Victory City

Pampa and her fellow escapees form a bond with the creatures of the forest. With its cooperation and equality across genders and even species, the forest resembles what Pampa had hoped a multicultural Bisnaga might be. She spends a lot of her time meditating and thinking about a world without kings. Gradually, her daughters begin to change. Yuktasri becomes nocturnal and befriends the wild women of the forest, learning the Master Language that all people and animals can speak. The wild women want Yuktasri to teach them to fight, as they have learned about “foreign pink monkeys” (139) that are threatening to take over the forest. The news of these foreign invaders worries Pampa. She wants to meet the wild women, but Yuktasri does not believe that her mother is ready to do so.

Grandmaster Li and Zerelda spend more time practicing their sword skills. Zerelda develops an urge to see the wider world, including Li’s native Beijing. Pampa understands that Li and Zerelda are falling in love. Together with Pampa, they make plans to leave the forest, even though Pampa knows that they will never return. Pampa uses a magic spell that turns Li and Zerelda into crows, so long as they carry a crow’s feather in their hand or claw. She disguises herself as a cheel (a bird of prey) to watch over them until they are in a safe place. She gives them each a bag of gold coins and then watches them until they reach a harbor, where Li’s friend General Cheng Ho has made port in his ship. Li boards the ship with Zerelda on his shoulder, still in the form of a crow. Pampa returns to the forest, keeping her feelings under control. Years pass in the forest, where the two remaining sisters feel betrayed by Zerelda. They plan great construction projects, but their efforts are fueled by anger more than love. Yuktasri spends more time with the wild women until she disappears into the forest with them. Yotshna is left alone with Pampa and Haleya Kote. Even though Haleya is many years older than Yotshna, she falls in love with him. He tries to dissuade her from her feelings but she insists that his knowledge of himself appeals to her. Though he warns her that she will one day need to nurse him in his old age, she assures him that “love is never a waste” (150).

Eventually, Pampa feels the need to know more about what is happening in Bisnaga. Much to Yotshna’s displeasure, she recruits Haleya Kote to go to the city to spy on her behalf. Haleya knows a series of secret tunnels that will allow him to get in and out of the city undetected. While he is away on his mission, Yotshna seethes with anger. She believes that her mother sent her lover on a dangerous mission because she did not approve of the relationship. However, Haleya returns unharmed. He reveals that a new governing body named the Divine Ascendency Senate (DAS) is running the city, with Vidyasagar’s brother Sayana at its head. They are demolishing religious freedom, outlawing Buddhism, Jainism, and Islam in favor of Vidyasagar’s religion. The unrest and dissatisfaction of the people is violently repressed, while Haleya’s old group, the Remonstrance, is campaigning for a return to the old ways. The Remonstrance has adopted “an inclusive, kindly, syncretist world-view” (155), though it is also banned. Number Two’s brothers, Erapalli and Gundappa, have been sent to put down the city of Rachakonda, where religious pluralism is still tolerated. Their disreputable uncles are now old, sick, and of no consequence. Much to Yotshna’s displeasure, Pampa plans to return to Bisnaga with Haleya. As soon as they venture beyond the boundaries of the forest, however, their true ages reveal themselves. The forest’s magic has prevented them from seeing the effects of age, so Haleya now looks ancient while Yotshna looks older than her mother, as Pampa looks still 25. Yotshna curses her mother and returns to the forest.

Pampa and Haleya travel to Bisnaga, where they learn about the conflicts over power in the city. Hukka and his counterpart, Sultan Zafar II, are both dead, and fierce battles have broken out over the succession to their respective thrones. Hukka II’s sons murder each other until only the youngest, Deva, remains alive. Deva is crowned king of Bisnaga. Pampa resolves to sort out the mess in her city, but she must be wary of Vidyasagar and the DAS. She bides her time, learning that King Deva is being easily manipulated by Vidyasagar and his brother, Sayana, due to his vanity. Pampa dubs Reva the “Puppet King” as he is easily manipulated, first by Vidyasagar, then by Pampa herself.

