Perhaps, thought Gandhari, that was why the devas did not garland her, why the flowers did not fall.
2
THE FOREST, NOW
Dusk was falling in the forest. The boys in the hermitage were preparing their evening food. Despite herself, sometimes the smell of food still gave Gandhari hunger pangs. Her body no longer craved food but sometimes her mind did, not for physical satisfaction but as a distraction, as a break from the routine drudgery of daily life, as a way of not remembering. It should not have mattered anymore, not in the vanaprastha phase of their lives, when they had renounced their worldly life and retired to the forest for quiet contemplation.
Perhaps she had not lived enough already, Gandhari acknowledged, and now, at the end of her life, this craving for life, this hunger she did not know how to quench, was rearing its head. Sometimes she dreamt of mangoes, of the spicy pickles her mother used to make, of meat and fish, of astringent mustard leaves fried crisp and bitter. When they had taken to eating roots and leaves, the vegetation on the floor of the forest, when they lived off that which they could forage and did not kill, the penance had been a relief to her. It felt cleansing. But now it was its own weight, its own burden. Now she felt like a ravenous woman.
She used her willpower to tamp down her appetite. The gods knew, she had reserves of willpower beyond mortal ken. She did not bother praying to the devas, the way Kunti and her husband did. She wanted neither their help nor their remembrance. It was easier for her to see her own death foreshadowed in the water of the river than to see the apparition of Shiva or the other devas come to accuse her, to remonstrate with her.
She sat at a distance from the ashram, away from the chanting of the evening prayers, the gentle laughter and chatter of the young boys. There had been a time when the chants of the names of the devas gave her pleasure, when she was drawn to them eagerly morning and night. But now the thought of the devas troubled her. She did not want to see their accusing eyes, to feel them weigh the merits and demerits of her life as they determined her fate in the afterlife. She wanted quiet.
Kunti approached and sat down next to her, on the thin mat Gandhari had spread under a large tree, without asking whether her company was welcome. Gandhari stifled a sigh. Could not she at least die in peace?
They did not speak of the harsh words exchanged in the morning. They never spoke of the past. How trivial it would be to dwell on these squabbles, on sharp words, when it was Kunti’s sons who had killed Gandhari’s sons, when it was Gandhari’s sons who had killed Kunti’s grandsons. And yet they bickered and poked at each other without ever letting it turn into an open confrontation. What could one do against the mother of her children’s murderers?
Kunti was always matter-of-fact. ‘Sister, we need to make arrangements if we are to die.’
Gandhari said nothing. Kunti was always so very practical.
Kunti continued, ‘Sanjaya should be saved. He should live a long and fruitful life. He should be there to tell news of us to the others.’
Gandhari acquiesced with a nod. She should have thought of it herself. Sanjaya had been a good aide to Dhritarashthra and her. It bothered her that Kunti had thought of it first. It made her feel one-upped. She became irritated at Kunti’s sanctimony and her own callousness.
‘Yes, your sons would want to know what happened to you,’ Gandhari paused. ‘There is no reason for you to stay with us anyway. Why don’t you leave with Sanjaya? Death must be coming to claim my husband and me. You could return to Hastinapur.’ Even as she uttered the words, she knew Kunti would not do it. Kunti had made her decision to follow Dhritarashthra and her into the forest and would never back down. It was like asking Gandhari to untie her blindfold. Gandhari had wondered what it was that drove Kunti to come with them to the forest in the first place. Perhaps there was something about that long terrible war, the loss of her firstborn son at the hands of her other sons, that made her feel more comfortable with the grieving parents of one hundred sons lost, than her own sons, the victors. Perhaps, she could no longer bear the presence of youth, to be in a palace whose halls would feel forever hollow, bereft of her grandsons, her husband, her firstborn who should have reigned over it.
Kunti continued: ‘That was the other thing I want to discuss with you. I will not be deprived of death this time.’
Gandhari knew immediately what she meant. When Kunti’s husband had died, Madri, her co-wife, had jumped into the funeral pyre, leaving Kunti behind to take care of Madri’s two sons in addition to Kunti’s own three sons with Pandu, their husband. Kunti had acquiesced and stayed back to care for all of them. She had never treated Madri’s sons as any less than her own three. They were forever the five Pandavas, the five sons of Pandu.
