Girls of the Mahabharata

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  ‘Your father wants me to be a ruler,’ he says finally, still not looking at me, but reaching out one tentative finger to touch the concubine’s nipple. ‘And this is how your father rules. I’m just learning by example.’ He laughs, but it’s not a nice laugh at all.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ I say through gritted teeth. I am so angry with him, I can’t bear to be in the same room. I turn on my heel so fast, there’s a bit of a breeze by my ankles and I stalk out of the room, head held high.

  ‘Amba, wait!’ and he’s coming after me, my boy-sweetheart, and I knew I hadn’t lost him, it only took me losing my temper for him to come to his senses. Why did I doubt him?

  But you should never forgive anyone too readily, because then your forgiveness means nothing. So I keep my angry expression, cross my arms and turn to look at him.

  ‘I didn’t mean for you to see that,’ he says, shuffling his feet.

  ‘Didn’t you? It appeared as though you were expecting company.’

  ‘Yes, but not you. You have done nothing to earn that. I respect you.’

  It strikes me then. How could I have been so silly? ‘You were waiting for my father.’

  ‘I just wanted to show him that I am capable of being a king just as much as he is. And he is not my father, Abhita said just that today.’

  ‘What? When did you speak to Abhita?’

  ‘She came to my chambers this morning. She said some of the concubines were curious about me, because I had never entertained them, and she said my own father had been receiving concubines in his chambers since he was only about ten rains old. And she said that everyone would respect me more if I did more things that were ... manly.’

  ‘But you always said that men could achieve more without the indulgences they keep giving themselves.’

  He looks torn. ‘I want people to respect me, not laugh behind my back!’

  ‘Who is laughing at you?’

  ‘Everyone! I can feel it, you wouldn’t notice, you’re only a woman, but Abhita said as much today.’

  ‘Abhita – the eunuch – said people were laughing at you?’

  ‘You know how she is, she knows everything. And she didn’t say it like that. She just didn’t deny it.’

  ‘I think people would respect you more if they knew how free of vice you are. Like Yama, the god of justice,’ I say, but he’s not listening.

  ‘It’s important for a man to show he is a man. Especially when your father’s men think so little of me.’

  ‘Oh my love, must you care about those men? They will do anything my father asks them to. If he asked them to fly off the towers, they would try to do that as well, and die in the attempt.’

  Salva is obdurate. His mouth pushes forward, his eyebrows meet in the middle. ‘You would not understand,’ he says, stiffly, ‘but I thought I would try to explain it to you anyway.’

  ‘Salva!’ I say, but he’s already turned away from me and is walking away. ‘You’re better than this!’

  As I watch him leave, I realize that Abhita has taken her revenge on me for interfering with the way she runs things. A clever little revenge, because it is one I can’t even punish her for. Maybe this is why I’ve always been a little afraid of her, there is something faintly sinister about her, like one of those witches in trees, feet on backwards, just waiting for you to get comfortable in the shade before they suck your blood while they strangle you with their long, long hair.

  Chapter Five

  It is morning. It is that morning. The sun is coming up in its usual ordinary way, the first birds are beginning to wake up and make the same chirrups as they always do. I sit up, the grey light filtering through the window, and see the maids asleep, Ambalika curled up next to me, her head pillowed in her hands, breathing deeply. And by the window, Ambika is watching the sunrise, her braid over one shoulder, a shawl wrapped around her to keep warm. I get up softly, taking the warm wolfskin from my bed and tip toe over to where she is, sliding next to her on the chest she is sitting on.

  She is unsurprised to see me, all that happens is her eyebrows quirk up and her mouth turns down slightly in the corners – her version of the smile people smile when they are pleased to see you but don’t want you to notice. We sit in silence like that for a while, and I notice her fingers are drumming on her knees, a fidgety rhythm that betrays her unease. I reach out and hold her hand, and then she looks at me, and I notice how pale she seems, her eyes have heavy shadows beneath them and they are open as though she has not blinked in a long while.

  ‘It will be all right,’ I tell her and she swallows and nods.

  ‘You don’t have to marry King Shashwat if you don’t want to,’ I tell her. ‘Father meant him for Ambalika anyway, and she does not care about these things.’

  ‘If I don’t marry him,’ she has a frog in her throat and has to swallow again and again to clear her voice, ‘then what will become of me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘You’ll marry someone else, you’ll be happy.’

  She looks at me as though I am very young and silly. ‘Sister. You have the luck of loving the one you will choose. Ambalika and I don’t. I’ve been listening to them talk about all the proposed guests when Father thinks I’m not paying attention. None of them are mighty kings, in fact, they are all less than our father. King Shashwat is the only one with some power, because of his kingdom, and it is a poor kingdom because he is not very good with managing his treasury and his advisers have steered him wrong.’

  And then it hits me and I voice my thought aloud, ‘Father invited only rulers with a lower rank because he wants them to be dependent on him.’

  Ambika nods, her face bleak. ‘He means to make up for not having sons by using us to conquer kingdoms for him. Even your Salva is his ward, Father owns him, as he does the rest of us.’

