Word Count: 5102 | Reading Time: 18 min
“What might I be this time, O’ Dharma Raja?”
Death sighs.
“Lord of Justice” the wretched soul calls him, one of his monikers, which would be flattering, if it did not remind him so deeply of his failure. He has not been just, no. Not to this one.
“A parrot,” Death replies. “Kept by a queen of marginally good-sense who lives to a reliably long age.”
The intrepid soul laughs at Death, his mockery bright as the silver fetters that bind his wrists, the shackles of a mortal soul that had yet to attain moksha. Death wishes, not for the first time, that this particular soul had been adulterous, prideful, covetous—some sin that Death could have pinned to his breast and saved both of them the bother.
The bastard steps on to the last rung of the Wheel of Resurrection, climbing steadily upwards. Death has known warmongering emperors and snarling beasts quake at the sight of it; a towering structure, with each step reflecting the worst of their sins, each rung dredging up the most painful of memories. But this one laughs as he ascends, rung by rung, each step decisive, the fall of his dove-grey uttariya whipping in the wind. When he reaches the top, he smiles, brash and unafraid.
“I shall see you soon, Dharma Raja,” he says, calm as any prophet, the knowing in his voice burrowing a hole at the side of Death’s head. Death grits his teeth, stopping himself from replying tartly.
The Wheel turns, carrying him out of sight, the gentle tumble of it stripping him of his mortal carapace, pouring the silver-pure soul of him in a new form, this one with green feathers, a tart red beak and a canny mind. Death hopes it is enough.
#
“I did not expect to see you so soon,” the wretchling croons, following him as Death makes his way back from the mortal world, his knapsack struggling with half a palace’s worth of souls. They are an impatient lot, eager to return to their lost mortal forms, now destroyed beyond recognition. There had been a fire, a great one, which had started as a tiny hearth-fire in the queen’s apartments to ward off the chill of the oncoming winter, grown in the face of carelessly dozing servants. He had survived, of course, crowing loud enough to wake the queen, who had used all of her mortal sense to organize an evacuation and saved a good number of people; noble and common alike. Well, mostly. Not all had been so lucky, stuck deep inside the gilded halls of the palace, and the foolish parrot had, of course, charged straight inside the burning building, in the hopes of saving even one of them. The parrot did manage to save a handful of lives who had jumped from windows and balconies at his urging, breaking more than a few bones in the process but still managing to escape Death’s clutches, but himself had burned to death, wings scorched.
“What you said did come to pass after all,” the wretchling says, still laughing, despite the circumstances of his own death. Perhaps Death’s continued failure amuses him. Not many can claim that the Lord of Justice has been derelict in his duty. “The queen did have good sense and will live a long life.”
“I am never wrong,” says Death, as he empties the knapsack over a weighing scale, sorting through each one. It doesn’t sink to the bottom; most of the souls have only committed minor sins; lying to their masters, the occasional theft of a sweet, being slovenly in their tasks every once in a while. Death strokes their agitated selves and whispers softly to them of bright glorious lives that awaits them. Several of them would live to ripe old ages, with only moderately harsh ailments to test them every now and then. One of them had enough good karma to be reborn as a wealthy woman’s favored tulsi sapling.
“No, surely not. The Dharma Raja is never wrong,” the vexing soul croons, craning his neck to look at the contents of his knapsack with bright, interested eyes that still retain the slick shine of a bird’s gaze. Death doesn’t bother hiding it from him— that effort will be wasted, he doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body, as much as Death wishes it were otherwise. “Except of course, when it comes to me.”
Death’s hand tightens over an unlucky soul, and when it yelps in pain, he rubs a soothing thumb over it, quieting it. “Come along now,” Death says, turning on his feet, knowing he would follow. He always has; little good though it has done him. “Your new life awaits.”
“Oh, Dharma Raja,” the wretchling says, and the trill of his voice is high and amused. “Are you not tired of it yet?”
Never, Death thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Never, you brat.
