Girls of the Mahabharata

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  ‘Just as grand as yours,’ I told Satyajit when he came in and stood at the door to watch me dress. ‘In fact, I think I like my rings more than yours.’

  Satyajit looked closely at my hands and then laughed. ‘You shouldn’t, for they are my old ones, only with sapphires instead of emeralds. And when you are done with it, Vrika will have them, probably with diamonds.’

  I twisted one around my finger and sniffed, ‘I don’t care, I think sapphires are nicer than emeralds anyway.’

  ‘You do look very grand,’ admitted Satyajit. ‘All ready to be the heir apparent to Dasarna. They won’t know who you are when you enter their country, they’ll think you’re a young god.’

  He smiled at me, his dimples dancing and I smiled back, but I was a little worried. It was the first time it was occurring to me that I would have to leave Kampilya. Most sons stayed with their fathers, but our father would have no use for all of us, so we would all be wed like this, to kingdoms with no heirs of their own, and leave our families behind. I felt a wave of homesickness already, was this the last time I would be around my brother and talk of nothing at all? Were these the last few days I would be breathing the sweet Kampilya air during hemanta, the smell of wood-smoke and the pine trees on the hills and the early morning mist that draped itself around the palace like a veil? Dasarna was meant to be warm, warmer than Kampilya and most of southern Panchala, and even though the noblemen from there had promised me vast forests with strange beasts – cats the size of two grown men, striped cats like sunlight through a bamboo grove – I wanted to stay here, where I knew everything and everything knew me, and no one would think I was strange for always covering my chest and insisting I dress and undress alone.

  As if he was reading my mind, Satyajit cleared his throat and asked me whether I was ready to be married. ‘Of course,’ I said, standing up taller, reaching for the sword that would be attached to my waist for the ceremony.

  ‘I mean, are you ready for ... marriage?’ he had such an odd look on his face, I was going to ask him what he meant, but just then they began to blow the conches, and a stream of people came into the room to take me away to be wedded. Draupadi and Drishtadyumna tugged at my hands as they led me away and amidst all of that, I didn’t even have time to answer Satyajit, let alone ask him what he meant.

  The wedding ceremony was like all wedding ceremonies – we walked around the sacred fire, we kept our heads bowed, so once again, all I saw was parts of her, her small painted hands folded across her lap, once the thrust of her chin as her hands were placed into mine by her father. I couldn’t tell you what Bahuratna’s face looked like, but I could see that she wasn’t meek or shy. I began to feel comfortable with her already – docile people always made me a little nervous, but I could talk to someone who wouldn’t be pushed around. I glanced at my mother who was what people called ‘gentle’ or ‘gracious’ but she got her own way more often than not. And the other girl I knew, Draupadi, was only a child, but I could already see that she would be a woman who you would hesitate to undermine.

  Hours later, the smell from the smoke of the ceremonial fire we were told to walk around and then sit in front of made me sick to my stomach, but Bahuratna obediently ate everything that was offered to us. The conch shells blew a lonely note, and we draped garlands around each other’s necks. We promised we would raise a contented, heroic family, we promised that we would gain in wisdom each day we spent together and we promised to be true only to each other for the rest of our lives. The rest of her life, anyway. If she died, I could marry again if I wished, but if I died, this would be the only wedding ceremony she would ever have.

  Then I was led away, not even allowed to say anything to my bride who was being herded off in a different direction. The next day we would travel to Dasarna together, five long days on the road, where the men and the women would camp separately, and then, ‘In Dasarna, you will have your wedding night,’ my mother told me as she used a soft cloth to wipe the ash from my face. She seemed angry as she did this, her mouth was all primmed up and her eyes snapped, but I was too tired to enquire why. Maybe I didn’t want to ask, either. Maybe I already knew what would await me in Dasarna.

