The arrival of the king (அரசனின் வருகை) by Uma Varatharajan

 Written by the Sri Lankan writer Uma Varatharajan

Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.

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The day the King was to arrive at that ruined city was nearing. They said that he was coming to inaugurate the renovation works of the temple, which was demolished in the war. The buffaloes were roaming on the streets of the city carrying the posters pasted on their body announcing the arrival of the king. The sound of the drums was heard in nooks and corners.

The city was situated on the banks of the ‘river of blood’. It was a city of bamboo that could catch fire and set everything ablaze at the slightest scratch of wind. The final battle occurred three years ago. The trumpet of elephants, neighing of horses, the clanking of swords and hapless howls of humans- were all still ringing in the ears. The stench of dead bodies was still hovering in the sky, not leaving the city. The birds that came there after leaving the nearby forests to feast on the corpse were perching on the branches of big trees, yearningly waiting for yet another chance. The houses with no roofs and the walls blackened with smoke were announcing how the city had lost the nose of its beautiful face. The nights of the city were passing with the incessant howls of the owls and the intermittent wails of dogs. The moon that had taken shelter in the clouds wouldn’t come out. The children didn’t cry for milk. The sound of horses’ hooves and the sporadic chattering of soldiers would pierce through the nights. Oomaiyan (Dumb) was lying on the mat as his chest pit dried up, ears growing sharper and eyes fixed on the roof.

Only Oomaiyan and some other men were remaining in the city. Those who were alive crossed the river to be alive and moved to different places. The boats disappeared in the tears that welled up in the eyes of women waving their hands, standing on the banks. Oomaiyan was not willing to part from his mother.

Many in the city had forgotten the original name of Oomaiyan. He acquired that name as he wouldn’t speak much. His mother knew how his eloquence of words grew thinner gradually.

Thousands of vultures also entered the city, almost clouding the sun with their wings, along with the soldiers the king had sent to the city to control the rebels. The idols in the temples, the breasts of women, and the heads of children – the spoils knew no limits. In those days, the city looked like a sugarcane grove destroyed by elephants.

Oomaiyan was one of those arrested men. They found him guilty of possessing a weapon, a razor for shaving the facial hairs, tied both his hands behind and took him somewhere by making him walk on the hot sand without footwear. They made him kneel in the middle of the street under the midday sun and asked him to perform Surya Namaskar. They stuffed stones into his mouth and punched his stomach hard. No sound other than “amma” came out of the stones.

Oomaiyan and some other people were returning along the empty street towards the city in the evening as their faces turned pale and their legs were tired. Fearing that the messenger of death might call them out back, they didn’t even look back and walked on wearily, as their shadows were being dragged on. As soon as their heads appeared at the corner of the street, women went running, briskly walking to them. They ran to every one of them, searched their loved ones in their faces and shivered when they couldn’t see the faces they were searching and wailed loudly and yelled haplessly, “What happened? What happened?”. Not knowing that his father had died, a baby sitting on a woman’s waist was smiling, sucking his finger tip. Another woman shook Oomaiyan’s shoulders and cried, “What happened? What happened?” The casuarina trees of the women’s hutments were still whistling the songs of melancholy in the squall.

Oomaiyan, who was ashamed of his momentary, childish happiness that he had a boon and luck to be alive, had now slowly realized that he had been destined for a life with a knife hanging above his head. His days passed in silence. All four walls of his house strangled him in his confinement. The roof of his house descended many times into his heart. He looked pale like a plant that couldn’t receive the sunlight. He was deeply troubled, like an intimidated slender loris.

He was roaming in dreams day and night. The men whose eyes were gorged out of their eye sockets, nails plucked out, were tottering, mumbling, “Where is our justice?” The corpses, half burnt, rose, twisting their torsos and murmured, ‘What’s our crime?” One hand from one of the dead bodies lying in the well gently caught the bucket thrown into the well to take water. A chicken that lost its neck convulsed, ran, flapping its wing, searching for its life before falling onto the ground. The wheels of horse-driven chariot would trample over the pregnant goat’s stomach. The mouths of completely bald dogs were clasping either humans’ hands or legs.

