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The holy thread dug into his wrist like the metal wire with sharpened barbs he'd seen on English barriers. Not only the pressure of his body weight caught on his wrist, tight over the joint, but the pain in his heart of his anna's betrayal.
He had thought that nothing could hurt more than Malli's frenzied pleading, of the tears in her eyes as she begged for her freedom, for him to not leave her behind but to take her home.
Then he had seen Ram so still and sickly, sinking into death with grayed lips and unfocused eyes. Limp as a freshly slain carcass in his arms, but feverishly warm as the menaag venom stole away his precious friend's life.
And then, only hours after he had thought Ram safe and saved, he was confronted by a stranger wearing Ram's face, speaking with his voice, but sounding so different; cruel and cold and nothing like his dearest friend.
The man that looked like his anna but wore that terrible police uniform fought him, tore at his hands to try to put them into cold metal cuffs. He spoke in that horrid English tongue that had been the language of cruelty outside of a few notable exceptions. (One of whom, he had thought, had been Ram).
And now, the English Governor had a weapon aimed at Malli, poor Malli, crying and being held still like a lamb for slaughter.
And the man he trusted with his life and the great weight of the mission on his shoulders only an hour ago had used the holy thread Bheem had placed on him as prayer to the gods for his anna's life as a weapon against him. The holy thread had not only been removed, the man whose name he couldn't bear to even think for the great pain in his heart of betrayal, had cut the holy thread, broken it and used it as a weapon to restrain him.
And after all that, the traitor he had thought his dearest friend had said to him with a firm and low voice; “Surrender, if you want Malli to live,”
Bheem could take this no more.
He roared, a sound of anguish. Of a wolf separated from its family pack and wounded, knowing it had not the strength to return to its home. Of a tiger beaten and trapped, having failed to rescue its cubs.
The sound of a man, betrayed by someone he held so dear and had so much trust for, he could never have seen this cruel twist of fate coming.
He wrapped his fist around the holy thread, with a burst of rage he found the strength enough to lift himself and strike the man that had caused this great breaking in his heart.
The policeman's face snapped to the side with the club of his fist.
Bheem had not expected the blow to free him.
And yet, in mere seconds, he found himself falling, and just above him, Ram was falling too.
The stone ground rushed to meet them in a solid collision, rattling his teeth and forcing his body to bend and buckle.
Ram stumbled to his feet.
Bheem did not, not with multiple guns aimed at him, and more importantly, one trained on Malli.
Now, he could see how grayed Ram still was, the sheen of sweat on his brow and an unhealthy glaze in his eyes. A red streak of blood ran into and then out of his right eye, like a mockery of tears.
Bheem wished himself to not be foolish enough to worry. But he was a healer as well as a protector, and he had known Ram as a friend, as bhaiyya far longer than he had as this cruel stranger in an English police uniform.
The white men in their cruel uniforms dragged him away from Malli as she cried. He did not, he had no tears left on this night, his eyes were dried. Malli was still alive, he was still alive, there was a chance, however small, that he could still succeed, even though he had failed that night.
Officer Alluri Rama Raju was not strong, not by his own standards. Akht- Bheem may have given him a cure for the banded krait venom, but though he was no longer dying, he certainly wasn't healthy by any means. He could feel the after-effects of near death still slowing his reaction, resisting his every movement and effort.
It had taken all his strength to fight and capture Akh- Bheem, the Gond Protector.
Now that it was over, the adrenaline was wearing off, and so was his strength. He had been dying only hours ago, and he could feel that again. The sickly warm sweat on his brow, the fever returning. The deep ache in every muscle and burning like embers within his bones. His shirt and uniform clung to his skin. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and blood.
He could taste the krait venom in his blood.
He may have received the cure, but the poison was still there, it had still done its damage, sapping him of his strength.
But he couldn't let that stop him. So long as he lived he would be working towards this goal. He promised Baba. Alluri Rama Raju had suffered and sacrificed himself and his morals time and time again for that promise, for that goal.
Akhtar… no, Bheem was not the first he'd turned over to the British, not by far.
And Raju was not foolish enough to delude himself into thinking he would be the last.
Whatever it took. He had to keep moving towards his goal.