  ‘Not everyone has to be married,’ my mother said, handing my turban to the maid who would put it away in a trunk, probably to be used for all our weddings. ‘You are my son, you could have stayed with me. But your father thought it best, I don’t know.’ She made a tchah sound with her lips and looked at me full in the face, the love she had for me shining out of her eyes, ‘I knew you were my son from the moment you were placed in my arms,’ she told me, putting her palm to my cheek. ‘It didn’t matter to me what anyone else said, because I knew. In my heart. You felt it too, didn’t you?’ I nodded. It was true. I did feel like her son, at least her son, even if not completely my father’s.

  That was the last conversation we had – it might even be the last conversation we will ever have. The next day, she appeared with the palace women with plates of burning incense and sandalwood ash from the sacred fire which she took a pinch of and pressed on to my forehead. I bent to touch her feet, she raised me up and we looked at each other for a long moment, before she moved on to place her blessings down the line. Utsarg, already blessed, had come up to me, riding his horse and leading mine by the reins, and my father clasped my forearm and said nothing at all beyond be well, stay blessed by the gods, send us notice of your arrival. I touched his feet as well, and then swung up on to my horse, and galloped ahead of the party.

  I did not want to look back, because I had loved them all so well, I wanted to fix them in my memory as riding towards them as I always did, rather than away.

  Chapter Ten

  It is the next morning, and I am sure we are cursed. No one has come to greet us, nor to break the spell, and I grow more sure that it is a spell. Food still appears, and there is plenty of water to drink, and we have clumsily dug out a latrine with whatever tools we had, but at least it is a latrine.

  Worse: Utsarg and I haven’t been the same since last night. It’s nothing I can put my finger on, but he is too polite, too eager to laugh at my jokes, and yet he flinches away from me when I go too close to him. I wonder if we have somehow ruined what had been between us, as though we set it on fire. I don’t care if I die any more, I think bleakly, this sort of stiff formality between us is worse than if we were enemies.

  Almost as soon as I think this, the world darkens. And I don’t mean that the sky gently fades into night – which would be the first time it did that since we’ve been here – I mean that suddenly there is a loud clap, like a thunderstorm and everything is eclipsed. We can barely see each other. I find my bow through touch, and load it with an arrow, the string drawn back against my arm, the arrow quivering to be off, but I don’t know where I would lose it. Next to me, I can feel Utsarg’s arm as he reaches for his sword, and then, without saying a word, we move so our backs are touching. The circular battle formation, the sarvatobhadra vyuha. My teacher would be proud of me.

  O Prince Shikhandi, name the advantages of the sarvatobhadra vyuha, and then you may leave for the day.

  In the distance, Utsarg calling to me with his special carved whistle, pee-hoo, pee-hoo! I had to leave the school room, but my tutor was insistent. Looking down at my feet, scratched from climbing up a thorn tree that morning looking for the eggs of a bird.

  The sarvatobhadra vyuha. I will have your attention, Highness.

  Pee-hoo! Almost giving up now. Utsarg would just go off without me if he had to wait too long. I looked down again at my feet and looked up and gabbled off the answer.

  It is a circular battle formation, O Teacher, and it keeps the soldiers safe from all sides because they are not presenting their backs to the enemy.

  Good. And when should one use this?

  I cast an anxious look towards the window, and back at my teacher, who looked back at me gravely, his eyes almost smiling but inexorable. I gave a great sigh.

  One should
use this when there aren’t that many soldiers. It is an advantageous position when you are about to be ambushed by the enemy.

  He nodded and smiled, and then waved his hand at me. Released! I leapt up and dashed through the door, shouting for Utsarg.

  The dust begins to swirl, and then it all moves as though it is being pulled into the air, so we are standing outside of the cloud that forms and watching it. It grows, so it is bigger than the tree we are underneath and then it shrinks, and then it grows again, until it is just a little taller than I am, and out of the nebulous form come four straight clouds, two across and two reaching downwards, and they’re almost like...

  ‘Arms and legs,’ whispers Utsarg. We are standing side-by-side so we can watch the body – it is now definitely a body – form. It is also not a body. My mind struggles with it, but the best I can do, is that there is a space suddenly, the clouds have gone almost into the air, like when you put your hand on wet sand and it sinks. It is an impression of a figure, as if your shadow had come to life and was reaching out for you.

  Finally, all the clouds are gone, and it is just there, and it speaks.

  ‘Amba and Lalita,’ it says, and it laughs a terrible laugh. ‘My very dear ladies. What a pleasure to see you again.’

  I can’t describe its voice either, only that it seems to be drawn from all the sound there should be in a forest. In the way the voice lingers over the names it’s just spoken, that could be the screech of a monkey or the coo of a dove, its laugh could be the way the wind moves in the leaves, or the scratchy sound of a snake moving through dry grass.

  ‘I think there must be some mistake,’ says Utsarg, after the silence has stretched for too long to be comfortable. It has not said anything to break the silence either, in fact, it stretches into the silence, seeming to enjoy it.

  ‘What sort of mistake?’ and this time it is sibilant, like a snake. Through the air, I can see bits of its features emerging, a wide mouth with small pointed teeth, the flash of an eye, a nose that is flat and flaring.

  ‘We are Prince Shikhandi, son of the great King Drupad, may his name live in honour, and his trusted companion, Utsarg, born to the Panchala kingdom and of noble birth. Tell us why you have brought us here.’ I’m saying all this in my best royal voice, but I can’t muster up enough courage to be as loud as I would like.

  ‘Oh, is that who you are?’ the creature sounds amused, and at once, it is both in front of us and behind us, heads emerging out of the air, all laughing at us with green tongues and pointed teeth. Now, at last, I get a look at its full face – and wish I hadn’t – it looks human in feature and form, but its skin is green. Not bright green or even a uniform one, more the mottled green of a tree bark, brown in spots, light in some and dark in others. Its eyes are red where the whites should be, the pupils very large, and seemingly endless, no reflection, no movement. Its hair is grass, short grass, long grass, moss creeping unevenly across its chin. A frog begins to hop on the tree behind us, and without breaking its glance from us, it puts out a long green tongue and quick as a whip, has the frog in its mouth. We hear the crunch of small bones, the white teeth spattered with blood before the tongue comes out again and licks them clean.

  We are both so startled by this that we have grabbed each other’s hands. I can feel Utsarg trembling, unless it is my own quavering I mistake for his.

  ‘Oh, come now,’ it says. ‘Are you still going to tell me you are not Amba and Lalita? A finer pair of friends I never saw.’ Its eyes look up and away from us, like it is going to sing a song, and sure enough, it begins to sing, all the heads nodding along.

  ‘A finer pair of friends I never saw!

  Like Princess Amba and her friend Lalita!

  They stayed together through their life,

  One would

  never marry, never be a wife.

  And the other was a eunuch...’

  It pauses, mouth open, eyes closed and then snaps its eyes open again. ‘Eunuch,’ it hums and then, ‘oh, it’s no use, I can’t think of anything. You boy, Utsarg-of-noble-birth, give me a word that rhymes with eunuch.’

  Utsarg is so pale, I feel he may faint. He doesn’t say anything, and we are still surrounded by the laughing disembodied heads, some of which are reaching out their long tongues to touch us.

  ‘Quickly,’ it says, ‘or I may eat you. I may not as well, it’s been a long time since I ate human flesh, it’s too fat for my liking, but I have to make an example of people who won’t answer my riddles, don’t you think?’

  I am reaching for my bow, when it grows the rest of its body rapidly, two arms and two legs, all that same mottled green, and devoid of any kind of clothing, so I can see its sex pulsing, very largely and vividly male. It reaches out a hand to stop my arm.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ it says. ‘What will you do after you kill me, young prince? Will you go back to your father’s house and let your father-in-law wage battle on your family? Would you go back to your wife, after she knows the truth about you?’

  ‘Look here,’ I say. ‘Who are you and what is this? Why have you brought us here? Stop toying with us.’

  ‘Who am I?’ it – which I suppose I’m now thinking of as he – is even more pleased with this question. ‘Who am I!’ he shouts and the sky fills with strange little echoes … am I, am I, am I.

