My father was always afraid that something would happen to his large and merry brood of children – he felt so blessed, each year a new son, that he worried that someone would cast an evil eye and we’d all fall prey to several disasters. Disease. Falling objects. Drowning – now, drowning was one of his biggest fears. We were all too rudely healthy for anyone to think we would get sick, it wasn’t even imaginable. All our childhood illnesses were tossed off within the turning of the moon, and if anything, like pruned plants, we grew even stronger. Satyajit’s mother, that first queen, had been a little sickly, which is why, we all said wisely, she died so rapidly after her child was born, but Satyajit had luckily inherited our father’s constitution almost exactly, down to the headaches he always got when he had too much wine. The rest of us resembled our mother, if not in face and feature, then in how we thrived no matter what happened to us. Seven natural born children – eight, if you count my dead twin, the could-have-been – and running around behind the active twins, and my mother is still able to stay on her feet the entire day, welcoming guests and supervising servants and sending messages to different kingdoms to see about brides for her sons, and still eat large meals and massage my father’s feet.
Not that our good health means my father got more easy-going about it over the years. On the contrary, he is becoming more miserly about us, objecting if we try anything new, but he only complains to my mother, who knows how to soothe him. That grishma, he was letting us swim only because the water was shallow, even though we had all been running away to the deep lake across the field from the palace since we could ride. ‘Ten sons,’ my mother would say, shaking her head. ‘You could spare one or two, my lord.’ And my father, always with one of the younger boys around him or on his lap or romping behind his seat would say, ‘What would I do without my gems, my diamonds, my emeralds?’
Oh, my sentimental father and my practical mother. I wonder where they think I am now. I don’t like to think of their faces when they hear that I am gone.
It was paddling in that stepwell – Utsarg isn’t in this memory, so he must have been busy somewhere else, anyway, the heat didn’t bother him as it did us – paddling in that stepwell, someone said something about Father’s long grudge with Drona, someone else said the city’s name Hastinapura just like that, but I felt as though I had been attacked by a snake.
My entire body seized up, I began to tremble and my teeth chattered. I would have drowned if it weren’t for another brother, Uttamauja, noticing me and giving a shout, after which the men closest to me pulled me out. Everyone asked what happened, for wasn’t I the most daring of them all? Wasn’t I the one who did all the bravest things so no one would pay too much attention to the binding cloth around my chest? Wasn’t I the best son that Drupad could have?
I didn’t know how to explain it, just that I suddenly felt as though if I was given a torch, I could set Hastinapura on fire. A dark bearded man’s face behind my eyes, his skin washed with red as though I was looking at him through blood. I knew it wasn’t Drona, even though we had never seen him.
‘Maybe you should lie down, brother,’ said Kumar, peering at my face. ‘You are very pale. Maybe it is a summer fever, and those can be fierce.’
It was a summer fever, I remember, relentless, pushing against the edges of my skin, making me sweat so much they had to pour water into my dry, unresisting mouth. I remember nothing, except the bearded man appearing over and over in my fever dreams, each time he was laughing at me, but I couldn’t hear his laugh. Each time I looked at him, I wanted to slit his throat, and I came so close in my dreams, so close, my hand raising, the knife in my hand a perfect weight, and then I would wake up. I insisted, in my delirium, that Utsarg tell me the story of my father and Drona again and again, but nothing he said touched on the tale that I was seeking, that would solve the mystery of the black bearded man, who I loved in my dreams as much as I loathed him.
And it was when I recovered from this, when a sudden storm lightened the air and darkened the sky, and my fever broke just as the little children from the palace ran outside to dance in the rain. I opened my eyes, and saw Utsarg sitting next to me, turning over the pages of a palm-leaf manuscript. He glanced up just as I turned my head, and his smile was wide and delighted as he ran his fingers over my forehead.
‘The sickness has left,’ he said, ‘and I am so pleased, because it has been a dull time without you.’
I laughed at that. ‘I suppose you didn’t worry about me at all,’ I teased him. ‘Just about what you would do for entertainment if I died.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have died,’ he said, comfortably. ‘When have any of you ever died? Besides, how can you die when I have some exciting news for you?’