The Brittishers had Bheem surrounded. They dragged him away in chains.
Raju tried to tune out the sound of the girl's cries. He was not successful.
He tried to think of the hundreds of children that his goal would free, hopefully, the revolution would free this Gond girl as well.
If not… how could he say her life was worth more than the countless that would be saved from British rule? Bheem was only one man.
It shouldn't matter how much Akhtar… Bheem had meant to him. He'd already made his choice, the choice he was always going to make.
He was Baba's most loyal soldier. He would not break his word.
He was dismissed, told to clean himself up. It took all his strength to salute and keep himself upright as he stumbled towards the barracks.
He washed the blood off his face, out of his hair. Tried not to think about how some of it may be Akh-Bheem's. Tried not to think about what the Governor would do to Bheem for the destruction he wrought on the estate.
The Freedom of the country came before the freedom of one man and one child. ( But it wasn’t just them two, was it?) (How many more would he sacrifice for his goal?) (How much more of himself was there left to give to his cause?)
The water he splashed on his face washed away the blood, but did nothing for the open wounds nor the cloying weight it always left on his skin, tangible guilt.
The next day the British presented him with the red uniform of a special officer. It was not the red of the British flag, or the flag of the British Raj, it was the red of blood. He knew he may be the first man of Indian blood to wear this uniform. He knew the fear and distrust it would instill in the people he was working to free. But being seen as a traitor was not new to him. He had done all those horrible things they accused him of. He had betrayed his closest friend, a man whose cause was just as noble.
He was strong enough on his feet to stand and salute as one of the foolish British men who behind his back he knew would liken him to a dog pinned a medal to the breast of his blood-red uniform.
He knew that he should be happy. Fifteen years' worth of hard work was finally paying off. He was closer than he had ever been to fulfilling the promise he’d etched into his soul that day with Baba.
His forearm stung, and the punctures from the krait fangs remained blackened; open, bloodless wounds. He could feel the venom in his veins still, the Gond cure fighting against it, the inside of his body just as much a place of war as his mind was.
It took only two days for Raju to realize that the weakness was far less temporary than he had first thought. The menaag venom was in his veins and it was there to stay.
He knew why.
The cure Akhtar-Bheem had given him had only started working after he'd taken off his own holy thread and placed it over Raju's head, tucking it around him like a vow.
Raju had taken the holy thread and broken it, he had snapped it and used it against Bheem, despite all the man had done for him. Bheem had made the vow and Raju had broken it, so the gods had revoked their earlier mercies.
And Raju knew that he deserved it.
The poison would not kill him yet, but it would stay with him. It would circulate in his bloodstream until he died or the gods deemed him punished enough for his misdeeds.
(And he knew, just as he always had, that the violence he enacted on the people of his country in chasing the goal of their freedom were still misdeeds. That the acts were no less terrible that his cause was just.) (But Rama Raju was prepared to sacrifice his soul and every bit of himself for the freedom Baba taught him, and he was prepared to sacrifice whatever he had to to reach that goal, just as Baba said).
The Governor summoned him from the barracks. Raju did not stumble or sway on his feet as the white man gave him petty praises and called him 'young man' in a tone that Raju knew meant the bastard saw him as no more than a boy or a well-trained dog.
These white men never did think of him as truly a man, he had always known this. He bit down his fury, swallowing it to burn in his chest, as his skin prickled into a sweat.
These British clothes were so ill-equipped for the climate of Dehli.
The sweat turned cold as the Governor continued, "I want him flogged, publicly. I want an example to be made, so that no one ever dares to rise against the British again!"
Raju bit down on his tongue. He tasted blood and the lingering hint of something else in his blood.
"Oh, I want to see him bleed," the vicious pale woman the Governor called his wife cooed as if his people's suffering were a game to watch for her own amusement.
Raju bit his tongue.
"And so you shall my dear," Governor Scott smiled, charmed by the cruelty of his wife.
Raju bit his tongue and swallowed his own blood, still tasting the poison of the krait's bite flowing through his veins.
"You, young man, I'd like you to do the job," there was a gleam in the white man's cold, steel eyes. It was a test.
