Chankya's Chant (6 page)

‘Enough with the sarcasm, Ganga. You’ll see why you need him. It’s a wonderfully simple and elegant solution.’

Squadron Leader Mohanlal was a typical scotch-and-soda gentleman. Whisky was his elixir of life, his thick white bushy moustache providing the perfect filter for whatever he drank. He had learned to fly at the Delhi Flying School and had been employed as a pilot for the Indian Post when he was requisitioned by the British Royal Air Force as part of a twenty-four-member Indian squad that would fly Hurricanes into Germany.

On his last sortie he had suddenly found his entire dashboard missing. He hadn’t noticed because of the ruckus made by the engine. Black smoke and oil had started emanating from his Hurricane’s engine at eighteen thousand feet over the English Channel. At seven thousand feet he was advised by ground control to bale out over the channel. A boat would pick him up.

‘Don’t send the boat,’ he had replied over the crackling radio. ‘Why?’ asked the operator. ‘Because I can’t fucking swim, that’s why!’ he shouted. Mohanlal had soon glided towards the white cliffs of Dover but as soon as he opened up his airplane’s landing gear, the Hurricane burst into flames. He managed to crash-land and had to be dragged from the burning wreckage. He hated the hospital food but loved his nurse and the scotch. He soon realised that scotch never changed its mind the way the nurse did.

After the war ended, Mohanlal returned to India with a rather generous pension from the RAF that enabled him to start up a limited-route air charter service using an old Hawker Hart. It was to lead to the wonderfully simple and elegant solution that Agrawalji spoke of.

‘See? That’s Patna city below you,’ bellowed Mohanlal as the sputtering Hawker Hart lurched once more. Gangasagar was ready to throw up his breakfast, and cursed both Agrawalji and Mad Mohanlal for placing him there at five on a bitterly cold morning. The plane seated the two men one behind the other.

‘Can you see those ruins, south of the railway lines? That’s Kumhrar—the ruins of the ancient city of Pataliputra from which Patna derives its name,’ yelled Mohanlal, oblivious to the discomfort of his first-time air traveller. Both men were wearing B-8 goggles with RAF helmets, A-2 bomber jackets and 1941 RAF Mae West parachute backpacks. Gangasagar peered nervously over the side of the aircraft to see what Mohanlal was pointing out.

‘Pataliputra was the capital of Chandragupta Maurya’s massive empire two thousand three hundred years ago. Difficult to imagine, given the pathetic state of Patna, eh?’ he barked as he turned the noisy machine northwards to follow the river.

‘The city is located along the south bank of the Ganges but the entire region is rich in iron ore. The trick lies in figuring out what the government hasn’t yet done— identify exact locations!’

Gangasagar muttered some obscenities under his breath, thankful that the din of the engine would prevent the pilot from picking up on his utterances.

‘Around the world, there’s been a phenomenal increase in the use of geophysical techniques in mineral exploration. What I’ve got here with me up front is a piece of technology called a magnetometer. There are only a few of them in the world. Your boss managed to get one through his American contacts. It’s bloody incredible!’ exclaimed Mohanlal.

‘So how does this thing work?’ shouted Gangasagar, ignoring the sensation of his breakfast sloshing around inside his belly.

‘What this
thing
does is measure the relative magnetic attraction of different parts of the earth’s surface. Iron oxide gives the strongest magnetic pull of any mineral. So when we fly over mineral deposits we should see a definite variation in the magnetic pull,’ explained Mohanlal, his voice partly drowned by the roar of the propellers and the ominous wobbling of the engine.

‘We’re going down!’ screamed Mohanlal as the Hawker Hart lost altitude rapidly. Gangasagar cursed Mohanlal, then Agrawalji and then his own luck—in that order. For a moment he had thought that the crazy pilot was playing a vicious joke on him but within a few seconds he realised that it was no joke. The airborne junk heap was collapsing fast.

‘We must bale out!’ cried Mohanlal. Below them lay the ruins of Pataliputra, seemingly devoid of gawking tourists at this early hour of the morning. ‘Just my luck,’ thought Gangasagar, ‘I’m going to die surrounded by two-thousand-three-hundred-year-old bones. Even if they discover my body later they’ll think I’m just another relic of an ancient civilisation! Why did my greedy boss send me up in the air to fucking search for iron ore that is hundreds of feet underground? Instead of digging for iron ore they’ll be digging for my body, entombed in this rusting iron bird. Look, Agrawalji, here’s the iron you wanted!’

