Agniputr: When Agni First Spoke

By Vadhan

When ace lawyer, Raghuram Surya, received an order of requisition from the Government of India for his ancestral castle, he was unaware of the Sutram beneath it or his own legacy. He will have to choose between the world's end or his own.
Before long, the lawyer takes on India's most powerful politician, Kiromal, a man utterly obsessed with power. Kiromal and his sinister Tantric advisor intend to use the evil beneath the castle to play God.
Raghuram finds an ally in Sheila, a scientist who is tasked to investigate the Sutram. Using Quantum science to interpret a Vedic verse, they will have to unravel the secrets of Creation to stop the destruction. Through it all, they have to be one step ahead of Kiromal just to stay alive.
Now is the time of final reckoning. Will Kiromal harness the evil to rule the world? Or will the Sutram break free to eradicate the planet? Or, are Raghuram and Sheila merely pawns in an even deadlier game?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Mar 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9788193315064

Book preview

Garfunkel

FRAGMENT-A

SUTRAM

CHAPTER 1

1940-Gudem, a village in Andhra Pradesh, India.

THE lone man gawked at the samadhi, a tomb.

He was a cadaverous individual wrapped in a dirty dark lungi around his lower torso. His flat lips were parched and as brittle as a sun-baked twig. He tried, with little effect, to wet them with a sandpaper dry tongue. He liked to think of himself as an aghora tantrik. A necromancer. He lived his life around rotting carcasses. He ate them sometimes or had intercourse with them and at other times called for spirits through them.

The structure trembled briefly. It was more than a shiver, less than a shudder. The motion was not unlike an earthquake except that it was local, just around the samadhi. Like sluggish resistance to a tectonic invasion. The rumbling that followed the quake was muffled. It sounded like rocks rammed into each other deep under the Earth. Like the very planet was gnashing its teeth.

The base of the samadhi cracked just a little. In a flash the crack zigzagged to the tip of the structure like a streak of lightning.

The tantrik had a bad feeling about this one. He had not in his life tried anything like what he had just done. He had expected the result of his experiment to manifest itself fast but not instantaneously. Shifting his weight from one foot to another he leaned on his trident. His beady eyes rested on the broken samadhi. The inscription on it read, ‘Rajah Raghuram Surya’.

The earth shuddered again. The quake was much stronger this time. The entire memorial hall shook. The tantrik almost lost his balance. It shuddered even harder a second later, as though angry that the man had not fallen to the ground.

All of a sudden, enormous surges concussed the earth. A tidal wave. The ground heaved, shattering the samadhi. The vast memorial hall which housed the tombs of the Surya Kings buckled and surged like an angry stallion.

Panic.

The arrival of the God was not supposed to be violent. At least the nallakolainool, the bark scripture of the Nellore-Ongole tribals, did not predict a violent entry. It had merely said that the God would rise from the middle of nowhere that was everywhere.

Or was it vice versa?

It was all the Guru’s doing. The Guru had dragged him into this mess. Damn him! The tantrik had not wanted any part of it from the beginning. But, he could not resist the Guru’s soothing voice nor could he resist the pleasures that were promised. The tantrik had no special love for money. But the woman the Guru offered! So clean! So fresh! He wanted to relish her cold flesh.

First, the Guru made him poison a man. He was made to retrieve the hairy ball from the dead man’s stomach. It was easy enough to get it after the man was cremated. Surprisingly, the ball of hair had not succumbed to the scorching heat of the pyre. The Guru had ordained him to cover the ball in flour and place it on the tombstone of the dead man. Only moments ago he had laid the hairy flour ball on the cold marble stone.

The last directive was for him to await the arrival of a God.

Here he was, quivering with fear. The fire torches were dying, one after the other. The hall was getting darker, the air suddenly thicker, like doom spreading its cloak of despair.

When the Earth heaved again, the trident slipped out of his hands. The tantrik started to back away, eyes riveted on the cracked samadhi as though he expected a ghoul to break its way through and devour him. Abruptly, rocks from the flayed belly of the memorial hall shot to its fifty-foot ceiling with a dull thunk, like arrows from a long bow.

The tantrik screamed. A cry for help. None came.

