The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  I tried to hold on to this compassion, sensing its preciousness, but even as I reached to grasp it, it dissipated into wisps. No revelation can endure unless it is bolstered by a calm, pure mind—and I'm afraid I didn't possess that.

  35

  Now it was Drona's turn to ride the beast of war. Drona whom I trusted less than the grandfather. Drona who cared more about victory than about the paths he needed to take to get there. Under him, the Kaurava attitude toward the battle underwent a change. Bheeshma had had his faults, stubborn and autocratic as he was. But he didn't compromise on values. He upheld righteousness and expected his underlings to do the same. And they obeyed him— if not from love then from fear. Now, without his keen and critical gaze, their morals began to disintegrate. And, as echoes from one avalanche set off other avalanches, the actions of Duryodhan's warriors affected the behavior of our army.

  Drona was still a fearsome warrior, but age sat on him more heavily than on Bheeshma. Deep down he knew that, unlike Bheeshma who had been bound by his word, he was here by his own choice. It leached away some of his certitude. He'd have to make up for it by being additionally harsh.

  On that first day, as he rallied the soldiers by taunting them, the sight pulled me into his mind, that place where even the most equivocal among us cannot escape truth. He was thinking that he could have left the Kaurava court long ago and returned to a life of austerities. Indeed, as a brahmin, he should have done so once he'd finished teaching the princes and received, in payment, the vengeance he so longed for. What tempted him to stay? Was it prestige? In his hermitage he would have been forgotten, but at court he sat next to the blind king, his immense, carved seat second in elegance only to the grandfather's. Was it the handsome remuneration he was paid for the military advice he provided? No. The pleasures of money and fame had long paled for him. It was love, that tricky shackle, which immobilized him.

  Aswatthama, Drona's only son, had joined Duryodhan's coterie and, emulating the prince, had developed a fondness for lavish living. Drona sighed as he thought of Aswatthama the child, whose long-ago tears for the glass of milk he couldn't have had set in motion the first act of this drama. And of Aswatthama the youth, hotheaded and full of complaints, who had taken Duryodhan's side when the prince accused Drona of being too fond of Arjun. You care for him even more than for me, he'd cried bitterly. Drona, so good with weapons, had failed to find the words to tell him that everything he'd done so far, all the compromises he'd made, had been for love of him alone. One time, when Drona had mentioned the possibility of retiring from court, Aswatthama laughed, incredulous and scornful. You want me to leave all my friends here for some godforsaken village in some backwater? Drona, who understood the world somewhat better than the boy, knew that his presence at court and his power as adviser to the king contributed significantly to Aswatthama's popularity. And so for the sake of his son he remained, saying to himself, Another year, just another year. Until the day he found himself in a trampled field by a blood-red lake leading a million doomed men into battle for a cause he didn't believe in—and knew it was too late.

  A long time ago, Arjun told me a story.

  One day, to test their learning, Drona took the princes on a hunt. Arjun, as usual, was the star: he shot down the swiftest birds just by listening to the sound of their wings; he killed the fiercest boar with a single arrow; when the princes grew thirsty, he sent an arrow into the earth, and a cool spring gushed up.

  But then something strange happened. His hunting dog had rushed ahead of him into the forest, barking. Suddenly the barking stopped. When the dog returned, whimpering, someone had shut his mouth with a muzzle made of seven interlaced arrows, shot carefully to silence the dog without hurting him. Mystified, they went to see who could have achieved such a feat. Deep in the forest they found a young man dressed in leopard skins.

  “Who is your teacher?” Drona asked.

  The youth fell at Drona's feet and said, “It is you, master.”

  Drona was taken aback. Then he remembered that, years ago in Hastinapur, a boy from a distant hill-tribe had come to him, begging to learn archery. Drona had refused, saying that he did not teach the lowborn. The boy had left without argument. He recognized the boy in this youth, now a master archer. The man—his name was Ekalavya—explained that, after Drona's refusal, he had retreated to the forest. There he made a clay image of Drona. Each day he prayed to it before practicing archery—and that is how he learned all the amazing things that he knew.

