The Aryavarta Chronicles Book 03: Kurukshetra

by Krishna Udayasankar

  Dussasan’s son, Buhsasan, now joined the fray, as did Vasusena’s son, Vrishasena. Asvattama remained where he was, but could no longer ignore his father. Dron came up behind him to rasp in his ear, ‘Prove it,’ he said, and went ahead to confront Abhimanyu. His eyes filled with pain, Asvattama followed.

  Ahead, a spinning whirlwind and a storm of death. At its centre, Abhimanyu, fighting first with his sword and then, as the blade remained wedged in an enemy soldier’s flesh, raising the wheel above his head with both arms, as though he wielded a giant discus. His shoulders taut under the wheel’s weight, the veins of his neck bulging from the strain, Abhimanyu moved, now one with his weapon, across the field. Wherever he went, men fell dead, crumbling like clay, their skulls bashed in by the spinning wheel, torsos rent and limbs severed by sharp splinters of its wood.

  Dron watched, stunned by the valour and skill of the young warrior, till a gut-churning cry of pain rent the air, followed by Vasusena’s shout as his son, Vrishasena, fell dead, his legs severed at the knees, his eviscerated guts spilling into his own lap as he collapsed. The Acharya saw he no longer had a choice. ‘Now, Kripa! Asvattama! Aim for the wheel, shatter it!’ he instructed.

  Kripa let loose more than a dozen arrows, shattering the wheel into splinters. Abhimanyu let go of it just in time and threw himself behind the remains of his chariot-rig to escape the flying shards. His hand fell on a mace, or a part thereof. Picking it up, he faced his enemy yet again. The makeshift weapon felt light in his hand; he felt it would but fly away like a bird if he let it go. The strangeness of the moment brought him back to reality. He looked at the battlefield around him, at the death and destruction he had caused, and the mob that advanced upon him to have its vengeance. Slowly, the mace seemed to regain its natural bulk.

  This is the end, Abhimanyu realized. I will die here. There would be no going back to camp, no hero’s welcome, no joking with Govinda and Partha. There would be no looking into Uttara’s loving eyes again or feeling her warmth close to him. At the thought of her, the dismay he felt disappeared. Abhimanyu gazed with longing as her lovely features played before his mind’s eye. He willed the image onto his every nerve and pore, committing it to a memory that he knew would not fade with death or whatever lay beyond. Then, he was ready. With a yell, he ran at the enemy, his mace upraised to strike.

  ‘Now! Aim for the boy! Kill him! Kill him!’ Dron commanded. Kripa immediately complied.

  Asvattama hesitated, but as his father’s gaze turned on him he closed his eyes and let fly his arrows till he heard the order to stop. ‘By Agni and Varuna!’ he gasped as he opened his eyes and saw Abhimanyu.

  The warrior was on his knees, his hands covered in his own blood, alive but barely so. Countless arrows had perforated his chest and arms, even his back, and two had gone into his left thigh. Blood and bile dribbled out of his mouth.

  Vasusena started a great cheer, which the armies around them took up.

  ‘Wait!’ Buhsasan said, still gasping for breath. ‘He’s not dead, not yet.’ With a leer of anticipation, he came forward, dragging along a heavy mace.

  With what life was left in him, Abhimanyu tried to reach for the weapon he had dropped, but he was too wounded to move swiftly. Buhsasan swung his mace, crushing Abhimanyu’s arm. A cry of pain escaped Abhimanyu, at which Buhsasan laughed and kicked the prone warrior hard, sending him sprawling on his back and then followed with a blow to his chest, mangling armour into lacerated flesh.

  Abhimanyu’s eyes reeled back in their sockets. Pain wracked his entire body and intensified till it was a throbbing beyond bearing.

  ‘Shall we make him squeal like a little girl?’ Buhsasan asked the crowd, who urged him on. ‘Or shall we strip him like a whore? I hear his mother, as he supposedly calls her, was quite the entertainer when my father took off her robe.’

  The words seemed to bring Syoddhan back to reality. ‘Finish it!’ he ordered.

  ‘But, Uncle…’

  ‘I said, finish it! This is a war, not some pleasure joust in the palace gardens. Finish it and get back into ranks.’ With that, Syoddhan strode away, his men moving aside in a hurry to let him through.

  Buhsasan waited till he was sure his uncle was gone before turning back to Abhimanyu. ‘Oh well,’ he consoled himself, ‘at least I get to do this.’ He spat on Abhimanyu’s face and kicked it yet again, enjoying the fact that the prone warrior was conscious enough to be aware of his own humiliation.

  Lost in agony, Abhimanyu felt his eyes close and the world around him spun into darkness.

  But Buhsasan was not done. He stamped down on Abhimanyu’s thigh, driving the embedded arrows deeper into the flesh, grinding the sharp arrowheads in till the shards brutally severed nerve from muscle and bone. Abhimanyu screamed, and his eyes flew open.

