The Queens of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  Peace would reign, both on Earth and on the mountain.

  But as Mother said, men are unlike the elements that can be shaped and bent to the will. Years of altering the world around them have made the Meru people haughty, she said; they now think they can control everything, even another man’s mind. She cautioned that this was only the beginning of a long era of violence and fighting; that we shall all pay the price for the amount of blood that would be shed in the coming years; that Krishna may not grow up to be the man we want him to be; that he – like Devavrata – may indeed bring about the very things that we wished him to prevent.

  Mother’s fears did not quite come true. Krishna remained loyal to the mountain all his life, but he did fulfil her prophesy. In his own way, by his own yearning to shape events around him, he became the single most important reason for the great war. He brought about the great cleansing of his age, called an end to the epoch of Dwapara, and caused the ousting of the Lady of the River, Ganga, his own mother, from the mountain of Meru.

  But I am getting ahead of myself.

  Right now, the tale is still young. I am yet a fifteen-year-old maiden with a heart heavy with the grief of parting. After Nishanta took my son away, I spent three full days and nights keeping the fast of the Goddess, waiting for the dark rider to reappear at the porch of our hermitage with news. Only on the fifth night – with the pale crescent moon hanging low in the sky – did he come and assure me that all had gone to plan, for once.

  Both Krishna and Devaki’s other son (Nishanta said they called him Balarama) have been taken safely to the settlement of Nanda. The chief has expressed boundless joy at receiving two sons for both his wives, and he has promised that they will be raised as princes.

  I must beckon the listener northward from Vrindavan now, to the court of Hastinapur. The city wears a festive look, for in a matter of three moons, the royal house has seen three weddings – the first one between Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, who had been ruling Gandhar as queen; the second between Pandu and Pritha, the daughter of Shurasena; and the third between Pandu and Madri, a princess from the sandy kingdoms to the west.

  Of these three, Gandhari’s tale is to my mind the most relevant to understand why things happened the way they did, for it was her ambition for vengeance – stoked by Devavrata, it must be said – that set into motion events that widened the fissures built into the founding stones of the Kuru kingdom.

  Also, Gandhari’s tale is interesting because of one other fact: she possesses the sight, the sight Kubera gave her, the sight that she chose to nurture by embracing blindness, the sight that showed her all that she can be and all that she is, the sight that led her from being the princess of a remote, rocky kingdom to being the queen and then queen mother of Hastinapur during its most glorious years.

  Yes, the sight that gave her everything, and as it must, took it all away, left her naked …

  CHAPTER ONE

  G

  andhari extended her right arm out, palm facing upward. The shadows in front of her eyes danced and shifted shape. The legs of the horse disappeared in a cloud of smoke and the boy who had been riding it seemed to fly up in the air, arms spread out, as if welcoming the sky. She strained her ears for his cry, but all she heard was the sound of laughter. It came from another boy, not the one that was falling. She tried to train her eyes on him, but he was just swirling smoke and shifting shape.

  ‘Quick, Shubrasi,’ she said. ‘Some more water.’

  Shubrasi’s wrinkled hands rubbed against hers, and Gandhari returned to the moist mass of clay in front of her. She tested the shape with her fingers. Here the horse’s hoof did not have quite the right shape. She dabbed at it with her forefinger. There the mouth felt like that of a pig, so she added a handful of clay to it. As her fingers worked, the image in her mind seemed to solidify into something she could recognize, but whenever she strained her eyes to make out what lay behind the shadows, it retreated further into darkness.

  Her eyes tried to open under the red satin band. That was a sign that they wanted to rest. She sometimes pushed too hard against the sight, driving her eyes and mind to the point of exhaustion in the search for meaning.

  ‘You should perhaps rest, princess,’ said Shubrasi.

  ‘What does the idol look like?’ Gandhari asked. ‘Does it look like anything you know?’

  ‘I think it is supposed to be a horse, princess, but I cannot be certain.’

  ‘And on top of the horse?’

  ‘It appears to be the figure of a rider, cut off at the waist.’

