Payback is Payback is RelentlessRelentless

Tarun had sucked all of the blood out of the unfortunate mutt. As you can see, almost immediately, the king and queen that they had to keep Tarun a secret. One day when most like himself were getting married, Tarun told his father that he too desired a wife. When he said this, his father burst out laughing and so offended by his father’s reaction, Tarun attacked the king as ferociously as he did the stray dog in his first days of life.

When his mother found out what he had done, she sent Tarun into exile to become a priest. The queen believed that by being more spiritually connected , it would chase out whatever was causing her son to act so violently. Five years later, the queen had fallen fatally ill and was almost incapable of ruling her beloved people. She told her officials to summon her son from exile to come and rule their village. The official obeyed and ventured out to find Tarun.

When the two returned, the queen had died and Tarun was the new king. Since Tarun’s dream in life was to get married he summoned all of the young maidens of Mohenjo-Daro into his palace to see which one he found suitable for marriage. When she stepped into the room, Tarun fell in love with the beautiful maiden Aloki.

He announced that everyone could leave besides her and he told her that she was the one he chose to be wed to. Aloki refused to marry Tarun for she thought he was too old since his parents did not allow him to marry as adolescents usually did in their village. The fact that Aloki did not love him made Tarun so angry that he needed to destroy something so he knocked down the valley covering the room that he was hidden in as a boy exposing the rectangular corridor which seemed to resemble a pool.

To give Aloki payback for how she emotionally scarred him, Tarun fabricated a plan. He made an announcement to the people. Lying, he stated that when he studied to become a priest, he learned that religion has changed. Going along with the fable, he said that in the new religion, priests must take fourteen individual each year into a sacred pool and God will tell the priest what their fate will be and he must obey.

The citizens believed the change and annually waited on who would be beckoned to come to the pool next. Every year, Tarun would select fourteen people closest to Aloki in hopes of making her feel as devastated as he was when she refused to marry him. Each year he would put fourteen cousins, parents, friends or teacher and tell Aloki that the Lord wanted her to watch as he gruesomely took the lives of each person as he had done with his father and the dog.

None of the citizens ever questioned why the people summoned to the sacred pool never returned because they thought that they must not question what fate God has laid out for the chosen individuals. Aloki never dared to tell anyone what he was doing was not for God, but that he was murdering the innocent people to prove to her how much she hurt him.

After many years when the majority of their already miniscule population had been diminished by Tarun, he found out that she was going to marry a man named Vineet. This was even more devastating to Tarun and he knew that he could not let her get away with being happily married to anyone but himself.

That year, when he got the town together to summon the next fourteen people, Tarun called Vineet’s name. Aloki then ran up to the king pleading not to choose him this year because she was carrying Vineet’s child. After knowing this, Tarun decided to humor Aloki’s plead and thought of a plan to hurt her more than just simply killing Vineet. So he told Aloki that he would wait a year. Everyday, Tarun watch Aloki and Vineet happily together and everyday, their love made him angrier and more jealous at their life together.

When their daughter was born, she was named Lakshmi. Tarun watched the family be happier than ever with their perfect child. Finally it was the time of year that Tarun most looked forward to, when he got to call the fourteen names to murder in his “sacred pool.” After watching Aloki’s family be so giddy for the past year, he decided on the perfect way to make her suffer as he had.

As he summoned the names, he called both Vineet and Lakshmi. Aloki then decided that she did not care if he killed her too, she would tell the citizens of Mohenjo-Daro what their king actually did to the fourteen chosen yearly instead of the lie they believed. But when she turned around to tell of this lie, there was no one there because everyone had already been summoned to their deaths.

When she realized this, Aloki begged the relentless Tarun to take her to the pool and kill her too. But he hastily reminded her with a sly smile that, the fourteen spots were already taken. Tarun took the the last fourteen remaining citizens which included her beloved Vineet and Lakshmi down to his pool with Aloki to witness.

She tried to close her eyes, but Tarun commanded his guards to pry them open and she was forced to watch as he slowly sucked the life, literally, out of her husband and child. Later that day, Tarun informed Aloki that if she had only married him, it would have spared the innocent people of their town including her family. Following that confrontation, Aloki jumped head first into Tarun’s empty pool and committed suicide. Only the was the king finally satisfied that she knew the pain he had felt when she refused his loving marriage proposal, and he jumped in after her.