Rocks wedged themselves into the ceiling. Others completed a lazy arc and hurtled downwards. A few stones wedged themselves into the cracked floor while others rolled down widening fissures. One chunk, the size of an apple, crashed into the tantrik’s shoulder, splitting skin and spraying blood.

With a shriek the man flung himself to the ground with both his hands over his head. Lightning crackled through the fissure in the tomb, lighting up the ravaged room for a brief moment.

The heaving and surging stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

The tantrik rose to his knees. His hands flashed downwards to pick his fallen lungi, which had unveiled his shrivelled genitals. He shoved his matted hair away as best he could and crawled around clumsily until he found his trident. He grasped the cool metallic implement like it was the only comfort in a world gone mad.

Fissures and cracks conjoined themselves into a yawning chasm in the ground where the samadhi stood moments earlier. The tantrik walked stealthily towards the precipice where he leaned on to the trident to peer into the yawning earth.

Surely, that was no ‘God’!

A glowing, green-skinned globule, translucent, like a gigantic blob of mucus, was lodged deep within the chasm. The tantrik was no great mathematician but he figured it was about hundred feet into the ground, radiating like a half-shrouded magic ball.

A cold shiver ran up the tantrik’s spine. How could a flour ball turn into this...this thing! What in the name of Heaven is it?

The whispers were faint. Like a puppy whimpering helplessly on a cold night.

‘Sutram’

It did not come from the thing in the depths. For some reason, he had an inkling it was the Guru’s voice. The tantrik whirled around.

A couple of torches were still casting wavering firelight.

He squinted into the half-light.

He was alone in the devastated hall.

‘Sutram’.

Was this the Sutram? The God of Agony. Annihilator of civilizations, of worlds. They were doomed. All of them. The whole world. There was no turning back from apocalypse now. The tantrik did not intend for it to happen. Not this way. He was duped into practicing an art so dark even the true tantriks feared it.

‘Who is the Guru? What is his agenda?’

The searing heat slapped against the tantrik. His armpits and palms were wet with sweat while his legs quivered under the strain of leaning over the precipice. Tendrils of hot wind caressed the man.

He bucked as though shot with a gun.

He screamed, a hideous caw.

The hooks were invisible, at least to the naked eye, but they burned like acid on skin when they sank into his flesh. The tantrik was being hauled into the hole.

Think. Do something. Now!

He rammed his trident into a cleft on the broken floor and clung on to the implement for dear life.

Through all his agony, the tantrik could not help stare at what had once been the size of a tennis ball. He could not fathom how a flour ball with the poisoned blood and viscera of a dead man at its core could become the destroyer of a world. He did not understand what the many thousands of tadpole-like creatures twitching under the greenish skin of the globule were.

He knew for certain that he was its fodder.

The Guru intended for him to be the Sutram’s first meal, a sacrificial lamb.

The tantrik cursed himself for being such a fool. He could never control the thing the Guru called ‘God’. When it came down to it, the Guru had found him expendable.

He tried a few hymns and incantations. Things that he had learned a long time ago. They were strong sounding words, good enough to impress a fool. They had no effect on the globule.

I am nobody, nothing!

Its gigantic strands of grey hair weaved hither and thither like the whiskers of a giant lobster. He was unaware that they were not really whiskers but probes, antennae-cum-feeders that first sought and then sucked in nourishment to fuel the power within.

It was a measure of comfort that the hooks pulling him to the God were weak or he would surely have been wrenched into the hole. It was like the thing did not really know to wield its invisible tentacles.

It would learn.

It would become powerful in the days to come.

But not yet.

That was the only edge the tantrik knew he had. He heaved again, ignoring the pain until he broke loose from the hooks. They retracted back to the Globule with chunks of his flesh still stuck to them. The man fell back onto the ground. There was blood everywhere. His blood. Life was inexorably ebbing out. His lips were so far stretched that they cracked open spilling blood into his mouth and over his chin. His agony echoed within the memorial hall.

Until his voice turned hoarse.

Until his throat gave in.

He was still whimpering like a wounded animal when he crawled away from the dark hole.

The tantrik threw open the wooden doors and staggered down a second hall. He crossed the large room like a drunk crossing a road until he stumbled onto open ground.

He breathed smoke riddled air. Yet, he drew a deep breath, at least as much as he could manage.

