*From To Sathish* - Thread 3 - Page 15

Chapter 50


"Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude - and destroy if possible - those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them."
? Carlos Ruiz Zafn, The Angel's Game


Envy,jealousy yes i have felt it.But i felt it long ago and when i was a child.I was in my 3rd std and was one of the best students in the subject of english.My english teacher,an anglo indian spinster called Miss.woodrose selected me and a few others to sing and dance the song " ate a peanut,stomach paining,call the doctor ".It was a three or four minute piece and she composed it herself and also the music, i think.The piece was for the annual day celebration and we were all given red shorts and white trousers and bows.I informed my aunt and a few other adults in my house and as was the norm,nobody accompanied me for the function and i was too young to go by myself,leave alone board a bus after dark.Well,the next day i got caned and had both my thighs pinched for not turning up and miss.Woodrose was pretty upset for i was supposed to lead the song and dance that she had worked hard to compose.i tried telling her that there had been no one to accompany me for the annual day,but my cries fell on deaf ears.That ended my stage arangetram and i went back to the stage during my 9th std to play a British colonel who kills tamil freedom fighters (imagine her surprise and joy when i showed her pics from the film RAMANUJAN and my role of ANANTHU aka ANANTHA RAMA IYENGAR).My tamil teacher selected me for that role and the reason she gave me was that i was fair and i spoke good english.

Parents day,annual day i used to sit with a few of my other rowdy pals in the last rows and pass comments and make loud noises.But i used to watch with envy and lots of jealousy as other kids came with their parents and family members.i used to curse god and life and hated myself and thought i was a bad omen and lost all self respect for myself.Even today when i go to the temple or to a film i watch and sometimes stare as kids walk past me with their dads or mums holding their hands tenderly.I smile and wish them well and go my way.



From light into darkness

Anger and jealousy can lead to reckless words and reckless actions and the consequences stemming from them can be deadly and disastrous for the person who is feeling it and for those that rely on his judgement.

Maravarman pandyan's mind raged with anger at the talk of peace between his people and the cholas.He thought and ached to strangle the person who had sent the message through the old man and decided enough was enough.Leaving the palace he quickly called his personal guard and hatched a plan to enter the capital of the cholas and bring back his men who were being held prisoners.He left with his men quietly informing the palace officials that he was going on a hunt and wouldn't be back for a few days.His plan was to reach Gangaikondcholapuram before appanar iyya met kulothunga cholan and conveyed the message from the mysterious person.


But the best kept secrets somehow manage to gather their own life and find ears to listen to their tales and Thenmozhi got wind of what maravarman was planning to do.She panicked and realised that this would destroy the whole purpose of the man who haunted her dreams and gathering a few loyal guards raced towards the capital of the chola kingdom via a different route.


A few days later appanar iyya stood before kulothunga cholan in the court after being granted an audience.He had,had to wait in a chamber that was near the entrance of the kings court before being allowed to enter the presence of the king.Then a palace guard called his name and appanar slowly made his way through a long hall towards the emperor who sat on a magnificient throne.The hall was lined with famous poets and important looking emissaries from distant lands.
Beautiful paintings adorned the walls of the palace court and there on the throne sat the mighty kulothunga cholan.Appanar respectfully bowed to the king and paid his respects.

Kulothunga cholan asked him to come closer and pointing to a chair asked appanar to sit and relax and then state the purpose of his visit.

Appanar thanked the king for his hospitality and " lord, the boy from the forest has sent me with a message."

Kulothunga cholan smiled " mysterious and strange.what boy and from which forest."

Appanar " the boy to whom you gifted the pearl necklace with the green emerald."

Kulothungan shivered with shock and excitement and a huge smile shone on his face.He clapped his hands and requested everybody to leave him and the messenger to talk in private.

Everybody assembled there murmured in excitement and frustration for nothing like this had ever happened in the court before and everyone took a hard look at appanar for they knew that he must be very important for the king himself to grant him audience and that too in privacy.

After everybody had left,kulothungan jumped out of his throne with an energy belying his old age and rushed forward to where appanar was sitting and quickly sat next to him.Appanar was too shocked to react and tried to get up from his seat but the king begged him to be seated.