  Arjun was furious. All his life Drona had promised him that he would make him into the greatest archer in the world. But here was this simple, self-taught man, already more skilled than Arjun could ever hope to be!

  Drona guessed Arjun's thoughts. He said to Ekalavya, “If I'm your master, you must give me dakshina.”

  “Of course!” said the young man, filled with joy that the teacher was finally accepting him. “Whatever you want, I'll give it to you.”

  “I want your right thumb,” Drona said.

  Everyone around him—even Arjun—went silent with shock, but Ekalavya didn't hesitate. He sliced off his thumb and laid it at Drona's feet—and Arjun was left without a rival.

  To Arjun the incident proved how much his teacher loved him. But I, thinking of the forever-lost talent of Ekalavya as I looked down at Kurukshetra, wondered if it didn't demonstrate Drona's ruthlessness, his readiness to do anything to win. What shape would that ruthlessness take over the next few days?

  Though I was concerned about what Drona might do, he only captured a small part of my attention. The rest of me yearned to find out how Karna was faring, how he conducted himself in battle. But the sight controlled me and would not allow me to turn to him. What was its cruel purpose? Even when momentous events occurred around Karna, I had to hear of them secondhand.

  Such was the case with Ghatotkacha's death.

  Ghatotkacha, that sweet, open-faced boy, had turned out to be a savage warrior, his father Bheem's rival at destroying enemy soldiers. He had an added advantage: since he was a rakshasa, a being of night, his powers increased as the day waned. When the Kaurava warriors were at their most tired, just before the trumpets announced an end to the battle day, he would fall upon them and slaughter them. On such an evening, when it seemed as though he would never stop, a desperate Duryodhan begged Karna to put an end to his carnage. Karna hesitated. Only one astra he possessed—the Shakti—had the power to kill Ghatotkacha. But he was saving it to use on Arjun.

  But a panicked Duryodhan said, “I order you as your king—do whatever you must to kill Ghatotkacha.”

  Karna was left with no choice. He chanted the mantra that would call up the Shakti. When Ghatotkacha saw the whirling missile speeding at him, spitting fire, he knew his last moment had arrived. Perhaps his heart quailed, but his voice was steady enough as he told Bheem to report the manner of his dying to his mother. Then by rakshasa magic he grew to an immense size. When the astra exploded his chest, he leaned forward so that, falling, he would crush as many of the enemy as possible.

  By this point in the war, we had seen countless dear ones perish. But Ghatotkacha's fall made us suffer a different pain. He was the first of our children to die. Bheem looked around him with unfocused eyes, mumbling that this was a perversion of nature. That sons should be arranging a father's funeral rites, and not the other way around. My own sorrow as I tried to calm him, though real enough, was many-pointed and guilt-ridden. I feared that without the one weapon that could have protected him from Arjun, Karna was now doomed. Was Kunti, too, thinking the same conflicted thought as she rocked back and forth, keening beneath her breath?

  From the beginning Drona knew that he couldn't defeat the Pandavas in open battle. He decided on a different strategy. He would capture Yudhisthir and, in this way, end the war. But this, too, was impossible as long as Arjun guarded his brother. So each morning he asked a different king to challenge Arjun to fight, luring him to a distant part of the field. Though he realized what wa
s happening, Arjun couldn't turn down the challenge: such was the illogical kshatriya code! When he killed one challenger, another warrior took his place. Susarma, Satyaratha, Satyadharma—their names scatter in my memory as dry grass before the wind. Still, each day Arjun returned in time to protect his brother and foil Drona's plan.

  Drona grew more furious as time passed. On the thirteenth day of the war, after Arjun had been drawn away again, he decided on a different strategy. He formed his army into the devastating and invincible formation known as the padma vyuha, and began to steadily advance upon the Pandava army. Even the greatest Pandava warriors could not break it apart, for a padma vyuha, shaped like a thousand-petaled lotus, can only be destroyed from the inside. Duryodhan was delighted. “What a wonderful idea!” he cried. “Now that Arjun's out of the way, no one can penetrate our war formation. Let's make use of this and wreak as much havoc on the enemy as possible. Maybe today is the day we'll get to Yudhisthir!”