The castle loomed large in the background, like a giant bird about to pounce on its prey. Around the dark structure was the village of huntsmen called Gudem.

The entire village was in a state of mourning. The young Rajah Raghuram Surya was dead. Rumour had it that he was poisoned by his own brother. The heir apparent had been a favourite, especially amongst younger women. Of late, Rajah Raghuram had become a devoted husband and father. His murder had sent the people of the two thousand villages under his rule into turmoil. And for good reason. His brother was as mad as they come. No one wanted him at the helm of affairs.

At that moment the villagers had forgotten their grief in favour of a more primal instinct. Survival. An earthquake had just hit Gudem. The black moonless night was interspersed with high pitched screams. The red glow of burning houses in the horizon was like a careless scarlet streak on a dark portrait. Quivering pillars of smoke rose into the night to disappear forever, like hope.

The tantrik realised he had little time left. His heart was pumping out blood through the holes in his body. Already, his vision had dulled and he found it increasingly difficult to breathe. Every step he took was an effort. He stumbled through the castle entrance way, unmindful of the two restless leopards that stood guard at the fifty foot gates.

Scent of blood and burning flesh.

Aroused and hungry, the beasts pounced on him as he passed through the castle gates. He barely noticed the cats, knowing their chains would not allow them near him. The tantrik launched himself on the sturdy rope tied to the bell of appeals. He used the entire weight of his damaged body to heave the mighty bell.

The zamindar, a tall, large boned man clad in a dark kurta and white dhoti, appeared at the Ambari, the protruding bay on the first floor of the castle, in response to the bell of appeals.

He was a worried man. His first born had died barely three days ago. Already an earthquake had devastated the village. These were signs of ill omen. The zamindar flicked his white mane of hair and focussed his wizened but hard eyes on the man below.

‘Rajah Garu,’ the man screamed in Telugu, ‘Please Rajah Garu, I need to speak to you. It is of grave urgency.’

The tantrik’s voice carried to the zamindar over the screams and noise of a gathered crowd of villagers and guards as if he had bellowed through a megaphone. He had used the last remaining vestige of the power of necromancy so he could be heard.

A crowd gathered around the wounded man in the blink of an eye. People gawked at him even as the tantrik wriggled in his blood like a serpent slipping out of its skin. It was everywhere, glistening on the ground like a river of red. The gathered crowd were horrified for sure and yet there was no sympathy, not even pity, in their eyes. Instead, they were whispering amongst themselves.

‘Isn’t that the tantrik who’s always with Prince Bharatram?’ a squat woman with venomous eyes, member of the castle kitchen staff, whispered from behind the folds of her saree’s pallu, which she held close to her mouth.

‘Looks like the bastard. What the Hell happened? It’s like someone’s drilled holes into him,’ said her husband, a man only inches taller than her. He was a guard at the castle.

‘Whoever did that’s got my respect!’ the woman declared.

‘What does he want now?’ the man growled under his breath.

‘Don’t know, but I wouldn’t help the bastard, he’s caused enough harm. Do you know he used to steal our chicken? I didn’t say a thing because prince Bharatram might hear of it. I don’t much care to get near the mad prince when he’s angry,’ the woman complained to her husband.

‘Chicken? What are you mad, woman? There were little children missing, and some of those senile farts who sat around cremation grounds to tank up. I think the bastard ate human flesh. Villagers used to find human bones, even little ones, in the fields often times.’

‘I hope he rots in Hell,’ the squat woman with venomous eyes spat out. Other servants and guards nodded their agreement. The roaring flames from the huge fire torches on the walls of the castle threw flickering shadows of the guards and the castle staff on the bleeding man in their midst.

The tantrik did not care much for the whispered gossip. Most of them were true anyway.

‘Rajah Garu,’ he screamed hoarsely, ‘I have caused you grave harm...grave harm, you see, I killed your son.’

A collective gasp ensued from the gathered crowd. The zamindar went very still on the ambari. Seconds later they cleared a path to make way for their ruler as he rushed down.

‘What? What did you say lanja kodaka?’

‘Yes, I thought I could use his death...to gain...powers!’

‘Ni Amma Kadupu Maada!’ The zamindar was livid with rage. His fair face had turned beetroot red when he spat out the vile swear word.

