Chanakya's Chant Read online

  westland ltd

  Chanakya's Chant

  Ashwin Sanghi's first novel, The Rozabal Line was originally published in 2007 under his pseudonym, Shawn Haigins. The book was subsequently published in 2008 and 2010 in India under his own name and went on to become a national bestseller.

  An entrepreneur by profession, Ashwin writes extensively on history, religion, mythology and politics in his spare time, but writing historical fiction in the thriller genre is his passion and hobby. Chanakya's Chant is his second novel in the genre.

  Sanghi was educated at Cathedral & John Connon School, Mumbai, and St Xavier's College, Mumbai. He holds a master's degree from Yale and is working towards a PhD in Creative Writing.

  He lives in India with his wife, Anushika, and son, Raghuvir.

  Ashwin can be reached either via his blog at www.ashwinsanghi.com, via Twitter at www.twitter.com/ashwinsanghi, or via Facebook at www.facebook.com/shawnhaigins.

  At the heart of this novel lies a chant—a Shakti mantra that appears several times within this story. The young and incredibly talented music composer Ameya Naik has set this chant to hypnotic and reverberating music reminiscent of ancient times. Surprisingly, it dramatically transitions into rock fusion towards the end.

  The chant has been recited in Vedic tradition by the enthusiastic Kushal Gopalka and choir. The four-minute track is divided into two segments, ancient and modern, in keeping with the theme of this novel, which also alternates between the past and the present.

  The track is available as a free mp3 download for everyone to hear. You may download it at:

  www.chanakyaschant.com

  The YouTube video trailer of this novel is also available for viewing at the above web link.

  We hope that you enjoy listening to this mantra as much as all of us enjoyed composing and performing it. It brought to mind the truth in the view that the journey is the destination.

  Chanakya's Chant

  By Ashwin Sanghi

  westland ltd

  Venkat Towers, 165, P.H. Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600 095

  No.38/10 (New No.5), Raghava Nagar, New Timber Yard Layout, Bangalore 560 026

  Survey No. A-9, II Floor, Moula Ali Industrial Area, Moula Ali, Hyderabad 500 040

  23/181, Anand Nagar, Nehru Road, Santacruz East, Mumbai 400 055

  47, Brij Mohan Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002

  First published by westland ltd. 2010

  Copyright © Ashwin Sanghi 2010

  All rights reserved

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN: 978-93-80658-67-4

  Typeset by Art Works, Chennai

  Printed at Thomson Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  I am indebted to Aparna Gupta who first suggested a novel on Chanakya to me. The embryo of the idea planted by her eventually evolved into this novel.

  I am obliged to my wife and son who ungrudgingly tolerated my persistent absence from their lives while I was writing this book and juggling the rest of my life.

  I am beholden to my family, which supported me in my endeavours—including my writing.

  I am thankful to various authors and producers of original or derived works. A separate acknowledgements section at the end of the narrative lists these in detail.

  I am grateful to my editor, Prita Maitra, and my publisher, Gautam Padmanabhan, without whom none of my novels—including this one—would have seen the light of day.

  I am delighted to have worked along with two very talented individuals, Kushal Gopalka and Ameya Naik. We could not have created the incredibly haunting audio track of Chanakya's Chant without their labour and inspiration.

  Finally, I am fortunate to be the grandson of the late Shri Ram Prasad Gupta and grandnephew of his brother, the late Shri Ram Gopal Gupta. Their blessings move the fingers that hold my pen.

  Prologue

  The old man sat propped up in his hospital bed. Monitors beeped numbers and flashed graphs, measuring his vital signs. His frail arms had been punctured with an endless number of needles and a tube ran through his mouth into his lungs. He knew that life was ebbing from his body but had prayed to Shakti to allow him to live long enough to savour the moment he had been waiting for.