  It was what Buhsasan wanted. ‘Look at me,’ he challenged.

  Despite his pain, Abhimanyu met his opponent’s gaze without fear. Then he smiled, as he looked through the man and into the distance beyond, where Uttara’s face had painted itself on a clear blue sky.

  Buhsasan neither noticed, nor cared. He braced one foot on the raw, bloody flesh of Abhimanyu’s chest and raised his mace high. ‘This is for Vrishasena.’ His feral cry cutting through the dust and heat of the battlefield, Buhsasan brought the mace down on Abhimanyu’s head.

  19

  PARTHA’S MOST CHERISHED MEMORY WAS OF A SPRING AFTERNOON, many, many years ago, before the strife had started. Abhimanyu had been about five or six years old. That day, Partha had taken his son with him on a simple hunt of sorts, hoping to inculcate the sense of being a warrior in the boy from childhood. At first Partha had been patient, but he had gradually grown irate. Abhimanyu had shown no interest whatsoever in the act of hunting, his child-sized weapons, or the art of wielding them. He remained far too engrossed in the colours of spring, the scented air, and the swaying trees to pay any attention to his father’s demonstration of how to track animals. When they did sight some small wildlife, Abhimanyu had asked if he might please get down from his pony and pet them.

  Angry, Partha had pushed on, ignoring his son’s wan face and the gentle suggestions from the attendants that children needed rest. When, finally, the sun became unbearable, as it sometimes did even in spring, they stopped for a meal. Partha had suggested a practice joust with wooden swords while they waited for the attendants to prepare them some food, but a forlorn Abhimanyu had refused. And Partha had lost his temper. He was not a man to shout as such but, this once, he did not hold back. Abhimanyu had listened, standing at respectful attention as an obedient son should, but he was just a child. Tears filled his large, soulful eyes, and streamed down his chubby cheeks.

  Immediately, Partha had regretted his actions and attempted to console the boy. It had taken a while for him to assure his son that he was not displeased with him, and the beginnings of a tired and very sleepy smile appeared on the boy’s face. He then sat down in the shade of a tree with Abhimanyu’s head on his lap, looking down at his son with love and a trace of disappointment as the boy slept. When Abhimanyu had woken up, Partha had tried one last time to explain the notion of hunting and how it was an exciting and honourable activity. He pointed out that the danger it posed to the hunter made it fair sport, that animals hunted each other for food and that death was, in any case, inevitable.

  ‘It’s all right for them to die, Abhimanyu. Everything that begins also ends. All who are born must die some day. You’re a warrior, my son. There’s no room for fear of death in your heart.’

  Abhimanyu had thought hard, trying to make what sense a child could of such morbid and mundane things. ‘So dying is just what comes after living? Like night comes after day?’

  ‘Yes,’ Partha had gushed, relieved.

  But Abhimanyu had still not understood. He had asked, ‘What’s the point of dying if you haven’t finished living?’

  Partha had not answered then. Instead, he had diverted the conversation to other topics. In all these ye
ars neither had Abhimanyu asked him such a question again nor had he referred to that day’s incident, but Partha had always treasured the memory of his dear son sleeping peacefully on his lap. And now Abhimanyu’s tall, lean form lay limp on the ground, his head on Pradymna’s knee. What’s the point of dying, Abhimanyu? You haven’t even begun living yet.

  The young man’s body was a mangled slime of pounded flesh and shreds of skin; his broken armour had been crushed right into his chest, past muscle and bone, causing what remained of his inner organs to spill out in a mix of metal shards. It was as though a demon from the netherworld had gorged on the young man’s flesh and spit out the remains.

  Partha looked around him, searching, as tears slowly blurred his vision. He needed Govinda, he needed his strength, his equanimity, the island of reason in the sea of despair that now surrounded them. His eyes fell on Panchali. Her face held pain, anger and an eerie, terrifying blankness. She did not weep, nor was she numbed with sorrow or shock. Panchali simply observed, her gaze constantly shifting from the lifeless Abhimanyu to the inconsolable Subadra, the silent Dhaumya and then to the motionless Pradymna. Partha did not know whether it was the desire to escape his grief or the fury he felt at Panchali’s composure, but he heard himself speaking in a voice that was not his own: ‘I trusted you, Govinda. I trusted you and followed your every lead. Look where that has brought me…’

  Govinda did not seem to hear or care; he remained kneeling beside Abhimanyu, unmoving. Eventually, he stirred, reaching for the piece of bloody linen that shrouded Abhimanyu’s face, but Shikandin stopped him. ‘No, Govinda. Not now.’ He nodded towards the wailing Subadra.

  ‘How?’ Govinda asked.

  ‘Dron formed the wheel.’

  ‘And you sent Abhimanyu to break it?’

  Shikandin hung his head in shame.

  ‘We were right behind him, Govinda,’ Dharma said. ