The Curse of Gandhari

by Aditi Banerjee

  Gandhari longed to be out in the audience chambers of the palace, in the side chambers where the ministers deliberated, debated and decided, in conversation with Bhishma and Satyavati, as they governed over the kingdom. But Dhritarashthra would not let her go. He was too enraptured by the idea of her as his wife, a coveted plaything he dare not let anyone see. It was a miracle to him simply to have someone in his bed, someone who bore his touch, someone who did not push him away, someone who had blinded herself for his sake, someone who belonged to him alone. It made him greedy for her; it made him hoard her.

  For weeks, they barely emerged from their chambers. Finally, Gandhari convinced him that for their own survival they needed to be visible to the court, the royal family, the citizenry. He was petulant at first, but she persisted. She told him that he, too, was prince, that he had his duties towards the kingdom, that he had to be ready to serve were Pandu incapacitated.

  That piqued his interest. ‘Well, Gandhari, you know, he has always been a weak sort, my brother. You are quite right, my wife. One must always be prepared.’

  From then on, he started seeing in his dreams the throne of Hastinapur and himself atop it. He confided these dreams excitedly to Gandhari, rousing her in the middle of the night, tugging her hair, to share his increasingly wild visions. Gandhari had originally meant simply to prod him out of inertia, to motivate him to take seriously his responsibilities and get him out of the darkness of his own chambers. But she wondered if she had pushed too far, if he was harbouring dreams that would never come true, whether she had catalysed in him the flowering of a dark, sinister plan that had been festering in his mind for long.

  She did not back down or retreat, however. The truth was she was so desperate to get out of the recesses of the palace, crazed with boredom and restlessness, that she would have said anything to get out. So, one day, Dhritarashthra and Gandhari finally emerged into the main courtyard. She had chosen the day of the week when the palace was open to all the citizens. Anyone with a grievance could appear and have audience before the king, currently Bhishma, who presided as regent over the court. It was a solemn obligation of the court to address the grievances of all citizens. The reign of Sri Rama, the ideal king, had long passed but it was still the duty of kings to emulate his reign, during which even a dog had won the audience of a king. This was the duty owed to all the living subjects of the kingdom.

  Gandhari had carefully dressed herself in a bright orange sari, inlaid with fine gold embroidery. It shone as bright and fervent as the sun, and that is how she wanted to appear to her new people. She described it to Ayla in detail so that she would pick the sari that Gandhari had in mind. When she brought it to her, Gandhari carefully touched the fabric, running it through her fingers, yard by yard, before she was convinced that it was indeed the correct one. She patiently waited while the maids took hours to oil, wash, comb and dress her hair. She prepared speeches in her mind of what she would say to win the hearts of the citizens and the royal family. She instructed Dhritarashthra gently, so skilfully and diplomatically, that he did not know he was being commanded.

  It was a sunny winter morning when they came out to the courtyard. Gandhari could feel the sun-warmed slate stone beneath her feet, the rays filtering in through the gauze bandage. It was crowded to the hilt – lusty cheers and cries of joy and welcome filled the courtyard. Throngs of people pressed upon them in waves and waves. Gandhari was delighted. Perhaps this would work out, after all. Perhaps they could be the royal couple they were meant to be. She beamed and let a rare smile slip out onto her face.

  Making her way to the centre of the courtyard, dragging her husband with her, Gandhari opened her mouth to begin her prepared remarks. Suddenly, Satyavati swooped down on her, grabbing her by the arm and interrupting her: ‘What are you doing, daughter?’

  Gandhari was flustered and stammered, ‘I – I was just going to address the people.’

  ‘Address the people? What is there to address? Come with me. You must take your place next to me. She is almost here!’

  Gandhari stumbled as she tried to keep pace with Satyavati. ‘Who is almost here?’

  Satyavati grunted. ‘Girl, you better learn to keep up. I thought you had more wits than this. Have you been so oblivious to what has been happening? Has Dhritarashthra not told you?’

  Gandhari cursed herself for having allowed to herself to be secluded away with Dhritarashthra for so long. They had not heard of any important news, or if Dhritarashthra had, he had kept it from her. ‘Forgive me, queen mother. I was not aware.’

  Satyavati snorted. ‘In a honeymoon mood, are you?’

  Gandhari blushed furiously.