  The room was dark, blackout curtains having been drawn to block out the sunlight, except for the psychedelic illumination produced by the moving images on television. The duty nurse sat on a chair beside his steel bed, dozing off intermittently. Light from the television sparkled in the octogenarian's eyes as he watched the eighteenth prime minister of India take the oath of office.

  The incessant buzzing of his three mobile phones brought his personal assistant, Menon, scurrying in. The patient in the adjoining room was complaining that the relentless ringing was disturbing him. The fifty-something secretary peeped into the room to see his employer lying on the utilitarian bed, his gaze transfixed on the images flashed from New Delhi. He was oblivious to the cacophony of phones. He had waited thirty long years for this moment and was not about to let it be obstructed by phone calls. In any case, he couldn't talk with the damn tube in his mouth. Menon had suggested that the phones be turned off but he had refused. I'm not ready to allow anything—including my own life—to be switched off before I've relished this moment, he thought to himself.

  The hospital in Kanpur was not equipped to deal with his condition. Pandit Gangasagar Mishra couldn't care less. He refused to bloody die in a hospital bed in New Delhi or Mumbai. Kanpur was home and he would go meet his maker from his own abode and on his own terms.

  He watched the scene unfolding at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The President was administering the oath of office to the charismatic woman. She was dressed in her usual off-white cotton saree, trimmed with a pale gold border, and wore no jewellery except for a pair of simple solitaire diamond earrings. She quite obviously had the text of the oath before her on a single sheet of paper but did not seem to need it. It was almost as if she had spent her entire life preparing for the occasion. With a crisp Oxonian accent she was saying, ‘I, Chandini Gupta, do swear in the name of God that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established, that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India, that I will faithfully and conscientiously discharge my duties as prime minister and that I will do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law without fear or favour, affection or ill will.’ The doyen smiled. Without fear, favour, affection or ill will! Bollocks! It was not possible to be prime minister without any of these, and she bloody knew it. It was only his opinion, though. But then, the wily Machiavelli had always believed that any clod could have the facts—having an opinion was an art.

  He chuckled and the result was a rasping cough, a reminder of his mortality, and the cancer that plagued his lungs. The secret service detail standing outside his room heard him cough. They wondered whom they were protecting him from. Indeed there were many who wanted the bastard dead but it seemed that God had other plans. It was almost like Gangasagar was cocking a snook at his enemies and telling them ‘Come and fucking get me, but I won't be around!’

  A thin film of perspiration coated his head, the baldness of which was accentuated by two tufts of shocking white hai
r on either side. The nurse dabbed at it with a towel. He followed her movements with his deep, penetrating, all-seeing eyes—little video cameras that had seen and stored away the very worst of human behaviour in the gigabytes of his brain's hard disk. His thin lips quivered as he gasped for breath, his hooked nose struggling to suck in life-giving oxygen in spite of the tube. His skin had a pale translucent hue, like a rare parchment in a museum, and his thin frame occupied very little of the bed. How could this diminutive little man be so powerful?

  In the lobby outside his room stood a posse of political associates. Pandit Gangasagar Mishra had no friends. In his world of politics there were only enemies. A clutch of newspaper hounds hobnobbed with the politicians outside hoping to get the inside scoop on Mishra's death before his death.

  The old man seemed to be mumbling something, a laboured effort to get the words out. It was his daily prayer in Sanskrit. It said, ‘Primal Shakti, I bow to thee; all-encompassing Shakti, I bow to thee; that through which God creates, I bow to thee; creative power of the Kundalini; mother of all, to thee I bow.’ He looked at his protégé—now sworn in as PM—fold her hands together in a humble gesture of acknowledgement to the television cameras... and then stumble backwards. The red stain that spread on her left shoulder—almost in slow motion—had been fired from a Stinger .22 Magnum.

  The august Ashoka Hall of Rashtrapati Bhavan descended into pandemonium. Mishra, watching the scene unfold on television, continued chanting in Sanskrit, ‘Adi Shakti, Namo Namah; Sarab Shakti, Namo Namah; Prithum Bhagvati, Namo Namah; Kundalini Mata Shakti; Mata Shakti, Namo Namah.’