  Gandhari sighed. Subhrasi was right. The vision would come to her again; she need not flog her mind mercilessly so. But for some reason, her fingers seemed to tire quicker today, and the clay … Although Shubrasi had assured her it was the very best in Hastinapur, she had felt hard grains of sand on her fingers when she was mixing the water.

  ‘Have this clay thrown out,’ she said, with a hint of anger in her voice. ‘Have a new cartload of it brought from the bank of the Yamuna, where the fishermen dry their fish.’

  ‘Yes, princess.’

  At once she felt bad, because she thought she heard a faint note of resignation in her old maid’s voice. She stayed silent as servants entered the room and carried the half-done idol away to the corner, covering it with a piece of linen. The vessel of clay was taken away too, and a plate of rosewater arrived. The smell of the floating petals wafted to her nose.

  Shubrasi guided her hands over the water and scraped the clay off Gandhari’s fingers, one at a time. She hummed a tune that reminded Gandhari of the gold mines, when they had been free, long before Bhishma had seized them.

  ‘Has there been any news of Shakuni, Shubrasi?’ she asked.

  ‘A letter arrived this morning, princess.’

  If this had been the first month of her time in the Hastinapur court, she would have asked Shubrasi to read out the letter, word for word. But now she had grown weary of Shakuni’s constant chiding and his unquenchable thirst for revenge. Bhishma had read him well; soon after Gandhari had been wedded into the Kuru house, he had sent Shakuni back to Gandhar and only spoke with him when the tribute did not arrive as expected.

  Hastinapur had also erected an outpost near the outer walls of Gandhar, to keep Shakuni honest and to keep that fire in his heart from exploding.

  ‘Will you tell me what is in it, Subhrasi?’

  ‘He wants to know why you have turned blind for a blind king, princess.’

  ‘Ah. Nothing new, then.’

  ‘No, princess.’

  ‘You know what to say in reply, do you not?’

  ‘Yes, princess. Your devotion to your husband is so great that you cannot bear to enjoy the gift of sight while he is deprived of it.’

  A smile came to Gandhari’s lips. Subhrasi had said that with a tone of mock grandeur. Why must you be this sacrificial lamb, she seemed to ask, as Shakuni had so many times. But the good thing about Shubrasi was that she did not insist on an answer. ‘That is so,’ she said.

  ‘Your father would not have liked to see you in this state, princess.’

  Her hands were clean, dry and fragrant now, so she raised her palms to her nose and took a deep, slow breath. ‘I am the wife of Dhritarashtra, the elder son of the Kuru house,’ she said, in a low voice, as though telling herself that fact. ‘I think my father would have loved to see me here today. What he would not have loved was how I allowed Gandhar to be taken by Hastinapur.’

  ‘Ah, that is not a maiden’s lot, that,’ said Shubrasi. ‘If your brother were any good, Gandhar would have forever remained the city of gold.’

  ‘It still is,’ said Gandhari. ‘Just not our city of gold.’ Not more than a moon ago, this thought would have pushed her to the edge of rage, but now she found she could view it with calmness, as though it were just another of those dark shadows that danced in front of her closed eyes.

  ‘You may be the wife of Dhritarashtra, but will you ever be queen?’

  Gandha
ri smiled. ‘It seems as though you speak in the voice of Shakuni this morning.’

  A tired wheeze came from Shubrasi. ‘It does hurt my eyes so, princess, to see you here like this, with no importance, whereas that girl from Kunti gets to be waited on by hordes of servants and chamberlains.’

  Gandhari groped for and found Shubrasi’s hands. She held them up and said, ‘What need have I for other servants, dear Shubrasi, when I have you?’

  ‘And now Pandu has another wife, all the way from Madra.’

  ‘That is so, yes. Madra may be a small kingdom, but they have the best weavers in North Country, Shubrasi. For all the cotton that Hastinapur grows, now they can get fine garments woven in Madra, for no cost at all.’

  ‘It amazes me, princess, that you can speak of all this as if none of it affects you.’

  Gandhari patted the old maid’s hands. ‘Look, Shubrasi,’ she said, ‘Hastinapur is but a young kingdom. Her king is no older than one and twenty. Pritha and I – why, in any other kingdom, we would be mere maidens. And Madri too … the time has not come yet to speculate about who will be king and who queen.’

