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heroes-hq-blog1 · 5 years

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MERLIN IS OFFICIALLY READY TO JOIN THE ACADEMY!

› KITTIBUN “KIT” KARA › 23 YEARS OLD › CHAOS MAGIC › 8 YEARS IN THE ACADEMY

POWER

chaos magic: it is the superhuman ability to generate and control various forms of magic and other mystical and supernatural forces.

STRENGTHS + the user can perform spells with a different variety of effects such as (teleportation, conjuration, healing_ + the user can manipulate different forces of nature through the use of this power + can affect probability by distorting the energy field of things it affects therefore creating chaos

WEAKNESSES - if the user can’t hear their spell they will be null - if the user’s concentration is broken their power will result in a backlash that damages the user and drains their stamina - the user is limited to the use of their imagination in the acts they wish to perform with this power. - user cannot use more than one spell at a time.- user requires a period of rest after using their ability; the longer the ability is used, the longer the period of rest. -the use can only handle a limited amount of force behind the spells and usage of powers, anything exceeding these limits will cause strain and destruction of the user’s body

ORIGINS

Money, Pride, Gluttony, Lust, desperation, these things have ruled the world for time immemorial, moving the foundation of where once stood virtues and values, are now just ruled by these powers that expand and encroach on everything they can clasp their claws on. Years go by and the rich get richer, the poor keep falling in a cycle of depravity, forced to commit acts, atrocious they may be, but only so that a family would be able to eat, have a roof over their heads, and survive. The organization feeds on these people for their purposes, dawning on them with false hope, as long as they abide by their rules, but at what cost? How much would a single person give up, to have food on the table? One particular family was met with this decision. A corporation was building a program, where a mutant would be subjected to multiple tests in the hopes of becoming their ultimate weapon, a pawn in their game, the perfect soldier for their empire. To end mutants once and for all, they would use the very thing they’re trying to destroy. If you can’t control it, then what use is it to them?

They were very forward with their program, calling out to families in the slums to provide any mutants they had in their family, and they would have a vast compensation. Many families handed in their loved ones, desperation taking over the love they were supposed to have in their hearts. What’s the price of one, to be able to maintain three, four others? Kit the child of a family of four was given up so that they cold survive. It was a quick process, signing forms, demonstrate the child’s power, and how powerful they could grow, and Kit piqued their interest from the moment they laid eyes on him. He was something special to them, something they could mold in their image, and for whatever purposes they would have in store for the young mutant. As a child it was easy to convince Kit of their ideals, fallacies of world peace were provided to the boy, and they made it seem as if their true wasn’t the extermination of mutants, but the protection of mutant kind. The young boy was just pawn in their elaborate game, how could a child ever understand how nefarious adults could be, people who once used to be children themselves now corrupt beings, filled with hate, and led by avarice.

A Reality warper that was the coined term that they called the young boy. Someone who could do more than just manipulate the element; his true power lied in ability to sense all phenomenon related to this power. Able to use his powers in a myriad of new and untested ways. With time his powers grew, and it seemed that Kit would be one of the organization’s greatest asset. They trained the boy in all sorts of combat and espionage, made him solve puzzles, and they tested him at every corner, each day would be a new challenge, and Kit felt that this was just his life, the training necessary to become the hero they told him he’d be. As he grew in rank and power, he underwent different types of training, each one more strenuous than the last, but all in the hopes that this child could fulfill their wishes. Everything changed the day Kit met another young boy, a boy that had the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.

The two boys were placed together forced into each other’s lives. This way the boys became friends, the only two children at the facility. It wasn’t something quick Kit had tried to approach the other many times, but it seemed the boy suffered from severe shyness, always scurrying away or hiding at the sight of Kit. Still, the other child never stopped trying; he always kept a smile on his face in the hopes that this other boy could hopefully become his new family. It took a month before the other boy finally directed words at Kit, and even then it was just one. With time the two warmed up to each other, doing everything together, and they promised that no matter what they would hold each other’s hands through it all, they would both become the heroes that saved mutant kind. Each day was another day together for them, helping each other through the challenges that were placed in front of them at the facility, the boys learned to rely on another, and cover the other’s faults. They were a team, and they seemed to want it that way, the two were happy together they had found a home in one another.

