The Great Indian Novel

by Shashi Tharoor

  ‘Rather well!’ Shakuni giggled incongruously, his jowls trembling with pleasure. ‘I am unbeatable. Simply unbeatable. I have,’ he explained, lowering his voice to a confidential croak, ‘a very special pair of dice. And in our traditional rules, it is the challenger who has to provide the dice.’

  ‘Bless the traditional rules,’ Duryodhani said. ‘I’m delighted, Shakuni. I’ll give you whatever support you need.’

  ‘First there is your father to be thought of,’ Shakuni pointed out. ‘Will Dhritarashtra permit the game in his palace? That is the only location which would make the challenge respectable, and where Yudhishtir would not be able to refuse, even if he were advised to.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Duryodhani said. ‘I’ll try.’ And she hurried, floating through my dream like an animated wraith, to her father. Dhritarashtra was seated on his golden throne, the white umbrella of kingship wobbling unsteadily above his thinning hair.

  ‘A game of dice?’ Dhritarashtra asked. ‘I’m not sure that’s entirely in the spirit of the rules I’ve drawn up for the kingdom, Duryodhani. There’s nothing explicitly against it, though. I’ll tell you what, my dear one. This is the sort of thing on which I normally consult the officials. Let me ask Vidur and see what he has to say.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Duryodhani pouted. ‘He will be against it, I know. You know how these bureaucrats are - they don’t like anybody to have fun. Why not let it remain a matter for your ministers? Shakuni thinks it’s all right, and he’s a minis-

  The blind king sighed, as he often did in the face of his daughter’s insistent demands. ‘All right, then,’ he said at last, the words echoing hollowly in my suspended mind. ‘Have it your own way.’

  The jackals howled again, Ganapathi, the vultures wheeled overhead and screeched, the crows beat their black wings against the window-panes of the palace, and the sky turned grey, the colour of ashes on a funeral pyre. Priya Duryodhani skipped happily to Shakuni and announced the king’s consent.

  ‘You can leave the rest to me,’ the minister said.

  In my dream it was Vidur who arrived at Yudhishtir’s palace to invite him for the game.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of it one bit’ the civil servant said. But I’m afraid it’s my duty, Yudhishtir, to ask you to come.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll come,’ Yudhishtir said impassively. ‘It is my duty, too, in all honour, to accept Shakuni’s challenge. Besides, I’m not too bad at dice myself.’

  And so the five brothers and wife set out for Hastinapur, to the tune of a farewell song which rang arhythmically in my mind:

  Yudhishtir said, ‘It’s time to go

  To keep a date

  With Fate;

  Fate beckons; we mustn’t be slow

  Or hesitate –

  We’ll be late!

  I realize that in this thing

  I have no voice,

  No choice;

  We’re just puppets on a string,

  To be thrown thrice –

  Fate’s dice.’

  They reached Dhritarashtra’s palace, and bent before his throne to touch his feet in ritual homage. Mynahs chirped in the trees as they entered, and the sweet fragrance of frangipani blossoms wafted before Draupadi with each tinkling step of her hennaed feet.

  ‘Welcome,’ Dhritarashtra said. ‘I understand, Yudhishtir, that you have accepted Shakuni’s challenge.’

  ‘It is my duty,’ Yudhishtir said simply.

  ‘You don’t have to, you know,’ the aged king responded sharply. ‘You can leave now, if you prefer.’

  ‘My honour obliges me not to flee from a challenge,’ Yudhishtir replied. ‘Besides, I am in the hands of Fate, as are we all.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Priya Duryodhani, the ultimate beneficiary of Shakuni’s skills. I’ll watch.’

  ‘I really don’t think this is a good idea,’ Vidur said from behind the throne. ‘When we drew up the rules of the kingdom, Dhritarashtra, we did not envisage anything like this.’

  Go ahead, Yudhishtir!’ blazed old Drona, standing up at the sidelines. ‘Defeat rotten Shakuni and win his treasures in the name of the people! You can do it.’

  ‘I think so too,’ agreed Yudhishtir, seating himself before the bald and gleaming minister. Throw the dice, Shakuni.’

  And in my dream, the clouds, which had lifted for Draupadi’s entrance, closed in once more, and the skies darkened again. And Shakuni boomed, ‘What do you wager?’

  ‘I wager my palace, my position, my share of the Kaurava kingdom,’ Yudhishtir responded, throwing the dice.