#
The very first time Death had come across this particular soul, it had been trapped in the shell of a mortal woman’s body. She had been meditating under a tree, clothed in the garb of an ascetic, hair matted with leaves, seeds, insect wings, bird droppings, and the like; her mortal body carved to inhumane harshness by the severities of her penance. The fire in front of her burnt ghostly-bright, almost eerily silver, the edges of it flickering and reshaping itself as he watched; taking the shape of a woman, a man, then both, then neither, before settling back into being only an ordinary fire.
“Amba,” he had spoken her birth-name, and she had raised her eyes to his. He was thrown at the anger in them, so ancient, so piercing; the anger of mothers from whom he had taken a little too much, the anger of warriors who had been wronged from birth. It was not an anger that he has ever had the chance to glimpse in an ascetic. “It is not your time. You cannot.”
“Dharma Raja,” she said, voice cracking strangely from decades of not-speaking. “I honor you, but I must dishonor your command. I have been granted a boon by The Innocent One himself, that I shall be born as a man in my next life and fulfill what I had hoped to in this one.”
Death knew, he knew all about this boon, and the terrible circumstances that lead to it. She was supposed to have an easy life, a princess of a noble kingdom, to be wed to a good man, and live a fulfilling life.
Things had gone astray. It was not that much a cause for concern. Sometimes they did. Mortals were unpredictable. But they could be corrected in the next life.
But not if she arrived there sooner than intended.
“You must desist, Amba,” said Death, though he suspected it would not have any effect. “Please, you do not understand. Wait for me to come for you in due time, not summon me by force,” it was rare than any soul could compel him so; Death had refused the pleas of aging kings and suicidal princesses, desperate beggars and bull-headed martyrs. But for her, he had been compelled from his lifeless domain, forced to abandon the wailing souls in his keep, halt the progress of the ever-spinning wheel. “You will disturb the natural course of the cycle of life and death, chances are you might never attain moksha–”
“I do not care, Dharma Raja,” she said, voice frigid as the mountaintops she must have walked to attain The Innocent One’s blessing. “Now, move please. You are in the way of my vengeance.”
Death knew he could stop her. She was weak from austerities; good sense riddled to nothing with her single-minded lust for revenge. But if he stepped in now, broke his oath to the universe at this instant, what punishment might it visit upon him tenfold? Like all beings, he was bound to the rules of the cosmos.
“Please reconsider, Amba,” Death tried one last time. “I will come for you soon. Only wait a little while longer.”
Amba looked at him with her dark, ancient eyes, stilling before her own funeral pyre. Burning was a terrible way to go, he knew, but he doubted the knowledge would stall her, if nothing else has till now. Pain did not seem to deter her, not like it did most mortals.
“I do not have eternity to wait like you do, Dharma Raja,” she said, stepping wholly into the fire.
Yes you do, Death thought bitterly; the Wheel of Resurrection flashing in mind, now churning in motion, endless lives, endless pain, endless suffering. You just do not know it yet.
#
“You can call me by my name, you know,” the wretchling says as he steps into Death’s domain, scratching one of Death’s hellhounds behind the ear, paying no mind to its sharp, curved fangs that are capable of tearing souls apart. “I mean, it gets confusing after a while.”
The sturdy orange tree this soul had been nested in in this life had been hacked down brutally after the villagers suspected it had been haunted, after the many young brides who had rested under its shade on a hot summer afternoon were suddenly encouraged to leave their abusive husbands the next morning. Death could not even be properly angry at the bastard, for it was due to him that Death’s knapsack lacked the souls of fewer young brides than usual.
“You have had many names,” Death says instead, snapping his fingers at the hellhound, who ignores him wholly to roll on its belly, its tail wagging in playful anticipation. You are a hellhound, a herald of doom, Death thinks reproachfully. Not a lapdog.
“You know which one,” the wretchling replies, rubbing a foot over the hellhound’s proffered belly. The ghost of a smile tugs at his sly mouth; knowing he has Death trapped.
Amba’s self-immolation had him scurrying back to his domain, arriving just in time to stop the Wheel from breaking itself entirely with the force of its spinning. Amba’s soul had already climbed atop it, never one to wait, the burn scars standing out starkly against their not-quite flesh, like specks of dust viewed through a glassine dish. Death had stood on the ground, helpless against the tide of fate, against the spin of the Wheel; toppling fortunes, rearranging destinies.