‘What is it?’ I asked, coughing a little, and he held a cup of water to my lips and waited for me to sip it before he smiled at me again.
‘Your father has found a wife for you, O Prince Shikhandi! You will soon be a husband.’
And I knew he was feeling the same things I was – dread, and yet, also, hope. For if my father had made me a man in the eyes of the world, why could he not make me a husband?
Chapter Six
We are sitting with our backs against the only tree in our cage, its trunk seems to be made for our bodies, it embraces us like we are old friends. This could be my imagination, I don’t know how long it’s been since we last had a meal, and my stomach has ceased growling like an angry animal and now just stabs me every now and then with hunger, my body saying ‘Feed me before it is too late’, but weakly. Utsarg stretches his arm out, so his fingers brush mine. I have not grown these past two rains, but he has, so he can reach further. I’m only just noticing this, and the way his jaw is emerging from the roundness of his face.
Somewhere in me, I find the strength to say, ‘Listen, Utsarg, if something happens to me…’
‘Stop.’
‘No, please listen, if something happens to me, you have to escape from this forest, all right? And tell them – tell them that I made you come with me and you tried to stop me, but I abducted you, and then died on my own. Tell them it was madness that drove me to it. Don’t tell my father, don’t tell him about what happened at Dasarna.’ I look him straight in the eye, my gaze growing fiercer each time he tries to open his mouth to say something in return and finally he sighs and nods and looks at the ground.
‘Good man,’ I say, and squeeze his hand, feeling his fingers clasp mine and squeeze back.
I am so hungry, I think, and I touch the grass next to where we’re lying down, and it might be my poor addled mind, but it seems as though that patch has that same waiting feeling the rest of the forest has. Ever so gently, something in the ground is throbbing against my palm, but my head aches, and my arms are tired, and my eyes are sore, so I don’t know, I don’t know. Our fairy tales never had a man question whether it was magic or madness, so I’m left to gaze at the grass.
Magic or madness? Magic or madness? Magic or madness? Magicormadness?
If I am mad, I may as well indulge my insanity to its bitter end, I think, so I begin to dig into the grass, first with the sword, and when the earth is too loamy and crumbles, with my fingers. Utsarg stirs, and asks, ‘What are you doing?’, but he is so weakened, he can barely form the question, so I wave my hand at him airily.
One of my fingernails begins to throb, the other, I think, I have wrenched right off, and I put the finger into my mouth, tasting dirt and blood as I dig, the best that I can, with cupped palm and the scrabbling motions of a dog burying a bone. I only stop when I have a hole the length of my arm, and then I stop to laugh at myself, the great prince, Drupad’s warrior son, digging a hole in the middle of nowhere! I pull back my arm and lie down, looking up at the sky through the tree, and realize that this is where I am going to die. I’ve come to terms with it, I’m not sad at the prospect. This will be my last resting place, by this tree, next to this hole, maybe someone else will come by for a quest many rains later, and they will
find my bones, and wonder what happened to me.
The sky accepts my decision, I think, because the colour changes from the blue around me to a soft green, and then back to blue again. ‘Very well,’ I tell the tree, the ground, the vines, ‘I suppose this is where you have led me so that I will die.’ I shift to move myself into a more comfortable position, because if I am to perish, then I would like to do it with ease, and as I turn on my side, I see that I have dropped something into the hole, something that catches the light and glints, so I reach in my hand for it, and it cuts my hand, because it is sharp and perhaps not something I have dropped after all. I am on my haunches, leaning in, cursing myself for making this hole so narrow, like a snake’s lair, because I can only go by feel, and I have no desire to cut myself again. Cautiously, I reach out, cautiously, I feel the edges of this sharp thing, and move my hand upwards until the surface is blunter and carved, almost like a ... hilt? I manage to hook my fingers around it and pull it upwards and I see that I was right, it was a hilt, and this is a knife, an old tarnished silver knife, with large green spots on the blade and hilt, but deadly sharp for all that.
