The Mahabharata Secret (34 page)

Vijay gazed at the arch, still uncomprehending. It was flanked by four arches on either side. Fatigue lurked on the fringes of his mind, threatening to overpower it. He fought it, concentrating on Colin’s words. What had Shukla said the fifth inscription was?

Isvara, Jeevas, Prakriti...Samay...Karma...

It struck him like a brilliant flash of light; like the flashbulb of a camera going off in the dark. It had to be the central doorway. Colin was right.

He felt a new surge of energy course through his body, washing away all his exhaustion.

‘Karma,’ he said aloud and Colin beamed at him, jubilant.

Vijay stepped forward and extended his hand for a flashlight. One of the men handed him one.

Colin walked up to join him. ‘You’re not going in there alone.’

Vijay smiled at him gratefully.

Farooq watched as the two friends made their way towards the central archway. They paused at the threshold, then, with a backward glance and a deep breath, they plunged into the darkness.

43

Day 11

The forests near Sitagarha Hill

Radha watched admiringly as the commandos methodically organised themselves in dead silence. No words were spoken, not even in whispers. The entire formation was complete in seconds, using just sign language.

Weapons were checked and the men split up into groups. A thrill coursed through her as excitement mixed with apprehension; a potent cocktail that made her heart race.

But the men around her seemed devoid of emotion, oblivious to danger—another day, another mission!

They had reached a part of the forest that was reasonably near their goal but still distant enough for them to remain undetected. The trucks would remain here while they proceeded on foot. In the centre of the formation, created by the teams of commandos, were Radha and Imran. The men were invisible in the darkness and barely audible except for the occasional rustle of undergrowth. There were no flashlights. Each commando was equipped with night-vision goggles.

Silently, slowly, like a gargantuan many-headed monster, the commando force made its way towards the goal.

It is All an Illusion

Vijay and Colin walked down the passage, shining their flashlight ahead. The bare stone walls that stretched before them were unpolished and unadorned. The rock floor however was level and flat.

As Vijay walked, he wondered if Shukla was safe with the terrorists back in the chamber. He didn’t trust Farooq, and the flashes of anger the LeT leader had recently displayed suggested that he was losing his grip on himself. Vijay also knew that each of them was safe only as long as they were useful to Farooq.

They stopped as two archways appeared. Engravings in the rock above each arch jumped out at them as the two trained their flashlights on them.

Vijay frowned. The archway on the right appeared to be carved into the rock and meant only as decor. ‘This doesn’t make sense,’ he said.

Colin agreed. ‘After all we’ve seen of the Nine, why would they create two archways when one of them can’t be used? Now, if they’d given us a choice between the two and we had to decipher a clue to make that choice, I’d have been happier.’

Slowly, cautiously, they entered the archway on the left. It was a straight passage that sloped downwards after a while.

Vijay frowned. ‘This seems to be going deeper underground. Wonder why.’

They continued along the corridor, careful to keep their elbows and hands from brushing against the jagged walls. The passage had narrowed considerably since they had entered it, and despite their cautiousness they had picked up a few bruises and scrapes from the rough walls.

They followed the turns of the passage until they reached a lone doorway.

Vijay stared at the arch suspiciously. What lay beyond?

Colin shot him a glance. ‘What do you think? I smell something.’

Vijay grinned. ‘Probably dead rats. There must be scores of them here. But I have to agree with you. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

‘We can’t go back. Farooq will kill us. And that’s not a joke.’

‘On the other hand, it’s just a feeling we have. There must be something beyond that archway.’

‘I’m not sure I want to find out what. In Hollywood movies there’s normally a mummy or dragon or some frightening beast that lurks beyond archways like this one. And, in case you haven’t realised by now, that’s not an encounter I’d relish.’

Vijay smiled. Even at a time like this, Colin managed to be humorous. ‘Ancient Indians never mummified their dead. So there won’t be any mummies here. And dragons are found in Chinese lore, not Indian mythology.’

‘What about demons?’ Colin countered. ‘I recall Dr. Shukla saying something about demons in the Mahabharata.’

