question_answer

The man screamed in agony. He knew his end was near. He wouldn’t have to bear this pain much longer. But he had to hold on to the secret till then. He had to. Just a little longer.

He steeled himself and repeated the chant endlessly in his mind. A chant that held immense power. A chant sacred to all in his tribe: the tribe of the Malayaputras.

Jsd Shri Rudra... Jai Parshu Ram... Jai Shri Rudra... Jsd Parshu Ram.

Glory to Lord Rudra. Glory to Lord Parshu Ram.

He closed his eyes, focusing on the mantra. Trying to forget his present surroundings.

Give me strength. Lords. Give me strength.

His nemesis stood over him, preparing to inflict yet another wound. But before he could strike, he was pulled back roughly. By a woman.

She whispered in an angry, guttural voice, '‘Khara, this is not working.'’ Khara, a platoon commander in the Lankan armed forces, turned towards Samichi, his childhood love. Until a few years back, Samichi had been the acting prime minister of Mithila, a small kingdom in north India. But she had since abandoned her post and was focused on finding the whereabouts of the person who had appointed her. The princess she had once served: Sita.

'This Malayaputra is a tough nut,'’ Khara whispered. '‘He won’'t break. We have to find the information some other way.’'

'‘There is no time!’'

Samichi’s whisper was rough in its urgency. Khara knew she was right. The man on the rack was their best possible source of information for now. Only he could tell them where Sita, her husband Ram, his brother Lakshman, and the sixteen Malayaputra soldiers accompanying them were hiding. Khara also knew how important it was to extract this information. It was their chance to get back into the good books of Samichi’'s true lord. The one she called Iraiva-Raavan, the king of Lanka.

‘'I am trying, but he will not last much longer like this,’' Khara said in a low voice, trying to mask his disappointment. '‘I don’'t think he’ll talk.’'

'‘Let me try.’'

Before Khara could respond, Samichi strode up to the table where the Malayaputra lay shackled. She yanked off his dhoti and threw it aside. She then wrenched his langot away, leaving the poor man completely exposed and moaning in shame.

Even Khara seemed horrified. '‘Samichi, this is-’'

Samichi shot him a sharp look and he fell silent. Even torturers had a code of conduct. At least in India. But clearly, Samichi had no qualms about flouting it.

The Malayaputra’s eye's were wide open in panic. Almost as if he could anticipate the pain that was to follow.

Samichi picked up a sickle lying nearby. It was dangerously sharp on one side, serrated on the other.

A cruel design crafted to inflict maximum pain. She moved towards the torture rack, the sickle in her hand. She held it up, felt its sharp edge, letting it prick her finger and draw blood. '‘You will talk. Trust me.

You will talk,’' she snarled as she poised the sickle between the Malayaputra'’s legs. Dangerously close.

She moved the sickle slowly, deliberately. It sliced through the soft epidermis and cut deeper. Deeper into the scrotum. Inflicting the maximum pain possible at a point that had an almost sadistic concentration of nerve endings.

The Malayaputra screamed.

He cried, he pleaded for it to stop.

It wasn’t his Gods he cried to. This was beyond them now. He was calling out to his mother.

Khara knew then. The Malayaputra would talk. It was only a matter of time. He would break. And he would talk.

“He knew his end is near”. What did he do to escape the pain?

A) He tried to run away

B) He started chanting mantra

C) He waited for the woman to save him

D) He strongly determined to bear the pain