“You will not have an easy life, Amba,” Death had yelled at last, defeated, knowing what was going to follow. “Nor will you die easy.”
“But I shall have my vengeance,” Amba replied, their voice hollow. “I shall not compel you to my side this time, Dharma Raja. Come at your leisure.”
If only. Compelled Death had been, not by the soul but by something far more stronger, summoned to a battle-camp at night, smeared with the blood and sins of unimaginable horrors. Death had picked soul after soul, his knapsack growing heavier and heavier with each weighted addition, making his way through the carnage until he found the soul that was once-Amba, now lying in a pool of their own blood, sword buried deep in their belly. Brave and honourable until the very end, and of course, stupidly brash. “Have you had your vengeance now?” said Death, coaxing the soul out of its mortal carapace. It was easier than he had expected.
“Yes,” said the man, smiling despite the pain. “Yes, Dharma Raja. I am at peace now.”
But I am not, Death had thought, cupping the soul in his palm. I will never be.
“Say it,” he urges now, in the present, as Death prepares the Wheel for another climb, another life that he hopes will be worthy of his soul. “Say it, Dharma Raja.”
“Shikhandin,” Death obliges, as the man smiles, stepping into the lowest rung.
#
Death has remade vindictive praying mantises into hunch-backed maidservants, has remade godlings into kindred cowherds who later rose to legendary prominence. Death has stolen the last breath from kings who fancied themselves immortal, and has gently closed the eyes of mothers who have labored far too long on the birthing bed. Death has done justice to wronged wives and duly punished cruel lords, has released worthy souls into moksha from the yoke of the endlessly-spinning wheel after lifetimes of penance.
But so far, Death has failed Shikhandin at every turn.
“A girl, this time.” Death says apologetically. He knows Shikhandin isn’t overfond of the form, but sometimes Death has little choice, slave to the whims of the ever-turning wheel. But Shikhandin only shrugs, accepting it.
“The princess of a small kingdom, which will not be attacked for a great many years after your death. Good parents, loyal friends, kind husband, an easy death.”
Shikhandin shows no reaction. “Would it be easier, do you think, if I were to be awful in this lifetime?” he says, picking at the sleeve of his dhoti, still wet from the flood that had ravaged his village. Shikhandin had died trying to save two young girls and a milking cow, all of whom had been reborn as happy little sparrowlings in a forest already. “Will you be relieved of your duty towards me then?”
“Not if you do it as a favour to me,” Death says, the truth cutting between his teeth like a piece of fine wire. “If anything, you will only be making my work harder.”
Shikhandin shrugs, and steps onto the wheel. He is unafraid, always ever so calm. Death cannot understand it. So many lives lived; so many tragedies endured. Why does he not even flinch when the Wheel starts turning, each rung thrumming with the pain of his past lives?
“Was it worth it, your vengeance?” Death asks, despite himself. “Was it worth all this?”
Shikhandin turns, and there is something bitter in the curl of his mouth, an ancient pain that Death has not had the chance to glimpse since his very first life. “Every moment of it, O’ Dharma Raja,” says Shikhandin. “Every single moment of it was worth it.”
#
Shikhandin had killed indiscriminately in the battlefield, his blade sparing none, yet he had done so with honour, keeping within the rules of war, which was why Death could not tally those lives against his ledger. But only once had he erred, slain by deceit, driving the war-chariot forward even as the godling Arjunah loosed arrow after arrow upon a defeated man, his own grand-uncle, driving each bolt deeper and deeper onto his unresisting body. His grand-uncle, the son of Ganga, had welcomed those blows, eyes only upon Shikhandin. When Death had come for him, he had given him a chance, for him to curse Shikhandin with his dying breath, pin his rage to his deceit and leave it be so. But the son of Ganga had only held his hand, eyes swimming with old ghosts and long buried guilt. “My great sin is now finally forgiven,” he had said, lying on a bed of arrows. “Please, O’ Dharma Raja, let my death not be on Shikhandin’s account. I release him, from any earthly bind, any mortal curse. My only wish—” he had coughed out blood, palmfuls of it, and Death had offered him the little solace he could, smoothing the pain away. “My only wish is for him to live a long and fulfilling life, the way—” he had paused, raising a hand to his face, as if recalling the callous way it had pulled a virtuous, innocent girl from her father’s home, and later, by her rightful betrothed’s side, all unwilling. “The way she would have, had I not intervened.”