‘Yes,’ Vijay agreed gravely. ‘There are loads of demons in Indian mythology. All kinds.
Asuras, Rakshasas
...’

‘Save the names and descriptions,’ Colin interrupted him hurriedly. ‘I think I’m better off not knowing.’

He poked his head beyond the archway and stood looking for a few moments. Then, he withdrew and grinned at Vijay. ‘This you’ve got to see.’

Vijay flashed his torch through the archway and walked through it, into an enormous cavern. The darkness of the cavern was impenetrable as far as his eyes could see.

He raised his eyes to the roof of the cavern, and his jaw dropped.

While the roof was cloaked in darkness, the blackness itself seemed to be alive with a million dots of twinkling light. Had they not known that they were deep underground and now stood in a chamber carved from the bedrock, they would have easily believed that they had emerged from the confines of the rock and into the open, under the starlight.

They switched off their flashlights for a few moments and savoured the beauty of the sight. It was like gazing at the night sky from the top of a mountain, with no clouds or smog to obscure their view, no city lights to dim the brilliance of the stars.

‘It’s a replica of the night sky,’ Colin murmured, outlining with his hand the constellations he knew. ‘Look, there’s the Great Bear—the Big Dipper is clearly visible. And that’s Orion—there’s his belt.’

They stood gazing for a while, identifying a few more constellations, wondering at the skill and ingenuity of the builders of this cavern. Who had they been? How had they created such an amazingly life-like representation of the night sky? And why?

Finally, they tore their eyes away from the spectacle overhead and turned their attention to their surroundings. All around them stretched an opaque canopy of darkness. The beams of their torches only scratched the skin of the darkness but failed to cut through its flesh.

‘D’you think this is it?’ Colin whispered, overawed. ‘The cavern of the Nine?’

They looked at each other and then moved forward together, slowly, cautiously. Who knew what the Nine had planted in this cavern to safeguard their secret?

Suddenly, they stopped. Something was visible in the torchlight. They crept closer until they could see it clearly, though it was still some distance from them.

It was a pillar, four or five feet tall and black in colour, which was why it was not easily discernible. It had blended in with the darkness of the cavern until they were close enough to it to see it in the light of their torches.

But it wasn’t the appearance of the pillar that astonished them. It was the fact that it seemed to be floating in the air, around four feet above the floor of the cavern. They flashed their torches along its length and above the pillar, to see if it was somehow suspended from the ceiling. But they could see nothing—the pillar was apparently not anchored to either the floor or hanging from the roof of the cavern.

They flashed their torches around the cavern. More pillars came into view; scattered around the cavern, frozen in the air at different heights above the floor.

Vijay looked troubled. ‘Something’s wrong.’

‘Agreed. A cavern with the night sky for a ceiling and now levitating columns. Not my idea of normal,’ his friend responded.

They approached the pillar closest to them, hoping to discover its secret once they examined it closely.

Abruptly, Colin grabbed Vijay’s hand and jerked him back. His torchlight played along the floor, below the pillar, and Vijay realised why, even though the pillar was around three or four feet away from them.

Barely a foot from where they stood, the floor of the cavern plunged sharply and disappeared. One step more and Vijay would have dropped off the edge. Colin had spotted the break in the floor in the nick of time.

Beyond the edge of the floor, the light from their torches glinted off something black and wet.

‘A subterranean lake?’ Vijay was mystified. He flashed his torch before him and Colin did the same.

The pillars were all suspended in mid-air above the water which seemed to stretch away as far as they could see. The water was black and still, not a ripple disturbed its surface.

‘What is this place?’ Colin wondered. ‘This looks like an artificial water body to me.’

‘It does,’ Vijay agreed. ‘But there must be a source of water to keep it filled over the centuries. Perhaps there’s an underground spring that empties into the lake.’

‘Now what?’ Colin looked at Vijay. ‘We can’t go forward. And we can’t go back. This is a fine mess. And I feel like any moment Gollum’s going to pop out of the lake, hissing “my precious.”’