  CHAPTER ONE

  About 2300 years ago

  The kiss was a lingering one. She seemed to lightly graze her lips over his, causing little sparks of static that travelled down his spine as he craved for the impassioned ritual to move towards its gratifying conclusion. Her name was Vishaka—it meant heavenly star—and she was undoubtedly a celestial creature. Her translucent ivory complexion with just a hint of aqua, her sensuous mouth, and mischievous emerald eyes were partially covered by her cascading, silken, auburn hair as she bent over his face, planting little pecks of exquisite joy upon his eyes, nose and lips.

  Paurus lay back on the silken bedspread in the chamber of the pleasure palace. Sounds of a veena wafted in from the antechamber as one of the courtesans played with chords from Raga Hindol—the raga of love. Along the north-eastern wall of the room stood a golden basin that had been filled with pure rose water, and opposite stood a large golden lamp that had been lit with sandalwood oil. Paurus was in a state of tender bliss.

  Allowing himself to submit to Vishaka's ministrations, he sighed contentedly. He tried to recall which great guru had suggested that the path to nirvana was complete and utter submission to the divine. Was this delectable creature anything less? He reached out his arms to pull her face downwards towards his own while his lips sought to quench their thirst from her moist clove-and-cardamom scented breath. He was on fire.

  His throat was on fire! Paurus let go of her hair in panic while clutching at his own throat as he felt the compound of arsenic and mercury scald his lips, tongue and throat. He tried to scream but no sound emerged from his larynx—it had already been destroyed by the Sankhiya poison on her lips. The ambrosial Vishaka continued to cradle his head in the warmth of her shapely bosom as she felt the living breath silently escape from him. The peacocks in the royal garden outside continued to dance, quite oblivious to the agony of the king inside. Paurus, mighty emperor of Kaikey and Magadha was dead. Long live the king!

  Pataliputra, the capital of Magadha, the great Brahmanic empire in the cradle of the beautiful Ganges valley in eastern Bharat lay quiet at this hour. The crocodiles in the moat surrounding the city fort were in deep slumber and the guards had shut the city gates for the night. Within the town, the only activity was towards Yama Gate, the southern quarter that housed the madiralays—the drinking taverns—and the houses of the ganikas—the prostitutes. At the northern end of the capital, towards the Brahma Gate, which housed the palace and the Brahmin community, the streets were deathly quiet.

  Inside a nondescript home, Chanakya listened to Vishaka intently as the glow of the two oil lamps on either side of his study desk threw ominous streaks of alternating shadow and light on his grimy complexion. He was a hideous-looking man. His skin was pockmarked and his features were slightly crooked. His clean-shaven head was tough, black and leathery and he boasted a sandalwood-paste trident on his forehead. Towards the back of his head started a long shikha—a lock of hair maintained by most Brahmins in the kingdom. The only garment on his body was a coarse cotton sheet and his only accessory a yagyopavita—the sacred Vedic thread. He rarely smiled because smiling exposed his crooked teeth. He had been born with a full set of teeth—the mark of a ruler, but a clairvoyant yogi had predicted that the boy would be even more powerful than a mere king—he would be the most powerful kingmaker of his time. To many he was known as Kautilya—the crooked one; to his childhood acquaintances he was Vishnugupta; but to most he was Chanakya—illustrious son of the great and learned Chanak, the most renowned teacher in all of Magadha.

  He did not show the slightest emotion or exuberance as he received her detailed report of the assassination. The wily old Brahmin knew that it never paid to let others perceive what one's true feelings were. ‘Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead,’ he would often say.

