The First Sight

By Gaayathri Arasakumar

“Senapathi, move forward, come what may! Let no Deva or man stop us!” I bellowed over the chaos of the battlefield. Perhaps, Mallan had not heard my cry over the maddening trumpeting of the elephants that were running amok across the vast iciness that had spanned for miles. From metres away, I realised that he stood rooted to the snow that had numbed my feet. The fury that I had stored within me expanded at this sight. How dare he stay still despite my orders? We were merely days, perhaps even hours,  away from conquering the revered grounds of Kailash. 

“Soon, Kailash, too, would be added to the likes of Swarga and be part of my glorious Pandyan empire! And, now is when Mallan chooses to slow things down?!” I screeched as I slit the throat of another soldier who had come charging at me. As I shoved the corpse of yet another slain soldier, I stomped through the snow to shake my senapathi, my commander-in-chief who seemed to have forgotten his purpose of fighting this battle, into action before we lost another precious moment, another crucial victory. 

Closing in on him, I understood that it was neither fear nor anxiety of the battle and the impending war that was to drain the last of our energy that had caused his legs to turn into steel. Mallan’s eyes were fixated on something that was above us all. Curious, I followed his eyes mountainward with my hand approaching his shoulder to tug him out of his stupor and saw that a commanding presence had stolen Mallan’s sight, attention, and mobility. My hand stopped mid-way. The looming presence seemed to upset my physical, mental, and emotional balance in a way that I had never experienced before. As I strained to get a better look at this being who had such a grip over Mallan, the usually most attentive one on the battlefield alongside me, and shockingly myself, through the thick fog, I sensed that I was being dragged out of the mayhem that was exploding in the background. Before I could take in anything more, the stranger disappeared into the grey skies almost as quickly as he had appeared. 

“Amma, did you.. did you see? That was… was… it was Him, Amma! Did you see Him?!” Mallan started blabbering bewilderedly. The slight annoyance raised by Mallan’s incoherence started to gnaw at me as I turned to face him to give him a piece of mind. As I started to string words together to express my displeasure at his actions, Mallan’s delirium set into motion once again. 

“Amma! That was Him! That was Him! How will we win this battle against Him, Amma?! We don’t stand a chance against Him!”  Mallan shrieked as he dropped his knees into the blood-stained snow. 

“Him? Him who?” My mind interrogated me as my face twisted into a sulk. I did not know which irked me more, Mallan’s un-warrior-like shriek or his pathetic despondency. Mallan was a prominent name given to Tamil baby boys in my Pandyan empire as it meant he who was a righteous warrior. Oh, the irony! I was inches and seconds away from grabbing Mallan by his shoulders to snap him out of his despair when the sound of a thousand counches split the skies and the expansive land that surrounded my Pandyan army. It was the first time my ears had experienced the intensity of the esteemed sangu, my beloved deity Narayana’s divine counch. The entire battlefield froze instantly.

Along with that, seconds later, my ears took in another sound. A sound I had not heard in my lifetime, yet it was a sound I felt I knew in another. It was powerful. It was mighty. It was deafening. Yet, it made my heart sing in ways I had never known. Yet, it soothed the waves of wrath I held in the core of my being. It washed over me and adorned me with nothing but calm. What was that sound?

“Amma! It is indeed Him! It is indeed the blissful udukai! Blessed am I to hear this, Amma!” Mallan’s voice floated across the boundless base of Mount Kailash. As I spun around to see what the commotion on the other side was, my heart fluttered. I raised an eyebrow suspiciously, for this was a virgin feeling, a feeling that had sprouted in my heart for the very first time. I knew not what or who stood on the other side, yet from the depths of my soul, I knew that something unprecedented, something magnificent was about to happen. I turned around to face the enemies on the other side with bated breath. 

Indra stood in front of the other Devas with an over-confident smile. Flashing me a sinister smile that almost seemed to forewarn me of an impending defeat, Indra turned to look over his shoulder, signalling the arrival of clearly someone greater than him. Mallan who had stood behind me silently took a step forward in what I sensed was acute excitement. Glancing over at him, I tried to read his facial expressions but to no avail, for it was a mix of trepidation and joy. What he was so delighted about, I could not fathom! 