Gandhari inclined her head, ‘I understand.’
‘Sister, do not let them stop me this time.’
Sister, so many choices about our lives were taken away from us. At least we will die on our own terms. That much they cannot take from us.
‘I will not,’ promised Gandhari. She meant it.
They sat together in silence. Crickets chirped, and the birds sang a mournful song as the sun set. Still Kunti remained. Gandhari wondered what more she wanted of her. Unable to bear the silence any longer, Gandhari pressed, ‘Do you not want to at least send word to Hastinapur? Perhaps your eldest could come to at least perform the final rites.’ She still could not bring herself to use Yudhishthira’s name, the one who had become king instead of her own son.
Kunti said decisively, ‘No. I walked away from Hastinapur. I have renounced my past. They are no longer my sons. I am no longer their mother. My work is done. Let my corpse decompose or be eaten by vultures or be burned by fire. It is of no matter to me.’
Gandhari turned away. How was it so easy for Kunti and Dhritarashthra to have severed all connections, to have cut asunder all bonds and attachments and memories? At least they still had people to be connected to, who cared what would became of them. Dhritarashthra still had his other brother, his nephews, his illegitimate son. Gandhari had no one, but she felt mired in the mountain of corpses of her sons and brothers, all those who had fought and died so her son could have been king. She had no one left to renounce but was unable to let go of the phantoms that haunted her still.
They sat together in uneasy silence.
Gandhari could feel the darkening of the day on the other side of the blindfold, the shadows crawling over the tall trees, slowly draping themselves over the forest. Even the chanting of the hermits could not ward them off. The night animals began stirring themselves for the hunts they would undertake that night. The birds flew away to the nests where they would sleep and wake again in the morning. The leaves rustled and whispered to each other, indifferent to the passage of time.
Gandhari felt the play of the dance of shadows across the blindfold. How they climbed up and stole across the forest, invading the daylight, snatching to themselves all that was in sight, silently and steadily devouring and growing into the blackness of night. When she closed her eyes, she could feel the corpses from the war claw their way out from smouldering funeral pyres, reaching for her with bony fingers, grasping at her feet, trying to pull her down. She drew her feet under her and scrunched herself into a ball, tight against the tree, not caring how undignified she looked. Tears leaked from underneath the blindfold, and she hoped it was dark enough for Kunti not to see. She felt the insects from the tree crawl down her back, slip in between her garments and her skin and start to bite at her, drink her blood, puncture her flesh. Better them than those ghosts, those corpses. She clasped her arms around her knees, trying to keep herself intact.
Gandhara, Then
Shakuni insisted on accompanying Gandhari to Hastinapur. He was paranoid that she would come to ill during the long journey, that Bhishma was not up to the task of protecting her. It was irrational and implausible, yet Subala was too aggrieved once Gandhari had blindfolded herself to disallow it. Gandhari did not share her brother’s fea
rs. She knew that she was useful so long as she could provide heirs.
In the beginning, Shakuni rode with her. It was stifling hot and stuffy in the chariot. The blindfold chafed at her skin and was itchy. Her eyelids sweated beneath the constricting fabric and sometimes she longed to tear it off, for coolness if nothing else. But she dared not remove it even when she slept.
Ayla had argued with her about that. Ayla worried about not letting the skin around her eyes breathe. She pointed out that in sleep her eyes would be closed anyway – what was the need for the blindfold then? But Gandhari worried that she may accidentally wake up in the middle of the night and inadvertently open her eyes. She was scrupulous about her vrata, her vow of austerity, that there not be a single break in it.
Bhishma said nothing as Shakuni, Ayla and she argued. How easy his vow was, Gandhari thought. It was easy to control not having sex. The logistics of blindfolding, of retaining the physical ability to see but not actually seeing, were much more complicated.
