Girls of the Mahabharata

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  Of marriage itself, I hadn’t thought much. Vaguely, I knew what went on between a man and a woman, but only in the barest sense. Anyone would think me very naive, a strapping young man, well-versed in the art of war, growing up with so many brothers, and still I knew less than the most callow young kitchen maid. Perhaps it was because my constant companion, my only friend, Utsarg, didn’t have much interest in these things, so we never talked about what happened after the wedding. Sometimes we would joke about our children growing up together, as we had, but we spoke of children like we’d talk about kingdoms – far away and someday ours. My parents certainly didn’t think it wise to speak to me about what would happen when I took my clothes off for my new bride, perhaps they too were so used to seeing me as a young man that they never thought about it. None of us thought about it – how foolish, and yet, also how touching. To assume the whole world would be like our kingdom, that I would always be the slightly odd second son of a great king. I wish I had asked, just one question and we would not be in this situation today, all I had to do was say and after the ceremony, then what happens? It was Shikhandini holding back, the bashful maiden held my tongue and hers, and Shikhandi suffers for it as she rejoices.

  ‘Well, son?’ asked my father when I went to him. Drishtadyumna had hoisted himself onto the sill of a high window, and Draupadi was trying hard to follow, her sari picked up and wrapped between her legs. She made a horrible face when she saw me.

  ‘Charming,’ I said, trying not to laugh. ‘Is this what you teach the daughters of Drupad, Father?’

  ‘Eh? What?’ He turned his large head trying to spot her, but she slid to the ground quickly, and put on an angelic expression, so his face softened.

  ‘Come here, my little doll,’ he said, reaching out his hand, and she took it, only looking back at Drishtadyumna once, a great expression of self-restraint. Once he had her perched on his knee, they both looked at me expectantly.

  ‘We don’t see much of you these days,’ said my father, stroking Draupadi’s hair. ‘Your mother was just asking after your health, you are well? You are recovered?’

  ‘By Varuna’s grace, I am, Father,’ I said. I had dropped to the ground to bow to him and now I stood and put my hands to my back. My body was still sore from its long confinement. ‘I shall visit my mother shortly. But I believe you wanted to see me?’

  ‘I did,’ he said, and picked Draupadi off his lap, placing her on the ground very gently. ‘Run along, darling,’ he told her. ‘Take your brother and go play somewhere else.’

  ‘But I wanted to stay here with you,’ she said, sticking out her lower lip. Drishtadyumna, much better behaved, had already climbed down from the window and was waiting obediently by the door. My father looked around in despair, and then pulled off one of his own rings and handed it to her.

  ‘If you’re a good girl, you can have this ring,’ he bribed, even though the ring was already in her small clenched fist. She grinned at him, and then at me, and let Drishtadyumna drag her from the room by her arm.

  ‘At this rate, you’ll have no rings left,’ I warned my father, but he just watched them go, smiling slightly.

  ‘Now, my son,’ he said, turning to me, ‘I have a fine proposal for you, should you choose to accept it, and frankly, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. The king of Dasarna has one daughter, a beautiful child, I am told, and no other children, so you would be his heir and rule the kingdom there like Satyajit does here.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I said, and although my words were obedient, I felt my heart begin to race in a very rebellious way.

  ‘This ruler has long wanted an alliance with us,’ said my father, looking pleased. ‘He sent a messenger to ask for Satyajit as well, when his child was just a babe in arms, but I didn’t know what she would emerge to be, it’s so hard to tell with infants. There was once the most beautiful baby I have ever seen, your mother was so struck, she wanted to at once secure her for one of you children, but I said wait, and now the child is older, walks with a limp and seems to be addled as well.’ He shook his head over the perfidy of babies and added ‘Poor thing’, as an afterthought.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I said again, and then added. ‘What is her name, Father?’

  ‘The name of the addled child? Oh, the name of your new bride. What was it – something fanciful, the messenger said her name was as beautiful as she was, but we shall see, we shall see. Bahuratna, that was it, that’s her name.’