Before I could rebuke him, the nemeses raised hell with a thousand couches and the glorious udukai again. As the thunderous beats raised every hair on my body, I stood still, silently anticipating what was to come. Half of me was vexed at the sudden halt in the long-drawn battle I was inches away from winning in the most brilliant fashion, yet the other half was pathetically desperate to see just what the foes were up to with their dramatic staged act. As I took another deep breath ready to launch into action, my enemies increased the intensity of the musical they were putting up. The intervals between each beat of the holy udukai shortened and the ground vibrated under my feet. Each beat reverberated around the sanctified mountain and the frosty air seemed to dance with a joy known only to itself. Just then, the mass of enemies who stood across from me parted in the middle and made way for a dark figure to emerge. As soon as he stood in front of the crowd, Kailash fell into a deep, eerie silence, and everyone forming a crowd around him fell to their knees. I furrowed my brows but before I could think of anything else, I heard the sound of snow being crushed around me. Taking a quick glance to my side, I was stupefied to see that the rest of my own regiment had too fallen to their knees upon seeing the figure who was now the leader on the other side. 

A Commanding Presence 

Not knowing why or how, the tall figure on the other side left me rooted to the ground. I could move neither my hands nor my legs. The commanding presence watched me intently and my tongue became a tight knot. My mind screamed out loud the million commands I knew I had to give my army. Yet, my tongue started its own rebellion and would not utter the directives I had in mind. Despite the struggle I faced, my eyes remained fixed on the leader of the enemies. He was a man like no other, like none I had ever seen before.

A massive ball of matted hair sat snug on his head, its size an indicator of its length. I had known no man to ever leave his hair in a knot at the top of his head. Perhaps it was this unique feature that raised in me a small desire, the desire to run my fingers through his hair. I clenched my fists tightly in an attempt to send that deplorable thought out of my head as I sucked in another breath before letting my eyes fall over the rest of his staggering nine-feet frame. His eyes were in my direction yet I knew not if he was looking at me. But, even with the metres between us, I could tell that he had a powerful gaze. As I squinted to get a view of this man that every man on both sides of the war glorified, I was puzzled to see that he had a huge wound on his forehead. Interestingly, it almost looked like an eye that had been rotated and placed in between his eyebrows. 

His nose was so sharp it could cut through anything that stood in its way. His face was chiselled and was the perfect frame for the shockingly rosy lips he had. His face was the picture of calm and astonishingly, every second that I spent taking in his features pulled me in closer, compelling me to stare brazenly at him while pushing me further away from achieving my objective of expanding my Pandyan empire into Kailash. Dazed, I continued to look at the man who had shattered my equilibrium and taken away all the focus and concentration I had painstakingly gathered. 

His neck was long and led down to a perfectly sculpted body. All my life, I had been surrounded by the bare torsos of sword-wielding men, and never could I stand to look at one for more than two seconds. It baffled me that I wanted to look at his naked torso for as long as time would let me. It rattled me even more that I wanted to run my fingers across his chest. I did not understand what he did to me, but the longer I looked at him, the more he drew me in. My head suddenly felt heavy and a voice within cooed that there was no better place for me to rest my head than to lean against his chest. My fingers tingled lightly as a vision of me and this beautiful stranger gently bloomed in my head. Shamelessly, I imagined my fingers tracing the battle scars that decorated his torso. From the top half of his body, I imagined my fingers sliding down to his well-defined abdomen. Mentally rebuking myself for dreaming up silly fantasies like other girls my age, I shook myself and reminded myself of what I was in Kailash for. 

Looking up at my foes, I noticed the man who had commanded my attention had his back turned on me. He seemed to be instructing his side on the next course of action to be taken. As he pointed to my soldiers who were flanking the battlefield, my eyes fell on his long, muscular arms. My eyes pulled themselves shut and yet another image drifted into my mind, an image of his long, powerful arms encircling my waist. The image terrified me as I had never had such thoughts about any man before. How had this particular man induced thoughts I never saw myself having? At the end of his muscular, powerful arms were long and delicate fingers, fingers that did not seem characteristic of a formidable warrior. Oh, those well-jointed fingers I could see caressing the skin that spanned across my three breasts or the thin skin that sat on the nape of my neck. Oh, his fingers that I would let him place anywhere on my own body that had never been touched by even my own parents. 

A second too late, I knew I had to pull myself out of these visions and dreams that I held in my heart and head. The whole idea seemed foolish beyond words could express but why was I feeling these things? I was left bewildered and mesmerised at the same time. Was I just another woman now? Suddenly, I was reminded of my ladies-in-waiting who often pined for their lovers, the same ones who were found under trees uttering words of affection and imagining their lovers’ touch on them all day long as we sat in the afternoon. I pored over the shastras and books on war and weapons as they read poetry and dreamed up fantasies of love and lust. I had never comprehended the dreamy thoughts they entertained, yet suddenly, out of the blue, the warrior on my enemy’s side had me envisage things that I had never deemed possible for myself. 