  The sun is firmly in the sky now, the bright morning rays are dancing across Ambalika’s face and I watch as she blinks her eyes and stirs. The maids are awake as well, Lalita has quietly risen and is pouring out our warm water with honey into little bowls, while she gives orders in a low voice. It is going to be a busy day.

  ‘Don’t tell her,’ says Ambika, grasping my wrist.

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ I say. ‘She won’t understand anyway.’

  We share a look, a moment that softens between us. It’s such a shame that this would happen now, just before we are never to live with each other again. Just when I think Ambika and I might be able to behave like real sisters – loving and able to trust each other.

  She leans forward, and I think she is feeling the same kind-heartedness and she’s going to kiss me on the cheek, but instead she whispers, ‘I think King Shashwat promised Father the rule of his kingdom and gave him money so that Shashwat could marry Ambalika. Father sold her.’

  I draw back, stunned, and her eyes narrow in her face. Her breath was hot and moist and I can still feel it on my cheek.

  ‘Sisters? What are you doing there?’ asks Ambalika. ‘Can you believe it’s today? I barely slept a wink, I was so excited!’

  Ambika gets up from where she was sitting and flings her plait back so it almost hits me in the face. ‘I saw you and you were fast asleep all night, so tell your stories to someone else!’

  Ambalika begins to protest, and Ambika continues to tease, and I feel like I’m watching them from very far away.

  My mother joins us for our morning meal. She says it’s because this is the last time, and she wants to rest her eyes on us for one glorious day when we still belong to her, but I think it’s because she wants to keep an eye on how much we eat. We are meant to make a hearty meal since we will not receive anything else to eat until nightfall, but eating a lot first thing in the morning will also make our stomachs bloat, and my mother wants us to look our best.

  Our meal is a simple one, and yet I eat it with a strange sort of sorrow. Nothing will change for me overnight, of course. I will still be here, in this palace, with Salva, until it is time for us to
leave. I will still be eating the same things tomorrow morning, and the day after that, except instead of my sisters next to me, it will be Salva, and instead of being one of the three princesses, I will be Salva’s wife, the queen intended.

  We have millet cakes and rice porridge, with ghee to spread across the cakes and crumbling golden jaggery to sprinkle on top of everything. Ambika is rather greedy about the jaggery, and is about to take her third lump of it, but my mother stops her by putting her hand on Ambika’s wrist and shaking her head. With our breakfast, we have bananas and figs and papayas, which the serving maid slices with a wicked little knife as we point to them.

  After we eat, we must have a bath, and here too, my mother is going to supervise. A bath is drawn up for me in our beaten copper tub inlaid with precious stones – it will be emptied and refilled for each of my sisters, because this is a purifying ritual and we must be as clean as we can make ourselves. Once I step into the steaming, sweet-smelling water, my mother calls out for me to dip my head underneath which I do, closing my eyes and holding my breath as the water surrounds me.

  Then I step out, naked and with my hair down to my knees, streaming water, and I am to stand straight while my mother and maids examine all of me, from behind my ears to even between my legs. I pray none of us will start to bleed, especially Ambalika who is new to womanhood and still doesn’t know what moon day is hers. But the maids have been keeping track and reporting to my mother, so there are no accidents. It would be an expensive mistake too, because we are not pure when we are bleeding, and so the whole ceremony would have to be called off.

  My mother grows tired halfway through examining me, and asks her maid to continue while she sits down and waves a languid arm for someone to come and fan her. I can see that behind her eyes she is somewhere else altogether, and while I am sorry for my sisters, I am glad that at least I got some attention before her mothering instincts run dry. It is a selfish feeling, and I reprimand myself for it, because as a wife, I can’t be selfish. If Salva and I have a child the first time we lie together, I will not be able to be self-serving at all.

  Lalita is drying my hair for me as my mother’s maid circles, and she gives me a smile of support. I am glad to receive any sort of comfort, so I return the smile, and shift from foot to foot.

  ‘Her Highness is clean,’ my mother’s maid reports, and my mother, who is sitting with one hand over her eyes, removes it and sits up.

  ‘Very well,’ whispers my mother, sounding too tired to be able to continue. ‘Begin dressing her and bathing the Princess Ambika.’

  Ambika has been waiting for some time, naked, save for the cloth tied around her, and as soon as my mother says the word, she is stepping into the bath. She is impatient, ready to begin her new life, no matter how it will turn out to be. I understand it, somewhat. Anything is better than the endless waiting we have been doing, it seems our entire lives.

  When I was born, a bright day, just after the heaviest rains Kashi had ever seen, my mother had not been a queen for very long. Only two moons had come and gone, since she lay in the queen’s chambers, where my paternal grandmother, Irmaa, once lived, where my aunts would have combed their hair and chattered to each other. After my father stared at the deaths he had accomplished – his brothers and his father slain – he offered their women sanctuary for as long as they needed. But most preferred death to being under his rule, so they waited till the bodies of their men were piled high with wood and flames, and then they broke free of their guards – for my father thought they would try something like this – and they jumped into the pyres.

