilderness in the south of India, we had seen and experienced it all. Now, we needed rest and wanted to assimilate our thoughts before we were back in the saddle.
Driving consumes time and time is money, so we were penniless, flat broke to be precise. We wanted to get rich, very quick. That would mean another plan, hence another reason for the pit stop. We decided to halt at a place of significant, historical importance to Modern India. This was supposed to be a sane move, a stopover for spiritual enlightenment, a logical stopover while in Orissa. And these days they find a lot of gold hidden under temples, anyway. Who knew, we could be luck! This seemed a logical plan to get rich.
Unfortunately, logic is not what we perceive it to be. It has been defined by some very important people who chose to paint us all into a box of comprehension that is based on our current levels of thought. It is not an illusion but a life that we lead in a world that has been hardwired to fit into a box of collective belief. Just enough to understand the way things work for us to live in harmony with the worms and animals around us.
We’ve been outside the box that you call the boundaries of science, faith and beliefs. Beyond this realm of science as we know today, there exists a strange, dark world of secrets, magic, occult and esoteric secrets that are known to few. But what we experienced in this adventure shook our beliefs around fundamental science, logic and comprehension.
It led us down a journey of a forgotten past. Who knew that these dreams would lead to a place that would otherwise be called Utopia if mankind were to become more evolved? How do you define something that would otherwise be called telepathic signals and is actually a calling?
Maybe, sometimes, dark secrets are unlocked from the vault of the universe by serendipity. This is exactly what happened to us. Favorable astral alignments, coupled with accidental potions had some mind numbing effects on our very existence. There are people out there, bunched in secret clusters that have knowledge beyond the very imagination that pervades humanity today. Maybe, we are not evolved enough to harness the power of secret energies and strange magic to be used for betterment of mankind. We tried hard to avoid getting into this sticky mess. We refused to get dragged into the unknown. But we were greedy, needy and downright shady. We were left with no choice. We learnt that Secret Societies exist. They exist for a reason. They were rich.
We choose to ignore the very facts that stare us in the face, day in and day out. Yes, we did get caught in this unfathomable quagmire of endless depth and reason. That alone was enough to spin our lives out of control.
Yes, life is full of surprises. How were we to know that an innocuous dream would lead us to of our wildest adventure? An adventure that would change us from within? How were we to know the extent of secrecy that shrouded the very world we live in? Why do we always have to be at the eye of the storm? Why were we the chosen ones always?
Life beckoned us to a place that we never knew existed before. Filled with unlimited treasures, we would find the lost city of gold. So, read on, dear reader, for this is the journey called ‘life’, if you wish to know the secret of ’99 Palms’, the long forgotten, ancient manuscripts written on palm leaves.
***
Location: Dhauli Hill, Bhubaneshwar, Orissa
It was a bright sunny morning in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa. We had just parked Motormouth near an awesome place called Dhauli Hill. There was an eerie silence all around as we stepped out to take in the morning breath of fresh air. It had been a smooth ride, a stretch of eight kilometers from Bhubaneshwar to Dhauli Hill
.
As soon as we stepped out, the weather suddenly changed. Morning sunshine gave way to a gray, overcast day. It would rain anytime. Something was quite strange.
We stopped by at the rock edifice at the bank of the river Daya, just a little away from the main road as one drives eight kilometers south of Bhubaneswar. We’d come here to check out the royal instructions of Emperor Ashoka, also known as his ‘edicts’ which dated back to 269 BC. These edicts were inscribed on the rocks in a language unknown to us. Mercifully, some scholars worked hard day and night once and hence, today we have the English translations available. Fourteen of these instructions had been written back then for common people like us.
We moved closer to the rock to read one of the edicts. It ordered, “
These are my instructions to you. You are in charge of many thousands of living beings. You should gain the affection of men. All men are my children, and as I desire for my children that they should obtain welfare and happiness both in this world and the next, the same do I desire for all men...'
After all these were edicts, or instructions issued by an Emperor and we need to first understand them to follow them lest we let some crazy nut unleash a bizarre, ancient curse like in the movies.
Hound took a deep puff as he surveyed the vast expanse of land that joined the Hill. His jeans cried for a wash, so did his unkempt hair. Derek kept staring at the rock edict, trying to decipher what it really meant. The strain on his face showed. It showed every time he tried to read anything other than a copy of the
Hustler
magazine. Goose was talking to a local tourist guide, trying to strike a bargain with him. Of course, he was good at that. Not at bargaining, but talking; what did you think?
The guide was a pro. Not many people knew about this place. I was excited to be here, I didn’t care about the slight drizzle. We drove down to place on top of the hill near a
Stupa
, a monument that is often associated with Buddhism.
Dhauli Hill is located on the banks of the Daya River. It has a vast open ground adjoining it. It is presumably the place where the historical battle of Kalinga was fought. It was a war that was a decisive turning point in the history of the world.
Goose waved out and shouted, “Guys, we have a passable tourist guide here! He promises to take us to a place where most tourists don’t go. He comes cheap, looks cheap too! Should I buy his soul for a couple of hundred bucks?”
“Awesome, blossom”, I said as I studied the nitwit of our guide from head to toe, “That’s rich!”
The guide was a small boy, barely four feet tall, neatly dressed in khakhi trousers and a ghastly green shirt with floral prints. A walking, talking fashion disaster, he gave out a toothy grin when he spotted us – four suckers for his morning breakfast. Tucked under his arm were four umbrellas and an old thick, fat book about Kalinga. It was sure to rain so it was money well spent. Little did he know that we would squeeze him hard till the time the last bit of information trickled out of the horse’s mouth!