Just then, as if to shake me out of my ridiculous stupor, Mallan stood up and looked at me with shock written all over his face. He was about to quiz me on something when the drums reverberated from the other side again. Looking up swiftly, we noticed that our foes had spread out, in the famed trishula, or trident, formation, ready to strike. The few seconds I stood mesmerised with the enchanting stranger was going to cost me but I had no time for that now. Howling my instructions to counter the trishula formation in Tamil to my soldiers, I charged forward, ready to take on the opponent leading the regiment on the other side. It had to be Indra, the leader of the Devas, I had to vanquish to expand my Pandyan empire. 

My bejewelled sword weighed me down as I quickened my pace to the front of the battlefield. Gathering whatever strength was left in me, I raised my sword, ready to swing it to conquer Kailash. As I swung it above my head, my eyes locked with the leader of the enemy pack. Gasping, I tried to calm my beating heart as I noticed it was not the sly Indra who led the soldiers on the other side, but instead, it was the same commanding presence who had stolen my attention and focus just minutes earlier. 

Despite the panic and exhilaration that were themselves at war in my head, I noticed the calm blue in his eyes. It was a blue that was far more beautiful than the seas and the oceans, a blue more alluring than the skies that floated above, a blue far more stunning than the glorious blue mark that covered his throat. What a strange mark, I thought to myself. It made no sense that a wound of the body would turn a bright blue like it had on the inside of his neck. Perhaps, someday, if fate had it, I would learn all about it, but not before I touched it with my own hands, and definitely not before I kissed it. 

Despite the distance that stood in between us, I was well-aware that he too was looking at me like I was the only one left on the battlefield. As he continued to look into my eyes, I felt as if I was washed over by a sudden wave of calm. Not once in my nineteen years of existence had I felt that peace in my heart. Every other soldier on the battlefield stood silent and still, almost as if the cold of Kailash had frozen them over, the elephants were so quiet I thought they had all been massacred. My hands and legs knew not what to do and I stood captivated, waiting for my handsome stranger to make the first move. I silently prayed to my Narayana that I would react accordingly and promptly as the stranger wielded his weapon. Just as my prayer left my lips, I saw the stranger move his own slightly.

“Parvati…” he uttered as a gust of cool wind blew past him. His voice rang loudly in my ears, raising the hairs on my body. This voice! I knew this voice from somewhere! Every cell in my body sang at the sound of his voice. Where had I heard this voice before, this voice that touched my soul? Even in the wonderment of that moment, it confused me that he had addressed me with a name I had never heard of. I shifted my eyes, looking for another woman on the battlefield. But, there had been none other than myself. Did he say Parvati?

“Look at me, Parvati. Is that not why you are here?” He uttered. He knew I wanted to look at him, and indeed I did! There was nothing else I had wanted more, not an expanding empire, not the victory of this war, not the riches I had back in Madurai. I could have spent the rest of eternity in this man’s sight without a single lament. 

As my eyes continued to stare at his face, I saw that his eyes had moved down to the rest of my face and within seconds, his eyes fell on my chest. Embarrassed, I pulled my eyes off his face and frantically adjusted the mundhanai of my green saree, the part that covered my modesty, all in sheer desperation of me not wanting him to realise that I was not a normal woman. I did not want him to see the biggest flaw in my body, my biggest insecurity. Refusing to meet his eyes, I let my own eyes rest on my chest, silently cursing fate for giving me this burden of an additional breast. 

Instantly, I felt a throb in my chest. Within split seconds, the throbbing intensified and turned into a dull ache that soon transformed into a sharp sting. As I brought my right hand to my damned middle breast to ease the discomfort, I looked up at him again. His eyes bore into my chest and as I reached the centre of my chest, I was flabbergasted! My third breast that had filled the gap that normal women had in between their two breasts was no longer there! 

I tried to catch my breath as I slapped my chest with distress. How was this possible? As panic rose within me, I looked up to look for the bewitching stranger. He was still the picture of tranquillity, the complete opposite of what I was in that instant. Just then, almost as if on cue, lightning struck the battlefield and with the roar of the thunder, Mallan and the soldiers jumped up in jubilation.

“Amma! Your third breast has disappeared! Amma, it means your husband has arrived!” Mallan screeched with exultation just as another stroke of lightning hit the grounds of Kailash before thunder split the skies. 

By Gaayathri Arasakumar