  ‘Is she beautiful?’ I asked. Strange feelings were welling up inside me, a throbbing in a place I usually ignore, a twist in my stomach, a rush to my face so my cheeks tingle. A beautiful bride. I will be married and have a beautiful bride. I will touch her hair as she lets it down for me, I will kiss her mouth with my own. This is when I should have asked my question, but I held my tongue, wanting to leave as soon as I could, to be alone with this newness.

  ‘Well, of course she is beautiful.’ My father looked closer at me. ‘Shikhandi, son, you know the prophecy made about you before you were born, don’t you?’ I nodded and he said out loud, ‘That you would be a great warrior, the best in our line? Yes?’ He reached out a hand for me, as though I was as young as Draupadi, and when I took it, he pulled me towards him, and looked straight into my face.

  ‘I knew you were the son I wanted from the moment you were born,’ he said, softly. ‘Your mother didn’t need to tell me that you were a boy, I knew it when you were placed in my arms. The king of Dasarna will be lucky to have you. Any king will be lucky to have you, no matter how lovely their daughters are. I would only choose the best for you, my boy, my prophesied boy.’

  My eyes grew wet and I looked away then. Now, I wake up with a great, gasping breath, and touch my face, feeling the tracks of tears I wept while I was asleep.

  How was I to know, I think.

  And another thought blooms in my head: he should have known better.

  Chapter Eight

  We are growing bored, Utsarg and I. We have woken, eaten again, with nothing else to do. We have practised our swordplay and marksmanship. We have climbed the tree until the branches sway alarmingly beneath our weight. We have looked at the knife from all angles, and Utsarg has spent much time cleaning it, so part of it gleams, but his fingers are raw from rubbing at the blade and hilt for so long, so he has cast it aside. I have picked it up and used it to carve birds and people out of twigs, the way Satyajit used to, to amuse the smaller children. I carve horses, and place two dollies on top of them, me and Utsarg. He watches me and asks me to make an army, which I do, and then he invents a complicated game of military strategy, where we lay out our soldiers and make war on each other. His soldiers are made of light wood and mine are dark. He wins seven times, but I surprise myself by winning thrice.

  ‘This light,’ says Utsarg, musingly. ‘Do you suppose it ever changes?’ For the heavy blue light has stayed the same whether we wake or sleep. At the beginning of the journey, I could tell you whether it was morning or night, just by the way I felt, but it could be midday right now and we feel as though it is the middle of the night.

  ‘Have you a plan, friend?’ Utsarg asks me, ‘I mean, what is going to happen to us next? Do you know what you will ask for? Are we ever going to see our home again?’

  I’m filled with irritation. As if I have all the answers! The burden of this quest has been placed on me, and Utsarg is not lifting a finger to help. Why must I always be forging ahead, and he holding on to my dhoti, demanding answers like a mewling child? I answer in a stiff, even voice, ‘I did not suddenly go behind the tree to make a plan, Utsarg. I have been here from the beginning, being honest with you. I don’t know the answers to any of your questions.’

  His face flushes, I have hurt him with my tone, and when he replies, his voice is laced with as much bitterness as mine is, ‘It’s like that, is it? Forgive me for asking, Highness, but since you brought us here, I thought maybe you’d thought a little bit about what you wish to gain.’

  Some part of me re
alizes that I shouldn’t fight with the only other living being in this forest, but the rest of me is relishing this break from routine. I want to go on and on hurting him just to do away with the monotony, I suddenly want to roar until the very trees shake, anything, anything to show that we are alive. So, I say, ‘This is why I am a prince and you are a suta. Another prince would have helped me instead of constantly being a hindrance.’

  The minute I say it, I know I have gone too far. We don’t talk about Utsarg’s father, even though we know he was a Kshatriya who bedded his Brahmin mother. Sutas have always existed, where there is Kshatriya royalty, where there are noblemen looking for affairs outside their marriages, as men do. As I suppose I must. Perhaps Utsarg is even my brother, my father might have sired him, but he will never be a prince, because of his caste, because of his mother’s status, and I’ve always seen how unfair that is, Utsarg would be a prince of whom there is no equal, but instead he must drive my chariot, and watch on while I insult him as I do now.