‘But it gets worse O king. Your memorial hall is now the haunting ground of the Sutram. You must destroy it my King. Please...’

The zamindar barely heard the tantrik. He saw red. He needed to see this man burning. Whip lashed. Skinned alive. ‘You killed my son, Oray, Chantiga, patra naa thupaki!’

Moments later, a servant rushed to his side with a Winchester .20 bore repeater shotgun. The zamindar grabbed the gun and the cartridges. He loaded six cartridges into the tubular magazine with the practiced ease of a hunter and pumped the first cartridge into the barrel. He trained the gun on the tantrik’s legs. The Zamindar did not intend to kill him at once.

‘Rajah Garu, kill me if you want to. Please listen to me first.’

‘Pinjari Munda kodaka...’ the zamindar swore under his breath, all the while holding the gun to his shoulder. The crowd around the hapless man cleared away.

‘Let’s hear him first.’

The speaker was a boy not more than seven years old. He wore a long kurta and pyjamas. His hooded eyes were bright, glistening with a life of their own in the firelight. His thin long face was saturnine in the glow of the fire lamps. He looked like a young version of Count Dracula.

‘Adhi Kaadhu nana Surya Prasad, this son of a worthless worm confessed to killing you father,’ the zamindar tried to convince his grandson.

‘Thatha garu andi, lets listen to him first,’ said the boy again, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. He was tall for a seven-year-old, close to five feet. His voice carried a ring of authority that could not be slighted, not even by his grandfather from whom he derived that trait.

‘Cheppi Chavu,’ the old zamindar spat out, still aiming the gun at the bleeding man.

The tantrik gulped, wetted his bleeding lips and tried to figure out where to start. He knew he had very little time. He spat the blood trickling out of his mouth and spoke.

‘There is only one way to stop the Sutram. You must learn how to wield the Agniputr.’

‘Agniputr?’ the boy shook his head, ‘Wait...what is...?’

‘There is no other way’, the tantrik croaked.

He flopped to the ground, dead.

CHAPTER 2

Present Day

HE did not laugh out loud.

Rather, his mirth comprised of a series of small throaty chuffs that galled the men sitting around him. People called him many things. ‘Guru’, ‘Necromancer’, ‘Aghori’, ‘Tantrik’ and other, meaner things. He preferred to be known as the tantrik. He had long wavy hair that he had recently washed and tied into a knot. His torso was caked with ash and all he wore was the Gochi, a loin cloth, in spite of the December cold. A streak of red ran down his forehead till the tip of his flat nose. In the gathering twilight he appeared eerie, like the lone representative of an alien civilisation.

He used a blackened finger nail to slit the throat of a pigeon that he held gently in his hand. The tantrik craned the neck back only that much to allow for droplets of blood to fall on a piece of flattened metal until a small puddle formed on its dented surface. With a gentle nudge, he broke the pigeon’s neck, thus ending its wild eyed misery.

He used a cylindrical strip of metal like a spoon to widen the circumference of the blood on the metal plate. The tantrik was lost to the world, as though critiquing some morbid art. He pulled out a couple of withered leaves from a cloth sack and dropped them into the blood.

To the onlookers nothing changed dramatically but the tantrik drew a sharp breath...and chuffed again. He inverted the plate, dropping the blood and the withered leaves to the thirsty ground below.

‘It is remarkable, I say, it is remarkable,’ he declared in a purr. His voice was mild and soft, it could have been the voice of a priest, or a salesman.

‘It is revealed to me only now. Only now, I say. The God of Agony was trapped many years ago, yes, I say it was trapped,’ he shook his head with disdain, ‘I thought I failed. I say, I thought that. We must free it or it is of no use, is it? I say it is of no use. But listen well for we must control it before we release a God from its trap, we must leash it or it will wipe us out. It is very powerful. I say it is more powerful than, as its maker, I ever intended it to be. A quirk of fate you think? I think not. It is an act of randomness you think? No, I say no. My command became its purpose and thus it became reality, do you understand? I say you don’t.’