Kulothunga cholan looked at appanar " old man,i have no idea who you are or where you come from but i am very eager to learn more about the boy and if possible to meet him again.i don't know why but being next to him makes me feel content and relaxed.I had the chance to meet him and spend time with him very briefly but i swear,i relive that moment everyday."

Appanar delivered the message that azhagan wanted to bring peace between the cholas and pandyas and stave off any further wars and the resulting death between them.He explained to the king that he had handed over the pearl necklace to kulashekara pandyan and that the king was willing to meet him even though he was bedridden.

Kulothunga cholan " old man,although the pandyas are under my rule i still think of them as my people.I accept that i committed a major blunder by burning down the coronation hall and i promise i will set things right.Please inform your king that a new coronation hall will be constructed by me and the entire cost will be borne by me."


The discussion was rudely disturbed by the sudden arrival of his son,Rajaraja Chola III who looked angry and in panic.

Kulothungan irritatedly looked up and asked the prince what the matter was and why he was tense.

Rajaraja Chola III " father, the prison in thanjai has been attacked in the night by a group of masked men and a number of our soldiers have been killed.A few of the survivors managed to send the information through our carrier pigeons.They suspect that it was the handiwork of the pandyan soldiers and want to know what to do."

Kulothungan's face turned a fiery red in anger and yet he slowly turned to appanar " old man,was this the plan all along.to talk peace and attack like cowards to release your prisoners.and here i was just about ready to send all of them home with you as a gesture of goodwill.Tell me and please be honest with me."

Appanar did not know what to say and realised that someone had seriously blundered and sensed it had to be the prince maravarman who had done this dastardly act. He folded both his hands and bowed low in apology " my lord,i swear to you not on the god i worship but i swear to you on azhagan that i had no prior idea that this was going to happen.I lay my life at your feet and mercy and will remain here in your prison until you sort out this setback.But i promise you that like you even kulashekara pandyan will have no clue as to what is happening."

Kulothungan stared at appanar intently and understood that the old man was telling the truth and asked his son to show in the generals.

The king looked at all his generals and screamed in anger " an attack on our own soil is not only something to be ashamed of but it also shows how careless and lazy we have become.A few pandyan soldiers have managed to infiltrate thanjai and made good their escape with the prisoners held there.Take as many soldiers as possible and use our best trackers and run down those who were responsible for this attack.I want everyone brought back alive and will not like it if any pandyan soldier is killed,but kill anyone who comes in your way.If you have to enter pandyan land you have my permission.so go now and come back victorious."



Deep in the forest that lay between thanjai and madurai,marvarman and his personal guard rode hard with the people they had rescued.He had been greatly surprised to see all of them hale and heart and grudgingly acknowledged the chola kings kindness and merciful attitude.Hearing the shriek of hawk,maravarman looked up and saw the hawk look down and turn back the way it had flown.Maravarman cursed himself for he knew that the hawk belonged to the cholas who had trained it to guide them to where prey was and also what they were hunting,beast or men.

Maravarman screamed in frustration for they still had another two days to go before they could cross into pandyan land and then probably they could make a stand or if they were lucky then the chola soldiers might not follow them for then it would mean open war and that is exactly what he wanted.

Just then one of his soldiers alerted him to the presence of people just ahead of them.All of them drew their swords and since the prisoners themselves were all trained warriors who had become generals but for nikantan their senior minister.

The horses were brought to a standstill and they all jumped down to face the assault from the group that lay in wait for them and from their hiding came a bunch of women carrying swords and shields and with them were a few familiar faces from the palace guard.

Maravarman looked confused and thenmozhi removing the cloth that covered her face walked up angrily to him " lord,have you lost your senses.you go and provoke the chola emperor with this cowardly act and just when peace,permanent peace was being negotiated between us."

Maravarman thundered " thenmozhi,what peace are you talking about.peace when our legacy has been burnt down and peace when our men,most importantly your father was in prison for nearly ten years and rather than rejoicing in the fact that i have rescued him,you are wasting your breath on talks about peace.there will be no peace as long as i am alive and i would rather die a warrior's death than make peace with the cholas."