The king had already appeared in Oomaiyan’s dreams. He appeared as an unassuming man with a smile that spread up to the corner of his mouth. People spoke among themselves that a moat full of crocodiles, a mound where poisonous snakes would take shelter and a jungle where poisonous trees would grow were hiding behind that smile that spread up to his mouth. There were many such stories doing the rounds about the king. Contradictory stories about him – he was fond of rearing white pigeons, and at the same time, he had a penchant for wearing skulls strung into a garland. Stories were floating in the air that he had been wearing an ancestral crown he had unearthed by undertaking a pilgrimage under the earth and carrying his throne wherever he went.

The king appeared in Oomaiyan’s dreams with the smiling face that artists of the royal court had scrupulously painted. The temple bell rang intermittently. The birds were flying in the sky in flocks. The saints were chanting the Veda. It was on the banks of a river. With his white dress, the king was walking on the grass bed where the dew drops hadn’t yet dried, stroking the white pigeon he was holding in his hands. Oomaiyan was behind him. It was an early morning when the Sun seemed to hesitate to come out watching the beauty around.

The king looked up to the sky.

“The clouds are clearing. A minute more…a minute more. Light will appear.”

Oomaiyan grew a little comfortable seeing the king’s enthusiasm.

“My lord, aren’t we going to die before the light appears? Are we better now anyway? We are already dead, yet alive.”

The king turned and smiled at Oomaiyan.

“If it is war, it is war. If it is truce, it is truce.”

Oomaiyan tried hard to swallow his words and said, “Even if it is a war, there should be some ethics. Shouldn’t be? What wrong did these innocent people do? Infants, diseased, saints, women – will killing them ever be the ethics of war?”

The king smirked. “You are complaining about the petty grasses that get crushed under the wheels of a chariot when it moves. I know everything…I know everything.”

“You can do anything if you want. Is there anything that you can’t?” Oomaiyan said.

The king’s walk stopped abruptly. “Yes…Anything is possible if I wish to. Look here…”, the king said. The white pigeon sitting in his hands disappeared suddenly and a blood stained, severed head of a rabbit was sitting there instead.

As the time of king’s arrival was nearing, the city grew restless. New royal security arrangements were beefed up. The work went on day and night. They planted flowers in front of the morgues and watered them. They brought uprooted trees from other cities and planted them at the entrances of this city, where the autumn had become a permanent phenomenon. They freshly painted the ramparts that stood smeared with indelible stains of blood and continuous rains of a hundred years. The smiling king’s portraits decked all over the walls. The bullock carts were standing in a long queue at the check posts. The people were silently moving, carrying the bundles on their heads, as their clothes getting drenched in the heavy rain. They were asked to stick their tongues out to search for any inciting words against the king. The stomach of a cow that strayed into the city at an inopportune time was slit open and had its intestines examined. They inserted their hands into the rectum of buffaloes to find out anything odd. The men who were under the intoxication of toddy were beating the drums and dancing as the foamy toddy was still sticking to their moustache.

“He gave us temple

Our king gave us a temple

He will give us more

He will give us whatever we want

Thillanlagadi thillaa….

Hold this begging bowl.”

Oomaiyan’s grandfather, sitting on the veranda, stopped crushing the betel nuts and looked in the direction from which the song came. For blind people, sound is the world. The toddy men’s songs must have annoyed his grandfather. He kept crushing the betel leaves in the mortar furiously with the pestle. “He gives us the temple. How long would he take to demolish it?” the grandfather mumbled and stuffed the betel leaves into his mouth as if he didn’t like to speak anything more.

One day to go for the king to arrive. The grandfather, who was slumbering, got up suddenly, hearing the sound of horses’ hooves. The women came to the doorway, stuck their heads out to see, and then pulled in swiftly and disappeared. Oomaiyan stared at his mother, who came there anxiously. Her lips were dry, and her eyes carried terror. She looked up to the sky, folded her hands and prayed.

Everything went on as usual. The soldiers entered each house in that residential area, searched and then left. When they took Oomaiyan along with them, his mother tried her best and cried. Only the horses that seemed to have understood the human language bobbed their heads and neighed. Oomaiyan’s dog cuddled his legs, followed him till the corner of the street, while continuously barking at the soldiers. The soldiers kicked it away. The women, beating their chests and stomachs with their hands, trailed the men captured by the soldiers, howling helplessly. The horse riders brandished their spears to drive them away. The women were helplessly watching their men disappearing through the layer of dust stirred by the horse hooves at the corner of the street. Leaning against the wall on his back, the grandfather spoke to them to ease their worries. “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. The king is coming tomorrow. Isn’t he? It is to inflate the crowd.”. A lizard chirped at that time. It made the grandfather and others happy.