  All except Irmaa. She loved my father best, he was her youngest child, and her other children did not inherit anything from her except her good looks. My father had all those, and probably the looks of the courtier he was said to be sired by, as well as a certain slanting way of looking at things. You might call it ‘sly’ but what use has a king for slyness? No, the two of them in their own way were able to take the truth, turn it upside down on its head and then examine it thoroughly for anything that might suit them. With her other sons, my grandmother was just their mother, wife to their father. Now that they were dead, she saw it as a way to rule herself. My father was still young, and needed an advisor, and she saw that my mother was about as capable of ruling as a sparrow was.

  Her people probably thought her cold-hearted – which mother would be able to stand so strong and with tearless eyes after the death of her children? Which wife would be able to carry on, looking about herself with interest when her husband’s ashes were still warm? But as my mother lay in her confinement, my grandmother stood next to my father, suggesting how he ruled, and as I grew from a swaddling cloth to being able to roll over on my stomach, my grandmother had her own little court; The Court of the Queen, they called it, where she heard issues which she said his subjects must not trouble my father with.

  My mother and I wanted for nothing, but she must have felt alone and isolated, closed away in the queen’s quarters with just her baby and the servants for company. My grandmother had made a big show of vacating the queen’s chambers for her new daughter-in-law, ‘No, I couldn’t stay here anymore, it’s only right that you take it’ and shifted herself to a set of smaller rooms, which had the advantage of being closer to my father’s large meeting room, so she could hear all the comings and goings. I believe it was Irmaa back when she was a new bride who purchased Abhita, and trained her, and now Abhita was also her spy, going from room to room and just lingering in the background where no one noticed her.

  It was growing cold by the time my mother was tired of being so ignored. She had me wrapped in a shawl and she unbound her hair and walked through the palace, holding me in just her regular cloth, no jewellery. No one had ever seen a queen like that before. Very carefully, she entered The Court of the Queen, where my grandmother was surrounded by fawning sycophants and laid me on the ground in front of her mother-in-law.

  ‘What’s all this?’ asked my grandmother, astonished. ‘Why are you here, looking like that, and what is your baby doing here?’

  ‘This is not just my baby,’ said my mother, flushing. ‘This is also your son’s baby, and your granddaughter. And she has not been given a name, nor a date for a naming ceremony. We are alone and forgotten.’

  At this my grandmother, to my mother’s surprise, tossed back her head and laughed. And all her serving girls and eunuchs and companions laughed as well. They made such a racket that my father, who was passing by, came in to have a look at what was going on.

  ‘What has happened, Mother?’ he asked.

  ‘Your wife has finally shown some spirit, that’s what has happened,’ said my grandmother, ‘And I admire her for it. She is quite right, we cannot let the child be without a name for so long, it is unlucky. What would you call your first-born daughter, my son?’

  My father didn’t even glance at us, at me at my mother’s feet, at my mother, whose face had fallen as she looked down at the floor. I think it was that moment that she realized she would never be the queen she imagined. That role was taken by my father’s mother. She would just be a quiet wife, always in the background, bearing children for the king.

  ‘There is no better example for my daughter than that which she is in front of,’ said my father., ‘And so her name will be Amba, for mother, so that she is always wise and loving, like my mother.’

  At this he lifted me up and made to cradle me, but I chose that moment to wet myself over his chest, and very quickly, he was thrusting me back at my mother, saying, ‘Tchah! I will have to change my clothes now,’ and then he stormed off, leaving my mother holding me, now wet and screaming, both of us looking undignified and foolish.

  ‘Men don’t think much of daughters,’ said my grandmother, and my mother thought of her own father, the chieftain Jayanta, and how he loved her through his fierceness and said nothing.

  ‘You bear him a son, and for that you need to be alluring, tempting. Men don’t want to bed a woman who loo
ks like...,’ she waved a hand to indicate my mother’s general appearance. ‘Did your mother teach you nothing, girl? But I forgot, your mother was just a potter’s daughter. I will send some of my maids to you and some of the king’s favourite concubines so you will learn what needs to be done.’

  She gave a deep sigh and sat back, and someone instantly came forward to massage her forehead. The meeting was over; the guards came to escort my mother back to her chambers.

  Later, when Ambika was born, right before the rains, when the sun beat hot and relentlessly against the palace walls, my father didn’t even go to see her. Instead it was my grandmother who visited, who picked up the baby girl and looked down into her face. ‘Not a beauty,’ said my grandmother. ‘And another daughter. It is not my son’s fault, I bore five fine young men, so boys run in our family.’ My mother made no sound from the bed where she lay, still exhausted from her birth pains.

  ‘What shall we name her?’ asked the midwife, who was also in my grandmother’s keep, a most unsympathetic woman, with hands as hard as wood and red-rimmed eyes.

  My grandmother looked around her, caught sight of the moon, big and full in the cloudless sky. ‘Call her Ambika, for the moon,’ she said, carelessly. ‘The child may as well have a namesake, and like the moon, maybe she’ll learn to keep herself hidden when needed and not cause too much grief.’