  But he couldn't help laughing inwardly. The fool Paurus had allowed himself to believe that the celestial creature in his bed was Vishaka—twinkle, twinkle, little star, indeed. Hah! Little had the imbecile realised that Vishaka was his trained vishakanya—a poison maiden. In fact, Chanakya had personally supervised the creation of an entire army of such maidens. His secret service would identify young and nubile girls whose horoscopes foretold of widowhood. These beautiful damsels would be sequestered at an early age and fed a variety of poisons in graduated doses, making them immune to their ruinous effects. By the time each of Chanakya's vishakanyas reached puberty, they were utterly toxic. A simple kiss with an infinitesimal exchange of saliva was lethal enough to kill the strongest bull of a man.

  ‘Go tell Chandragupta that he's now emperor of Magadha,’ the cunning Brahmin matter-of-factly instructed his venomous pupil as his mind wandered back to how and when the saga had started.

  King Dhanananda of Magadha was in a foul mood. His Brahmin prime minister, the wise Shaktar, appeared to be lecturing him—God's representative on earth! Shaktar wanted the king to spend less time absorbed in winedrenched carnal pursuits, and more time improving the lives of Magadha's citizens. Dhanananda found scholars such as Shaktar boring and insufferable. He tolerated them nonetheless. Patronage of Brahmins in his council made him appear wise.

  The roof of Magadha's great audience hall was supported by eighty massive pillars. Rich furnishings and tapestries embellished the court of the world's richest king. Some distance away from the palace stood a gilded Durakhi Devi temple, a Buddhist monastery as well as an ayurvedic hospital—signs of Magadha's religious, material and spiritual progress.

  Dhanananda looked to his right and observed the first chair. It was reserved for the most important Brahmin in the land—the prime minister, Shaktar. The chair was empty because Shaktar had stood up to deliver his sermon to the king. The pompous bastard, thought Dhanananda. They were all a bunch of self-serving rascals, recommending the most arrogant amongst themselves as ministers, and then using Dhanananda's money to award themselves honours, grants and titles, while attempting to tutor him—the mighty Dhanananda—on the duties of kingship! Their hypocrisy revolted him.

  Dhanananda's eyes wandered towards his female attendants. Women always surrounded Magadha's monarchs. They performed various functions including guarding the king's person, controlling access to his chambers, tasting his food to ensure that it was not poisoned, delivering messages, polishing his armour, entertaining him with music, bathing and dressing him, gratifying his sexual need
s, and tucking him into bed at night.

  Dhanananda had over a thousand female attendants and courtesans serving him. Catlike, they were vicious and protective of their master. Dhanananda slyly winked at a delicious feline whose curvaceous figure belied her strength and capacity to kill and she returned the favour, smiling coyly at him.

  The wink was the final straw. The usually coolheaded Shaktar lost his temper, allowing many years of pent-up anger to burst open like stinking pus from a festering wound. ‘O King! No woman in your kingdom is safe anymore due to the lecherous ways of the court. Girls are routinely found on the banks of the Ganges—raped, murdered, or both. Usually their trail leads back to the royal palace!’ he thundered.

  Dhanananda, master of the largest standing army in the world, was furious. ‘Hold your tongue, Shaktar, or I shall have it removed for you! You live off my grants and think that you have the right to come here and tell me—the most powerful emperor of the known world—how to do my job?’ he shouted, white spittle bursting forth from his lips along with each word. ‘Rakshas! Have this rascal thrown into Nanda's Hell. Let him experience first-hand what a pain in the ass feels like,’ he ordered Rakshas, his minister for internal security.

  Nanda's Hell was the infamous torture chamber in Dhanananda's prison complex. The overseer, Girika, was a monster. Even as a child Girika had enjoyed catching and torturing ants, flies, mice and fish. He had later graduated to torturing cats and dogs, using hooks, nets, hot wax, boiling water and copper rods. Bloodcurdling screams could be heard at all hours from the dungeons in which Girika worked, wrenching out helpless prisoners’ teeth with metal pliers, pouring molten copper on their genitalia and thrusting red-hot embers into their rectums.