  ‘Stand here now. Stand straight. Was it necessary for you to dress so flamboyantly today?’

  ‘Flamboyantly? I’m hardly a widow!’

  ‘No, but you don’t want to overshadow the new bride.’

  ‘I thought I was the new bride?’ Gandhari worked to keep her voice diffident.

  Satyavati laughed. ‘You were, but now Bhishma has fetched a bride for Pandu. Kunti. She will be here any moment and you will bless her as your new younger sister.’

  Kunti.

  The word sliced through her like a dagger. From that very moment, from before she had heard her voice, felt her touch, knew anything at all about her, Gandhari hated her. For stealing her moment, her limelight, her position in the family and at the court in Hastinapur. Gandhari may have been the senior princess, but Kunti was wed to the prince who would be king. Kunti would be queen. Kunti had been deemed worthy of Pandu, where Gandhari had failed.

  The bitterness rose like bile in her throat even as Kunti arrived and prostrated at her feet. Gandhari went through the motions of blessing her with a long life, with a hundred sons, even as she inwardly fumed at this unwelcome stranger – her sister-in-law, her companion, her greatest rival, with whom she would rewrite the pages of history.

  3

  IN THE FOREST, NOW

  It was night. Gandhari lay on a bed of straw and leaves under the same tree she had lain under for years now in this forest hermitage. Kunti’s words, her voice, her sanctimony, rattled around in Gandhari’s skull, rankling her. She had never seen Kunti’s face, of course, but she imagined it as a squeezed lemon, perpetually sour and dour, always self-righteous and judgmental.

  I will not go to sleep on my last night on earth thinking of that bloody woman.

  Gandhari tossed and turned. The others were still awake; talking amongst themselves, but Gandhari had wanted to escape. She had wanted solitude. But now that she was alone she felt troubled and restless.

  So what if I am going to die? I am an old woman. This is precisely what I have retired to the forest for, in order to die. What is surprising about it? Why does it affect me so? Why am I weak now after having been strong for so long?

  She cried out for Ayla before realizing that Ayla was no longer there, had been gone for years, decades in fact. Feebleness of mind! The one thing I cannot countenance and now it plagues me.

  Despite herself, tears trailed down her cheeks. This is for drinking the water in the morning. Had you not indulged yourself, your body would not have had the capacity to produce tears. Your weakness in will has produced this weakness in your body, in your emotions. Get a hold of yourself!

  Yet, she found it impossible to stop the tears. Ayla! She had not thought of her maid in years. Ayla brought back memories of her childhood, of Gandhara, her parents, her brothers–

  No! Do not think of that. Not ever!

  Gandhari drew a deep breath. In the past, she perhaps would have recited the names of the devas. But now the sound of their names was like poison in her throat; a bitter, acrid thing that burned her from within.

  ‘Sister? Are you troubled? May I be of help?’

  And there she was again, her sister-in-law, Kunti. Gandhari gritted her teeth. ‘I am fine. Let me be.’

  But Kunti did not. She never did. Kunti seated herself next to Gandhari, the pile of bran
ches and leaves creaking under her weight. She was thin enough but there was a solidity, a heaviness, a weight to her that made her seem denser than she really was.

  ‘Why do you always insist on serving me? I do not need anything. Look after yourself. I am fine.’ Gandhari did not intend her voice to sound as irritated as it did.

  Kunti suppressed a laugh as she whispered: ‘I suppose I am used to it. I have always been serving others. Even in my father’s home, I was a servant.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Gandhari had not meant it to sound inquisitive, but Kunti took it as a prompt to say more. Perhaps it was the notion of impending mortality that made her so talkative now, so fixated on the past. Gandhari sighed inwardly as Kunti kept talking. ‘By father, I mean my adoptive father, Kuntibhoja, after whom I am named. Did you know my biological father sent me away?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Gandhari tried to sound sleepy, as a hint to quieten Kunti. She had enough demons of her own to contend with; she did not need to hear about Kunti’s, too.

  Kunti continued, unperturbed. ‘He had made a vow to send his first-born child to Kuntibhoja, his cousin, who was childless. I was called Pritha, but after he adopted me, I became known as Kunti. He had a large kingdom and was forever entertaining wise men and rishis. I was given over to the devas and the guests who frequented my home. It was my responsibility to serve them. So, I’m used to serving people, I suppose. Trust me, you are easier to look after than Durvasa rishi.’