  ‘But princess, Bhishma has already crowned Pandu king.’

  ‘So he has. But he who can be crowned can also be dethroned.’

  ‘Who will dethrone him, my princess? They say that none of the Northern Kingdoms now have strong enough an army to fight him. He is to leave on a campaign of annexation on the day of the coming full moon.’

  Gandhari nodded. ‘I have heard.’

  ‘Once he returns from it, he shall be the king of the land for as long as he chooses.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Shubrasi pulled her hands angrily away from Gandhari. ‘You are too slow for your own good, my dear.’

  Gandhari laughed. ‘Not too slow, Shubrasi. I have learned from my earlier lessons that a step taken in haste is a step better not taken. We have more time than you and Shakuni think.’ Gandhari turned her face to the open window, feeling the morning air on her dry lips. She ran a tongue over them. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we certainly have more time.’

  Dhritarashtra sat on the throne, wearing the High King’s ruby-studded crown.

  A golden silk sash was wrapped around his shoulder. The red mark of a rising sun was painted on his forehead and his unseeing eyes were lined with kohl. In his deep voice he said something she could not quite understand, even though she sat right next to him, on the queen’s throne, draped in a resplendent blue sari, a coronet perched atop her head. She still had the band covering her eyes, but her lips wore a wide smile. The subjects in the court raised their arms as one, and she nodded at them.

  She had been receiving this vision almost every night for the last month, which meant that it was not a dream. Whatever Bhishma thought, a blind man shall rule the land of Hastinapur. And he shall rule it well.

  A blind man cannot be king, Bhishma had said, in spite of Dhritarashtra winning against Pandu in debate, in untying problems of statecraft, in administering justice. Only in fighting had Pandu triumphed, and she had said then that although Pandu would therefore make an excellent commander of the Kuru forces, the kingship should belong to Dhritarashtra. He was the firstborn, yes, but of the two, he was also the more deserving.

  ‘Lady Pritha to see you, Your Highness.’

  Gandhari stirred, not knowing for a moment where she was. She felt around with her hands and discerned the cushion of the chair on which she was sitting. When she inhaled, she smelled the odour of camphor that the cleaning woman had left in the lamps after dusting the room in the morning.

  She thought of calling for Shubrasi, but she remembered that the old lady would have just had her breakfast and must be getting ready for her mid-morning nap.

  ‘Lady Pritha to see you, Your Highness.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gandhari, moving herself to the edge of the chair and bringing her hands to rest on her lap. ‘Show her in.’

  The air of excitement Pritha brought into the room sent a stinging jolt up Gandhari’s back. Could it be that the girl was with child? But she kept the smile on her lips and stood up as the irregular footsteps approached. Gandhari had heard that Pritha had the bearing of a common girl and carried herself with none of the grace of royal women, especially those from the far west. The Middle Kingdoms were no more than barbarian settlements, and if Bishma had not been on the lookout for an alliance to counter the growing threat of Magadha and Mathura, he would never have sought Pritha’s hand for Pandu.

  ‘Sister,’ said Pritha, and bowed to her, even as Gandhari took her hands in hers and clutched her close in an embrace. They walked together, hand in hand, to the mirror. Pritha sat on the seat facing it and placed a comb in Gandhari’s hand.

  Gandhari took it and tested it against her fingers first. Then she began to feel Pritha’s hair.

  ‘You have sought my audience this morning after a long time, Pritha,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to think you have forgotten me.’

  Pritha laughed like a seamstress. ‘I … things have been rather busy with Lord Pandu’s wedding to Madri, sister.’

  ‘I have heard that Madri is a beautiful girl.’ Gandhari allowed her fingers to slide deep into Pritha’s hair. Whether she had the grace of a royal or not, her hair had the touch of the finest silk. ‘She will make Pandu a fine queen, they say.’ Gandhari felt Pritha’s back tighten against her arms as she said this, and she allowed herself an inward smile. The excitement she had heard was not of the happy kind, then. She waited for the girl to speak as she ran the teeth of the comb down her tresses.