  Drona bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment, but he said, “There is one other person in the Pandava army that knows how to penetrate the lotus.”

  “Who is it?” Duryodhan asked, his euphoria fading.

  “Abhimanyu, who learned it from his father, Arjun.”

  “We must stop him somehow!”

  Drona shook his head. There was a feral smile on his face. “We can't stop him. He's too good a fighter. But don't worry. The others will not be able to follow him in. And Abhimanyu hasn't yet learned how to extricate himself from the vyuha once he enters it.”

  My head swam as I realized Drona's diabolical plot. If only I could send word to Yudhisthir and save Abhimanyu! But it was impossible.

  Duryodhan took the costliest jewel from his crown and offered it to Drona. “Truly you are a master strategist! Even Bheeshma couldn't have conceived of such an infallible plan. So this is how we'll destroy Arjun!”

  As Drona had foreseen, a desperate Yudhisthir asked Abhimanyu to break through the vyuha, promising that he and his brothers would follow close behind. I focused all my mental power on Abhimanyu, begging him to excuse himself, but I failed. An excited Abhimanyu was delighted to finally be of help to his uncles.

  When Abhimanyu saluted Yudhisthir and drove his chariot into the army amassed in front of him, I shut my eyes in despair. But the sight was relentless. And so from behind my closed lids I saw it all: how the vyuha locked up immediately behind Abhimanyu; how the lock was guarded by Jayadrath, my onetime abductor who had received a boon to withstand the Pandavas as long as Arjun was not with them; how the Pandavas, unable to aid their nephew, despaired. Inside the vyuha, Abhimanyu, realizing he was doomed, decided to make his death as expensive for his enemy as possible. None could withstand him in fair fight, this boy so like his father, until finally six of their best warriors fell upon him all together, in violation of the most important code of war. Coming up behind him, they cut the string from his bow and the hilt from his sword. They killed his charioteer and his horses and smashed his chariot. Still he wrenched out a broken wheel and advanced upon them, asking only that they fight him one at a time. But they would not honor this last request. So Abhimanyu fell, his beautiful face turned toward the women's tent where Uttara waited, his eyes filled with astonishment at the perfidy of men he'd respected as heroes. And his killers—so greatly had war altered them—roared their triumph like beasts.

  Who were among the killers, these warriors who trampled honor into the bloody ground beneath their feet to commit this heinous act? Drona was there, and Aswatthama, and—yes, the sight chose this moment to grant me my wish that I should observe him in action—Karna.

  I remained on the hill that night. I knew that in their anguish none on the Pandava side would pay attention to my absence. I could not bear to be there when Uttara found out the news. But the cruel night air carried every sound of lamentation to me. Uttara was in a frenzy, tearing her hair and beating her breast, calling on death to come for her, too. She flung herself on the ground unmindful of the child in her womb, while the other women, putting aside their own losses, tried to restrain her. I could feel the suffering of my husbands, their rage surpassed by their excruciating guilt, for had they not pressed him, Abhimanyu would never have entered the formation on his own. Each one wished that he'd died in Abhimanyu's stead. But theirs was not to be such a quick release.

  When he finally learned what had occurred, Arjun fell down in a swoon so deep that his brothers were afraid he'd perished of sorrow. But Krishna touched his chest and said, his voice stern, “Your son died most nobly. Be a worthy father to him!” Then Arjun awoke and took water in his hand and spoke a dreadful oath: If by sunset tomorrow he did not kill Jayadrath, who had prevented his brothers from entering the formation to support Abhimanyu, he would commit suicide.

