The Queens of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  Nishanta said, ‘The cart to the north. How much will you take?’

  ‘Me? Oh, no, sir. Sarangi cannot run for that long any more. She would just collapse and break her legs halfway from here to Hastinapur. And then I will have to carry you all the way back to Mathura, eh, Sarangi?’

  Suhasana laughed, and the horse seemed to neigh and snort along with him. Then he began to relate some other story about his mother as they trotted along, and Jahnavi felt her eyelids grow heavier. Amid the sounds of Sarangi’s hooves and Suhasana’s words, she rested her head to the side, against the armrest of her seat, and closed her eyes.

  She woke up to gruff, angry voices.

  ‘Hmm?’ she said, fluttering her eyes open in the muggy darkness of the cart. They had neared the river, that much she could tell by just inhaling the moist night air. She peered out and saw that the moon had come out. Did that mean the boat had left without them?

  ‘Did I hear a maiden’s voice in your cart just now?’ said the gruff voice.

  ‘No, sir, no maiden. Just a young man whose voice has not cracked yet,’ said Suhasana.

  ‘Say, I do not remember seeing this cart in this neighbourhood before.’ The sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath. ‘And I do not remember the faces of the people you carry.’

  ‘We come from Pundra, sir,’ said Kubera. ‘We have sold our silk wares to the High King of Mathura, and we are now on our way back home.’

  ‘I see. And you?’

  ‘Sir … sir,’ said Suhasana. ‘I ride my cart from the gates to the river every day. I have been here all my life, sir.’

  ‘Interesting that you say that. I have stood guard here all my life, rider, and I have never seen you. Nor have I seen your horse before either. Horses from Mathura do not stand this tall, do they, Anagha?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said another lower, stronger voice.

  Jahnavi found her breath quicken. She rummaged in her bag frantically, and her fingers found the block of wood and the packet of herbs she had brought with her from Meru. She transferred them into the innermost pocket of her garment.

  ‘Our midsummer feast attracts all kinds of men from all over North Country,’ the voice was saying, and Jahnavi heard the clang of metal on the rim of the cart’s wheel. ‘Not all of these men are honourable. We have heard complaints of thieves that come into the city from the fishing settlements to the north.’

  ‘The fishing settlements, sir?’

  ‘Yes, the fishing settlements that sit on the river’s bank a few leagues from here. They say they belong to Hastinapur, but when they have to rob someone, they come all the way to Mathura.’

  The lower voice chuckled.

  ‘I live in Mathura, sir,’ said Suhasana. ‘I have heard of these settlements you speak of, yes, but I have never been to them.’

  For a moment, Jahnavi heard nothing. Then the clop of a horse’s feet on the hard ground. ‘You say that, but your cart seems to smell of fish, rider. Does it not, Anagha?’

  ‘It does, sir.’

  ‘And your horse is much like those I have seen in Hastinapur’s stables when I visited the city a few moons ago. Are you certain you live in Mathura?’

  Jahnavi could hear Suhasana’s breath falter. But he managed to mumble, ‘Yes, sir, I live in a hut by myself near the western gate.’

  ‘We can see if you are speaking the truth easily enough.’ The guard on the horse had now come to the back of the cart, where Jahnavi was sitting. With the tip of his sword, he lifted the flap and peered in at her. She sat up and looked back at him. ‘Yes,’ he said, glancing at her clothes, ‘we can take you back to the city and ask the guards at the gate if they have ever seen you.’

  Nishanta sat up. Kubera raised his voice just a touch and said, ‘Then the three of us will get off and go toward the river, sir. You may do with the rider as you please.’

  The guard cocked his head to one side, still looking at Jahnavi. His figure was silhouetted against the moonlit sky, so she could not tell what he looked like. But he seemed to be slenderer than the hefty husk they had seen at the gate. He held the sword with an easy and light grip, as though it were a twig.

  ‘Rider,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘You have a maiden in the back of your cart.’

  It was then that Jahnavi realized her hair had come undone when she had been sleeping, and it now fell over her left shoulder, in open view of the man on the horse. Nishanta reached for his waistband, but the guard pointed his weapon at him.