With the passage of time the late night whispers turned into intimate conversations, they loved learning about each other, and every day there was something new to be told, another story, another venture. It was to be expected that the two fell for each other; everything they’d gone through together just cemented those budding feelings. A confession turned into affection, affection turned into a kiss. The following months were the greatest of Kit’s life, they were allowed to be together at all times within the facility, and they ate up every moment together, wondering about life on the outside, and how things have changed, and the things they’d do together once it was their time to be the heroes they were trained to be. Promises of marriage, love, building a family, the young boys dreamt of it all, it seemed that they just thought they were meant for one another, the perfect half for the other’s mold. It was perfect, truly, and utterly perfect, while it lasted.

No matter how much one tries to bury the truth, it always finds a way to surface. While their lives seemed perfect, the duo’s tasks were becoming more and more draining, barely able to move the very next day, but they knew they had to, it was their duty. Kit was being subjected to random blood tests, and forced to take many drugs of unknown effects, it seemed that they was becoming more and more ruthless with their treatment. Kit was finding their activity more perturbing, they changed from the warm and caring people he knew from around the base to cold and distant strangers in the blink of an eye. His curiosity grew, and he couldn’t put his finger on it, but the whole program, everything just seemed wrong. A heavy toll was taken on Kit daily, and he tried to tell the other boy about what he was feeling, but he was dismissed with just being paranoid, silly, or simply anxious.

For a while Kit agreed, maybe it was just all in his mind, the simple paranoia that soon enough they would both be deployed, and the burden of becoming heroes was a closer reality than before. Still he had his doubts; nothing was as picture perfect as it once appeared to be. Kit didn’t know if it was chance, or clues were placed before him, so he could finally uncover the truth behind the organization, and its dark agenda. Kit heard them talking, whispering about the progress of another secret project, about how rumors were spreading, and that they were almost ready to begin their final phase. Kit felt alarmed as he heard them talk, this new project seemed to be of great importance, and somehow he knew that he was at the center of it all. That night he decided to snoop around see what he could find and bring back for the other boy, the one whom he was in love to see. But what he found, he could have never been ready for.

The lower levels, where only the ones with the highest clearance could enter, it was almost impenetrable, almost. Thanks to his powers, Kit could bypass any security measures undetected, they had trained him for this very thing, but they never expected that it would be his downfall. Past bleak lights, and dark, damp corridors, he followed his instincts, where the strongest surges of power took him, the pull was far too strong to deny. Through metal sliding doors, Kit had found it, or better said, them. Clones, all in pods, all the same, all bearing Kit’s face. The boy looked in horror at the duplicates in stasis, all bred for some reason, their numbers far too vast to count. Then it hit him, all the clones where of himself, not one was of the other boy. He ran as fast as he could, careful to not leave a trace of his discovery, he had to be careful, he had to stop this, and he needed answers. Kit decided that the next night he would show the other boy just what he uncovered.

He played along, like he never left the room, like he was just the same clueless boy following every order. Kit tried to talk to the other boy, but that day they had been separated, the other boy was told that he’d need to be subjected to a very new test, one that Kit could not take part of. In some part of his being, a sense of dread fell over Kit, and he couldn’t tell why, so far his feelings had been very true, so this eerie sensation shook him to the core. The day had been far too long, and yet no sign of the other male, Kit was just informed that the boy’s test was long, and that he’d need to perform his task through the night. This forced Kit into action, escaping his room, trying to find where exactly the other was. What he found, it wasn’t him, at least not anymore, the person he was looking for was gone, and in his place stood madness, depravity, something Kit didn’t want to see.

Blood was splattered across every wall, only one light seemed to function as it tittered back and forth, shining over the boy. At his feet piles of bodies, the clones, images of Kit broken, torn apart, dead just painting every crevice of that room. No sheer amount of words could explain what Kit was witnessing. The boy ran to the other, Kit took him in his arms, holding him close as he tried to ask for an explanation, why had he done this, why was he now a killer. The other just stood frozen, not uttering a single word until men in white coats entered the room. They answered each and every question, before Kit could even ask them. They were never meant to be heroes, only weapons, meant to track down and kill other supers, or bring them in to further Organization’s study of powered kind. They had devised a plan for the two boys, for them to become as close to the other as possible, and then use that about of emotion to create the perfect weapons against those with powers, stripped of all emotions, just one who was able to follow orders without hesitation, the perfect killing machine.