A sign? Am I to cut my throat with this blade or is it to help me escape? Well, I’d pick the one where we stay alive, says Utsarg’s voice very clearly inside my head, so I hold the knife to me and turn around, and Utsarg, who had fallen asleep while I was battling for my life, is standing up, blinking and gawking at me.
‘What did you do?’ he asks, rushing across to me, and grasping my arms.
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I say. ‘I was digging, and I found this knife.’
He reaches out to take the knife from me and gazes at it, turning it round and round in his hands. ‘It’s funny,’ he says. ‘This is not that old, it may have been buried here in our grandfather’s time, but see, it has this emblem on it, let me just scratch some of this tarnish off, look, it’s sort of like the sun with his horses. I’m trying to remember what kingdom uses this, let me think.’
‘Maybe it’s a sign we’re meant to escape,’ I say. ‘After all, someone buried it here, and I see no other signs that humans were here, so if they escaped, we can too.’ I’m only half believing what I say, just babbling to keep Utsarg cheerful. He looks at me, his mouth half open, his eyes surprised, and I’m a little taken aback that my words have worked so well, but then, there is a slight sound behind us, a spitting, crackling sound, and just a moment after the sound, we smell meat roasting, and Utsarg looks at me, and I look at Utsarg.
‘It could be my stomach’s pleasant dream,’ he says, softly, ‘but can you smell what I smell?’
I nod, and we turn at the same time, and just there, a little ahead of the tree is a merry fire, with a kid roasting on a spit. Just there as well, are our long lamented packs, our food, our clothes, our bedding.
‘Oh!’ cries Utsarg and runs toward it, while I proceed a bit more cautiously, and he takes the meat off the flames and slices it with the knife, and offers some to me.
‘What if it is enchanted?’ I ask, taking the meat anyway.
‘And we fall asleep forever and wake up in Indra’s court?’ he asks, smiling broadly, he is so pleased with the food and the fact that his bundle has been returned to him. He keeps stroking his pack like it was a pet, checking to see if the things are where he left them. ‘The way I see it, it is either eating this food or starving to death. Maybe finding the knife is the next step.’ He takes a big bite of meat and washes it down with the wine he finds in his pack. ‘Maybe it will lead us to the yaksha. Who knows? We found our way here, didn’t we?’
Watching him eat and drink is too much for me, so I start to eat as well. The food is remarkably good, and it doesn’t taste of anything but roasted kid, not a trace of magic, even when we fall asleep, it is a full bellied sleep, nothing enchanted about it.
Chapter Seven
When I was very little, I used to wonder what a beard would feel like. One shishir, early in my life, I was so curious, I fashioned a beard out of everything I could find. Old matting, rope, rags through which I bit a hole and ran my tongue through, so it looked like a moustache as well, even my own hair – it is a custom in Kampilya to let children of either sex wear their hair long until their eighth name day so you would see all our top knots and not be able to tell whether we were boys or girls. In some ways, it was the happiest time of my life.
I forget who it was that told me that I would never have my own beard, no glorious moustache declaring my warrior status, no dark shadow around my face if I went into the forest to meditate or pray to one of the gods, I wouldn’t be marked a supplicant, in fact, I would look just the same as I always did. Smooth faced, my curse. My jaw rounded, my mouth slightly open, my hair dipping into the centre of my forehead, my eyes set at a slant, and a bystander could be forgiven for thinking me coquettish when all I did was glance down at my bow and then look up again. Who was it that said all these things to me, who said you will never be a man? It could have been one of my playmates; jealous because I climbed faster, swifter than him, it could have been Utsarg’s mother, driven by her concern for me not to be disappointed later, so she just disappointed me in the present. It could have even been my mother, driven by guilt, wondering how far her lie would lead.
