(1)

Tara lay down in the desolate cave, on a single hill. Through the threshold, in the darkness before the dawn, she could see the ruins of the medieval village spread before her. Above her on the low roof of the cave and the sidewalls were engraved King Surya’s victories, his words and maybe some withheld facts. She shut her eyes.

(2)
Surya climbed the hill looking down at his conquest. The newest territory he had won. His tired legs moved slowly, but his heart throbbed wildly. Surya’s heart tonight, was the only part of him yielding an imprint to the adventure his life was. Far down he could hear the shouts of approval of his soldiers. He sank down on the ground inside the cave. The prospect of his might thrilled him so that he lost the will to sleep. The sky looked like a carnival of lights. In the darkness, the stars sparkled brighter and shinier and he imagined them making a proclamation of the glories of his 113 annexations to the world, over which the night had drawn.

(3)
Tara lying still, sought impatiently something, she was herself clueless about. A middle aged man draped in white shroud crept into the cave and sat against the cave wall.

“Silence is bottomless like a well. If you seek answers there, you will drown.”

Her eyes wide open, she rose on her elbows astound.

“I did not see you were here, Sir.”

“I just came in. I see you have come by yourself. Where is your team?”

“They are back at the government inn. But who are you?”

“I live close. I was just going up to the temple. What do you seek here?”

“Our job is done here, Sir. The Archaeological Survey sent a team of historians, fact checkers to survey this cave. We are going back home today.”

“What brings you here again with no team and company?”

“I was just here for a final check, making sure everything is accounted for.”

“Most of the others, I fear to admit, who came before seemed admirably sure about what they saw and recorded.”

“Yes.” In a childish whisper Tara spoke as she rose to her feet.

“I like to think there is more to places, buried deep, than others are too hurried to notice. Maybe I would discover a truth?”

(4)

Since last year the days of Suryan army were happy ones. It scored one victory after another. Travelling, forging ahead. There was rejoicing and greater absoluteness in his kingdom. He was a seasoned fighter who had once been a peasant. He proved his mettle at a very young age. Whichever army crossed his battlefield, it was crushed.

With a bold stroke he pulled out his dagger and started chiseling the cave walls. A silence fell about outside as the 113 names of his territories marched with drum rolls in his mind.

(5)

“Mana…” Tara traced with her fingers the last name engraved on the wall. They came quickly into her consciousness. She breathed the final sentence on the wall- “‘the treasured of all- “

She peered about uncertainly with the old man intently gazing her.

“It’s plain. The glories the Mana conquest brought him were the treasures. So Mana is the most treasured of all!”

“-but you don’t believe that?”

“Its strange he would die that night with no fatal injures, assumedly of heart failure, engraving his winnings. What was he doing that night?”

(6)
The sky was pink. Surya gazed out at the morning sky which lightened with the moon’s partial departure. He rose from the ground. He could figure his way back home now. Much had to be done at the castle. Out of the silence a thought arose. He stooped and picked the dagger and carved- ‘the treasured of all- ‘

“My home!” he thought lovingly. But the dagger did not move. It did not carve the name. He laughed pressing the dagger in both his palms. He paused, touching the point of the dagger on the wall.

“God!” He said.

“No!” He spoke again.
The dagger slipped from his failing grip. He fell on his knees. He labored with the unexpected loss.

“Where did I belong?”
A chiseling pain rose from his heart and he collapsed.

Lying there he thought – “My home?”

He wondered in a trembling daze, a pain pierced his body like a thousand daggers stabbing all over. The graces his mother paid to the Gods reverberated in silence-

“Thank you God, for our home. May we never lose it or seek it elsewhere!”

The childish nightmare of losing safety laid on him and engulfed him, the fearless Surya breathing low spoke-

(7)

“His unfinished words- ‘I am far from home!’ “The old man spoke grimly

Tara stood at the gateway lost in her thoughts, half-listening. The stars faded away and light absorbed the darkness.

“The army found him here and took him back down, to his home.”

She gazed at the mural glowing on the walls as mellow golden sunlight flooded the hillside.

“….and her. She still looks as beautiful and alive as she must have been then. Love has remained unfading. They say, she was Surya’s love. Every time they met, he pinned a bunch of these flowers she is holding to her cascading curls and told her they flourished in a home where he belonged. Later, his subjects painted her as she was remembered- an unfailing lover, at the cave, with a fistful of hope that someday he would know his way back home.”

Tara mounted her horse. The old man stood inside.

“Home-Where? Do you know where?”

“Down there to Mana. The town he raided. The 113th conquest of Surya. He raided his own home.”

She rode away under the fading stars. She heard a thump behind her as her horse jumped from the escarpment. She rode on. Her heart was hammering and the night air chilling her through her flimsy drape. The cave overhead was menacing. Somewhere far behind she heard a man’s cry. She rode on without stopping.

(8)

A few hours later, in the train back home Tara wrote down the last piece of information. Her pen dropped and struck at her foot like a dagger. She read what she wrote.

“The old man spoke Surya’s unfinished words- I am far from home”