"Of course sir, it would be an honor, sir," he answered with a salute. Officer A. Rama Raju, the obedient dog, Officer A. Rama Raju, always falling into line, performing above and beyond on each and every one of his commands. Officer A. Rama Raju, eager to show that he could be an effective tool for the British Empire despite the color of his skin.
He did not remember much between the assignment and when he arrived at the stocks only a day later, feeling it had both been a lifetime and merely moments.
He knew he had thought of nothing but the event.
It was good that it was he who would be carrying out Ah-Bheem's punishment. He had seen the glee with which the white Officers flogged and beat his people. He had seen some flogged to death.
If it was him to hold the whip, he could try to keep Bheem alive, he could try to keep Bheem from getting too hurt.
Though the venom in his veins felt all the more heavy as white men pushed the man he wished he could still call brother onto the platform in chains.
Raju wished to apologize, fall to his knees before his friend and beg forgiveness. For what he'd done and what he would still have to do.
Instead, Raju bit his tongue, and blinked back the sting of tears building in his eyes.
He could not let these white men see him cry. He could not let them suspect he harbored and doubts for what he was ordered to do.
"The criminal will now drop to his knees, repent for his crimes against the crown, and beg the Governor for forgiveness," his voice was loud, low, but it felt as though it was not his own, "If he fails to do this; he will be punished severely!" These were not his words, he was a mouthpiece for the British, spouting their horrid message to oppress his own people.
He circled the platform, coming to stand at Bheem's side, where he stood, wrists chained to the stocks, feet chained to somewhere far behind him, the cold metal links limp upon the wooden floor, stained with the blood of too many before Bheem.
"Kneel down now, Bheem," he spoke low and firm, though inside he was shaking, "Kneel down and confess your crimes, or I will have to hurt you," the last part was a plea. One he hoped with equal fervor that Bheem would recognize and that he would listen.
Bheem did not kneel.
He did not move but for a hardening in the line of his jaw.
It had been too foolish to hope that he would not have to do this. Raju rarely let himself hope this foolishly, he had forgotten how it hurt.
He handed his uniform helmet off to the nearest officer, a cruel man who would have no doubt, taken glee at the chance to flog any Indian man for any crime.
With the first crack of the whip, the fabric of Bheem's kurta split and the man flinched and hissed. The audience, present and watching only under fear of Scott's orders, flinched with Bheem.
Slow soreness coiled around Raju's lungs, making breathing a labor. He could taste the venom, feel it awakening in his veins, all throughout his body. Most tender and fiery on his left forearm, where the unhealed bite still lay, black puncture marks beneath the sleeve of his blood-red uniform jacket.
He struck Bheem with the whip thirteen more times before stepping on the lengths of chains that bound the Gond Protector's feet and pulled back sharply, daring to hope that he could end this quickly.
Even if Bheem did not confess, if he could get him to kneel, maybe then, this would be over.
And he foolishly allowed himself to hope again.
The sweat on his brow was sweet and unnatural, the soreness in his muscles not from the bruises from combat against Bheem, or from the not-insubstantial effort it took to flog a man with such a whip.
The Governor's wife was a blood-thirsty woman Raju would have liked to call a monster, but he knew, just as every other Britisher, she was only human.
She threw down another whip with a request to go with it.
Raju could only obey. If he did not, one of the white officers would. And they would not try to save Bheem. They would show no mercy.
His hands were pale as he picked up the new whip, this one with nails and barbs braided into its length.
It would not strike and break the skin from one strike. It would dig in and tear.
The bile in his throat tasted like blood and venom. And he could feel more of it awaken from its dormant, cured state.
If he dropped dead while flogging Bheem, what then would happen to his friend?
He raised the whip back and threw his arm forward, wishing he could look away from how it wrapped around the man he called his dearest friend and stayed, before he tugged backward and each barb and nail tore through Bheem's kurta and his bloodied flesh below.
Then, Bheem started to sing.
And as he sang his gaze hardened and he stood.
"Make that bastard kneel, now!" Scott roared.
Though he could feel the venom in his heart building with the fresh searing pain of guilt, Raju raised the whip and acted like the ruthless loyal dog they expected him to be.
Bheem was not so naive to think the world did not have cruelty in it. He knew cruelty. He knew pain.