Thenmozhi calmly looked at him " ok,you talk about war.are you ready for war.are our men prepared if kulothungan invades us right now and many will agree that he is in the right to do so and that you were wrong in going ahead just to satisfy your ego.Isn't this all about you,your anger,your ego,your legacy.and when war comes will you fight alone and die alone.won't thousands of our men and women die along with you.Couldn't you have waited for a little while longer and grown stronger and then met the cholas on the battlefield."

Maravarman slowly realised that he had done a mistake and yet could not back down " Kulothungan burnt down our coronation hall and with it he broke our king who now lies bedridden with spit dribbling down his chin and has to be fed,bathed and cleansed like an infant.how do you think he feels about this and how do you think i feel,when i see him suffering like this.He is just not my brother,but my father,king and god.I did this to avenge his broken soul."

Just then a few men who had lagged behind came running with the news that an army numbering hundred or more were coming towards them.

Panic set in for all of them knew how good the trackers of the chola army were and that they belonged to the famous hunting tribe of the islands of Andaman and most of them were cannibals.

Thenmozhi " okay,here is what we will do.we will split up in three groups and make our escape.Surely that will confuse them and they will hesitate and take time to decide which group they will have to follow.That will give us enough time to enter the forest of our kingdom and once on our own territory we will worry about what to do next.one more thing,my prince,order a few of your personal guard to launch a sneak attack and this will further slow down the advancing army."

Maravarman and the rest of the group agreed that it was the best plan in the circumstance and the future king for the first time looked at thenmozhi and understood that she was just not a good looking woman but possessed a brilliant mind and she would make a great queen.


So in three directions sped the pandyan teams and with the great chola army hot on their heels.



was maravarman right or wrong.This is life and there is just never a right or wrong answer and from these situations arise great tragedies.



I,you,we all are from the light and we all go into dark and come back to light understanding so much.This is life,this is the voyage we daily take on a knife's edge.Be well.

That was a very dramatic chapter.
To answer the question of whether Maravarman was right or wrong:
According to me, what Maravarman did was wrong (objectively) even though his thoughts and heart were in the right place. Wrong in action, but right in thoughts.

One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name.
Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.
It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers.
That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what everyone else had said about that individual.
On Monday she gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling. 'Really?' she heard whispered. 'I never knew that I meant anything to anyone!' and, 'I didn't know others liked me so much,' were most of the comments.
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. She never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another. That group of students moved on.
Several years later, one of the students was killed in
Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral of that special student. She had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature.
The church was packed with his friends. One by one those who loved him took a last walk by the coffin. The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.
As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her. 'Were you Mark's math teacher?' he asked. She nodded: 'yes.' Then he said: 'Mark talked about you a lot.'
After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates went together to a luncheon. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting to speak with his teacher.

'We want to show you something,' his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket 'They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.'
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. The teacher knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which she had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him.

'Thank you so much for doing that,' Mark's mother said. 'As you can see, Mark treasured it.'
All of Mark's former classmates started to gather around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, 'I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home.'
Chuck's wife said, 'Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.'
'I have mine too,' Marilyn said. 'It's in my diary'
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. 'I carry this with me at all times,' Vicki said and without batting an eyelash, she continued: 'I think we all saved our lists'
That's when the teacher finally sat down and cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.

Go Kiss the World - Subroto Bagchi
This speech was delivered to the Class of 2006 at the IIM, Bangalore on defining success by Subroto Bagchi CEO MindTree.

Part one

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was, and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father.
My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system, which makes me what I am today and largely, defines what success means to me today.
As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government- he reiterated to us that it was not "his jeep" but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days.. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary.
That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.
The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, Raju Uncle' - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family driver, as my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.
To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Go Kiss the World - Subroto Bagchi
This speech was delivered to the Class of 2006 at the IIM, Bangalore on defining success by Subroto Bagchi CEO MindTree.


Part two

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was neither gas, nor electrical stoves.The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson.

He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it". That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons.
We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply," We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant.
Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.
Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom.
She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited".

That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.
My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness. Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.
Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.
Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair".. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes.

To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Go Kiss the World - Subroto Bagchi
This speech was delivered to the Class of 2006 at the IIM, Bangalore on defining success by Subroto Bagchi CEO MindTree.


Part three


Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world.
In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.

There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what the limit of inclusion is you can create.

My father died the next day. He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion.
Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.

In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking.
Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said,

"Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it.

It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.
Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and God's speed. Go! Kiss the world...

That was really nice one Satish... I learnt many things and I know I would follow atleast the little things..

Chapter 51


"Magic is really only the utilization of the entire spectrum of the senses. Humans have cut themselves off from their senses. Now they see only a tiny portion of the visible spectrum, hear only the loudest of sounds, their sense of smell is shockingly poor and they can only distinguish the sweetest and sourest of tastes."
Michael Scott, The Alchemyst


Like the quote says magic when it refers to our senses,i agree totally for when you are outdoors and caught in a sudden burst of rain,what you remember the most is the smell of the earth as rain drops fall down on the soil.The earth dried and aching for water from the heavens merges with the rainfall and releases a fragrance that puts a smile in all or faces.Somewhere i think we are still connected to this earth and still its children,though we have no respect for our mother and yet thae fragrance or the soil and nature reminds us and transforms us into screaming children. It is called " MANN VASANAI but i call it PAAL MANAM.yes,we are still babies in mother earth's womb and although like in c-section we have cut ourselves out,she still has so much to give us.if only we could respect her more,listen to her more.



Tribal tracker and dogs of war

Moorkan was his name and he came from the island of Tinmaittivu ("impure islands" in Tamil) which are now called Andaman and nicobar islands.He was a huge man standing nearly 6 feet and 5 inches and he was so ugly that even the sun hid itself behind the clouds when he glared at it.He and his family were captured along with the other tribals that the chola king could gather and brought more as curios than slaves and made to reside in gangaikondacholapuram.Moorkan answered to no one but kulothunga cholan and rajendara cholan his son.It was he who was tracking the fleeing parties of thenmozhi and maravaraman.

Still very far away from their prey, moorkan halted and crouched low on the ground and sniffed the air.Then he got up and slowly walked around the area and stopped at a spot which was concealed by thick bushy grass.Crouching low he took a stick and slowly scraped the damp spot and again sniffed the air like an animal.He got up with an evil smile and looked at the prince rajendra cholan.

The prince well versed with moorkan's signs got down from his horse and both walked a little distance from their men and moorkan looked at the prince

" The enemies are very good but not as good as me and can never fool me or my skills.To throw us off their track and to confuse us they have split up into three teams and are fleeing in three directions.But the reason i stopped and called you was to tell you that there is a woman in full bloom in the pandyan teams.There are a few other women with her but she seems to come from royal stock.I gathered all this from the place where she had urinated just a few hours ago.She is very young probably 16 or 17 years old and that is exactly to your liking.So you need to decide on what course to take."

Unlike his father the mighty kulothunga cholan his son the prince and future king Rajendra cholan was a womaniser and drunkard and spent most of his time hunting and terrorising people who lived in other kingdoms an those who paid taxes to the chola regime.Most of his atrocities went unnoticed and all most all of it never reached the king's ears because everyone knew that kulothunga cholan was getting old and soon rajendra cholan would sit on the throne and he was vengeful and had long,long memory and a vicious one at that.


Rajendra cholan looked at moorkan " the chase has made me tired and yet pretty horny and this girl you mentioned will be time well spent in the forest.Our men are more than capable of chasing and capturing the other two teams,so you and me with about fifty men will follow the tracks of the girl and her group."

Rajendra cholan called the army and informed them that the fleeing parties had split themselves into three groups and that he was going to follow one and ordered the rest of the army to split up into two teams and follow the other two groups.

Moorkan signaled to his fellow trackers that he was going with the prince and asked them to guide the rest of the army properly and threatened them with death if they failed to lead the soldiers to the fleeing groups.

Moorkan ran into the forest and the prince rajendra cholan followed behind him on his horse and with his team of equally brutal soldiers.

Rajendra cholan's mind was filled with thoughts of the woman who he was going to bed that night and wondered if she would put up a fight for he liked them that way.He mostly used the women for a few days and then would pass them on to moorkan and his soldiers.The women would welcome death with open arms that came to them after being passed around the soldiers.Some very young girls bled to death and they died screaming and some died comatose for their minds had long since shut down from the horrific acts that were performed on them.


These were the demons that raced after thenmozhi and she and her group had little knowledge of the terrible state they were going to be in the next few days.


From the darkness of the forests in "Sairandhrivanam" emerged Azhagan and his keen eyes caught the thin smoke that rose in the distance.They were from the cooking fires of the tribal people,thinnan and his people.He smiled to himself and shook his head for he knew who was looking at him from behind the tree.

She knew he had sensed her and slowly peeped out from behind the tree and came towards him.Azhagan knew it was malar and yet since they had not met for such a long time was not prepared for the woman she had grown into.

The skin of malar was neither black nor brown but a mix of both and it shone in health and burst in vitality.Her slim body was covered with a small orange like cloth below here waist and a thin orange cloth was wrapped around her upper body and it did nothing to cover her well developed breasts.Her ears were covered with pieces made from ivory and one small ring hung from her left nostril.

Azhagan noticed something strange on her left forearm and his sharp eyes caught a tattoo of a boy with a stick and he knew it was an image of him that decorated her arm in green.

They stood staring at each other and before azhagan could react she threw herself at him and kissed him deeply.



"It was at first almost as if he hadn't wanted to kiss her. His mouth was hard on hers, unyielding; then he put both arms around her and pulled her against him. His lips softened. She could feel the rapid beat of his heart, taste the sweetness of apples still on his mouth. She wound her hands into his hair, as she'd wanted to do since the first time she'd seen him. His hair curled around her fingers, silky and fine. Her heart was hammering, and there was a rushing sound in her ears, like beating wings" Cassandra Clare

Chapter 52

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,"so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him."
? Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems


I will remain thus for i love you,now and forever


She kissed him on his mouth and she kissed him even though she had never kissed before.She felt the sweetness of his mouth and yet as the seconds passed she felt the stiffness in his lips and in his body.malar stepped back and stared at him and azhagan stared back.Both stared at each other and malar found it difficult to sense or understand what azhagan felt or was feeling.

" I have waited for you all this while.Though i ate food,drank water,slept and did my chores my soul waited for you,aching for you,dying to be with you."

Azhagan smiled gently " i know."

Malar " you know and yet you hold back.I am yours for the taking.Not only my father and my people,every tree and every bird in this forest knows about my love for you and yet you hesitate.Am i not beautiful ?"

Azhagan placed his fingers on her lips " no,please don't say that.for you are the more beautiful than any flower in this forest.But this is not the time for these talks for i have a lot before me that needs to be done."

Malar reacted angrily " everything can wait for i have waited long enough and cannot wait any longer.My father knows that i have given myself to you and now i have kissed you and with the sun and this forest as witnesses i offer myself as your wife.Please accept me and i will follow you to the ends of this earth and into the very gates of hell."

Azhagan closed his eyes and he saw her running like a deer into the forest and he saw her ankles with those anklets jingling and he whispered her name.

He opened his eyes and was shocked to see malar on the ground crying.Not knowing what had hapened that could have made her suddenly breakdown like this,azhagan kneeled down next to her and slowly raised her chin and asked her why she was crying.

Malar " thenmozhi.you just whispered her name and as you whispered her name i saw what you felt for her and my heart broke for i realise that you will never love me like you love her."

Azhagan did not know what to do but he did what he thought was best and hugged malar to his bosom and gently wiped the tears for her eyes.

" Malar,my sweet flower.This thenmozhi,whose name that i just whispered is a woman whom i have yet to meet.our destinies are somehow tied with one another and until i know more i will not talk about it.Please stop crying for it breaks my heart to see you like this."

She looked up with tears " promise me this.if it does not work out with this woman thenmozhi.will you come back for me.I will wait for you and i will wait in hope until i die."

Azhagan took her hand and gently kissed it and wiping the tears from her eyes " i promise you now with the same sun and forest that i will come for you if it does not work out."

Malar gazed deeply into his eyes and knew he spoke the truth and that he would never lie and holding his face close kissed him again with such passion that even azhagan melted and kissed her back and they were one as the spirits of the forest covered them with their glow.


Far away over the hills and deep in the forest thenmozhi,her father nikanatan and few other soldiers heard the hunting dogs in the distance and knew that if they stopped now to rest the enemy would soon be upon them.They ran for their very lives and as if the devil himself was upon them.but thenmozhi knew that they wouldn't be able keep up the pace and knew that some hard decisions would have to be made.At the right moment when things were surely going to go bad she decided that she woudl fall back with a couple of soldiers and make a stand and fight the cholas.The delay might just give a chance for her father,the other women and the rest of the soldiers to make good their escape.


Moorkan halted and looked at the prince " they are not very far away and i think we will be able to catch them by tomorrow afternoon.I think we should rest for a bit for we have pushed very hard and will not have energy for the final charge."

Rajendra cholan agreed and their group halted and made preparations for the night.Moorkan went off to hunt for some rabbits and wild boar for the prince loved his meat and wine.


It had been a couple of hours since azhagan had left malar behind and suddenly he heard his master whisper " run child,run like the wind,run faster than light and do not halt even for the night.she whom you seek in your dreams is in great danger and only you can save her."

Azhagan roared into the darkening sky and for the first time opened his senses so powerfully that he see everything around him in a ten km radius and let it pulse ahead of him like a radar.And then he began to run and he ran faster than the fastest deer and he ran so fast that he was a blur and even he did not know that light erupted from his eyes and they glowed strangely in the dark.Every animal in the forest ran out of his reach and ran and hid themselves for he ran not as a human being but the god of death.


I am azhagan.I am the son of Avini and tomorrow i will deal with heaven and hell and will bring peace in my land and in her heart.With the sun i will rise and darkness shall run for its life before me.


The boy who went into the dark and came back with light and as love.

Chapter 53

And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent's arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from his nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died, and he was more alone than he had ever been before." J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

From a very young age i began to feed dogs,give my food away to beggars.Once long ago when i was a boy,a few months before my parents died i remember a man dressed in strange clothes parading a black bear in our small streets.It was leashed,dressed in clothes and made to dance.People thronged and saw the great tamasha and all i did was stare into the bear's eyes and saw how sad it was.It was just about 8 in the morning and i was having my favourite breakfast idlis with sugar and ghee.Three were the maximum i could stuff myself with and i had just started on the first one and not knowing why i gave the other two idlis to the bear and it gulped them down and kept dancing.Now i wonder why,think back and have concluded that the little good i did maybe were the credit in my life account that has sustained me as i grew up lost and lonely.I did not know then but i knew later as an orphan what the bear felt and that look in its eyes,oh that lost look.Maybe the bear saw what was going to happen and felt sad for me or maybe it was saying " bro,today me,soon you.we all dance to someone's tunes and go dancing to the end."



Cornered and back against the wall

Just before sunrise thenmozhi heard the noises the dogs made and long before they made their appearance.Thenmmozhi,nikantan,the two women who were trained warriors like her and the five soldiers looked at each other.They were tired from the non stop running and walking they had done the past two days.

Thenmozhi looked at them " father,you and the women with two soldiers have to leave now for there is no more time to waste.I will stay here with the other three soldiers and attack the enemies from far with our arrows and this might just slow them down enough for you to cross into our land and maybe gather our people and fight your way back to madurai."

Nikantan shook his head " sorry but i am not going to leave you here to die.if we are going to die then we will all die fighting together.and anyway i am too tired to make another step and at my age i don't think i will last longer than this."

Time kept ticking for time does not wait for anyone good or bad and it flew past them and brought the dogs towards them.

Many thousands of years ago dogs became untied with humans and began to hunt with them as a pack.Man became the dogs leader and it obeyed him to death and in return it was given food and protection and so the wild hunting wolf slowly became the domesticated dog,faithful to its master.Dogs in the wild have known to take on bigger predators like tigers,lions and leopards and have fought to death for food.