Shakuni’s temper stayed at boiling pitch ever since Gandhari had blindfolded herself. He was barely civil with Bhishma and when he did speak with him, he spat out words incoherently. Gandhari kept him by her side to separate the two of them. Shakuni punished her for her sacrifice by remarking upon all of the beautiful scenery they passed. She could hear the roaring of the five rivers that they crossed, and he audibly gasped at their beauty, the drop of crystalline waters over round black boulders. He named all the birds and flowers they passed along the way, describing the different trees of the forests. It was sparsely populated terrain they travelled through, a remote wilderness Gandhari would dearly have loved to take in, to ramble through, to ride horseback on her favourite horse, Shalva.
Instead, she trained herself to hear things properly. She quickly learned to distinguish voices from each other, memorizing the cadence and inflection that identified the speaker, so she knew who was around in the general vicinity even if she could not decipher their words. She learned to tell the passage of time by differentiating the intensity of the sunlight falling upon her blindfold. She learned to eat by smell. She learned how to walk anew. She refused to take a stick, to look disabled. Instead, she learned how to balance, so when the ground beneath her feet gave way, when the ground was not level, when she tripped over a stone, she could immediately catch herself, like a cat who always fell upright. She learned to mask pain. Every time she bumped against an object, walked into something hard, she refused to wince or cry out. She simply remembered where it was and how to avoid it so that it did not happen again. She walked on as if nothing had been amiss.
She counted on Ayla to make her appearance decent. She learned to pray blind, to offer the arghya, the water offerings, gracefully, without seeing where the water fell, to memorize the texts she had once read. When there was no one else around, when she was certain no one would overhear, sometimes she would ask Ayla to read her stories, to allow herself that small entertainment since she had always been a voracious reader.
Shakuni kept taunting her again and again until, finally, Gandhari ordered him to keep quiet. He started sulking but did not say a word. Instead, he started playing dice, throwing them against the walls of the carriage, rolling them everywhere and all the time. Even as they slept on the hard ground near the campfire, he would throw them onto the dirty ground, read them, pick them up, and roll again. He was like a madman. But Gandhari did not dissuade him, so long as he kept quiet.
Now that Shakuni had been somewhat neutralized, Bhishma joined Gandhari in the carriage. After asking after her health, he offered, ‘Now that you will be joining the Kuru clan, daughter, it is time you learn our history.’
‘I already know much of it.’ Try as she might, Gandhari could not keep the haughtiness out of her tone. She knew she should be demure to this stalwart who was, after all, in a sense, her father-in-law but she still smarted from being married off to the inferior brother and she wanted Bhishma to know she could have succeeded as queen.
She could imagine Bhishma raising his eyebrow. ‘I am confident Subala has taught you well.’
‘And our spies.’
‘Hmm. Then, tell me, princess, what is it you know?’
She knew how the dynasty had started. She knew that the ancient king Kuru had come to a barren field in the dusty plains in the heart of Bharat. He had performed such intense austerities and sacrifices that the place itself had become sanctified and known as Kurukshetra. He founded the Kuru dynasty that had become the premier lineage in the land. But she did not start there. She started with Bhishma’s grandfather, who once sat on the bank of a river, in quiet contemplation. A river goddess emerged from the waters, dressed in diaphanous white, sheer and flimsy, like a curtain of frothy bubbles. She was as effervescent as the waters from which she emerged, laughing and flirtatious, settling herself on the king’s knee. She asked him to unite with her, to become her husband, but he demurred, intent on his life of renunciation. She was the great river goddess, Ganga. He said that she had sat on his right knee, which was the knee reserved for daughters and daughters-in-law, and it was only the left knee on which wives and lovers sat. Therefore, he said, she belonged to him as a daughter-in-law and was meant to marry his son.
She agreed and in time she met his son, Shantanu, who became Bhishma’s father.
They were on a bumpy trail over rocks and mud now and Bhishma grunted, either at that or at Gandhari’s words. Gandhari thought he would have preferred talking of the great battles they fought, the territories they had claimed, the kingdoms that had become their vassals. But this was the interesting stuff for her.
‘When Ganga met your father, Shantanu, she made him promise that he would never question her, that she would always be free to do as she pleased, and if he ever challenged her, she would walk away forever, leaving him behind. He agreed. So it is said.’