  ‘It is true,’ he says, slowly. ‘You are a prince, and I, your humble servant. I suppose it was simple of me to think of us as brothers – as friends, but then when has there ever been a friendship between a man and a woman?’ He is hurting me as I have hurt him, I know this, and still I feel his words like a knife, lodged between my ribs, gouging out the most tender part of me.

  ‘Stop it,’ I whisper, and he comes closer, I am faced with his chin, jutting out at me, and I never realized how much taller than me he was, he must have been hiding it all this while, stooping, to save me embarrassment. He cups my chin in his hand, and forces my face up so I am looking into his eyes.

  ‘Would we have suta children, do you think?’ he asks, his voice so low I can barely hear it. ‘Or would they count as Kshatriyas, all of you and half of me?’ The air is still and waiting, unbearably waiting, as it has been this entire while, and I want it to stop, I want to go home, I want Utsarg to see me as me again, and that’s the only excuse I have for closing the distance between us with my mouth. I do it angrily, defiantly, I do it as a prince, but also as a princess, I hope he can feel my rage when I bite down on his lip and taste blood, but he does not even flinch, his arms are on my shoulders, how funny, it’s like we are wrestling, as we used to do when we were children, something we haven’t done since I started to bleed.

  He is rolling on top of me and I am clawing and fighting and biting, but pulling him closer even as my nails sink into his back. At one point, I see his face – his expression grim but also yearning, and I know it is just an echo of my own eyes, deep with lust. I know this, between us, might also happen if we were both men or both women, I have been on enough hunting camps to know that when men are in masth, it doesn’t matter who they reach out to at night. I know that women, sitting in their chambers for nights on end, need something to stave off boredom. I know all this without being told, and I know the next day it is not as if they are lovers, just two people whose fingers happened to meet in the dark. There were a set of soldiers in my father’s army who became more than just that, though. Neither married, and they cared for each other deeply, just as a man and a woman would.

  There is a moment when we lock eyes, and without saying anything I am pulling myself up, loathe to stop kissing, it seems the entire universe is contained there between our lips and if we let go the world will suddenly go askew, but I am moving him so he is at the bottom and I am on top and then I break from him but keep looking at his face, and I fumble with my dhoti and his, and then oh, he pushes and I push back and there is an instant of searing pain but oh, there is also something else, it is just like that time when we were children and wrestling and his thigh went between my legs and in the moving, I rubbed against it and something exploded inside of me, softly, like a clenched fist finally being released, but this is a bigger explosion. Under my chest binding, I feel my nipples tighten, I am propped up on one arm, and I know my mouth is slightly open and Utsarg is looking up at me, his eyes wide with wonder and we move slow and then fast, fast, fast and his face crumples but I am looking beyond him, through him, and he gives a shout and stops, but I am still moving until it is done. It is done. It is done and I am collapsed, my face against his neck, his hand coming up to rest on my thigh.

  And neither of us wishes to speak, so I roll off eventually and lie next to him on my back, and he reaches for my hand and grips it tightly. It is still Utsarg, and he is still my friend and companion, only now our friendship is deeper. There’s still one thing I want to know so I ask him, my voice creaky.

  ‘Was that – did you – was I a man or a woman just then to you, Utsarg?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, still looking up at the sky. Then he adds, ‘Both. Neither?’

  And that answer will have to do. I find that I am satisfied by it.

  Chapter Nine

  The day of my wedding, I woke up just before dawn. Somewhere in the palace, my new young bride was doing the same thing, but she would be woken by her mother and cousins. I woke of my own accord, and rolled over on my bed, looking out at the lightening sky. Utsarg had spent the night in my chambers, as he sometimes did, and he was sleeping on, oblivious to everything.