The tantrik chuffed again which produced many a frown from the group of onlookers, some of whom had had enough of his rantings. Karan Kiromal, watched intently. He knew the tantrik was not finished. In the end the tantrik would reveal the plan. They had to bottle up and listen to his rantings till then. There really was no other way out. The tantrik had always been that way. He ranted and raved, spewed out information that made little or no sense to Karan. Still, in the end he would tell him concisely what he needed to do.

Karan was old, nearing eighty in years. His birthday was just a couple of months away. He was not energetic enough to do the things that needed to be done. He depended on his nephew, Govind Kiromal, to do his bidding. Govind controlled the affairs of their family, industries, and the political future of their party. At that moment, uncle and nephew were sitting cross-legged on the ground.

It was chilly in the fields in winter but they hardly had a choice. If they had brought the tantrik into their more than hundred-year-old haveli in Jaipur, it would have been downright dangerous.

Thirty years ago, Rajasthan was theirs for the asking. No one dared to challenge Karan Kiromal. In those days, the tantrik was a regular visitor at his haveli though Karan’s elder brother, the late lamented Ganshyamlal Kiromal, would have had the man tarred and feathered had he known. But, of late, secrets were hard to keep, especially from the media. Even the slightest suspicion would destroy his nephew’s career.

Govind Kiromal cleared his throat, ‘How do you know this?’ he asked, challenging the tantrik’s observation.

The man stared at Govind for a long moment. It was like a hungry wild cat waiting to pounce. Suddenly, he burst into full throated laughter.

‘He asks me how I know, Karan, should I tell him?’ he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he continued.

‘Because Govind Kiromal, you are bound to it. I don’t say it. The blood says it. Can you read drops of blood, Kiromal? I can. I say, don’t ask stupid questions, just listen.’

Uncle nudged nephew and shook his head to say, ‘Shut up’.

Karan had no children but his elder brother had seven of them. Govind was the third; neither old enough to be involved in politics with his father, nor young enough to be excused from the harrowing work of managing their estate, a job he hated. It was therefore not a surprise to anyone when Govind found his uncle to be a better alternative. Karan loved Govind like the son he could never have. Soon enough, Govind became Karan Kiromal’s political and legal heir.

His association with his uncle had paid rich dividends for Govind. He was at the time the second most powerful public official in the country, the Home Minister of India. Politically, perhaps he was the most powerful.

Wiping the plate clean on both sides, the tantrik placed the implement on the ground. With one flick of his head, the man noted the positions of all the people around him. Karan, Govind, his right hand man Shiro, the goons that followed Shiro, he needed to know where all of them were positioned. It was important for what he was just about to do.

The two politicians were closest to him, within touching distance. The uncle with his eyes closed, putting on a show of meditation, while the nephew was meddling with a cellular phone. The rest of the crew were standing in a circle around them to block the view of anyone snooping around.

Without a warning, the tantrik pounced on Govind and held his right hand in a vise-like grip. Before the politician could realise it, he cut off the little finger on Govind Kiromal’s right hand with a knife he pulled out of nowhere.

Govind let out a screech that ended in a horrible wail of pain. He clutched his hand, staring at the stump in shocked disbelief. Shiro and his men rushed at the tantrik. They had already drawn a variety of weapons which included country made pistols, knives while one of them even had a midsized spear. The henchmen needed no better excuse than the fact that the tantrik had cut off their employer’s finger. They had every intention of burying him that day. If possible, alive.

The tantrik did not as much as look up from the severed finger. He flicked a wrist, just a faint movement, as though he were ridding himself of a persistent fly. The thugs went flying into the air like leaves in an autumn wind. Not one of them rose.

The tantrik did not bother to examine the result of his handiwork. Instead, he drew four quadrants on the metal plate with a piece of yellowed chalk. He pulled a few pieces of withered leaves from his cotton sack and placed them in one quadrant. He placed a piece of string in another. In the third quadrant he placed Govind’s severed finger while in the fourth quadrant he placed a withered crow’s foot. He dipped his makeshift spoon into the blood pooled around the finger and sprinkled it into the remaining three quadrants of the plate, whispering mantras under his breath.

Karan Kiromal could not drag his gaze away from the crow’s foot. A shrivelled claw quivered. The old man shuddered feverishly. The leaves turned green, as though they had erupted into life just that afternoon.

The tantrik pulled out the string from the second quadrant. He folded the piece of metal with enormous effort and dexterity until it was