  Shakuni threw, and announced, ‘I win.’ A great wail rose in the distance, like the lowing of a thousand wolves in a moonlit forest. The players remained oblivious of it. ‘And what do you wager next?’

  ‘I wager the Constitution, the laws, the peace of the people,’ Yudhishtir proclaimed stiffly, and threw.

  ‘I win. Next?’

  ‘I wager my own freedom, together with that of ten thousand faithful party workers, the support of the press and the prospect of the next elections,’ he said.

  Shakuni threw again, and the pockmarks on the ivory cubes gleamed dully at Yudhishtir, like the scabs of a virulent rash. ‘I win.’

  The eldest Pandava sat very still, looking straight into the eyes of his victor. ‘I am ruined,’ he said evenly. ‘I have nothing else to wager.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do.’ The massive bald pate inclined towards the five figures of Yudhishtir’s appalled family along the wall. ‘You have them.’

  A thin line of perspiration, like a row of transparent beads, appeared on Yudhishtir’s upper lip. He seemed about to say something, then stopped.

  ‘I stake my brothers,’ he said in a strained voice.

  ‘You’ve got to stop them, sir,’ Vidur pleaded with his blind half-brother. ‘Dhritarashtra, this mustn’t go on. Damnation will visit us all. Shakuni is not playing an honest game. Yudhishtir is trapped. You must stop it, or the whole country will be ruined.’

  But Priya Duryodhani was within earshot. ‘Don’t listen to him, Daddy,’ she urged. ‘He’s always been on their side, even when he pretended to be helping you. Shakuni knows what he’s doing. And as for the country, we can manage it just as well without the Pandavas. Probably better.’

  Dhritarashtra was too absorbed in the contest to reply to either of them. Vidur lapsed into a sullen silence, his arms folded across his chest, disassociating himself from the proceedings his invitation had initiated.

  ‘I throw for your brothers.’ Shakuni flung the dice, which landed mockingly at Yudhishtir’s feet, their unbeatable dots face up.

  ‘They are now your prisoners,’ Yudhishtir conceded, his staring eyes downcast, avoiding the looks of impotent betrayal his brothers were directing at him from their hopeless places on the sidelines.

  ‘There is still,’ Shakuni said pointedly, ‘Draupadi. Wager her, Yudhishtir, and you might win your own freedom back. Who knows how the dice will fall?’

  At these words the howling started up again, Ganapathi, the fluttering resumed outside, and thunder rolled in the heavens. ‘Close the windows,’ Duryodhani commanded.

  In my dream Yudhishtir never looked at his wife as she cowered at the wall. He spoke in a hoarse low voice. ‘My wife Draupadi, most desirable of all women, in the full flower of her youth, pride of our nation and mother of our fondest hopes - I stake her.’ And Karna’s golden face, the half-moon throbbing on its forehead, parted in a mirthless ghostly laugh that echoed around the room.

  The dice flew from Shakuni’s fingers in a flash of his wrist. ‘I have won!’ he exclaimed. ‘Draupadi is mine.’

  As the howls rose again in the distance, a streak of lightning at the window illuminated the glee on Priya Duryodhani’s pinched face, lit up the horror on the faces of the Pandava brothers and threw a shadow on to Draupadi, cringing against Arjun’s shoulder.

  ‘Go and bring them to the centre of the room,’ Duryodhani said to Vidur, who was sitting near the throne with his head in his h
ands. ‘Let everyone see what Yudhishtir has lost.’

  ‘No,’ he groaned in the only refuge of bureaucrats. ‘It is not my job to do that.’

  A guard instead went forward to summon the Pandavas. Draupadi alone stayed where she was, refusing to move.

  ‘Ask Yudhishtir,’ she said, ‘by what right he staked me as his wager, when he had already lost himself? Can a fallen husband pledge his wife when he himself is no longer a free man?’

  The guard repeated the question before the hushed gathering.

  ‘How dare she waste our time with such questions!’ Duryodhani snapped. She turned to a faithful retainer, the organizer of the palace fairs, a man of unquestioning loyalty and unquestionable coarseness. ‘Go, Duhshasan, and bring her to us.’

  Duhshasan, with his red eyes and Pathan nose, his cruel moustache and vicious tongue, strode towards Draupadi Mokrasi, who with a terrified gasp ran towards the women’s quarters. But the villain was too quick for her; with a lunge he caught her by her long dark hair and began dragging her to the centre of the room.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she pleaded. ‘Do not humiliate me. Can’t you see I’m bleeding?’