  The Dasarna party had arrived two nights before, first the camels with their heavy packs – clothes for all of them and presents for us – that camel was guarded by four soldiers riding next to it and its rider, then the camels bearing the food that Dasarna contributed to our feast. Not meat, for that would have spoiled on their long journey, but dried corn and pounded rice flakes. Salt in special pouches, other spices in little carved boxes of tree bark. With the camels, came the hunters, and they set out with my father’s men to catch as much game as they could, coming back with their arms across long bamboo poles on which were strung up pheasants and wild boar, even a few deer. In the kitchen with our cooks, the Dasarna cooks worked so that at each meal we were given food of both our kingdoms, a way, said my new father-in-law, for our two lands to meet inside our mouths before they met outside.

  I liked him, my new wife’s father, King Hiranyavarman. I only met him briefly, once when he had first arrived, and I, along with my brothers, went to greet him. I saluted him as a son-in-law does, making the proper official bow, and he raised me up by my shoulders and smiled into my eyes and said, ‘Well, this is my Panchala prince, is it? You look just like your mother, boy, which is nothing to be ashamed of, she was a great beauty in her time, we all wanted to marry her, but your father did in the end.’ And then he tossed back his head and roared with laughter, and the whole court laughed with him. Up in the women’s gallery, I could hear my mother laugh as well, and Draupadi’s high piping voice, ‘What’s so funny, Mother? I can’t see anything!’ I glanced at my father and he smiled and indicated for me to move away which I did.

  The second time I met him was at the feast, where his wife and daughter were also present, but since they were tucked away behind screens, I did not see my bride, except for a brief glimpse of her toes when she tiptoed up to the screen to look at me. I knew it was her, because her cousin bade me come closer so Bahuratna could see better. I couldn’t see her at all, only maybe a flash of her pupil as she peered at me, and then I looked down and saw her small, slender feet. I reached out with my foot and touched her toes and then I heard her gasp and giggle, saw the toes retreating, the back of her heel as she walked away, a yellow sari above her narrow ankles.

  I backed away and straight into King Hiranyavarman, but he had been drinking deep of my father’s wine, so he just belched softly and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Good boy, good boy,’ he muttered, probably not knowing or caring which of the sons of Drupad I was. I caught Satyajit’s eye above Hiranyavarman’s shoulder and he smiled at me and nodded towards the door with his head, then gestured me to get to bed before too long. I had gone, and later, Utsarg had joined me, blushing and giggly about the Dasarna girls, and what he had been doing with one of them. ‘I think we’ll be very happy there,’ he told me, and I laughed and told him t
o stop talking so much and go to sleep.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, the morning of my wedding, poking him with my toe. ‘Wake up, you big lump.’

  He opened one bleary eye and regarded me. ‘It is not auspicious for the friend of the groom to be sleepy through the ceremony,’ he said. The palace priests had been going on about how some things were auspicious and others weren’t, and we had got into the same habit as well.

  ‘I don’t think that’s anywhere in the scriptures,’ I told him. ‘Besides, I must bathe and so you must run down and ask the maids to come up with my water.’

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said, his voice muffled by the fur he draped over his face against the chill. ‘None of the maids are awake yet.’

  ‘Utsarg,’ I said, ‘the whole palace is awake, except maybe people who drank too much wine last night. Do go. It’s my wedding day.’

  It was the season of hemanta, just before the bitter winter set in, and the water steamed in the bronze tub the maids filled up for me. Some of my younger brothers have maids wash them, especially their backs, but I have bathed alone since I was old enough to request it. For a moment, my hands lingered on my imperfect body – in my mind’s eye, I imagine my body so different, so like the person I want to be, that each time I am alone with my naked self, it is a little betrayal. But my father would have thought of this, I thought. Maybe I was to turn into a man as soon as I was married. Maybe my wife would be like me, half this and half that, maybe together we would be whole.

  Because it was cold, my wedding clothes covered all of my body, an indigo dyed tunic, stiff and the very latest sort of textile, part of our Dasarna dowry, over a crimson cloth that I draped around my legs. On my forehead, attached by a gold chain running through my hair, an ornament shaped like the head of a snake with eyes of ruby to match my dhoti. In my ears, gold circles, increasing in size until the last one, as big as a child’s wrist, rests on my shoulders. On my fingers, rings of gold set with sapphires and around my neck, three strands of coral and gold.