Death had coaxed his soul out then, but he did not put it in his knapsack. This was a soul that had already attained moksha since the moment it had first breathed life, delayed by the play of fate. He only lifted the yoke of mortality from where it was buried in the soul, and watched it as it left, first to pay his respects to his mother, the holy river who had taken a woman’s form and endured a woman’s pain to birth him, and then finally, flying free, to the cosmos, where it can became one with the universe.
Sometimes, in his more spiteful moments, Death wonders if in his last moments, the former son of Ganga had indeed cursed Shikhandin, to live out life after life, undergoing trial after trial, only to be denied moksha. But if he had, it was not like the son of Ganga could have hidden it from him. Even the most practiced of liars could not be anything but honest to him.
“I must confess, I did not expect the turn this life of yours would take,” Death tells Shikhandin as he collects his soul from the mortal world, his mortal form now revered as a saint; surviving drownings, snake-bites, and numerous murder attempts. The once-sheltered princess had turned to religion in her adolescence, shunning the hypocrisy of her father’s court, turning her face away from the selfishness of her husband’s heart to the devotion of The Pure One. For her pains, she was rewarded with bitterness, humiliation, and at last, the solace of death. “What possessed you, if I may ask?”
“Love,” Shikhandin spreads his hands wide, a guileless smile on his lips. “Love for the divine, love for the universe, love for every blessed thing that has ever lived and breathed. Can you not relate?”
“No,” Death says coldly, not taking the bait. It is not love that drives him, only duty, ancient ties, divine vows. “No, I cannot say I can.”
“Pity,” says Shikhandin, shrugging insouciantly, and Death forces himself to not utter something sharp and biting in reply. No soul has ever managed to get under his skin the way Shikhandin has. “Shall we, O’ Dharma Raja?”
Death sighs, leading the way forward, Shikhandin’s footsteps heavy behind him, like the chiming of temple bells, heralding doom.
#
This time, Death finds Shikhandin far quicker than any other time. The happy, carefree life he had been promised as a jungle hare had been upset when some enterprising hunter had chanced upon his burrow. Shikhandin being Shikhandin had bled to death while trying to get his family out of harm’s way. Death comes for both him and his wife, who despite Shikhandin’s best efforts, had still met the same sorry end as her mate.
“I can reincarnate you both together, if you wish,” Death offers. “You and your mate, you can another life together, a better one—”
“Leave it be, Dharma Raja,” pants Shikhandin through his hare’s mouth, the arrow still digging deep into his flesh. “She will not be at peace if she is with me, in this life or the next.”
The truth of it digs into Death, but he cannot—he cannot give in to it. He cannot give up hope yet. “I will not fail you this time,” says Death, hating how the words lack the polish of certainty, the absoluteness of prophecy. “If only you—” he bites back the rest of the words; if only you stop being so noble, so selfless, so intent upon running headfirst into danger.
“O’ Dharma Raja,” says Shikhandin, somehow still managing to sound mocking. “Have you finally started caring for me?”
No, Death thinks resolutely, but he finds the word tangled in his mouth, unable to make it past the tide of feeling in his throat.
#
After Shikhandin’s eighth life as a garden snake had ended with him being beaten to death by a cruel child whom Shikhandin had refrained from biting even when the little monster fully deserved it, Death had made the precarious trek to The Innocent One’s abode, where he lay in deep meditation in the icy terrain, supported by his consort, who had alerted her husband to his presence to his presence in the way only goddesses could, without breaking their penance. “Why?” Death had asked without preamble. They were not equals, but at the moment, Death was also not a supplicant. “Why did you grant her boon, O’ Innocent One?”
The Innocent One opened both of his eyes, his throat harshly blue in the cold morning light. “She had earned it,” he said. “And I have granted worse boons to demon kings and avaricious godlings alike.”