Bhishma affirmed with a gruff grunt.
Gandhari paused. She was not cruel enough to talk about the next part, when Ganga gave birth to seven babies, and after each birth, she took the new-born baby to the river to drown each baby, again and again, until Bhishma was born. Shantanu was aghast but too besotted with her to protest. The citizens of the kingdom were horrified and started whispering against this otherworldly woman and the strange sorcery she must have woven over the kingdom and their beloved king. Finally, when Ganga gave birth to Bhishma, their eighth child, Shantanu protested and stopped her from killing him, calling her a mad evil woman.
Ganga had turned to him with a sad smile. She explained that these babies were the eight Vasu deities who had been cursed to be born on Earth. Before taking birth, they had asked Ganga to be born to her and for her to deliver them from earthly life as quickly as possible. That is why she had drowned them right after birth. Because Shantanu had tried to stop her, she left in his arms the eighth baby, Devavrata, and went on her way. ‘He is meant for you, king. He is meant to stay with you and be your family even as I must leave you.’
Shantanu was heartbroken, but he had no choice but to let her go.
That is the hard price of breaking a vow. Sometimes you cannot understand what you have entered into, what you have cost yourself by a sacrifice, a vow. And if you break it, you cannot know how everything may be lost. Everything.
Yes, Shantanu had eventually remarried but he had never recovered from the loss of Ganga, that ephemeral, elusive river beauty whose grace and charms had won over his heart and that of the kingdom despite her eccentric behaviour.
Gandhari resolved to never falter from her vow. Never.
Desperate to change direction from these dark thoughts, Gandhari asked, ‘Venerable one, they say that you learned from Brihaspati, the guru to the devas, himself. That you went to the heavens and learned from the devas how to wage war, how to rule, the codes of righteousness.’
‘Yes, it is true.’
Gandhari said wonderingly, ‘How lovely that must have been! To learn at the feet of the devas, to while away the years with them.
Truly, you have been blessed.’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps I have been cursed, to have been sent back here.’
‘It is a matter of perspective.’
‘Yes, princess. What is a curse is often a blessing and what appears a blessing is often a curse.’ He paused, ‘I hope one day you will learn to look upon your marriage as the blessing that it is for you and for us.’
Shakuni’s dice rattled against the carriage windows loudly, as if he was playing for their lives, to get them out of there. But they were almost at Hastinapur now. The air had changed. It had grown hotter, dustier, the sun scorching her wherever she sat, her legs sticky with sweat. Every few minutes, she shifted position, trying to shrink back away from the sun as much as possible.
Her father had taught her to look at situations in permutations, to examine the range of possible outcomes before making a decision. During those weeks traveling and camping along the way, there were many times she had fantasized about escaping or even being abandoned by Bhishma. If he found her unworthy, then perhaps she could go back. She could perhaps tear off her blindfold and run back home with her brother. She could gallop away on a horse; she could win herself a different fate.
But they were so far away from Gandhara now, in foreign lands, where the dialect was smoother, more urbane, unrecognizable to them, that even if they evaded Bhishma, they would be hard pressed to find their way home. And how could their parents accept them now, how could Gandhari make them lose face like that? This was how Gandhari convinced herself that the path to Hastinapur was the only road forward, the only option left to her.
But the truth was that even if the circumstances had allowed it, even if Bhishma forsook her, she would not have been able to go back. Her vow bound her now to Dhritarashthra and it was a bond that did not permit her escape. Even if she walked all the way back to Gandhara, the power of that vow would have drawn her all the way to Hastinapur again, to this stranger, to this man for whom she felt nothing. When she had blindfolded herself, she bound himself to a man in a way that was more deep and profound than the rite of marriage, than the power of seven circumambulations around the sacred fire. This was why Subala had cautioned her that day to be careful in choosing which vows to take. In those vows, one loses one’s willpower, one’s heart. Even if she was a world away, she would be drawn to Dhritarashthra again and again, like a calf who finds her mother even in the midst of a great herd unerringly. All paths led to Dhritarashthra now, and she had better accept it.
The Curse of Gandhari Page 5