  ‘Please do not touch anything, sir, my lady,’ he said, ‘and please step out of the cart into the moonlight. We wish to take a closer look at you.’

  As they stepped out of the cart, Jahnavi inserted her hand into her pocket, where she could touch the broken piece of wood, and shut her eyes. She would need a minute or two to finish the incantation. She hoped Nishanta would see her and understand what to do.

  Her fingers caressed the ridges on the wooden piece. Her mind swirled, and as though out of nowhere, from deep within her, she heard her own voice whisper the words.

  ‘You are making a mistake,’ Nishanta was saying. ‘We mean no harm to Mathura. We have no care for the fishing settlement you speak of. We come from Pundra, O guard, and we wish to be set free so that we can make our way home.’

  ‘We shall see who you are,’ said the soldier, ‘after we search your cart. If I find anything in it that belongs to Mathura, I am taking the cart back.’

  ‘Sir!’ This was Suhasana. ‘I beg for your forgiveness. Please do not punish me. Just let me go and I shall never again be seen in these parts.’

  She focused and her teeth gritted together. The night breeze, hot and wet, was in her hair. She dropped her free palm, opened it up, and curled her fingers up into a fist.

  ‘Hey!’ said the guard. ‘What is the woman doing?’

  ‘Here are gold coins that Mathura’s High King Kamsa has given us in return for our silk.’ Nishanta’s voice was harried, frantic. ‘If you take us back to Mathura, the king will be displeased with how you treated his guests of honour.’

  A moment of silence prevailed, perhaps because the guard had stopped to take a closer look at the coins. In that one moment Jahnavi finished her incantation, and she opened her eyes. Her hand came out of the garment, and her eyes met Nishanta’s.

  She gave him a tiny nod.

  ‘Anagha!’ said the guard, and the other man came trotting on his horse. ‘Take a look at these coins.’ He tossed one of the coins to him. ‘Do they look like they have come from the king’s treasury?’

  Anagha held the coin to the moonlight. Then he raised it to his nose and took a deep breath. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said at last. ‘It looks all right.’

  ‘Then they have managed to rob the king himself!’ thundered the main guard. ‘We have to take them back, and we have to present them in court.’

  ‘No!’ said Suhasana. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’

  Jahnavi looked to her right. Suhasana was still seated in his rider’s chair. Next to him sat Kubera. The first wisps of fog had already begun to appear in the air. The moon had started to take on a pale yellow colour. Now she had no doubt that Suhasana came from the fishing settlement; her hope was that he – and Sarangi – would be able to find their path through the fog.

  ‘Say,’ said the guard, looking around him, ‘is there mist about?’

  Anagha gave another of his chuckles. ‘Whoever heard of mist in summer, sir?’

  ‘Oh, mock me not. I have a friend who is a carpenter, and he worked on building the watchtowers at the eastern gate. A giant wall of fog had been erected, he said, to hide them from the raiders of Magadha.’ Jahnavi and Nishanta took a step closer to the cart, in the gathering gloom. ‘Two men and a maiden, he said.’ The guard’s face changed. ‘Two men and a maiden …’

  Jahnavi threw out her right arm and hit the back of the cart. She pulled herself on to the climbing step. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Nishanta had latched on as well.<
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  ‘Anagha?’ the guard said. ‘Are you here?’

  ‘I am right here, sir, but I cannot see you.’

  ‘And I cannot see you.’

  Jahnavi heard the crack of the whip from the front of the cart and guessed that Kubera had whispered something into Suhasana’s ear. Even as they both entered the cart and closed the flap behind them, the cart lurched into motion and another crack of whip on hide pierced the air.

  ‘Hi, Sarangi!’ said Suhasana, as they accelerated. He bellowed order after order at the beast in a series of tongue clicks and grunts. At the end of each command he lashed at the animal’s back, making it neigh and keep up the speed of her gallop.

  Jahnavi opened the flap and looked behind the cart. All she could see was a rolling, impenetrable white curtain.