  She would not be more than two years older than Pritha, she thought, and yet she felt as though she were her grandmother.

  ‘You are right,’ said Pritha at length. ‘She will make a good queen for His Majesty.’

  ‘I sense a strange unease in your voice, my dear. Is something bothering you?’

  ‘There is, but it should not, should it? I should feel happy for them both, should I not?’

  ‘Sometimes, what we feel and what we ought to feel are two different things, Pritha.’

  The comb became stuck in her hair and Pritha raised her hand to untie the knot. Then she sighed. ‘I feel as though I am not wanted any more.’

  ‘Madri is Pandu’s second wife, my dear, and kings all over the land are quite partial to their second wives.’

  ‘So I should not feel … jealous or sad?’

  ‘Oh, Pritha, it is hardly my place to tell you what you must feel. I am certain you must be a bit unnerved as well. I would, if I were you.’

  ‘Unnerved? Whatever for?’

  ‘Well,’ said Gandhari, setting the comb aside and smoothing Pritha’s hair with her bare hands. ‘Until now, you were the only queen Pandu had, so you were the only possible queen mother of Hastinapur. But now Pandu has another wife, and if she were to get with child before you …’

  Gandhari let the sentence hang in the air, as she drew a small drop of oil on to her fingers. She rubbed her hands together, allowing the tender coconut perfume to tickle her nose.

  ‘You smile at my folly, sister!’ said Pritha. ‘I do not wish to be the forgotten wife of High King Pandu.’

  ‘Of course, dear. None of us likes to be forgotten.’

  ‘Then what shall I do to make certain I give birth to the first child?’

  ‘It is quite simple.’ Gandhari wrapped her hands around Pritha’s hair and tugged at it a couple of times. ‘There,’ she said, ‘all strong and oiled.’

  Pritha got up, took Gandhari’s hand, and led her back to the chair in the middle of the room. ‘You were saying it is simple?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Gandhari. ‘The easiest way is, of course, to woo the king so that he shall never think of leaving your chambers. You can do that, I suppose?’

  A soft chuckle – the chuckle of a grown woman. Sometimes Gandhari wondered if Pritha’s clumsiness was not just a careful act of pretence. Every once in a while, she would say something that would surprise Gandhari with its wisdom, an
d some of her gestures belonged to a woman who knew what she was doing.

  I must be careful with her, she reminded herself.

  ‘Yes,’ Pritha said, ‘I did after we got wedded to one another. The king did not leave my chambers for a whole week.’

  Gandhari’s eyebrows rose, and she pulled Pritha down by the arms on to the chair beside her. ‘A whole week!’ she said, feigning excitement. ‘Then it could be that you are already with child!’

  A sigh. ‘No, sister. It was perhaps not my fertile time. I am bleeding from between my thighs as we speak.’

  ‘Ah, no matter.’ Gandhari coughed to conceal her relief. ‘The other way is to make certain that Madri does not get a belly from any of the king’s visits to her chambers.’

  ‘I … I do not understand.’

  ‘My dear.’ Gandhari took the younger girl’s hands in hers. ‘In Gandhar, my brother Shakuni was in the habit of taking a different waiting woman to his bed each night. Do you know how many of them carried his child?’

  ‘I know not. How many?’

  ‘None.’ Gandhari smiled. ‘My father knew some mendicants who came from the hills to the west. They brought these herbs with them. They look like coriander leaves, and all you need to do is break off a small part of the stem, crush it and give it to the lady dissolved in food or water, and she will never get with child.’

  ‘Oh, lord,’ said Pritha, suddenly breathing faster. ‘I cannot, I just cannot!’

  ‘There is no pain, my dear,’ said Gandhari, caressing the girl’s knuckles. ‘The taste is quite indistinguishable, she had said. It burns on the tongue just a little bit, nothing you could not hide with a bit of cumin or cinnamon.’

  ‘It … it would make me feel like such a witch!’

  ‘All women have to be witches at some time or another, Pritha. If you wish to be queen mother of a city as great as Hastinapur, well, let me just say it will not fall into your lap like a ripe apple from a tree.’