It was just the kind of reasoning The Innocent One would provide, even when said demon kings and avaricious godlings ravaged the world alike. “Did you know—” Death began unthinkingly, then bit his tongue. Did you know the pain he would have to go through, lifetimes of suffering that he would have to endure—
“Dharma Raja.” It was the goddess this time, soft and serene, replete with otherworldly wisdom. “Nothing would have changed; boon or no boon. It is the nature of the soul you call Shikhandin. Surely, after so long, you must have gleaned that much?”
Yes, Death thought wretchedly, thinking of his quick smile, his easy kindness, his implacable honor. But he also recalled the cruel twist of his mouth, the vicious thirst for revenge in his eyes that had burnt as bright as the pyre he had ended his life in. If he had never been wronged in that first life, if the wretched son of Ganga had realized the error of his ways sooner, would Shikhandin still have been the same; breaking himself on causes, no matter small or large?
“Do your duty, O’ Dharma Raja,” said The Innocent One, closing his eyes again. “Do not trouble yourself with ours.”
#
Shikhandin returns to him this time with a missing head, which he tosses in the air as if it were little more than a child’s plaything. “It is a small price to pay, for a girl’s life,” says Shikhandin. “Won’t you agree?”
“You could have just stayed out of the way,” Death suggests. He had come for the offender only days after Shikhandin’s death. If he had been far more brusque than usual, he had not reflected much on it. That wretch deserved it. “Let karma do the needful.”
Shikhandin’s eyes turned hard and sharp as the blade that had lopped his head off. “She would have already suffered by then,” he says, anger underlining his words. “Forced to marry that vile, hateful man whom she does not love—” he breaks off, anger giving way to a charming smile, and Death hates it, hates himself from even touching that wound so callously, which hasn’t healed even after several lifetimes. “What form have you fashioned for me this time, O’ Dharma Raja? A traveling minstrel? A cricket? A rose?”
“A boatman,” says Death quietly. “On the banks of the holy Ganga.”
Shikhandin’s smile does not waver, but it loses some of its shine. “I tried not to,” says Death, and for the first time in his immortal life, he wishes that he were not who he was, tethered to this endless, thankless job, forced to visit pain after pain upon this man who had already suffered so much. “I tried—but sometimes I can’t—these things are out of my hands at times. The Wheel— I am only its keeper, not its master.” It is his curse; his ever-living, unbreakable curse. “It is short, if it is any consolation.” It is the only thing he could have done.
“Yama,” says Shikhandin, voice so achingly gentle it hurts to even hear it. It is the first time he has called Death by another came, anything other than the mockery that is his title. “It is alright. It has been far too long since I have paid my respects to the goddess.”
“You do not have to,” Death says, though he knows somewhere, sometime; he will surely pay for slighting Ganga thusly, but at the moment he does not care. “Shikhandin—”
But the young man is already striding forward, climbing up the rungs of the endlessly-spinning wheel, ready to step into his next life.
#
Ganga is kinder to him than Death expects, and Shikhandin more courteous to the goddess than he has any need to be. He diligently prays to her every morning as he takes his boat out to the holy river’s edge, who carries him across without incident. Sometimes, Shikhandin also sings to the goddess, humorous lyrics in a now dead language that makes her laugh and splash him with the kind of silly affection that a mother shows to her child, causing him to run shrieking from her banks in mock-terror.
“Do you expect me to be cruel because he had a hand in killing my son?” says Ganga haughtily, combing tortoises and fishes from her tresses, smoothing crematory ash from her saree. She looks older now, Death thinks, wearied with all the sins of humanity. But like him, she will not spurn her duty, carrying out her vows to the mortal world until it dissolves itself into the cosmos at last.
It should have made them kindred spirits of a sort, colleagues even. It does not.
“I do not presume anything,” Death reminds her. “But it is not so utterly insensible a notion, considering the history—”
“I loved my son, O’ Dharma Raja,” says Ganga, and her voice rings with the truth of the statement, not altered in a millenia. “But I was not so blinded by it that I did not see his errors.” Ganga finishes patiently. “His is a good soul, O’ Dharma Raja. It is impossible not to love him, even if one tries otherwise.”