‘Why would the Nine create an alternate entrance to the cavern, make those nine archways which only someone familiar with their thinking could get past, only to lead to a dead end?’ Vijay frowned as he tried to search for an answer. ‘We’re missing something here.’

‘I think the answer is connected to the suspended pillars. There must be a logical explanation for this illusion.’

Vijay grabbed Colin by the shoulders. ‘That’s it,’ his eyes were shining with excitement. ‘Thank you, buddy. I never thought I’d ever hear myself say this, but you’re a genius.’

‘Huh?’ Colin looked bewildered.

‘I think you may have just helped us find the answer to this puzzle.’

Eerie Stillness

The commandos had come to a sudden halt. They had apparently detected movement ahead. Or a presence.

Radha kept close to Imran, following his lead, though she wondered how much experience he had in operations like this.

She looked around. The teams that had flanked them on the journey, all but invisible in the darkness of the forest, had disappeared. Something was afoot. She shivered and Imran smiled at her reassuringly.

A man suddenly screamed from somewhere up ahead, shattering the stillness, making her jump. There was a flurry of sharp claps followed by silence.

The team of commandos escorting them signalled that they should move forward.

As they advanced, Radha understood the reason. Her heart leaped as she discerned the X Trail standing behind six Ford Endeavours. Bodies lay scattered on the ground around the cars, LeT men who had been taken out by the commandos.

Radha averted her eyes from the sight of death and concentrated instead on praying that her father, Vijay and Colin were safe.

The commando to her right signalled again, asking them to move forward and they continued their trek through the forest.

44

Day 11

Sitagarha Hill

‘What d’you mean?’ Colin stared at Vijay as they squatted on the rough floor of the cavern.

‘Illusions. Remember Uncle’s emails? He mentions illusions twice. We had tried to interpret those lines without luck and given them up as junk that had been added to confuse the reader of the emails, in case they fell into the wrong hands.’

Colin thought hard, trying to remember. ‘I remember only one reference to illusions. The fourth email.

If something happens to me, you must seek out the Nine. If you look for a deeper meaning, you will find it. Two thousand years of history, which I have safely guarded for the last 25 years, is yours to unlock. Follow the path of truth and you will find your way through any illusion.

‘There was another reference. In the second email.’ Vijay repeated the line from the second email for Colin. ‘“
In an ocean of maya there is always an island of satya
”. One meaning of
Maya
is illusion. So, for example, the world is an illusion, everything material is
maya
. And
satya
means truth.’

‘Right.’ Colin got it now. ‘So this cavern is
maya
, right? The stars, these suspended pillars; a magnificently created illusion. So where’s the island of truth? And the path of truth that we’re supposed to follow to find our way through these illusions?’

‘There,’ Vijay pointed across the water into the darkness. ‘I’m betting there’s an island in the centre of this lake.’

Colin grinned at Vijay, despite their circumstances. ‘You’re kidding. What d’you think, the island is invisible?’

Almost as soon as the words left his mouth it struck him as well.

‘Holy crap!’ He looked at Vijay. ‘You could be right. After all, these are the guys who have the secret of invisibility hidden away somewhere in this hill.’ He looked around in awe. ‘It certainly explains the illusion of the pillars. They aren’t suspended—their lower portions must be shielded with an invisibility cloak. And it is possible that there is an island out there that is also shielded so we can’t see it.’

Vijay grinned. ‘You got it, kid. An island of truth hidden behind an illusion of invisibility. See, my brilliance is beginning to rub off onto you.’

Colin scowled at him. ‘Okay Brainy One, how do we get to the island then? Figure that one out.’ He held out his hand. ‘No wait, I think I’ve got it. There should be an invisible bridge over the water if our theory is correct.’

‘Our theory?’ Vijay put on a mock indignant expression.

Colin grinned happily at him. If they were right, this cavern wasn’t so much of a mystery after all. ‘We find this invisible bridge by following the pillars. Some of them must be supporting a path across the water, right?’

‘Let’s go,’ Vijay started towards the nearest pillar. It hung above the water two feet out from the shore. He extended his leg and felt around for a bridge over the water.