We called him
‘Nitwit’
, for want of a better name. It suited him well.
“Sirs, thank you for giving me the opportunity to take you all around the place and thank you for the interest in the Ashoka Rock edicts. Your friend tells me that you would like to know everything about this place. I would need the whole day. I have a lot to tell you. I hope you have the patience. For two hundred rupees, I’ll tell you the history of Kalinga in much detail. No tips OK please.”
“Wow! This sure seems like a royal decree from his highness, he sure means business. Two hundred bucks! Hell! OK, as long as we get the umbrellas for free”, said Derek in a tone that betrayed his amusement about the whole tourist guide thing.
I smiled as Hound dragged Derek down the hill.
“There’s something about this instruction, if you read carefully, that is more than general and broad based. It sure seems that this is a warning to each one of us not to mess up. This place sure gives me the creeps. It looks evil”, said Goose, as he took a few photographs of the inscriptions.
I read the inscription over and over again on the camera. One had to be a visionary to decipher the nuance. It sure seemed to read much more than what was just mentioned in as an edict inscribed on a rock. It seemed more like a threat to those who want to play around with mankind.
We had come to this place for it sports a major edict of Emperor Ashoka that is engraved on a mass of rock just by the side of the road leading to the summit of the Hill. As we scurried down the hill, we could see that o
n top of the hill, there stood a majestic white peace pagoda. We chose not to explore it for that was up the hill, best left for Jack and Jill. It reminded me of the peace pagoda in Leh, Ladakh called Shanti Stupa. It looked beautiful, calm and serene.
Built in the 1970s by the Japanese Buddhist Order, the hilltop pagoda is a symbol of peace. It’s the kind of place where all touristy-types with zero interest in history come from all over visit to take those
‘I-was-here’
snaps and post them on Facebook. We had crossed small temples from the Medieval-age and particularly of interest to the tourists was an old temple on top of another hill. Mercifully, not many people were interested in the sights we wished to see. Or maybe, we were the only medieval types around who prefer a downhill stroll to an uphill sprint.
Hard Rock Edicts:
Along the way, Nitwit, our guide, explained what the edicts really meant. We gathered that they are a collection of 33 inscriptions depicted on the
Pillars of Ashoka
, boulders and cave walls during Emperor Ashoka’s peaceful kingdom for about forty years or so. These inscriptions are scattered all across the areas of modern-day India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. Of these inscriptions, 14 of them are called the Major Rock Edicts.
Walking down the hill, we were told that the real deal around the place is the ancient, archaeologically invaluable artifacts - the edicts of his awesomeness, the Great Emperor Ashoka. Nitiwit said that the philosophy of these edicts needs to be well understood, if we need to know about the myths and legends that haunt the place. I was listening intently for this place reeked of buried treasure.
It is said that the edicts in Kalinga are special due to the inscriptions written on the 13
th
rock. These are rare pieces of art. Many records or edicts of Emperor Ashoka that have been discovered across the world are major edicts. These are the same 14 major rock edicts. Since they didn’t have photocopiers back then, they had to chip all around the place with chisels and hammers to inscribe the same all around the world. Some copies of these 14 major, dude-edicts are located thousands of miles apart.
These are quite different from the kind of rock records which we are used to, for we always prefer rock records on CDs or USB sticks, mostly composed by the Gods of Rock like Metallica and Led Zeppelin, bought from the local pirate on the street. These rock records caught our attention for they were radically different. Unlike CDs, these were not round and were made of rocks. They’re also a lot heavier.
These edicts inscribed on rocks provide substantial information on the way of life as interpreted by an enlightened Emperor Ashoka. It is said that not all records have been discovered and some have vanished mysteriously while others have been lost beneath the sands of time.
“The edicts of Emperor Ashoka in Kalinga have a special significance”, said Nitwit, as he expertly navigated through the bushes. It was beginning to drizzle now. The bracing dampness in the air was invigorating. “Ashoka left a large number of inscriptions on rocks and pillars. These inscriptions are his edicts or what one would call his philosophies and guidelines. These are his instructions. He dictated these instructions to his scribes in a place called Paṭaliputra or what is known as Patna today, in the State of Bihar. He had them carved and inscribed in conspicuous places throughout his kingdom so everyone could read and follow them.”
We were listening intently as he continued to speak excitedly, “All the edicts in Orissa are administrative and you’ll find copies of the same elsewhere across the region. But what’s special about this place is the two special edicts that are only found here and not elsewhere”, our guide went on, “There are sixteen rock edicts around the place. The rock edicts found in Kalinga include numbers one to ten and number fourteen. There are two special Kalinga edicts that mysteriously seem to express Emperor Ashoka’s concern for the welfare of the whole world and the remorse felt by him after the war of Kalinga.”
Not worrying too much about all the discovered rock edicts of Emperor Ashoka, it was evident that there was a specific rock edict he would want us to focus upon. “So much needless information for two hundred bucks, what a waste of money”, I muttered under my breath as ignorance reared its ugly head once it took flight from the safe confines of my crotch, flew all the way up to my face and bared itself on my face.
Our flunkey and local guide, Nitwit, hurried down the hill like a mountain goat, towards what seemed like an edifice of a massive, rock-cut elephant named
‘Amravati’
. This elephant, Nitwit explained, is the earliest Buddhist sculpture of Orissa. Hewn from a rock, this piece of art is a glorious display of the front section of a running elephant in full action.