Gangasagar felt dizzy as the plane shuddered and went into a tailspin. ‘Jump! Now!’ shrieked Mohanlal as he ejected himself and pulled the ripcord of his parachute. Gangasagar blindly followed. He was now beyond caring.

He knew that he was about to die and didn’t care if the damn parachute opened or not. Considering the state of Mohanlal’s plane, it was very possible that there would be no parachute in the backpack at all!

He was in heaven. He was quite certain that he had died and was now floating above the clouds in Indra’s heavenly abode. It was only when he looked over and found Mohanlal floating alongside him that he realised that they couldn’t possibly be in heaven if Mohanlal was around. Both their parachutes had successfully deployed and Gangasagar felt the wind in his face as they gently floated towards mother earth.

Thud! The impact was anything but gentle. Weren’t parachutes supposed to soften the impact? There was no time to ponder over the harshness of their collision with the ground. Less than a hundred yards away, the groaning mass of Mohanlal’s Hawker plunged, shrieking a pierce, chilling scream, as it crashed into terra firma and exploded into a fireball. Both Mohanlal and Gangasagar braced themselves and hit the ground for protection from the heat blast that emanated from the wreck.

It was several minutes before either man raised his head. Their faces were covered in black soot and their clothes torn. Gangasagar’s hair was standing straight up, almost as though an electric current had been passed through it. Cuts and bruises covered his arms, legs and face. Despite his weakened condition he had an overwhelming urge to strangle Mohanlal and fervently prayed that he would restrain himself from attacking the pilot.

He looked around him. The ruins of Pataliputra were like a ghost town at 5.30 in the morning. It was almost as if on a given day, Chandragupta’s bustling empire had simply ground itself to a halt. At the centre of the Kumhrar site stood eighty massive pillars, probably once part of Magadha’s great audience hall. Of course, there was no roof, no polished floor, no tapestry, no rich furnishings, which would once have embellished the court of the world’s richest king. Some distance away stood the ruins of a Durakhi Devi temple, a Buddhist monastery as well as an ayurvedic hospital. ‘This must have been one hell of a kingdom,’ thought Gangasagar to himself, allowing his passion for history to take over.

‘Hello? Which world are you in?’ asked Mad Mohanlal, waving a hand in front of Gangasagar. ‘We need to get near the crash site and ensure that there was no one in the vicinity. There could be casualties,’ said Mohanlal as they started waking towards the fuel vapours and flames.

The ground had caved in at the crash site. Black acrid smoke puffed from the infernal machine, which had landed nose down. The ruins of the great assembly hall of Pataliputra lay a hundred yards to the west. ‘Shall we walk towards Patna?’ asked Gangasagar.

‘No point making the effort. We’re bang in the middle of the tourist circuit. Sit here for an hour or two and we’ll have all the buses rolling in. We’ll simply hitch a ride back into town,’ suggested Mohanlal.

They sat down away from the circle of wreckage and watched the flames die down. Gangasagar dusted off the soot from his clothes, spat in his hand and used the saliva to clean his eyes. Mohanlal offered him a swig from his hip flask. Gangasagar ignored the pilot and continued to poke a twig he had found into the soil before him. It was soft red alluvial soil—rich in ironore.
Agrawalji, look sir, I found your fucking ferrous fields,
thought Gangasagar.

The twig encountered an obstruction that prevented it from sinking deeper into the soft soil. Curiosity piqued, Gangasagar stabbed at it unrelentingly. Mohanlal drank some more in an effort to make Gangasagar bearable. Gangasagar got down on his knees and started digging with the twig. He needed to know what was obstructing it. A few minutes of digging by Gangasagar and a few pegs of whisky downed by Mohanlal, and the source of the blockage was discovered.

It was a small squarish block of black granite. Although it had remained buried in a few feet of soft soil for some time, it seemed polished and smooth. As Gangasagar used his palms to clear the soil that covered the face of the slab, he felt indentations along the smooth fascia—this was no ordinary rock formation, it was a rock inscription!

‘Come on! Get up and help me!’ shouted Gangasagar at the pilot. A visibly irritated Mohanlal got up, screwed back the cap on his hip flask and tucked it away inside his baggy flying pants. ‘We need some metallic pieces of the wreckage that we can use as shovels,’ Gangasagar told him. The intimidated pilot did not want to face the wrath of Elvis-sideburns. He found a metallic shaft, probably one of the wing supports, and touched it gingerly—it wasn’t flaming hot. He picked it up and brought it over to Gangasagar who snatched it and began shovelling frantically.