  Gandhari snorted in amusement. ‘Well, that is not saying a lot.’ Durvasa was an irascible yet revered rishi (literally, one who sees, a sage, a person of wisdom and high spiritual attainment). He was quick to lose his temper if he was not served food promptly or if it was not salted or spiced to his taste. And when he lost his temper, bad things happened. He was prone to uttering curses, causing people to be reborn as animals or trees, and though he often felt remorse after cooling down and offered a blessing as an antidote, it rarely was sufficient to overcome the initial curse. A rishi’s words always carried power, and a curse once uttered, could never be fully negated.

  It was said that Durvasa had been inordinately pleased with the ministrations of the young woman Kunti had been at that time. It was then he had given her the boon of being able to invoke the devas at her will and bear a child of the invoked deva. That was how she had borne all her sons.

  Kunti replied softly: ‘Well, he may have been difficult, but his blessing saved me and my family.’

  And destroyed mine.

  Kunti remained silent for so long after saying this that Gandhari almost finally fell asleep. But then Kunti asked softly: ‘Sister, do you think I will find him in the afterlife, in the lands where my consciousness will wander after departing this earth?’

  Gandhari did not have to wonder to whom she was referring. It was the anguish of a mother, the harsh remorse only a mother who had abandoned her child could feel. Kunti was referring to Karna, her first-born son.

  Gandhari did not answer directly. ‘To imagine what happens after death is to enter into murky waters. The rishis tell us this. They tell us to die well, and we will attain the heavens on the basis of our merits. They describe to us the different worlds, but are they other planets, are they faraway heavens and hells, or are they the lives that await us back here on this very planet? It is impossible to tell. It is not wise to dwell on such matters when we cannot know the truth.’

  ‘Will I not meet my son again?’ Kunti’s voice was choked with tears.

  ‘It is said that we find our ancestors and forefathers in the heavens.’ A ghoulish laugh escaped Gandhari’s lips. ‘Even our rishis did not contemplate that a woman’s children would predecease her. There is a word for orphan, but no word for a mother who has lost all her children. At least, you still have your other sons.’

  ‘But your sons did not die hating you,’ Kunti pointed out bitterly.

  ‘Well, I did not abandon them to die when they were born, either, woman!’ Gandhari could not resist snapping back. She could not understand how Kunti could feel sorry for herself when she had been the one to abandon her new-born.

  ‘Did you not ever consider it, sister? Really?’ Kunti sneered. ‘I heard about what you did when you heard my Yudhishthira had been born. You were so jealous, you almost aborted your own children.’

  Gandhari bristled: ‘Once they were born, once I held them in my arms, I could not bear to be parted with them. Even when I was told by Vidura and others to abandon Suyodhana, that he would be evil, that he would be the source of destruction of our house, even then, I kept him.’

  Kunti whispered, ‘When Karna was born, he was golden and radiant, just like Suryadeva, the sun god who fathered him. He was born with small golden armour around his chest and golden earrings. Oh, he was so beautiful!’

  ‘Yet, you floated him down the river.’

  ‘I did not even know if he would survive,’ Kunti confessed. ‘But what choice did I have?’ For a woman like Kunti, it would have been social suicide to have kept a son born out of wedlock.

  ‘I couldn’t do it. Even when I was asked to abandon my eldest, even when I was told to do it for the sake of the kingdom, I could never let him go.’

  Kunti’s voice was leaden. ‘And now we are both paying for our sins. You for keeping your child, me for abandoning mine.’

  ‘Now and in the hereafter.’

  The shadows of the night passed across their faces. A cool air chilled their bones and spread through the forest, silencing the insects and night birds that otherwise kept them company.

  Gandhari asked curiously, ‘Did you never tell Pandu about Karna?’

  ‘I dared not! My position was precarious as it was. He was so besotted with Madri, I thought he may abandon me if he knew the truth.’

  ‘He would not have done that. He was too noble and righteous.’ Gandhari loyally defended him; she still remembered he was the first to have been kind to her in Hastinapur, her first and perhaps only friend in that foreign kingdom.

  Kunti laughed. ‘Yes, of course he would not besmirch his reputation by kicking me out. But he could have banished me to the furthest reaches of the palace and made Madri the senior ruling queen in effect. He could have made me irrelevant.’