Deva spends much time away from Bisnaga on military campaigns. He expands the empire, but the power centers in Bisnaga become old and atrophied. Sayana and Vidyasagar are both becoming too old to wield influence, allowing corruption and unrest to brew. Pampa seizes upon this power vacuum, spending her time trying to win over the people to her own views. She tries to convince the expanded population of Bisnaga that the multicultural and inclusive Bisnaga is superior to the narrow and hateful one Vidyasagar has sought to create. She finds, however, that many people prefer the simplicity of hatred. She sends Haleya back to the forest to be with Yotshna. As he rides, however, his age catches up with him. He loses his mind and enters the forest not knowing his own name. Due to the enchantments of the forest, he is turned into an extremely elderly, dying woman.

When Sayana dies, Pampa decides to act. Vidyasagar is still clinging to life, but he is too old to oppose her. She begins to whisper in the ear of King Deva, using flattery to convince him that her ideas are his own. She tells him to forget bigotry, to build a dam to provide water to the people of Bisnaga, and to recruit poets and intellectuals to the city to reimplement the old royal council. Among them, she says, he must make sure to include many women. The changes she has brought about meet some resistance among the people, but the era sees the birth of the New Remonstrance, linked to the old society only through the three remaining principles of standing against religion in the government; opposing mass religious gatherings; and favoring peace over war. Bisnaga returns to being a dynamic, progressive city, but by this time, Pampa Kampana has transformed from a real person into a legend. When she is brought before King Deva, he laughs at her. He does not believe that she is the real Pampa Kampana (his grandmother). She accepts this newfound anonymity because her astrological chart predicts that she will marry another king of Bisnaga in her lifetime, but it will not be Deva.

Only a few people know Pampa’s true identity, though she struggles with this identity herself. She feels like “a ghost in a body that refuses to age” (173). Shortly after Vidyasagar’s death, she meets a Portuguese man named Fernao Paes who looks remarkably like Domingo Nunes. She admires his emotional maturity and wisdom, and she is pleased that he is often away on long voyages. Pampa falls in love with him and enters into the “second phase of her exile” (177), when she has returned to Bisnaga in a physical sense but not as the person that she once was. She still thinks about Yotshna’s anger toward her. Fernao suspects that there is someone whispering in Deva’s ear, but he does not know that it is Pampa. Eventually, Pampa learns that Deva is planning for his own funeral, in which some of his many thousands of wives will burn themselves on his funeral pyre. Pampa is determined that no more living women will be burned in Bisnaga. Before she can act, however, she is visited by a crow with a message. The crow tells her that Yotshna died many years earlier of a broken heart, but Yuktasri lives and has sent a message to her mother that simply says “war.”

The pink monkeys arrive in the enchanted forest. They want to trade, offering cash—that they call kacu—to the inhabitants of the forest. The green and brown monkeys are manipulated by the pink monkeys, who turn them against each other and take over the land that they leave behind. Pampa Kampana arrives in the forest to help deal with the situation. By the time she arrives, King Deva is dead and no women have been burned at his funeral. His descendants involve themselves in bloody, murderous battles for the throne, until the entire royal bloodline is extinguished. Pampa joins with her daughter, Yuktasri, to drive the pink monkeys from the forest. Pampa’s tale includes a scene with her daughter, but it ends abruptly, as though it is too emotional to revisit. Pampa admits that she has “failed [her] daughters all their lives” (187).

To save the forest, Pampa joins forces with the goddess of the forest, Aranyani. Pampa hopes that her powers can be unleashed to drive away the pink monkeys, though Aranyani warns that joining their powers together may kill a human like Pampa. They join forces anyway and drive out the pink monkeys, though they know the monkeys will return. After the war, Yuktasri dies peacefully. As Aranyani predicted, the war has a terrible effect on Pampa, who sinks into a deep sleep. She can only be awoken by an act of love. Many years later, she is visited by a woman dressed as a warrior. The woman kisses Pampa and introduces herself as Zerelda Li, “the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of Zerelda Sangama and Grandmaster Li Ye-He” (190). The kiss wakes Pampa, who still only seems to be 35 years old, even though the year is now 1509. Zerelda Li claims that she is a brilliant warrior and Pampa believes that such skills may be needed in their near future, as she transforms them both into birds and they fly toward Bisnaga.