Kit’s part was just to provide the perfect practice dummies for the other. To be the perfect challenge, the perfect contender for that boy, they were meant to fight each other, and whoever came out the victor would become their greatest asset. The boy’s anger grew, how could they use them like that? How could the other boy just go along with it, when they promised that they would save the world together, be together, become a family. Flashes ran through the whole facility, Kit intended to bring it down along with every project and secret they had. Before he could the man said that there were facilities all over the world, all filled with clones of Kit, ready to be pitted against the boy to train him and make him grow stronger until he was finally able to strike down Kit. A blur, that’s all that Kit can recall as he let his powers rampant across the facility, destroying everything in his path. Before everything could be destroyed, he gathered the coordinates of all the facilities spread across the world, and he began on his path, to stop them, and to put a stop to the sad fate his clones were forced to face.

The aftermath was hazy, smoke rose from the ruins of an enormous building as police, heroes, and other swarmed around. The only living thing in the surrounding area was a 15 year old boy, one who didn’t utter a single word but he was fund unscathed in the rubble, surrounded by a bubble of pure red energy. Kit was then taken it, unveiling to the authorities what the facility was and who they were, and all that they were planning. With no real information on the boy or his family’s whereabouts, he was thrust into the hands of the academy as there was no other way he could be let out into the public with his powers being a potential threat.

#hq:accepted #ten #nct

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capnahab · 7 years

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The Chronicles of Juddha Shumsher

She knew. Three years after Juddha Shamsher’s rani found out that the child she had loved and nurtured as her own wasn’t hers, she put on her favorite dhoti over a purple petticoat and went to visit Shaligram.

She is here, in Shaligram’s chambers. The lights come from candles; it is evening. On her right, next to the door that leads into his room, is the painting of a just-born child. It is a happy painting—the birth of the child is to be celebrated; life is to be celebrated. Juddha Shamsher’s rani recalls that the painting is hers, done as she waited, child inside, for nine whole months to birth the son that she loved for 21 years now, thinking he was her very own. The time of her pregnancy she had spent in great distress. Her prince had demanded that she stay inside, guarded from the sun and from the cosmic rays that penetrate a woman’s uterus once in a while. And so she had done, but in the time that she stayed inside, out of loneliness or out of boredom, she had taken to painting portraits of children. Just born sons, with faces as round as her stomach; skin softer than the breasts she bathed each morning in buttermilk; a nose too large for his face; a face too large for his neck; a neck too large to be a baby’s. Then they turned into her fears: triangular slits where the baby’s eyes should be; yellow skin melted from his cheek into his neck, and from his neck outside of the canvas, dripping paint like blood from the body of a man stabbed to death. Of the paintings that she had done, Shaligram had selected the best for display – baby boy with divine skin and the stature of a patriarch; a drop of water under his left nostril as a reminder of his humanity – a speck of fault left on the body of the most perfect being. Here she is, walking into the chambers of another man, and she stifles the urge to say the first word until Shaligram speaks –

“My dear rani –”

Shaligram knows why she is here. But he has forgotten – does he remember things past? Things that happened yesterday, or the day before, or a hundred years ago, are they bits and pieces of memory that cohere just because they do? – he cannot tell. He is seated facing a mirror, and it is said that the only image one can see with their naked eyes of Shaligram is that image of him that one sees in a mirror. Juddha Shamsher’s rani does not care – or has she forgotten – and she walks into the space between him and the mirror. Many years ago, the myth goes, there was a child who accidently walked into Shaligram’s chambers and, unaware, stared at him in all his naked existence, skin, substance, him. Shaligram warned her to close his eyes, but with less authority than he would demand his morning tea; for he, too, wanted to witness the result of this aberration. The child, it is said, died right where she stood; and before Shaligram could touch her, see her, remember her long enough to not forget her, she had disappeared – wiped away, stripped of all existence in the world. That day, Shaligram had grieved, and sensing the sheer strength of the emotion that went into his grief, the world around him had withered away and died with the child; no plant or animal remained to tell the story of existence; only humanity remained, and they told the story in parts – that thing called memory – and sometimes the story changed. Sometimes it became less coherent – the child had been Shaligram’s own – or it became much too coherent – the child had become one with Shaligram, at the greatest peace at such a young age. The myth goes that way, and it goes around. Here, in this moment, Juddha Shamsher’s rani is the child reborn –

Mana knocked twice on the table at which he was seated. The morning before, he had written a poem. The poem is the word of God, he wrote, and God speaks to me through it. In my words I express divine wisdom, but like the doctor cannot make himself better, or the preacher never preaches to himself, I do not heed my own wisdom, come to me by the word of God, he thought. At his table, he collected all sorts of pens: there were those that wrote only in blue, or in red, or in green; there were those that were heavier than gold, made of metal, as fragile as plastic. All of these pens he only kept at his desk; he never used them.

