by Kavita Kane
Was it acceptance or escape, Satyavati pondered over her decision. Had she, Satyavati, too, lost relevance in this palace? She and Bhishm still ruled the palace and kingdom. But it was time; it was the turn of the new generation of queens of Hastinapur—Madri was dead, Kunti remained the uncrowned queen, now the widowed queen mother. Sulabha, Vidur’s sagacious wife, would never be queen, like her doomed husband could never be king. Gandhari, Dhritrashtra’s queen, had turned the hurt and anger of having to marry a blind man on herself, and tied a blindfold on her bitter eyes. As the blind queen of a blind king, she shut her eyes to the world, the kingdom, and her hundred, short-sighted sons.
Satyavati had immediately sensed the new tension in the family since the arrival of Kunti and the Pandavas. Duryodhan, the eldest Kaurava, had not welcomed his cousins, displaying his resentment openly. Dhritrashtra had indulged his oldest son far too long, far too lavishly. Dhritrashtra was blind in every way: refusing to see his son’s flaws, fortified each day by the poisonous mentoring of Shakuni, his brother-in-law. It was just like Ambika had previously indoctrinated a young Dhritrashtra to believe that he was the rightful heir, not Pandu.
There again, Bhishm and she had erred—to propitiate the piqued Dhritrashtra whom they considered had been unjustly sidestepped, they had been overly accommodating, allowing his unrequited ambition to infect his son. When the weak no longer remain weak, any support to make them strong feeds the natural hunger for power and privilege. To know when to stop is very important, and she had not.
Satyavati had got Kunti back to Hastinapur with the young Pandavas, but she was going to leave the young widow to fight alone for the throne for her sons. She would not be able to fight their battles any more. She was too tired, too crushed.
She shivered as a cold breeze blew, and it seemed like an ominous hurricane blowing over Hastinapur, which would take the city, her family and her people in a bloody storm. She had wanted heirs—she now had more than a hundred, destined to ruin the throne. Was that a future of her own making? She could not put it on the still strong shoulders of Bhishm either, though he had resolutely refused to come with her to the forest.
‘How can you leave, especially when you have been told the future?’ he had demanded. ‘The war which Vyas mentions will not be between the descendants of the great Kuru king Bharat, but your blood; they are your descendants! The Kuru bloodline ended with me, Chitrangad and Virya. You are the grand matriarch of this new dynasty that you started. You can’t forsake them.’
‘I have to. I can’t bear them killing each other, and that’s what Vyas has said. . .’ she pressed her lips together unhappily.
His voice was like a whiplash, cutting her short. ‘You pride yourself on having control over your life, crafting your own path, so do it now! Stop this war if you can!’
‘No, I can’t. We started it, Dev!’ she cried. ‘I lost! Just a week ago, I thought I had got my world back, that though we had lost Pandu, we had got him back through the Pandavas. All of them together were kings of our future; I thought I had got my reward. But it’s an illusion. Everything’s undone, and it will end in destruction! My dreams will drown in rivers of blood . . . our blood, the blood of our family, the blood of these very children!’ she paused, trembling at the terrible truth. ‘Your blood as well, Dev. You will perish as well. No, not like this! Whom will you choose? You will be a torn man, wretched and alone, fighting a pointless war within your family whom you have loved and lived for all these years. Dev, come with me, I entreat you. Let’s not witness the destruction of our creation,’ she implored, her heart sinking, recognizing the unmistakable determined glint in his eyes.
She pleaded again, clutching at his arm. ‘Or accept your icchamrityu and go back to Ganga. Your mother is waiting for you!’
He moved away from her. ‘For all your faults, I could never accuse you of being a coward,’ he gave her an empty smile. ‘But now you are leaving the battlefield even before the day has begun. . .’
‘No, Dev, the day has long gone. We started this war, but I won’t be there to watch it. No, Dev. Don’t ask that of me.’
‘But I need you here!’ he said thickly. ‘Hastinapur needs you, your family needs you, your orphaned Pandavas need you, Kunti needs you!’ he faltered, his eyes bleak. ‘I need you!’
Her heart contracted painfully, but she shook her head, bowing it to hide her grief. ‘That is the significance we place on ourselves, bestowing us with self-importance. With me or you gone, the days will pass into years, the Kauravas and Pandavas will grow up. Leave them on their own. They don’t need you, they don’t need us. If you do believe in Fate, then what is to happen shall occur, with or without you. So, Dev, it’s time to leave. Retire gracefully to the forest. You are obsessed, as I once was. I know it; one becomes a slave to one’s obsession till it destroys one completely. Don’t remain here in Hastinapur. Why do you choose to linger on?’
‘I can’t; I won’t,’ he said, that stubborn line on his lips. ‘They need me. I have to be here to serve them and protect Hastinapur.’
‘By selecting one over the other? Will you have the courage to do it? Why do you want to torture yourself more? Have you not suffered enough?’ she cried, tears in her voice. ‘Come, Dev, please come with me,’ she begged, her pale face turned up towards him, her eyes filled with all her love. ‘Let’s go, Dev; let go of your oath, your principles, your life. Our work is done here, for good or for worse.’
‘You are escaping at the worst hour,’ he said viciously. ‘You are a queen! You cannot flee when your throne is in danger!’
She shook her head violently, too choked to argue with him. She dropped his warm hand, her heart aching, swelling with unbounded anguish, weeping tears of blood and love. She would have to let go of him, and the thought made her shiver, her eyes closing briefly in horror. He would be alone, with no one to turn to.
She quickly turned away before he saw her tears, before his tormented face made her weak enough to stay back with him, with the throne, with doomed Hastinapur. . .
‘You are a coward, you are running away!’ he shouted after her, his voice breaking.
She sighed and kept walking; she was too fatigued to argue further with him. . .
She was now in the forest, with its endless trees and the Ganga flowing through the serene greens. . . Ganga again: always bigger, stronger and more popular than the smaller, darker Yamuna, who, like her, remained neglected and ignored: just as she was, as the fisher girl from the banks of the Yamuna.
Ganga. Would she ever forgive her for what she had done to her son? Each time she had caught sight of the river in the horizon from the palace in Hastinapur, she had been the conscience that pierced her.
She was standing in the river now, the cold waters gurgling at her waist. She had finished her morning ablutions, and she had to go back to the ashram where Ambika and Ambalika would be waiting for her.
And then she saw it. Just a speck, but the orange glow grew larger as she kept staring at it, rooted to the spot. She heard the growing screams and the frightened cries of the animals, the terror-stricken screeching of the wildly flying birds—the forest was on fire, the flames licking hungrily at branches and felling tall trees as it ravaged new paths, swiftly approaching her.
She gazed into the unwelcoming waters, and saw rivulets of blood streaming into it—of Shantanu, of her sons, and of all the heirs of Hastinapur. Even of Amba.
Satyavati caught her reflection in the waters. Parashar’s boon was still with her. She looked young, but was so old now that she had lost count of the years she had lived on this earth. It was time to leave this earthly kingdom, too. She took a step deeper into the river and another and another, not faltering, a prayer on her lips. ‘Absolve me, oh Ganga, forgive me for what I did. Wash away my sins, give me my salvation. . .’
She no longer felt the wet gravel under her feet, but the clear waters rushing, swirling gently, closing on her, her submerged face and her eyes which she finally closed in tired
surrender. Ganga had accepted her in her arms.