These English with their white skin and foreign language thought of themselves above everyone else because their skin was not brown. Because they knew their own language and very little of the languages spoken in this land.
He knew that the police were often the cruelest of the white men.
He had known there were men in the police uniform who were not white, men who betrayed their own people and all that looked like them by wearing British uniforms and enforcing British rule.
He had been horrified to find that Ram, a man he called bhaiyya, a man he called anna, to be one of them.
He knew Ram had not told him the whole truth of himself, he had not thought being a police officer to be among that truth. He had never known Ram to be cruel.
And yet here a man with Ram's face stood, with his beard shaved away into one of those British styles of facial hair. Trying to look like one of the white men. He wore a blood-red coat with shining medals and ribbons to boast of his cruelties. Holding a whip in his hands.
Ram would be the one to do it then.
He wanted to scream. Had breaking his trust not been enough? Had breaking the holy thread, the vow and prayer for the safety and health of his anna not been enough?
Though the datura root mixture he'd made had worked, Bheem felt as though his Ram, the dear friend he called anna had died that night.
That the Ram before him now was some cruel stranger, standing proud in a blood-red coat, as if to boast of the violence he enacted in the name of the white people and their commands.
When the second whip tore into his flesh, like the teeth of a saw, Bheem knew that the Ram he had known before must have been a trick.
He could feel the wind on his face, hear how it rustled the leaves in every tree, see a puddle of water rippling and the dust of the earth dancing.
He was the Protector of the Gond tribes. He would not fall down and kneel for these cruel tyrants. He would not kneel for the man he once called brother.
And so, he found in his heart, a song.
He faltered on only a few notes as the toothed whip struck him.
Ram looked grayed, as he had that night, sweat shining on his brow, his hair plastered to it.
Bheem pushed it down and continued, letting his voice ring louder, the music in his heart a gift from Mother Earth, just as his life, and he would give it freely, loudly. He glared at each British uniform and turned his head to stare into the cruel eyes of the Governor and his wife.
They could kill him, but they would not make him kneel. He would not give them that satisfaction.
All he had to do to know his heart had changed was to feel the earth soaked with Bheem's blood, to rub the grit of it between his fingers and feel the echoing ache of the snake bite he'd suffered what seemed like a lifetime ago.
Babai found him like that, sat close to the earth, pressing his feverish palms into the bloodied dirt, transfixed and nauseated.
This blood had been spilled by him.
He had done this.
He had done this to his friend.
"Raju! You've been chosen for the next gun consignment!"
His head whipped up. Victory, joy, years of work and sacrifice finally paying off.
He heard the crack of the whip in his ears and felt the burning pulse of venom sink into his lungs.
The shipment was in two days.
The same day they would execute Bheem.
He was not thinking of his cause, of himself, but of Bheem. The people needed hope more than they needed weapons. With hope, each person had become a weapon. He had seen the carnage and chaos that the crowd had wrought on the British forces after Bheem's song.
It turned out to be remarkably easy to plan the escape of a prisoner, the execution of that plan, less so.
He didn't know what it had been that had tipped Scott off, but something had, and the car had been thrown from the road.
Raju found himself stabbed in the back, just as he had done to Bheem.
It was poetic. Almost.
Except, he was trying to help Bheem now, and he needed to make sure the girl was safe.
He would gladly die, after he had returned to Gond girl to her tribe's Protector.
Then he was on the ground, the blue sky stretching out above him.
Everything hurt.
There was a face blocking out the sky, he could see the shape of dark curls. The face was angry, scowling, snarling. Holding something up over him, as if to bring it down and to hurt him.
That made sense, he’d done so many horrible things. He would deserve it.
He knew this face somehow…
“Tam’mudu?” His voice was small, he was choking, he could taste blood, everywhere, there was blood. He was stained with it, innocents, the blood of his people, Baba…
Tam’mudu froze above him, he reached out. His hand was clammy with fever-sweat tam’mudu’s hand shook as he wrapped his around it, over whatever it was tam’mudu was holding.
“I’m sorry, tam’mudu, I should have saved you before, I’m sorry,”
Tam’mudu was dead he knew, he didn’t know why it was tam’mudu’s hand felt so warm and firm under his. He must be dying.
