Victory City(5)

Then life began, and hundreds—no, thousands—of men and women were born full-grown from the brown earth, shaking the dirt off their garments, and thronging the streets in the evening breeze. Stray dogs and bony cows walked in the streets, trees burst into blossom and leaf, and the sky swarmed with parrots, yes, and crows. There was laundry upon the riverbank, and royal elephants trumpeting in their mansion, and armed guards—women!—at the Royal Enclosure’s gates. An army camp could be seen beyond the city’s boundary, a substantial cantonment in which stood an awesome force of thousands more newborn human beings, equipped with clattering armor and weapons, as well as ranks of elephants, camels, and horses, and siege weaponry—battering rams, trebuchets, and the like.

“This is what it must feel like to be a god,” Bukka Sangama said to his brother in a trembling voice. “To perform the act of creation, a thing only the gods can do.”

“We must become gods now,” Hukka said, “to make sure the people worship us.” He looked up into the sky. “There, you see,” he pointed. “There is our father, the Moon.”

“No,” Bukka shook his head. “We’ll never get away with that.”

“The great Moon God, our ancestor,” said Hukka, making it up as he went along, “he had a son, whose name was Budha. And then after a number of generations the family line arrived at the Moon King of the mythological era. Pururavas. That was his name. He had two sons, Yadu and Turvasu. Some say there were five, but I say two is plenty. And we are the sons of the sons of Yadu. Thus we are a part of the illustrious Lunar Lineage, like the great warrior Arjuna in the Mahabharata, and even Lord Krishna himself.”

“There are five of us too,” Bukka said. “Five Sangamas, like the five sons of the Moon King. Hukka, Bukka, Pukka, Chukka, and Dev.”

“That may be so,” Hukka said. “But I say two is plenty. Our brothers are not noble characters. They are disreputable. They are unworthy. But yes, we will have to work out what to do with them.”

“Let’s go down and take a look at the palace,” Bukka suggested. “I hope there are plenty of servants and cooks and not just a bunch of empty chambers of state. I hope there are beds as soft as clouds and maybe a women’s wing of ready-made wives of unimaginable beauty as well. We should celebrate, right? We aren’t cowherds anymore.”

“But cows will remain important to us,” Hukka proposed.

“Metaphorically, you mean,” Bukka asked. “I’m not planning to do any more milking.”

“Yes,” Hukka Sangama said. “Metaphorically, of course.”

They were both silent for a while, awed by what they had brought into being. “If something can come out of nothing like this,” Bukka finally said, “maybe anything is possible in this world, and we can really be great men, although we will need to have great thoughts as well, and we don’t have any seeds for those.”

Hukka was thinking along different lines. “If we can grow people like tapioca plants,” he mused, “then it doesn’t matter how many soldiers we lose in battle, because there will be plenty more where they came from, and therefore we will be invincible and will be able to conquer the world. These thousands are just a beginning. We will grow hundreds of thousands of citizens, maybe a million, and a million soldiers as well. There are plenty of seeds left. We barely used half the sack.”

Bukka was thinking about Pampa Kampana. “She talked a lot about peace but if that’s what she wants why did she grow us this army?” he wondered. “Is it peace she really wants, or revenge? For her mother’s death, I mean.”

“It’s up to us now,” Hukka told him. “An army can be a force for peace as well as war.”

“And another thing I’m wondering,” Bukka said. “Those people down there, our new citizens—the men, I mean—do you think they are circumcised or not circumcised?”

Hukka pondered this question. “What do you want to do?” he asked finally. “Do you want to go down there and ask them all to open their lungis, pull down their pajamas, unwrap their sarongs? You think that’s a good way to begin?”

“The truth is,” Bukka replied, “I don’t really care. It’s probably a mixture, and so what.”

“Exactly,” Hukka said. “So what.”

“So I don’t care if you don’t care,” Bukka said.

“I don’t care,” Hukka replied.

“Then so what,” Bukka confirmed.

They were silent again, staring down at the miracle, trying to accept its incomprehensibility, its beauty, its consequences. “We should go and introduce ourselves,” Bukka said after a while. “They need to know who’s in charge.”

“There’s no rush,” Hukka replied. “I think we’re both a little crazy right now, because we are in the middle of a great craziness, and we both need a minute to absorb it, and to get a grip on our sanity again. And in the second place…” And here he paused.

“Yes?” Bukka urged him on. “What’s in the second place?”

“In the second place,” Hukka said slowly, “we have to decide which one of the two of us is going to be king first, and who will be in the second place.”

“Well,” Bukka said, hopefully, “I’m the smartest.”