Book Excerpt: The Wife and the Dancing Girl

Anuja Chandramouli

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Love scorched the heavens and when it was lost, it turned everything to ashes…

He was no hero. He was not one to rescue his loved one by hauling her back from the blazing wreckage of a broken world or by fighting a war to win her hand. But he was sweet and sensitive. And loved. Fiercely. By his wife and the dancing girl. They loved him and lost him in turns. But to the bitter end, they went on loving him.

Swept away on the tides of breathtaking passion and delicious desire, Kannagi, the wife, and Madhavi, the dancing girl, find themselves plummeting to the unforgiving depths of love and despair, armed only with futile hope and the bleakly dawning realization that exquisite pleasure must be paid for with endless pain. This is the story of two women and the love triangle destiny enmeshed them in which spawned an epic saga that has lasted centuries.

Inspired by the Silapathikaram, Ilango Adigal’s timeless Tamil classic, Anuja Chandramouli’s bold new take delivers a double dose of romance that is unforgettably tender and unrelentingly tragic.

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EXCERPT

A lone stone was hurled at him with such force, it split his eyebrow open, and blood gushed into his open eye. Others followed. His men drew their swords and raised their shields. Furious, he issued his command, ‘Kill them all and bring the bitch to me in chains. Since she is already naked, we will not have to strip her and parade her across the city. Tie her spreadeagled in the square and leave her to rot.’

I raised my anklet in response and watched numbly as the hordes charged into the ranks of the guards, unimpeded by their weapons and armour, tearing them to pieces and flinging various body parts in all directions without breaking my stride. Aiyai and I made our way past the thronging bodies caught up in the middle of a pitched battle. Blood and guts seemed to pour out like a river in spate. The King’s guards fought their way towards me. Time and again they were beaten back. But every time one fell, another took its place. Meaty paws grabbed at my body or got a handful of my hair. I fought them off with whatever came to hand. My defenders were legion, and they intervened,sacrificing their lives for mine. ‘My life is yours, Goddess!’ they sang in exultation, consumed by battle lust and feverish fanaticism. I barely acknowledged the sacrifice and kept moving with Aiyai at my side, knee-deep in blood and corpses.

More guards poured in from all directions and they surrounded me. Madari interspersed herself between my body and the pitiless guards, her hands folded in supplication. ‘Please! She only seeks to…’ One of them brought his club down on her skull, smashing it like an overripe melon, casting her body aside like it was no more than a broken pot.

Aiyai howled and charged towards them, fighting like a demoness to reach her mother’s killer. A sword slashed across her face. She fell in a heap and lay unmoving even when the guards aimed savage kicks at her like the maddened beasts they were. I rushed at them and within moments, they were upon me, tearing at what remained of my garments, rough hands pawing, groping, slapping, beating, pushing me to the ground. I lay in shock, choking and sputtering on the fumes of blood, sweat, liquor and urine. On any other day, I would have died of shame and humiliation. But not on that day.

For long moments that seemed to stretch out across the course of eternity, I lay stiff and still as an unprotesting corpse, ignoring the evil men swarming over my body. Then the rage took over. Snatching the protruding hilt of the dagger from the sheath attached to the waist of the man who was trying to pry my legs apart, I plunged it into his throat and watched imperviously as he died with a copious outpouring of blood from his mouth, his lips wide open, locked in a rictus of agony, right on top of me.

The dirty defiler’s partners in crime lunged at me, hoping to finish what he started and avenge their fallen comrade in arms. Pushing the repulsive creature aside, with the dagger still in hand,I plunged it in quick deadly strikes into the fleshy thighs of two who were almost upon me. They fell back screaming fit to burst, geysers of their blood gushing forth and drenching me as I forced myself to stand, though not a rag remained on my body. The heartless monsters who had murdered a kind, old cowherdess, mutilated her daughter, and sought to violate and kill a recently widowed woman who asked for nothing but justice, took a step back when they caught a glimpse of death in my eyes. When they saw the avenging destroyer I had become.

 ‘Is this what you wanted?’ my voice boomed into their cowardly faces rigid with fright, and they took a few paces back. Hefting the dagger in my right hand, I slashed at my left breast repeatedly with increasingly violent strokes, immune to everything but blinding fury. With superstitious dread, they continued to do their utmost to get away from me, raw panic and terror writ large across their ugly features. Gone a long way beyond suffering, I hacked at my breast in a relentless rhythm till it came free. Then I lobbed it in a vicious arc towards the retreating guards.

‘Take it, you filthy beasts! Isn’t it what you wanted? For every lifetime you are cursed to roam this sinful world, you will be denied a mother’s breasts! Run for your lives, because in your next one, you will answer for every one of your sins and suffer the doom you deserve without the protection of mother’s milk and the pleasure of a woman’s body! Run as fast as you can and be damned unto eternity!’

With bitter satisfaction, I watched them flee from my sight, weeping with fear, trying in vain to dodge the blows of cudgels and spears that dogged them every step of the way. My loyal followers who had accompanied me all the way from the cowherds’ establishment as well as the others who had joinedus along the way pursued them, calling down the wrath of the Gods, pelting them with stones, slicing their bodies open with whatever weapon came to hand, leaving them to die, ripped to shreds, spat and stomped upon, abhorred like the detestable beasts they were.

Aiyai had somehow made her way back to my side, bleeding from her many wounds and near naked as I was, holding a sword in one hand. In the other, she held my anklet, which had nearly gotten lost in the melee. Gratefully, I took it from her. ‘I can’t thank you enough for this and more, Aiyai. Hopefully I will not be needing it much longer.’

‘Let us end this! Don’t hesitate to kill all who obstruct your path, Kannagi,’ she said through clenched teeth, cold determination to avenge poor Madari imbuing her with superhuman strength and endurance.

‘Death to the tyrant! Death to all the tyrants in his employ! Death to all the tyrants who have despoiled Madurai!’

Every woman in the crowd picked up her chant. There were so many of them. Where had they come from? Their brightly coloured saris were stained with mud and blood. They seemed to have emerged from nowhere and were everywhere, chanting Aiyai’s refrain like a prayer.