Yes, that sounded right. This feeling of fire and pain and bone-deep tiredness, he must be dying.
Then why was tam’mudu here already? If he was not yet dead?
Tam’mudu had died fifteen years ago, this face was a man’s.
The man was tam’mudu, but not that tam’mudu.
How had he forgotten? Akhtar… no, his name had been Bheem, hadn’t it? His true name?
It didn’t matter that he had lied, about his name and where he was from, Raju had done far worse to their bond. Bheem was his tam’mudu all the same.
“I’m sorry I stopped you, tam’mudu, I never wanted to turn against you,” he was clinging onto that hand, his tam’mudu’s hand, against the weapon.
He didn’t see how tam’mudu reacted as his eyes rolled back and his clammy hand fell to the dust earth. Venom-laced blood flowed freely, underneath him, blackening the blood-red special officer uniform that painted him a traitor against his people.
Alluri Rama Raju fell fast into the embrace of the menaag venom's poison with no expectation of ever seeing sunlight again.
“ Anna? ”
Bheem startled, looking up. Malli.
“Anna, is he okay?”
He opened his mouth as if to speak, but he could not find the words.
“Anna, please don’t hurt him,” Malli said, her lip was wobbling and her eyes filling with tears, she had seen so much cruelty, so much violence.
“He- he was going to hurt you,” he said, knowing that these words he spoke would make no difference.
“Anna, he brought me to you,” she cried.
“He-, Malli, he has hurt us both, he is the policeman that stopped me from taking you home those nights ago,” even as he tried to explain to her why he should make sure that Ram the traitor wouldn’t follow them, he knew in his heart that he could not. Even if the man hadn’t called him tam’mudu, he would not have been able to.
“But anna, he called you-”
“I know, Malli,” he interrupted, tossing the bit of wood to the side with a heaving sigh. Even if she were not here, he knew he would not be able to go through with it, even if the Ram he had known had been a lie, the fondness he knew for the man was as true in his heart as it had always been. Even as that fondness stung with the wounds of betrayal.
Bheem fled with Malli on his back, trying not to think about how he had wanted to forgive Ram as he had reached a grayed and clammy hand up and pleaded in apologies with glassy eyes and blood on his chin.
Perhaps what made Bheem want to forgive him most was that Ram had never asked for his forgiveness.
"Keep the traitorous bastard alive, Governor Scott wants him publicly executed,"
"Edward, tell the Governor that I will do all I can, but it is out of my hands if this man dies,"
"How so?"
The doctor lifted one grayed and pallid arm, in the meat of the man's brachioradialis were two blackened punctures.
"What's that?"
"These are from a snake bite, either common krait or banded krait,"
"And?"
"Both are venomous and do not have antidotes," the doctor explained, "If it is the common krait he may live long enough for an execution at the end of the week,"
"And the other kind?"
"Dead within the hour."
Edward nodded, and rushed to find a way to pass along the information without putting his head on the chopping block.
He didn't need to. Though former special officer A. Rama Raju did not wake, he also did not die.
Months after escaping Dehli, still on the run from the police officers and the white men's army, Bheem finally met the woman he had already called vadina, as her fiance he had once called bhai and anna.
Ram's Seetha spun a true tale of tragedy and dedication. And Bheem found his heart breaking for the same man yet again.
Ram had betrayed him still. But he had done it for the cause of a free India; for the land and all its people. Not just for the freedom of one child.
Ram had been the one to organize the circumstances of his escape. Those cruel words he'd spoken about making Malli watch his execution were a ruse to free Malli and help him to bring her back home to her mother.
And he would learn this only as Ram was to be hanged in two days.
He wept and his hands shook, how much violence had he enacted on his anna? Had his own betrayal not hurt Ram just as much?
How much had his anna sacrificed for years for his cause, only to throw it all away for one man?
He takes Seetha's hands between his own and vows to bring her Ram back to her.
It feels like that night, a vow made that he would gladly die for.
If he must burn down all of the Governor's buildings he will.
(He had beaten his anna, even as the man had been working to free him, to rescue him from his execution just as Ram had done for him was the very least that he could do).
Raju woke to find cold stone at his back and steel manacles on his wrists and ankles.