All captured men were kept in the city’s lodges. All the lodges in the city were overflowing with men who were brought from surrounding places like them. They didn’t speak to each other, bemoaning their fate that had befallen on their heads with all its pernicious outcome. The laughing sound of the soldiers pierced their ears like arrows of insult. Oomaiyan leaned against the cool wall and closed his eyes. A big sacrificial sword was shining on the altar in the darkness. A rope with a noose was dangling in the wind that howled like a fox. The pillar-like legs of elephants were marching ferociously towards him, buried neck deep in the ground. The whips had drawn newer blood streaks on his naked body. In the vast nebulous space of dreams and reality, he saw his house coming. Withered flowers and dead leaves were found in the yard, which hadn’t been cleaned. The dog that lost its zeal was lying across the doorway. A lazy cat was lying in the stove, from where the ashes had still not been removed. The utensils that turned cold in the kitchen. The grandfather would grope in the dark, hitting the walls, unable to sleep like a dark beetle. His mother would be lying, curling her body without food, sleep and eyes not yet dried. Oomaiyan was roaming in the magnificent forest of darkness, carrying every minute on his head that burdened him like boulders. He was lying, not shutting his eyes, waiting for the lodge’s door to open to enjoy the wind and light.

It dawned. The leader of the soldiers entered the room through the door before the light entered.

“Get up…get up” he yelled out.

The bullock carts marched fast along the city’s streets carrying them. The merchants of the commercial street stood stunned at hearing the constant jingling sound of the carts. Oomaiyan was greatly ashamed to see him walking like the most despicable animals in the world with oily faces, sleepy eyes, unkempt hair and hungry stomachs. All were disembarked on the banks of a pond near the temple that had been hit by thunder. They were made to sit in a queue. The sky was cloudy. The soldiers were speaking among themselves that the king had brought the rain along with him.

“Rajathiraja….Rajamarthanda….Rajagambeera…” a thick announcement rose. The musical instruments began playing suddenly. The exponents of ‘Makudi’ made the girls of the city twist their bodies and dance like snakes. The toddy men were somersaulting without touching the ground. The king was coming from the rear. The saints rose and paid their homage with a smile that failed their beards. The king reached the pedestal built at the topmost place and waved his hands. The poets with enormous buns on their heads were fanning him with palm leaflets even in that chilly weather. Ice cubes kept pouring in from the royal poet’s tongue. The domestics who had shaved off half their moustache were sitting at the rear of the king and scratching his back while itching.

Oomaiyan looked up. The sky was waiting to get rid of its dark attire to get naked. A drop of water fell on Oomaiyan’s face like a piece of excrement of a bird flying across the sky. Then followed the drops falling at a speed, commotion and the wind that indicated the direction, the war that the rain waged had begun. The king rose from his seat amid the heavy rain. He must have been astonished to see the people not moving an inch, even in that heavy rain.

“My dear countrymen whom I hold above my life…” his voice tried to overwhelm the sound of rain.

The king’s voice, unaffected by the rain, resonated under the canopy decked with the fully grown rack of bananas, tender leaves, and crimson flowers. Oomaiyan was shivering in the cold. The rain that repeatedly slammed the mouths, stomachs, backs, and faces like a woman possessed by a demon.

“I have come here to renovate the temple hit by the thunder. What else do you all need more? Tell me”

The wind and the rain replied to his queries. Terrorized by the tips of spears the soldiers were wielding, and their rolling eyeballs, people were silent without moving.

“I am overwhelmed to see you all waiting to meet me even in this heavy downpour. Let me know what you all need”

Oomaiyan looked upward again. Varuna Bhagavan (The god of rain) was clenching his teeth. The whips of lightning that descended through the ladder of rain, the water flowed zigzag, finding its way, snakes of fire were wriggling all across the sky and played truant.

“I will build magnificent buildings for you. I will order to get all the streets repaired today. I will get the ponds renewed. What else do you all need? Do you need galleries? Do you need nine types of grains? Silk clothes? What do you need? Let me know what you need. I am ready to give you all these. But you should never….”

Hardly had the king finished his statement, was there a lightning, then followed a loud noise. A long streak of lightning appeared as if connecting the sky with the earth.

Oomaiyan was shocked for a moment as his eyes grew dull. He rubbed his eyes once and looked upward again.

The king who was addressing the crowd a while ago had vanished.

***Ended***