In the poem that he had written yesterday, called “The world a poem, and the poem its cocoon,” he had written about his father. From the moment of conception, the child belongs to his mother; and at birth, the father steals him, he had written. And then onwards – from the point of birth, the world belongs not to the child nor to his mother; it belongs to the father who claims to carry his household; the child submits, quietly and contently, to his father, and in every move, every inspiration, he mirrors his father with no hesitation until such time come that he remembers his first home: his mother. That was in the poem: the image of a lone man contemplating his birth on the banks of the Trishuli, his fingers fidgeting restlessly on his bansuri, mimicking the musician whose fingers would once have produced music. Mana’s poetry, as it was to be described many years later by a well-to-do literary critic who sat under the salik in New Road and delivered his sermons, was conceived under pretense – and in pretending it thrived and survived.

Outside, in Juddha Shumsher’s courtyard, crows crowed today. Rumor, that which had born Mana, was now dying out. Rumor needed memory to survive, and when memory remained unrecorded, it faded away, like the color from a rose petal. Outside, in Juddha Shumsher’s courtyard, the ground had swallowed itself, and the buildings on it; and with the ground, Mana was swallowed into darkness, consumed for what had remained of his life. What outlives him is his poetry, the words that tell the world the truth about the birth and death of the only rajkumar of Kathmandu. Four generations later, on that very ground, a tree will grow, it is said, and the fourth fruit born on that tree will contain the seed of that rajkumar – the rightful heir to Kathmandu – but none will carry the seed. They will leave it to rot under that tree, on the ground that had once swallowed the child, Mana, and the ground will open up and swallow it once more, never to be seen again. Outside, in Juddha Shumsher’s courtyard, a man who screams salaam, sir! – and bows at every chance he gets has today lost gravity; he stands upright, his back pointed towards the skies, his world a different one to Juddha Shumser’s courtyard, and the tears from his eyes fall onto the ground in small explosions – bisfot! – while Mana falls from the sky and onto the ground, driven by the strength of his poetry, the realization of the complete story to his life and death.

Such is the act of suicide.

The man who had seen Mana fall ran up to his chambers, as though to salvage what can be salvaged. Outside, in Juddha Shumsher’s courtyard, a throng had formed around the body of Mana. Fallen from the height of a thousand stories, the body could only be called so for so long – for when does a body stop being a body? When it has been completely deformed, head separated from torso, torso ripped into a hundred pieces, and those pieces scattered across the earth like rain on a gray day – where and when does the body stop being a body? After it has fallen from a thousand stories, driven to death by anyaya – injustice – and unrighteousness?

In this very language, these thoughts ran across the mind of the man who ran to the thousandth floor, to Mana’s chambers. There, he knew, would be the truth to this untimely death, and none would reach there quicker than he could. And someone must get there – for poetry fades away; it becomes unreadable, arcane, obscure, obscene even. Unread poetry goes stale, like uneaten bread, he thought, and as he raced across the thousand staircases on his way to Mana’s room, his heart pumping blood just fast enough for him to stay awake, the world outside became consumed by itself – the weather, a gust of wind, the slightest rain, a warm sun. Outside Mana’s chambers, these things were the world and the world was these things, and for those gathered around Mana’s body, their own lives fallacies in the face of untimely, omniscient death, this world was undesirable. The man still ran, unrelenting in his pursuit of the thousandth floor, where, he thought, poetry in its purest, most worthy form would be found. A poem is like a dictionary, he amused himself, in the way it proposes new meanings for words that we already know and learn and use. An intoxication this thing must be, that even the strongest minds are seduced by it, ruined by it – intellects undermined, rationality consumed. That is the idea of the poem.

The man still ran – there could be no stopping now. His own history was irrelevant – his name, the history behind his skin, the color of it, the hardness of it. In this moment, there was nothing for him than poetry. What had been written in the few pages that Mana had left behind as legacy before he was driven to death – no, suicide; it is not death. Death ought to happen organically, quietly. This was sudden, unnatural, against the idea of God, against time – suicide was not death. Philosophically, the man thought, it was an even greater death than death itself. For in death, often you are unaware of the impending doom. You simply face it, and you greet it with honor and dignity, and then you make friends with it, love it, caress it. In suicide, he thought, death comes much easily; and yet death is enemy. It is the impending doom given birth to prematurely. As he ran, his left knee began to hurt. There must be a story behind it.