He was still alive, though he had no idea how, or why.
"You're alive," a British man said in wonder. He had the strength enough to break his nose before other officers came to his aid.
He was weaker now, and there were many Britishers eager to beat him. He was almost as weak as he had been, dying of the snake bite as Bheem fell to his knees before him and cured him, prayed to the gods to spare his life and placed his holy thread over Ram's head in a sacred vow. (A vow which Raju had broken).
He wished he could go back to that moment, that night, close his eyes and lie in his bed, and wait, let Bheem rescue little Malli, come what may.
British boots met his ribs, pulling him out of his mind, out of the past.
His throat felt scraped raw as he shouted. It felt as if he'd gone months without drinking.
With how his matted hair fell into his face, it may have been.
Governor Scott came to visit him that day.
The soldiers rip his head back by his hair to force him to look at the man.
He spat. Watching with satisfaction as the white man's thin lips curl downward.
They broke his knees for his disobedience.
Then, they dragged him to a cold hole in the earth's belly with stone walls more unforgiving and damp. The noise that passed his lips upon impact could not have been bitten back, not with how thick his dry tongue felt in his mouth, how dry his throat was.
"Can't wait to see the bastard hang," one of the Englishmen snarled as the door slammed down and metal bars snapped down over the square of sky he could still see.
"Thursday can't come fast enough," another replied, with a click, a padlock shut him in.
The beaten, bloodied man tipped his head back and laughed, dropping the last of his guard down, dropping the last of his acts.
Raju: diligent officer was no more. Raju who could sacrifice everything and everyone for his cause of a free India was dying now too.
Ram: friend of Akhtar, no, friend of Bheem, that was all he left to be. That was all that he wanted.
He knew he would not see Seetha again. Part of him had known the day that he'd left her on the shore, that he wouldn't see her again in this life.
And Babai... he hoped that Babai had escaped Dehli after he'd sabotaged the weapons shipment and freed Bheem.
He hoped Babai would forgive him. That Baba would forgive him for breaking his promise.
He didn't know what day it was, or how much time he had left.
It felt like that night, he would soon be dead, and all he could think of was how much he would like to see his friend one last time.
Time passed like summer heat, slow and building in the stagnant air of his new cell. He sleeps fitfully through the days, through the pain, wondering as the sun rose above him, if this was the last day he would see.
Then the sun set.
They did not waste rations on a man set for execution.
His cell was cold, and there was barely enough room to turn himself around in it.
There was enough room to curl his broken knees to his chest and try to pull himself up by the bars on the cell door above him. He had only a few inches he could lift himself.
The sky brightened and darkened again, and he was still alive. Next, he woke it was still dark, his clothes were still torn and stuck with blood, sweat, and grime.
He was weak and hurting, death approaching slowly, like an old relative. Something had woken him.
Some sound, some change in the night.
Ram adjusted himself as much as he could in the stone hole in the ground. His head came to rest against the stone wall behind him feeling...
He turned sharply, placing his ear against the stone wall.
It was not the pounding of marching feet or an ambling horse. It was more rhythmic than that. It was drumming.
Ram didn't know how he knew, but he knew that it was Bheem. He knew as the drumbeat matched the rhythm of his heart.
Then above him, he heard a voice he'd thought he'd never again hear with any warmth or fondness.
"Anna, anna," he had thought he'd never hear Bheem call him brother again.
He reached his hand up, between the bars, to feel the warmth of his friend's breath on his palm and the soft scrape of Bheem's beard. How warm Bheem's face felt in his hand, how warm Bheem's hand was, clinging his hand to his face.
"Bheem, tam'mudu, why did you come?"
"Forgive me, anna," Bheem whispered, choking as his wide eyes welled up with tears. They shone so brightly in the moonlight.
"I've already forgiven you, tam'mudu," the words came easily, and with them, he could feel something lighten in his chest, an ache he'd gotten used to finally leaving. "Who told you?" he asked when Bheem met his gaze again.
Wordlessly, Bheem answered. Then he reached down and made the shell pendant over his heart whole again, just as Bheem had done with his heart and life.
Ram smiled. He had wished to only see the man he called brother once more before dying. But like that night, Bheem would not let Lord Yama take him yet.