  ‘Like me.’

  ‘No, sister, you did that to yourself.’

  Gandhari did not respond. Some minutes later, Kunti rose to leave. Gandhari hesitated, then said softly: ‘He was a brave man, your son. He safeguarded my son with his life and his blood. There was a nobility to him; I was glad, always glad, that he was part of Suyodhana’s life. And he came to you in the end. He did know you as his mother. There is some peace in that, surely.’

  Gandhari could imagine the bitter twisting of Kunti’s lips as she replied: ‘Oh yes, what a wonderful mother I was, to come to him begging him to spare my other sons’ lives; revealing myself to him only to ask him that he spare my lawfully born sons. He died knowing me as the mother who abandoned him and then who begged him for a favour. Who was I to ask him anything when I had given him nothing, left him with nothing?’

  ‘You had to do it, for your other sons.’

  Kunti laughed bitterly. ‘And what thanks did I get from them? Yudhishthira cursed me and all women that womankind will no longer be able to keep any secrets, so angry was he that I kept Karna’s identity from him.’

  As Kunti walked away, Gandhari said, ‘When a great one is cursed, a deva or a parent or a rishi, it is the one who pronounces the curse who suffers, sister, not the one who has been cursed.’

  Kunti said nothing

  Finally, when she was alone, Gandhari gave in and did what she had done every night for eighteen years after the war had been lost, after her sons had died. She had stopped afterwards, once they had moved into the forest. She had tried to renounce it all then: her past, her attachments, her grief, her regrets. She had pretended she had no identity, that she had never been queen, that she had never been mother, that she was just a renunciate with no past. It had n
ot worked, but she tried.

  Now as the tears flowed, wetting the leaves and branches that were her pillow, she gave in. She recited the names of her children, one by one, like a prayer, slowly, lovingly, in a murmured whisper so soft no one else could hear her:

  Duryodhana, Duhshasana, Duhsaha, Duhsala, Jalasandha, Sama, Saha, Vinda, Anuvinda, Durdharsha, Subahu, Chitrasena, Dushpradharshana, Durmarshana, Durmukha, Duhshkarma, Karna, Vivimshati, Vikarna, Sulochana, Chitra, Upachitra, Chitraksha, Charuchitra, Sarasana, Durmada, Dushpragaha, Vivitsu, Vikata, Urnanabha, Sunabha, Nanda, Upanandaka, Senapati, Sushena, Kundodara, Mahodara, Chitrabana, Chitravarma, Suvarma, Durvimochana, Ayobahu, Mahabahu, Chitranga, Chitrakundala, Bhimavega, Bhimavala, Balaki, Balavardhana, Ugrayudha, Bhimakarma, Kanakayu, Dridhayudha, Dridhavarma, Dridhakshatra, Somakitri, Anudara, Dridhasandha, Jarasandha, Satyasandha, Sadahsuvak, Ugrashrava, Ashvasena, Senani, Dushparajaya, Aparajita, Panditaka, Visalaksha, Duravara, Dridhahasta, Suhasta, Vatavega, Suvarcha, Adityaketu, Bahvashi, Nagadanta, Ugrayayi, Kavachi, Nishangi, Pashi, Dandadhara, Dhanurgraha, Ugra, Bhimaratha, Vira, Viravahu, Alolupa, Abhaya, Raudrakarma, Dridharatha, Anadhrishya, Kundabhedi, Viravi, Dhirghalochana, Dirgabahu, Mahabahu, Vyudhoru, Kanakadhvaja, Kundasi, Viraja, Duhsala; the last her only daughter.

  It brought her no peace, only the churning of grief and anger and torment. She knew they would trouble her dreams tonight, haunt her and chase her through the labyrinths of her consciousness. But she did not resist. She was drawn to them, her children, her sons, her dead, evil sons, as a moth was to flame.

  Hastinapur, Then

  ‘Well, this one is even stranger than you.’

  Gandhari repressed a smile at Satyavati’s exasperation.

  ‘What do you mean, queen mother?’

  They were taking a stroll in the gardens. Although Gandhari could not see the flowers, she enjoyed feeling the soft petals between her fingers and lifting the scent from her hand to her nose. She enjoyed the drone of bees and birdsong swarming around her. They were better company than the sullen paranoia of her husband.