  Utsarg sees that I am fast losing patience and places one restraining hand on my arm. I don’t care if killing this creature will mean we’ll be trapped here forever, I don’t care, I don’t, I don’t. I think the thing can read my mind, his eyes gleam wickedly at me, he is stretching now, so his shoulders spread and his arms reach up, filling the clearing with his greenness.

  ‘Are you the yaksha Sthunakarna who we seek?’ asks Utsarg, and all of a sudden the creature snaps back into itself like a branch that has bent away from a tree and is now returning to it. He no longer seems so large or so monstrous, instead, he is almost human, still a little taller than me, still green, but instead of shaking his strangeness in our faces, it’s as if he’s shrinking to meet us. Slowly, all the hair that has risen at the back of my neck settles down, and my heart stops beating like it will rise out of my chest and fall on the grass.

  ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t name me,’ says Sthunakarna, for it is him, and now I wonder how I didn’t see it. Of course a yaksha, a nature spirit, wouldn’t be beautiful and clever like an apsara, nor mischievous and winsome like a gandharva. I think of storm clouds and earthquakes, I think of floods from rivers wiping out villages like they were nothing, just scribbles in the sand. I think of a time I saw a mouse in a snake’s grip, and how the mouse just lay there, trembling, as the snake drew circles around it with its body and raised its head, almost like it was dancing, to strike.

  ‘Well, now you have found me, princeling and friend of princeling. Not-Amba and Not-Lalita. I should have revealed myself to them perhaps, they were just here, just yesterday ...,’ he takes in a deep breath and scratches his chin, and I notice that instead of nails, he has talons, curved and long and sharp.

  ‘O Sthunakarna, we appeal to you to grant our wish,’ says Utsarg doggedly, and woodenly, refusing to let the yaksha’s ranting about some long ago women he keeps confusing us with stop him from his train of thought. ‘Please turn Prince Shikhandi into his true form, the form of a man, so that he may fulfil his destiny.’

  Sthunakarna blinks and then smiles very widely, from ear to ear, each pointed little tooth gleaming. ‘Why?’ he asks brightly, ‘Why do you wish this for your friend?’

  ‘Because his destiny is that of a man,’ says Utsarg, who is now looking a little confused.

  ‘That’s of no concern to me, men and their destinies. Why not just be happy as a woman, hmm, Shikhandini?’

  ‘Because, he is supposed to be a man!’ Utsarg is bewildered but still rushing to my defence.

  ‘I feel like you and I, my friend, are not seeing the whole story.’ The yaksha walks over to Utsarg and drapes an arm around his neck and looks at me. U
tsarg tries not to flinch.

  ‘You see, in the end, Amba and Lalita told each other the truth,’ observes Sthunakarna, gazing up at the sky. ‘That’s why I liked them so much. It’s why I appeared to you just now, instead of making you wait several moons. You were truthful to each other with your bodies. No, it’s sweet! Don’t deny it with your blushes, boys. It’s always been there, the question of what would it be like, you just finally answered it. Truth is a better weapon to have than bows and arrows, Shikhandini. Maybe if you told me the rest of the truth, and Utsarg here, the truth, maybe then I might be able to do something about your man woman situation.’

  ‘Stop calling me Shikhandini,’ I finally spit out.

  There is silence. Sthunakarna looks like he is in no hurry, his eyes dart from here to there, his ears twitch, his talons brush against Utsarg’s chest and it is that final gesture that makes Utsarg say to me, ‘Just tell him, Highness. Tell him whatever there is he needs to know, so we may finish this.’

  I haven’t told Utsarg why we left Dasarna, why King Hiranyavarman is waging war against my father, why Bahuratna spat in my direction as we left. He’s guessed, I’m sure he’s guessed, but I didn’t tell him, because uttering those the words – even though we know that already – would be admitting that we were all play-acting all these years, that I am not his prince, his master, but his princess instead.

  But now I see I have no other choice, so I take a deep breath and begin the end of the story.