Victory City(36)

Pampa Kampana’s face reddened. Her daughters, seeing this, came up and led her off. “We need to talk,” Zerelda told her mother.

Pampa Kampana took seven very deep breaths. “Very well,” she said, “talk.”

The three women gathered around their mother, coming in close, so that they could whisper. It occurred to Pampa Kampana that after having whispered all the histories of Bisnaga’s citizens into their ears she was now having her own story whispered to her by her offspring. Karma, she thought.

“In the first place,” whispered Yotshna, “nobody around here will fight for our rights, or even our safety. Agreed?”

“Yes,” said Pampa Kampana, sadly.

“In the second place,” Yuktasri continued, “maybe you haven’t heard the rumors about the royal council. A headless council, now that there is no king. Have you noticed that nobody came to you from the council confirming your reappointment as queen regent until the question of the succession is settled?”

“Yes,” said Pampa Kampana.

“One rumor,” Zerelda told her, “is that they wanted to force us to enter the fire at the king’s funeral pyre. That didn’t happen, but it was a close thing.”

“I didn’t know,” said Pampa Kampana.

“Nobody on the council can decide who should rule,” Yotshna said. “So when all are assembled, Vidyasagar will be the kingmaker.”

“I see,” said Pampa Kampana.

“The most important thing now,” Yotshna said, “is for us to get you to a safe place until we understand what the new world will be like.”

“And if there’s any place for us in that new world,” Zerelda added.

“So a safe place for all of us,” said Yuktasri.

“And where is that,” Pampa Kampana asked, “and how will we get there?”

“As to how we will get away,” Yotshna said, “we have a plan.”

“As to where we’ll go,” Zerelda continued, “we hoped you might have some ideas about that.”

Pampa Kampana thought for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Get us out of here.”

“You have ten minutes to pack,” Yotshna said.

    Grandmaster Li Ye-He was our savior,

rolling over the zenana like the thunder

on Mount Kailash,

his blades as powerful as thunderbolts,

flashing in the night like the light

of freedom.



I give here my poor translation of Pampa Kampana’s imperishable verses. I cannot come close to her poetic genius (I have not attempted to match her in meter or rhyme) but I offer it to suggest to the present reader the intrusion into the narrative of a moment belonging to a universe of marvels; for not only did Grandmaster Li arrive flying over the rooftops like a giant supernatural bat and then drop into the zenana’s inner courtyard like a panther who devoured whatever crossed its path, not only did he cut a path of death all the way to the four ladies; but then the princesses, as agile as he, two of them holding their mother by her hands, followed him as he ran up walls and along the heights of the city, bounding as if on winged feet from temple to tree to battlement, until at last the five of them dropped silently to the ground beyond the defenses of the city at the place where Haleya Kote was waiting, all in black, with six black horses saddled and ready to ride.

    Where shall we go, our Mother,

Away from those who mean us harm?

My darlings, my beloveds, my dears,

Let us go to the Enchanted Forests

As they did in the ancient stories

And be safe.





PART

TWO


   | Exile |





9





The jungle stands at the heart of the great ancient tales. In the Mahabharata of Vyasa, Queen Draupadi and her five husbands, the Pandava brothers, spent thirteen years in exile. Much of that time was spent in forests. In Valmiki’s Ramayana, the lady Sita and the brothers Ram and Lakshman are exiled, mostly in forests, for fourteen years. In Pampa Kampana’s Jayaparajaya, she tells us that her time in exile, which is to say vanvaas, plus her time in hiding in disguise, which is agyatvaas, added up to a total of one hundred and thirty-two years. By the time she reemerged in triumph, everyone she had ever loved was dead. Or almost everyone.

In the jungle the past is swallowed up, and only the present moment exists; but sometimes the future arrives there ahead of time and reveals its nature before the outside world knows anything about it.



* * *



—

As they galloped away from Bisnaga it was Pampa Kampana who took the lead. “So many forests,” she said. “The Dandaka forest where Lord Ram took refuge, and Lord Krishna’s Vrindavan. Also, elephant-Ganesh’s sugarcane forest, Ikshuvana, and Kadalivana, monkey-lord Hanuman’s banana forest. In addition, there’s Imlivana, the tamarind forest of Devi. But we will go to the most powerfully enchanted forest of them all, the Forest of Women.”

She does not say in her book how long they rode, how many nights and days, or in what direction. So we cannot say for sure where the Forest of Women was located, or if some part of it stands there still. All we know is: they rode hard and they rode long, through coarse hilly terrain and green river valleys, barren land and lush, until at last the forest stood before them, a green rampart concealing great mysteries.