  They rode in silence, long after the fog had dissolved. Aged or not, Sarangi did fly like the wind when it mattered. They were not being pursued, Jahnavi knew, but the guards had known who they were. If they could not follow them, they would turn back and report to Kamsa that his prisoners had escaped. Perhaps it would be too late by then, perhaps they would pass the Cave of Ice long before Kamsa could react to the news. Perhaps he would not react at all, until the midsummer feast had come and gone.

  But what if he did?

  What if he loaded soldiers on to his war barges and sent them flying upriver in their search?

  If they passed the fishing settlements of Hastinapur before that, they would be safe. If they reached the meeting point of the Yamuna and Ganga, and if they began their ascent up the Great River, they would be safer still. But if they slowed down even slightly, it was just possible that Kamsa’s men would catch up with them.

  The cart hurtled along gravel paths. It hacked through dry open fields. It pounded over rocks, leaped over streams, and all along, the smell of the moonlit Yamuna did not leave the air. Jahnavi remembered what Suhasana had said, that it carried the aroma of wet sandalwood. To her it seemed more like the scent of white jasmine petals drenched with morning dew.

  After about fifty minutes of riding, the land turned browner, sandier. Sarangi did not slow down, though, until they reached the edge of the river, where a row of fishing boats had been left upturned for the night. Suhasana brought the cart to a halt, and jumped off to pet his horse and whisper into her ear.

  As they dismounted, Jahnavi saw thatched roofs and hovels stretch out toward the west, along the bank. They came to the front of the cart and stood around Sarangi, who was panting like a bent old woman, knees ready to buckle. Suhasana picked up a pail lying next to his seat and ran to the river. He returned with it full to the brim with water and thrust the animal’s face into it.

  ‘I was going to rob you,’ said Suhasana simply, untying his turban and stretching it out in his hands. ‘I thought you looked like rich merchants, and I knew you would have gold on you. If I could drive you past the guards of Mathura into the unknown, I thought I could rob you and leave you in the wilderness.’

  He spread out the turban on the sand and sat next to it, looking up at the river. ‘I live in the village downriver. It is as the guard said. We belong to Hastinapur, but the midsummer feast in Mathura tickles every thief’s palms. I am no exception.’ He looked at Jahnavi and smiled. ‘But I have not lied to you completely, my lady. My name is Suhasana, and my nose does not work.’

  ‘We are glad your horse has a working nose, Suhasana,’ said Jahnavi, the lightness of her voice surprising even her. ‘If your horse had not known this path well enough to run through it in a blinding fog, why, we may have found ourselves prisoners in Mathura.’

  ‘You and I both, my lady,’ said Suhasana. ‘You and I both. But what is your tale? I am a thief, I have a reason to run away from the king’s guards. If you truly are merchants from Pundra, why must you flee?’

  Kubera dug into the sack of coins and brought out five of them. He walked to where Suhasana was sitting, bent down and let them drop, all at a time, on the brown sand. ‘This is for your help, Suhasana,’ he said, ‘and for your promise that you will never, ever speak of us again.’

  ‘Not even to my mother?’

  ‘Not even to your mother.’

  ‘This smells of fish,’ said Suhasana. ‘It seems to me that you are bigger thieves than I, that the king would be glad indeed to get his hands on you three.’ He looked down at the coins. He picked them up, one by one, and tossed them into his pocket. ‘But Mathura is not my kingdom. I do not serve its king.’

  ‘We will tell you one thing,’ said Kubera. ‘Whatever we do, we do for the good of Hastinapur.’

  Suhasana smiled up at them suspiciously. ‘I do not trust you, stranger. Let it just be that we are both thieves, and our only allegiance is to gold.’

  Jahnavi said, ‘You are right, Suhasana. Now if you tell us where the northward-going boat docks on the bank, I am certain my friend here will have two more of the best gold coins for you.’

  Kubera produced two more coins and held them up for Suhasana to see.

  ‘Make it five,’ he said.

  Jahnavi nodded at Kubera, and Suhasana grinned. ‘This is our lucky night, Sarangi,’ he called out to his horse. She blubbered into the water pail and wheezed.

