Book excerpt: Kala Krishnan's Mahasena: Part One of the Murugan Trilogy is a peek into the legend of Kartikeya

The Vast: a still, dark, endless field of nothing, in which something broods and gathers, rising and billowing into waves. Everything emerges from these waves of the Vast, including Time, Creation, and the woman and two men known as The Three. From the waves come multitudes of beings, including the Asura, those of untiring breath who seek knowledge, and the Sura, the bright ones who keep order. The greatest of all the Sura and Asura is Surapadman, who will embody inventiveness, wisdom and statecraft for all time to come. The only one who can counter his might and his challenge to the rules of creation is Karthikeya, child of Shambhu and Uma, and brother to Ganesha, the all-seeing elephant-headed god. Kala Krishnan has been exploring the Murugan universe for years now. In this first volume of a planned trilogy, she expands the mythologies of the god. Kumara, Karthikeya, Kandhan, Velan, he is the god of Tamizh, the patron of the Great Assembly of poets in Madurai, friend and mentor to the hot-headed and fiercely loyal Aambal, who is known to all as ‘Murugan’s poet’. A reimagining of the life and exploits of the magnificent young god, Mahasena is resonant with the stories that were, as well as vividly original.​ * Surapadman had commissioned Mayan, the best architect in the fourteen worlds, to build for him a floating city, held down by a system of ballasts that would not only keep it afloat, regardless of the wind’s velocity, but would also keep it gently revolving throughout the day. And for him, a palace from which he could look over the waters to the coast of the land known as Thiravitam and Tamizhakam, regardless of the island-city’s spin. Padmakomalai, Mayan’s daughter and assistant, who was known for innovating on the old, took charge of designing specific sections of Surapadman’s palace: The library, the courtroom, the study, the music room, the kitchens and stables. That was how they came to be seated across from each other at a table, with parchments bearing building plans laid out in front of them. ‘She asked him,’ said Ganesha, ‘like I am asking you now, “Where do you propose to locate the heart of this magnificent palace, around which the rest of it will fit like the parts of a body?”’ The light from the morning sun struck the metal weights that held the parchments down, and fell over the drawings. ‘Where would you put it,’ he asked her. She said to him that it was his dwelling and his own heart should tell him where the heart of it ought to be, and what he would place in that room. He said to her that she was the architect, and she could hear what the light and the air were saying about the rooms waiting to be built. She told him that he should sit quietly and shut his eyes and wait till an image came into them, and that would be his answer. Later that day, as the sun was setting, Surapadman sat on one of the temporary benches that had been set up here and there, on the island that the architects and artisans had constructed. He shut his eyes. The sound of the waves fell into his ears; on his tongue was salt. As the island turned soundlessly, he opened his eyes, and into them came the lights from the high towers of the fabled seaside town of Chendur. As he looked, the lights blinked, and he recalled an old ballad sung by a wandering musician, describing Chendur’s waves as boats ferrying Tamizh between the Rakshasa and Manava lands. The library! That was the heart of his palace, his home. The library in which, on shelves of karpura wood, he would arrange his prized manuscripts — some inked by his own scribes, songs and poetry composed by his scholars and some by him, and yet others, copies of great works from across the worlds, including the mother grammar, the Akattiyam. The library would have a tower, as tall as the lighthouse towers of Chendur, and he would climb up there to look out over the rugged waves. Padmakomalai smiled when Surapadman told her that he had followed her instructions and found an answer, and again when he told her what room he had chosen. Through the days of the construction, these conversations continued, and Suran found himself imagining going through the rooms. He saw their interiors, the windows through which light streamed in, and sometimes, spray from the waves. As he went from room to room, in his mind, there was someone beside him, who watched him silently, and in her hands was one architectural implement or another. And when she actually walked with him through the palace, pointing out how the work was progressing, her sight joined his, and the whole world seemed better balanced and better fabricated to him. He had fallen in love with her, but of her feelings he had no idea. He could not ask her, for that would be inappropriate. If only his sister Ajamugi were here. Far away, in the land of the Gandharvas, Ajamugi heard his wish in her heart and appeared in Veeramahendrapuram. Ajamugi observed Padmakomalai’s work, and she saw how every line she drew, every instruction she gave her workers, spoke of how well she had come to know Surapadman. In the days that followed, Ajamugi and Padmakomalai became friends, and Ajamugi hinted to her friend her brother’s feelings, and Padmakomalai made it clear that she held Suran close to her heart. Thus, it was that Surapadman married the one who had shown him to recognise what his heart wanted from this fabulous palace being built for him. The wedding was conducted on the day of the moving-in ceremony, and all of Veeramahendrapuram rejoiced. The fireworks on that day, it is said, could be seen as far as Chendur. ‘Chendur,’ Murugan repeated with a faraway look in his eyes, remembering his visits to that town by the sea. The red of its soil gave it that name, the red mud that turned your hands red when you scooped it up, and turned your feet red when you walked barefoot. Ganesha touched his brother’s shoulder and asked, ‘What is the heart of your palace? Where will you place it and what will it embody?’ He clearly did not expect an answer, for he got up and pulled Murugan up and said, ‘Go sleep now.’ His brother’s words resounded in Murugan’s ears, and when his chief architect, Nanthiya, came to speak to him the next day, he asked her, ‘How come you haven’t asked me where I want the heart of the palace to be?’ She smiled and said, ‘You have already told me. You said, “Libraries and kitchens and rooms to sleep, these are to be well laid out and luxuriously fitted. The Assembly hall — let it be spare, large, with perfect acoustics.” Is that not the heart of your palace, the room where your poets will read?’ While the construction was in progress, Aambal was to go to Pothigai and apprentice herself to the ‘Mother of Tamizh’, the Kuru Muni who had carried the infant language at his breast, nursing it with all his attention and care. Aambal expected her time with the sage to be one of rigorous and active study. Instead, it was a time of quiet, of introspection and practise, for Akattiyar said to her, ‘A language is learnt by comprehending its syllabic, word, sentence and meaning-making structures, but a poet needs its gestures of intimacy. And for that, you have to be still, unapproachable, intimate.’ Every day, Akattiyar sent Aambal out onto mountain paths, so she could observe carefully her surroundings. Like the ferns that were still dew-damp and not just green, but of a colour for which you might find the words if you watched so keenly that there occurred a concord of poetic sight, language and nature. He said to her, ‘Go to the ledge, look down into the precipice, and be ready to fling yourself down unless you find one verse, one line, one phrase or one word that rings true.’ In the course of her days there, Aambal was surprised at how easily she settled into a new pattern. The tempo of her breathing slowed to the easy rhythms of the mountain and its creatures. She understood that this was a time to let fallow the soil inside her, which she had tilled and ploughed and cropped and weeded all these years. The days passed, and Aambal began to hear, as Akattiyar had said, the words that waited in all things, and the Kani men, women and children who lived on that mountain, who had neither script nor grammar, seemed to know this, for they said to her, ‘You can sing now.’ Akattiyar called her to him and handed her a bundle of palm leaves, a stylus, an inkwell full of indigo ink and an instruction: ‘Write about the Lord of Pazhani. About his love for this language that sweetens the heart, sharpens love and speech, and which, in this time, has given you the last of the attributes of poetic attitude.’ Kala Krishnan is a well-known Tamil poet and author. Excerpted with permission from Mahasena: Part One of the Murugan Trilogy published by Context (an Imprint of Westland).