After I was told, I ran away from the scene, to be by myself. I went to my mother’s antechamber, where she lay when she was sick or with child, and I barred the door, and I took off my cloth and I gazed at myself as best as I could in that small room. No one told me, nobody told me until that one person did, and so I thought from the slash between my legs would grow an outward presence, that somehow the flaps would fold and the inside would lengthen, and I would have something resembling every other boy’s. There, by myself, I moved my hand up to my head and loosened my top knot so my hair tumbled down to my shoulders, standing up in a riot of curls. Then I found my mother’s supply of kohl and I darkened my eyelids, and I went to the corner where the maids kept the betel nut box, and I chewed on one, spat it out into my hand and smeared the juice on my lips with a little finger. I caught a glimpse of myself in the bent tin mirror, this distorted reflection of my face, this little girl where just hours ago, there had been a little boy. And then, from very far away, Utsarg’s voice calling me: Shikhandi, Shikhandi, where are you, Shikhandi? I came to myself, rushing back into my body as though my soul had been on a journey. I remember wiping my face with the back of my palm and hurrying to tie my cloth back around my waist, and running outside, my hair streaming behind me, and Utsarg making a face when he saw me, and boy-like, we fixed my hair so it resembled nothing more than a bird’s nest, but we fondly imagined it looked like everyone else’s, and we played as though nothing had changed, and for him, I suppose nothing had but now I knew, and with that knowledge, the other me, Shikhandini, walked next to me and held my hand from time to time, whispering in my ear often enough for me to never forget that she was there.
I dream about my father, as I lie there by the fire. I dream about the day he told me about Dasarna.
He had summoned me to his chambers as soon as I had recovered enough to eat a good meal. I had still not gained back the weight I lost, nor had my hair seen to, so when I got a glimpse of myself in the tin mirror that the boy held out to me, for an instant, I saw an old woman, not a young man at all. An old woman who had hidden behind my cheeks and in my eyes, and whose mouth sunk in, with deep dark pockets under her eyes, where mine had been merry and laughing.
I knew what he wanted to talk to me about. The whole palace knew. After Satyajit, there was me, the next marriageable son. Satyajit’s marriage was a success – his wife wasn’t a great beauty, and had been offered to us as part of her father’s taxes on his failing kingdom, but she worshipped him and he her. The wedding had gone on for ten nights, we, all of us children were allowed to stay out as late as we could manage, the littlest ones fell asleep in piles of marigold and mango leaves and had to be hunted out from their nests every day. Utsarg and I had just had our eleventh name d
ay celebrations, and were considered old enough to participate in everything – from the morning prayer ceremonies to just about every celebration in the evening. We sat in the boats that were lit with flaming torches and dancing girls twirled in front of us, the sparks from the fire lighting up their faces briefly. We ate feasts that just seemed to be one animal inside another – a camel stuffed with sheep stuffed with peacock, stuffed with quails, stuffed with their own eggs.
Part of the ten-day wedding was just my father showing off – he wanted to let Satyajit’s new father-in-law know that he was getting the better part of the bargain and be more grateful for it, but it was also a wedding for the First Son of Drupad, a festivity to show what the next fifteen years of celebration would look like. I think that’s why he also chose the quiet Haradevee for Satyajit; he could have had a flashier bride coming with her own set of traditions and feasts, but he wanted everyone to know that the bride was just there because she had to be, for a wedding, and the important thing was that his son was honoured and feted. I did not see much of my quiet brother that week, the more the bards sang Satyajit the valiant wins his beautiful bride, the more he seemed to slip into the background.
I was still looking forward to my own wedding though, I, the warrior that had been promised to Drupad, the one whose name would be remembered for generations after, I had no doubt that my father would outdo himself. Southern Panchala was rich for the past two rains, crops had been plentiful, the coffers overflowing, every subject paid their taxes promptly and even while my father and Satyajit ploughed it back into the kingdom – better roads, more soldiers to police the trade highways, land allotments to anyone who deserved them – we were just at that lucky time when anything we touched would turn to gold. People were beginning to talk about King Drupad and his ten sons and one daughter, and not just people from Panchala either, news of our family went north and south, east and west, and each time a rumour returned home to roost, it grew bigger, until we were all beautiful giants, noble and each of us descended from a separate god. We even outdid the Pandavas of Hastinapura, if you can believe it.
Girls of the Mahabharata Page 15