  Five more coins left Kubera’s hands, and this time they fell into Suhasana’s outstretched palms. ‘You see the causeway ahead where the two big palm trees stand? The boat you want to catch docks there every night, right at the eleventh hour.’

  They stood on the edge of the causeway. Jahnavi looked up at the half-moon perched in the sky. She fingered the wood in her pocket. It was still warm to the touch. The tips of her fingers seemed to burn, as though they had been smeared with ground mustard. Her tongue had gone dry, but she resisted the urge to drop to her knees and drink of the river. This thirst would not die with mere Earth water. It needed the water of the lake.

  She looked at the haggard, shrunken faces of the two men, and knew they were thinking the same thing. How did Mother Ganga live here for eight whole years?

  A black spot appeared on the silver ripples, in the east. ‘The boat is here,’ said Kubera. ‘Lady Jahnavi, it would be to our advantage if you did not speak from now on, until we find ourselves on the black barge.’

  She sat between a flute player and an apple chewer. One played the same song of the fishermen, over and over. The other kept munching on apples. As soon as he finished one, he tossed the stub over his shoulder into the river, where it vanished with a quiet plop.

  Every once in a while she would look back at the long stretch of water behind them, her eyes scanning the surface for Mathuran boats. But all she saw were the lazy undulations of the river’s bosom. Nishanta and Kubera sat near the front of the boat, where a poet was reciting verses in Sanskrit, to the great mirth and enjoyment of those around him.

  The boat swayed to one side, then to the other, and then back again.

  The oars dipped into the river, splashed water back, seemingly in tune to the flute player’s notes.

  They left Suhasana’s village behind. A few hours, and they would reach the mouth of the Great River.

  She woke just as the sun appeared on the horizon. The waves of the river, as though waking up, became more violent, and the boat lurched sideways. She did not look back over her shoulder, because the fact she was still here meant that they had managed to escape. She caught the red eye of Nishanta, who was sitting a few feet away, leaning back against the hull, his arms resting on his knees.

  He smiled at her.

  The boat entered calmer waters and floated along to a dewy meadow strewn with trees which bore flat red leaves. Jahnavi did not know what trees they were, but she could hear the roar of the water in her ears – the roar of the Great River in full, torrential, unfettered flow.

  ‘This is as far as this boat will go,’ one of the oarsmen was saying. ‘We dock here for an hour or two, and then we go back. So unless you want to come back with us to Mathura, you shall all disembark here.’

  Jahnavi
got up. The boat was almost empty. The flute player was nowhere to be seen, nor was the poet. She leaned over the edge of the boat and collected a small amount of water in her palm. She raised it to her mouth, and with the image of the Crystal Lake in her eyes and the Mother’s prayer on her lips, she sucked the water in and swallowed it.

  They walked along the bushes following the other travellers. Nishanta and Kubera stared into the distance with vacant eyes, and Jahnavi knew they were thinking of the same thing she was: now that their physical selves had escaped from danger, their minds had begun to dwell on what they had done over the last two moons in Mathura. They had used men and materials from Meru as they had been instructed, but instead of strengthening one kingdom against another, they had laid the foundation for an alliance – an alliance powerful enough to challenge the might of the Kuru house.

  The sun had come up, but they were closer to the mountain now. And they were alongside the Great River. The north wind had a chilling bite to it. Jahnavi wished for the warmth and coarseness of her cloak. She tried to rub her upper arms, but the numbness in her fingers did not help. The sandals that Rishabha had given her were now sodden and soaked on the dewy grass. The soles of her feet had turned a faint shade of purple.

  The roar of the river rang in her left ear throughout; that was how she guessed they were all walking along the bank, at a safe distance. She had heard that at the mouth of the river, venturing close to the water’s edge was hazardous. The white foam would swallow you whole and forget to spit you out.

  Kubera plucked out twigs from the bushes they passed, and idly broke them into smaller and smaller pieces with his hands.

  ‘My lord, Kubera,’ said Jahnavi, ‘it is not proper to blame just yourself for what happened.’

  ‘I am not thinking of what has happened in the past, Lady Jahnavi,’ he said. ‘I am merely trying to predict what we could do in the future to amend it.’