  ‘Bleeding or dry, you’re ours now, my lovely,’ the Pathan snarled, still tugging, as Draupadi’s tinkling silver payals broke and cascaded to the floor.

  ‘How can you all allow this to happen?’ she screamed despairingly, and her words struck Yudhishtir and echoed round the room, hurtling in rage against the unseeing Dhritarashtra, the irresolute Arjun, the fist-clenching Bhim, the shaking Vidur, the broken Drona. But none of them replied; none of them could reply.

  ‘This is wrong.’ It was Ashwathaman, stepping forward for the first time. ‘I have supported you so far, Duryodhani, but common decency -’

  ‘Guards, arrest this man.’ Priya Duryodhani’s command cut through the bearded figure’s voice, amputating his hoarse plea. Ashwathaman was dragged away, too shocked to resist.

  ‘How can you?’ It was a last desperate cry, for Duhshasan was now rolling Draupadi’s hair up in his hands, winding the wife of the Pandavas inexorably closer to him as her five husbands stood gritting their teeth in impotent fury.

  ‘They can,’ Shakuni said, ‘because I have won you, my dear. On behalf of everyone assembled here. You, Draupadi Mokrasi, are our slave.’

  A shout rose from Duryodhani’s men in the court, almost loud enough to drown the insistent howling of the jackals outside.

  ‘No!’ Draupadi implored, as Duhshasan’s arm snaked round her waist. ‘Yudhishtir didn’t know what he was doing. He was playing by his old code, and he was cheated.’

  ‘Silence!’ Priya Duryodhani snapped. ‘How dare you accuse our distinguished minister Shakuni of cheating! Silence, slave!’

  And in my dream the weeping Draupadi turned to the blind king and his assembled court, extending her fair bruised arms in tearful supplication. But Dhritarashtra could not see, and the others, especially after what had happened to Ashwathaman, dared not intervene.

  ‘Please,’ she whimpered, as Duhshasan’s fingers spread across her midriff. ‘They entrapped him.’

  A roar of fury from Bhim stopped even Duhshasan for a moment. His red eyes bulged from their rage-suffused sockets. Bhim’s hate-knotted muscles stood out in places where other men don’t even have places. ‘Even a whore would not have been risked in so shoddy a wager. How could you do this, Yudhishtir, to our precious Draupadi Mokrasi? We have always considered you to be right in anything you did, but this was wrong, unforgivably wrong. You should have done nothing that could put Draupadi in such a position. Bring me fire, Sahadev, and I shall burn those piss-holding hands that lost Drau-padi!’

  Sahadev blanched, but he did not need to interpret his brother’s command too literally, since he was as much a prisoner as Bhim was. And Arjun was already speaking soothingly to his burly brother, as Bhim trembled to control his fury.

  ‘You mustn’t shout like that. Yudhishtir was only doing what he has been brought up to believe is right. He played of his own free will, and honestly. What is there to reproach him for? Fate decided the rest.’

  With an effort that shook his mountainous frame like a palm tree in a breeze, Bhim remained silent.

  Karna it was who spoke now, the half-moon on his forehead throbbing with an eerie glow. ‘How is it that these slaves, defying custom, stand fully clad before their betters? Their clothes too are lost, and belong to Shakuni. Duhshasan, take them off.’

  Duhshasan moved forward to execute the command.

  There is no need,’ Yudhishtir spoke. ‘We know the customs, and do not need help.’ The five brothers proudly, in honour, removed their upper garments and flung them at Shakuni’s feet.

  Draupadi alone stood still, dismay and disbelief battling with each other on her face.

  ‘It seems Draupadi Mokrasi needs your help, Duhshasan,’ Karna said in my dream.

  The Pathan grinned evilly, and reached for her blouse.

  ‘No!’ she screamed, a cry that rent the air, as the fleshy paw of her tormentor tore hook and material off in one savage gesture, baring Draupadi’s pale breasts to the court.

  ‘No - please - don’t do this to me,’ she wept, shame flowing down her cheeks. ‘I am your slave, but do not . . . humiliate me like this.’

  ‘Humiliation?’ It was Karna again. ‘Fine word, from the much-savoured lips of a woman with five husbands! You are no chaste innocent, Draupadi Mokrasi, but an object of many men’s pleasure. Well, you are our pleasure now. Strip her, Duhshasan!’