Her eyes travel to the other side, where Shikhandin is now entertaining a young couple with his easy boyish charm, rowing the boat steadily forward, ever so carefully. Death winces at the sight. If only he had known Ganga would be this nonchalant, if only he had known beforehand that Shikhandin would be happy—
The boat overturns. Shikhandin, selfless to the bone, tries valiantly to save the couple, but it is no use. Both of them are murderers, who had killed their respective spouses and eloped, and Death now swoops in to collect their souls, tying the top of his knapsack firmly. Cockroaches, he thinks grimly, the kind that only inhabits the sewers.
“Forgive me, Shikhandin,” Death says, turning to the man, who falls into step beside him. “I didn’t—”
“It was a good life, Dharma Raja,” he says, eyes shining with gratitude that he does not deserve. “The best one I have ever lived. Thank you.”
Death turns away, his insides seized in a terrible grip of something he cannot yet describe.
#
Death kneels in front of the endlessly-spinning wheel, Shikhandin steadily ascending, preparing himself yet for another lifetime of pain. “Please,” Death says, voice hoarse with unshed tears. “Has he not suffered enough already? Why do you withhold moksha from him, why do you keep him yoked still, what sins does he still have to answer for?”
“Dharma Raja,” comes a disembodied voice, and Death hates it—hates the title with every fibre of his being. What dharma does he guard, what justice can he claim to deliver—if he cannot save Shikhandin from this never-ending cycle of mortal suffering?
“Dharma Raja,” and it is not a disembodied voice at all but Shikhandin’s, at the very top of the ever-spinning wheel, looking down at him with dark, ancient eyes. Death expects to see condemnation there, accusation, even anger; but he is surprised to find sorrow instead, made sweet with understanding. “It is not a sin at all, but a want.”
#
The next time Shikhandin dies, shot with a dozen burning arrows in the back as he carried across a bunch of tortured children to safety, Death is by his side long before he breathes his last. “Every life I live,” Shikhandin struggles to speak, and Death holds his hands through the awful, awful pain. “I do not only suffer so. It is a blessing to save other lives from harm. It is a gift to know that your death is never in vain.”
Death leaches out the pain from his back in small increments. It is a dreadful sight, but Shikhandin does not whimper; does not cry out in agony, as if he knows it will end soon, that someone will relieve him of it in a moment. “Mortality is not a yoke,” Shikhandin gasps out. “Not to me. It is a garland I shall willingly wear, for several more lifetimes.”
Death closes Shikhandin’s eyes. His soul floats upward, sly and mocking, noble and proud, and Death holds it close to himself, feeling it burn and blaze against his chest.
#
“You cannot do this for me,” Shikhandin says, trying for the umpteenth time now to change his mind. “You are the Dharma Raja—”
“Not anymore,” Death shrugs. The Innocent One had chuckled at his request, but granted the boon, and his consort had winked slyly at him, which Death had chosen to ignore. “It is a title, not a person. Another has taken my place now, and maybe one day, another will replace them as well. It is not my concern anymore. As long as the Wheel keeps spinning, it shall be alright.”
Shikhandin looks as if he wants to argue, which makes Death grin. For the first time, their reactions are mirrored; Shikhandin frustrated, Death irreverent. It is a refreshing change. “It will hurt,” Shikhandin says at last. “It will hurt badly, every time—”
“It is better,” Death says, turning to him. “Than putting myself through the agony of watching you die, time after time, waiting and dreading your return to my domain.”
Shikhandin is quiet then. “Mortality is not a yoke,” Death repeats. “Not if it’s by your side.”
Something flickers in his eyes then, something fierce lining the shape of his soul, and Death thinks he has never seen any soul burn quite so brightly before, a newborn star winking into existence, an endless mine of glowing diamonds.
Shikhandin, Shikhandin, I could live a thousand lifetimes and never grow used to the dazzling brilliance that is you.
“Well then,” says Shikhandin, stepping on the first rung of the Wheel of Resurrection. “Shall we?”
Death smiles. “We shall,” he says, and they both ascend the endlessly-turning wheel, whirling to tumble them into yet another life, not just a wheel anymore but a loop of ever-twisting gilded thread, spinning out golden lifetimes.