Olfaction, the act or process of smelling, is a dog's primary special sense. A dog's sense of smell is said to be a thousand times more sensitive than that of humans. In fact, a dog has more than 220 million olfactory receptors in its nose, while humans have only 5 million. "If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well."


Thenmozhi heard the dogs and knew that there must be at least 10 or more of them and she also knew that they were trained to kill and would attack them and die attacking.and this would give the people chasing them enough time to catch up and finish them.She took a deep breath and realised that they had come to the end and nothing more was to be said but it would be kill,kill and be killed.she looked at the rest of the gang and knew that they all understood what was going to happen and everyone prepared for the final battle.

Once the mind is made up the heart steels itself for everything and the body churns up strength that one would not normally posses and this is called adrenalin rush,a shot of action hormone that the body delivers and one can run faster,jump higher and bear and incredible amount of pain before dying.So thenmozhi and her group steeled themselves and everyone smiled bravely.

Thenmozhi then did something which she had not been able to do for the past few days and that was greeting the sun as it rose from the east.she looked at the sun and lifted both her hands and curled her fingers into claws and growled like a lion and the tears poured down in sadness.

she looked at the sun as it blinked like a sleepy person who struggles to get out of bed " i don't know who you are and now i will never know.But i feel you in my soul and i feel you in every part of my body.maybe we might meet again in some other lifetime.so good bye my soul for i leave it here with you.still holding her hands up she roared in love and anger and then the forest roared in return and the ground vibrated as above the noise the dogs were making and above the roar that thenmozhi had made came the roars of a lion.

The aggressive noises of the dogs soon turned to deathly growls and painful yelps and thenmozhi and the rest of the group looked and wondered at what was happening.But soon they could wonder no more for the chasing chola soldiers could now be heard and some could also be soon and they were just a km away.

Then from the darkness of the forest and from the direction of the chasing soldiers came a huge black maned lion and he calmly strode up to them and then turned to face the attackers .thenmozhi and her father stared at the huge lion which stood next to them facing the direction from where the attackers were going to come upon them and understood that the lion was helping them and also knew now was not the time to wonder what or why, for from the forest came a hundred men led by moorkan the tracker.The lion roared its challenge and stood ready to charge.

The roar of the lion was drowned by the roar of the man who came from the light or so it seemed for the sun had now risen and it burnt white.He came like the light and with the speed of light and now he stood in the center of the forest between thenmozhi and her group facing the chola soldiers.then to everyones amazement the huge lion slowly walked up and stood to the left of the stranger who reached down and ruffled its mane.

Moorkan stood facing the stranger.He was just an young man,slim but well muscled and tall. He was armed with just a thick stick and but for the lion on his left he was unarmed otherwise.Moorkan saw the strange markings on his left arm and wondered what the tattoo was about.

Thenmozhi felt him even though he was about ten feet away from her.She could hear his heart and it matched the rhythm of her heart.She sank to the ground for the strain and the excitement was too much for her.Then the man slowly turned to his right and looked at her from the corner of his eye and smiled the most loveliest smile she had ever seen and then his eyes glowed green and white.

Nikantan wondering what had happened to his daughter and worrying if something had struck her kneeled down by her side to check for any injuries.He gently
lifted her face and was shocked to see the strange green glow that danced deep in her eyes.

By now you'd know that I'd come for you
No one but you, yes I'd come for you
But only if you told me to
And I'd fight for you
Give my life for you
You know I'd always come for you
You know I'd always come for you.

I was blindfolded, but now I'm seeing
My mind was closing, now I'm believing
I finally know just what it means to let someone in
To see the side of me that no one does or ever will
So if you're ever lost and find yourself all alone
I'd search forever just to bring you home,
Here and now this I vow.

Nickelback I'd come for you



I have risen and i stand before you.I am azhagan and i am the son of avini.I am also called as Pakalon,Maasilan,Kathiravan,Meykandan,Koman,Nikaran.I am the legend and i am the sign.I will fight the darkness and bring light and peace.