  And the jackals howled again, Ganapathi, the wolves bayed, the braying of donkeys rose above the clamour, the vultures screeched outside as their wings resumed their insistent beat on the window-panes, the claws of unknown creatures scratched gruesomely on the glass, but inside the court there was only the deathly unnatural silence of spectators at a public flogging as Duhshasan caught hold of the pallav of Draupadi’s sari and wrenched it off her shoulder.

  Draupadi cried out as she twisted away from his evil grasp: ‘Krishna! I need you now, Krishna! Come to me!’

  And then she was running, trying to escape her pursuer, but Duhshasan was pulling at the unravelling sari. Draupadi slipped and fell on to the floor. Duhshasan laughed maliciously, continuing to pull, and the sari unwound as Draupadi rolled away from him . . .

  ‘It’s a bloody long sari,’ Duhshasan said.

  And indeed there were already yards of material in his hands, certainly more than the regulation six, but Draupadi was still rolling, and the sari was still unwinding, and in my dream the whole court swam before my eyes, Duhshasan with his pupils popping as the material flowed into his fingers, Dhritarashtra’s ears cocked like a spaniel trying to identify a distant sound, Duryodhani’s thin lips bared in a chilling smile of excitement, Karna’s half- moon glowing, pulsating as he watched the slow disrobing, and the sounds outside echoed in my mind, mixed with the hoarse cackle of a thousand demented geese, the bleating of a lakh of tortured lambs, the mooing of a million milkless cows, as Draupadi’s breasts swung tantalizingly in and out of view as she turned, and the sari continued to unravel, and faces leapt off the walls to look at her in my dream, Lord Drewpad pointing. Sir Richard, florid as ever, with a large black camera on his shoulder, Heaslop laughing with his head tossed back, Vyabhichar Singh grinning beneath a halo as a brown behind bobbed between his legs, Vidur placing his palms across his eyes and then parting two fingers for a peep, Drona shaking a sad head as if to drive the scene out of his vision, Ashwathaman in manacles weeping his self- reproach, the five brothers powerless in their anger, as Duhshasan kept pulling, and the material of the sari was strewn all over the floor, and Draupadi kept twisting and turning and rolling away from him, and in my dream her cry was no longer for Krishna, but for me . . .

  Duhshasan stopped, exhausted. The walls swam slowly back into focus. My sleeping mind cleared. The court stood back in silence as Duhshasan looked stupidly at the end of the sari still in his hands and the flowing, multicolou
red cloth that littered the marble ground. He stared again disbelievingly at the half-naked figure of the recumbent Draupadi, her bleeding womanhood still not uncovered, and surrounded by enough resplendent material to clothe her for years. Shamed, he sat down heavily amidst the pile of clothes.

  Yudhishtir smiled in vindication.

  ‘By all the oaths of my ancestors,’ Bhim swore, ‘I’ll get you for this, Duhshasan.’

  And then Krishna’s face appeared on the ceiling, just above Duryodhani’s startled eyes. His dark face shimmered against the light from the chandelier.

  ‘However hard you try, Priya Duryodhani,’ he said in a calm, deep voice, you and your men will never succeed in stripping Draupadi Mokrasi completely. In our country, she will always have enough to maintain her self- respect. But what about yours?’

  And then he was gone. But his message had been heard by every pair of ears in the room, including a chastened Duryodhani’s.

  This time, to my surprise, it was Arjun who spoke.

  ‘One more dice game will give us a last chance to regain our self-respect and freedom,’ he said evenly. ‘You owe us that much, in the name of honour.’ He addressed himself to Dhritarashtra, silent upon his throne.

  ‘I agree,’ the king said, before his daughter could raise her voice.

  ‘Yudhishtir has lost to Shakuni. But I . . . I wish to play your heir, Duryodhani.’ Arjun’s voice was firm.

  ‘I agree,’ Dhritarashtra said. Duryodhani shook her head, but it was too late.

  Karna snorted. ‘Fine specimen of the Kaurava race,’ he said. ‘Playing dice with a woman.’

  ‘I shall play you, Arjun,’ Duryodhani said quietly, as if sensing one last way to restore her credibility. She moved forward to pick up Shakuni’s pair of dice, which the minister leaned forward to give her.

  ‘Not with those dice,’ Arjun stopped her. ‘It was my challenge, remember?’ Duryodhani stopped, and dropped the loaded weapons with a clatter on to the floor. Sixes blazed uselessly from their polished surfaces.

  ‘We have brought no dice with us,’ Arjun said. ‘King Dhritarashtra, could you call for dice from Within your palace?’