  I lay on the hill under the great, wheeling stars. I had no energy left for raging, I to whom rage had come so easily all my life. Fog had stained the dark; the heavenly bodies were dim. It seemed to me that with the murder—for so it was—of Abhimanyu, a glory had passed from the earth. We were firmly in the grasp of Kali, the age of injustice. The war had festered. Neither Kaurava nor Pandava would escape its infection. I wept for Abhimanyu, that guileless, golden boy who would have been king after Yudhisthir, and for all of us who loved him. I wept in fear of what would happen if Arjun failed to fulfill his vow. I wept in remorse for the part I'd played in pushing the Pandavas into war, for now I'd begun to realize its full horror. Finally I wept for Karna, who had lived all his life for honor only to lose it today. He had cut away his armor and with it his hopes of victory rather than be known as a man who broke his word. For the sake of his good name he had given up the possibility of his brothers' love. He had curbed his longing for me to stand by his friend. But now he would be remembered as the murderer of a defenseless boy.

  What subversive power did war possess that it could turn even such a man into a butcher?

  Perhaps it was good that Abhimanyu fell when he did. He could die believing that the Pandavas, at least, had maintained the battle code with which they'd brought him up. He didn't have to witness how, in the days that followed, they, too, swerved from honor when it was expedient, attacking the unarmed and maimed, justifying their actions by stating it was for the ultimate good. Even Krishna played his part, creating the illusion of a false sunset so Jayadrath would think he was safe—and then, when Jayadrath stood up in triumph, urging Arjun to behead him. But the worst was how they killed Drona.

  After Abhimanyu's death, Drona fought like a demon, discarding every one of the laws he'd helped set up a mere fifteen days ago. Goaded by Duryodhan's poison tongue or by self-loathing, he forced his exhausted troops to attack at night, when the Pandava army had retired to rest. He turned his divine astras on common soldiers who had no way of withstanding them, transforming entire battalions into charred masses. In an attempt to break Dhri's spirit and render the prophecy of his death false, he singled out my family and killed, in one afternoon, my father and all three of Dhri's sons.

  Perhaps Krishna was right in declaring that Drona must be stopped by whatever means necessary. Still, there was something shameful in the way it was done. Bheem killed an elephant that had the same name as Drona's son and announced to Drona that Aswatthama was dead. But Drona said, “My son is too fine a warrior to be killed by the likes of you! I will believe it only if Yudhisthir, who never lies, declares it to be true.” Yudhisthir was caught in a terrible dilemma. But finally, weighing the lives of all the hapless men gathered to fight for him against his personal good, he gave up the virtue by which he'd lived his whole life and said it was so.

  Then Drona dropped his weapons in despair, closed his eyes and sat in prayer. Seeing this, Dhri—my gentle brother who until then had not fallen prey to the insanity of war—rushed at him with his upraised sword. With all my strength I cried to him to stop—but once again I was merely an observer, helpless to intervene. Even as the Pandavas shouted that he should take Drona captive but spare his life, he
beheaded the man who had, in a happier time, been the greatest teacher he'd known. Drona's blood spurted over my brother. He held up his dripping hands and roared with laughter, calling on the spirits of his father and sons to see how he avenged them. I shuddered. Bile rose in my throat. His laughter was so like that of the men who had killed Abhimanyu that had I not been watching, I couldn't have told them apart.

  Thus my brother fulfilled the fate he was born for, gaining revenge and losing himself, and spawning (for such is the nature of vengeance) a further drama of hate.

  36

  When Karna became commander, some semblance of order was restored to the battle. He sent a proclamation to both sides, urging a return to righteousness. It is certain to me that most of us shall not leave this field alive, he wrote. How shall we behave, then, in these last days? Would you rather the gods welcome us to the loka meant for heroes, or do you wish to be banished to the tortures of narak? Perhaps the warning about hell struck a chord in the hearts of the kings, for in the next days they extended a grudging chivalry to each other. For his part, Karna practiced his own philosophy. I sensed that he bitterly regretted his part in the death of Abhimanyu, that moment when in the blood-heat of battle he forgot himself. Perhaps in recompense—or because of the secret that clawed at him from within—he spared, one after the other, Sahadev, Nakul, Bheem— and most important, Yudhisthir, when he had them at his mercy. In this one instance he was disloyal to Duryodhan. He was careful not to rouse their suspicion, though, and taunted them mercilessly before he let them go. Only I saw the way he gazed after them in sorrow and tenderness.