The Cloud of the Princess - Part I Chapter 5

Hundred and fifty years earlier, pavazhamozhiyaal, the queen of aadhirayan was crying in pain. Pain that was more mental than physical. Pain that a woman should never experience. Pain that hits your heart with sharp edged stones when your first child dies before even making the first sound on earth. Pavazhamozhiyaal cried her lungs out on the dreadful day when she had given birth to a dead child. A male child. who if had lived would have changed the course of history of pavazhanaadu. But now it lay aside her as a lump of matter that neither moved nor cried. There was dead calm in the aura of the silk bed where pavazhamozhiyaal was lying except for the continuous sound of pain that started somewhere deep below her heart and was directed towards the sky , translating into deadly words of woe as they reached the ears of those brutal gods who were comfortably sleeping up there. The gods woke up, stared bluntly at pavazhamozhiyaal and spoke the worst words that pavazhanaadu had ever heard before ‘Oh lady…. may you come here too’

And the shrill started to fade off.

Pavazhamozhiyaal cried one more time in helplessness and her soul prepared itself for the unknown journey towards the unknown worlds.

Aadhirayan, normally praised by poets as the man with an iron heart stood by his wife's side and also by all those poet’s words. Not a single drop of tear came out from his eyes. Those eyes were not red. They were rather yellow , depicting neither fear nor pain but an unknown stem of disease, the roots of which started to pierce harder into his heart.

It was regarded as the karuppu aandu in pavazhanaadu’s history.

Exactly an year later, pavazhanaadu celebrated in joy. aadhirayan had married again and this time his new queen was safe after giving birth. To double the happiness of her and the whole of pavazhanaadu, she was blessed with a pair of twins. Both were male. And aadhirayan thanked the almighty silently as he went back to his palace after kissing his queen on the forehead.

The kids grew up fast and they were seventeen in no time. They had mastered all the skills that a king must have and were as powerful as rocks physically. They had the wondrous looks of aadhirayan and were even more analytical than him. All the knowledge that aadhirayan had kidnapped into his land were taught to them and they were teeming with confidence and pride.

It was then on a sunny morning day, old and experienced mudanmandhiri kesavanaar had come up to aadhirayan , bowed and said

‘irayey… I don’t wish to say what I have to say now, but if I don’t tell it now, it might affect not this old man but the whole of pavazhanaadu’

aadirayan started to laugh. His laugh became a roar in a while and he uttered with a voice that shook men with hardest of hearts, let alone old kesavanaar

“I know ayya… I know… is it not about who becoming the next king?.... ‘

There was a worried look in the mudamandiri’s face

‘Yes …’ he replied without emotions.

‘Time shall decide that my dear old reliable mudanmandiri…. time shall decide the fate of this god’s land’

And time had something very bad to give back.

Slowly, small problems began to pop up between the twins sugumaaran and eezhendiran. Though both of them were as close as possible for seventeen long years, a split up was occurring slowly but surely. They were controlling themselves for their father was still ruling the country but they knew it was not going to be for long before that old man died. But in the meantime the soldiers and the army had slowly started to divide into two groups, one supporting sugumaaran and another eezhendiran.

And the old man did die after seven years.

Immediately after his father’s death, sugumaaran declared himself the ruler of pavazhanaadu. And ordered his men to attack eezhendiran. eezhendiran who ,though was expecting a war , did not expect it on the immediate day after his father’s death. The unexpected attack made eezhendiran and his men to flee from the palace. A civil war broke out and the streets started to float in blood. Men, dogs, women, goats, children, cows and every other thing that came in the way of the two armies were killed. It was a deadly sight especially because no war rules were followed and a pang of horror hit the poor and the common man. Men and women started to flee along with eezhendiran’s army to safer places which did not seem to exist at all. The war of death continued for two years and at the end of it no one was a winner. eezhendiran had run away to the other side of the majestically huge river amudhu that aadhirayan had seen as blue line of water from the apex point of asuragiri some fifty years ago. A significant part of the common men had also transferred their homes to the eezhendiran’s side. Slowly , eezhendiran built up a army of his own and declared himself the king of eezham – the name he gave to the land he had occupied on the east of river amudhu while sugumaaran continued to rule from the west of amudhu without renaming the name of the land that his father had discovered – pavazhanaadu.

The thought of every old man who had survived the civil war and was on either one side of amudhu was similar.

‘The twins have spoiled the beautiful land that the father had built with his blood and flesh’

And it was very true.

Except for one man who had a slightly different idea – mudhanmandhiri kesavanaar.