Juddha Shumsher had two wives, but only one fit to be the rani. Shaligram was to judge the fitter among the two. There they were: two beautiful, round-breasted women, donned in the most exquisite jewelry in Kathmandu. The criteria were thus: that the woman know her dharma, her place in the household and with her husband; that the woman bear a son – indeed, if better, as many sons as possible; that the woman know how to carry herself as one; that, in the time of need, the woman be skilled enough to lead the kingdom, to practice its politics for as long as it took. Shaligram, who was blind, had never seen either woman. He knew simply to choose – and Juddha Shumsher trusted him with it. And that was when he chose her – Juddha Shumsher’s rani. When he lightly tapped her shoulder with his hand, it is said that flowers rained down from the sky, and tears from the woman’s eyes. The other woman disappeared that very moment, and that was that. She was gone, wiped out, khuda hafiz, and no one knew where she went. Juddha Shumsher never asked. Shaligram never told.

Shaligram was the state puret. He was trained in Kashi, and it was there that he had been blinded. The story goes thus: his guru, the pandit that had trained him all his life, from beginning to end, had become so jealous of Shaligram’s vision – the way he saw things, and the way he refused to see some things – that, out of pure spite and hatred he had blinded his most accomplished shishya, the one student that would have carried over his legacy. Legacy – Shaligram had thought to himself then – what is it without sight? Anger had taken over him in those days. There was so much anger within his body that it caused fires, they said; not a day passed by when there wasn’t a fire near Shaligram, one that arose out of nowhere and went nowhere: just angry, spontaneous, fire. That was many years ago, but it still carried over. When they said that nothing could pass in front of his eyes without disappearing, khalas, no one believed it. And when the child disappeared, no one said a word. They believed the rumors; they believed the anger that had led to the child’s death. No one ever said a word again.

The man had reached the thousandth floor. Exhausted beyond his wits, he walked into Mana’s room. The tears in his eyes burned. He could no longer see. He made his way to Mana’s desk, where the chair was still warm. He sat down slowly, calculatedly. The poetry the man sought was on Mana’s desk, organized in the order that he would have wanted it read.

The first poem was the poem he had written yesterday, called “The world a poem, and the poem its cocoon.” In it, the man saw traces of himself, an image of his fatherhood being caressed by the subject of the poem, the lone musician, out by himself, fingering his bansuri. The man thought back to a billion years ago. He recalled the beating. He flipped the page to turn to the next poem. It was called “To my mother, always; to life and to family.” The man remembered that he had a story to tell.

Many years ago, after Juddha Shumsher’s other wife had disappeared, Juddha Shumsher’s rani had visited Shaligram. It was her desire, no, compulsion, to bear children, for her husband and for the kingdom. For Juddha Shumsher could not leave Kathmandu without a seed whose tree would shade the city from all else. There had to be children – a son – and it had to be sooner rather than later. Shaligram gave her a potion. He instructed her –

“My dear rani, drink one thirds of this before you sleep with your husband; drink one-thirds during the act of sleeping; and drink the final third after you have fornicated.”

With that in mind Juddha Shumsher’s rani had returned home happily, knowing that she would bear a child soon. But months came and went, and the rani saw no change in her physique. Her womb was as cold as always; it bore no sign of life. She decided to visit Shaligram yet again.

In his chambers, the puret sat cross-legged, meditating as though he was playing cards with the epistemological obscene, gambling with knowledge he did not need. When Juddha Shumsher’s rani walked in, he knew –

“My dear rani, what brings you here?”

She replied –

“Guru, you must know what brings me here. It is the only thing that has kept me awake night and day for the last year – that thing that you had promised me. Why do I not come to you bearing a child, guru?”

Shaligram had handed her another concoction, one that he now claimed would guarantee her desire to bear children, and if it did not –

“Mero naam nai Shaligram hoina.”

That was the end of their conversation. The second poem that the man read as he perused through the remainders of Mana’s life was a tribute to Mana’s mother. Drawing analogy between the relationship of mother and child, and a buffalo and its teats, Mana had written –

“Swallow / this pain when the buffalo sits / beneath the willow tree and asks / for advice to the mouth that suckles on its teats / but he later learns that the mouth is fingers / that belong to a farmer / stealing from underneath the willow tree.”

Two years later, Juddha Shumsher’s rani was at the puret’s doorstep again, and this time she cradled a son in her arms. The man turned to the next poem that Mana had written, and in this one, he wrote about the puret. These were the lines the man read:

“Like waves that form on the inside of our palms / a stone that I found at sea turned into a man named Shaligram / for the remainder of his life, conceived in anyaya and paap / the man named Shaligram will cry from his two blind eyes.”

Many years later, in the moment that the rani had known that her son Mana had never been hers, in the moment that she had decided to confront that man named Shaligram, in the moment that she had paid no heed to rumor, to the idea of death, to the fear of disappearance, and walked in front of his blinded eyes, body and soul and all, it was these lines that ran through her head, in the space between her eyes and forehead, over and over again.

It came back to him now – to the man, the story in its entirety. He remembered the urge to run to the thousandth floor, the blood that surged through his veins and threatened to pop out of his forehead – bisfot! – and for all that remained of his life he knew he would spend it here, in this room, on the thousandth floor, crying like a swallow in its wallow.

Sometimes I wonder if it ever made sense – the paused worlds of Kathmandu’s monarchs. They later found the man lying on the winding staircase that led to Mana’s chambers. He had tripped and fallen and broken his skull, the stairs painted in blood and grime and brain. Mana had died; suicide, they said. Juddha Shumsher’s rani had disappeared. They said they had last seen her walk into Shaligram’s chambers with nothing but hatred in her eyes and anger in her skin. For many years, however, I looked for this man, Shaligram, but I found nothing of him – not a trace. None knew him, none had heard of him, and nowhere in the state’s official papers was he identified as the puret. I found it rather strange that so much can happen in a family, in a country, and none would ever know about it, or know why it happened. It hadn’t seemed possible to me. History, I had thought, was unchangeable – if things changed, they would be feelings, thoughts, inclinations, interpretations, those unreal things. Never history itself, nor the people in it.

I then began to look for Juddha Shumsher. For none had talked of his death; none of the abdication of his throne. It must mean, I thought to myself, that he is still there, somewhere, alive and in charge of Kathmandu. For months on end I looked for him, through every wall in Kathmandu, past every door, on the porch of every home. I could not find him anywhere. The people I talked to around Kathmandu – they knew nothing about the monarch, nothing about where he was, where he might be, where he had been; in the fifty years since he was last seen walking past New Road, where he had disappeared. One evening, drunk and out of my wits, I even went to look for him in his palace. It was late and dark; I had finished my last bottle of whisky, and I did not know what direction my Chronicles of Juddha Shumsher was headed in. It was a rather low moment for me, I must admit – and I found myself breaking into Juddha Shumsher’s chambers. Perhaps it was the alcohol that I had drunk that kept me from seeing clearly, but I saw nothing. Nothing – his chambers were empty if not for a drawer in the middle of the room, and a single, lonely chair, stuck against a vast wall of brown and white. I cried for hours and hours, and with my tears I had soon wet the entire carpeted floor. My tears, mixed with the dust that had layered over the carpet in the years that none had visited these chambers, created a mixture of fumes that had me passed out there, on the floor of Juddha Shumsher’s chambers. When I finally woke up after rather long – it must have been two days – I concluded thus: in the middle of New Road, Juddha Shumsher must have turned into stone.

I am now in possession of the thick legacy of poetry that Mana left behind. In it, I am trying to retrace his origins. This story – the above one that I transcribed from my own memory – came to me in a single dream from one night’s sleep; that is, the voice of it, the narrator, the emotional inflections, the poetry of Mana’s suicide, the undilutedness of the society of Shaligram, Juddha Shumsher’s rani, of Juddha Shumsher himself. But it is simply a footnote in the bigger history that I now feel the necessity to write, the book of my career that I have titled the Chronicles of Juddha Shumsher. And yet, if in just this one single footnote there is so much pain, so much happening, poetry that has made my skin ache night and day, then how can I claim right to the whole of the Chronicles?

This much is clear to me: on one evening, when Kathmandu had turned into stone and that stone carved into a mess of buildings, statues, and people, a crime was committed. A real crime – not a symbol for my story. In the years since, roots have grown through Kathmandu’s stone; its foundations have weakened; and none of those roots, to my greatest dismay, have grown from the seeds of real, living, breathing people – not stone people, carved out unnaturally, unwillingly. At the center of the crime was the monarch, Juddha Shumsher, and to his side, like a tree, stood Shaligram; under it, trampled by the feet of the stone people, lay the dying body of a poet, Mana.

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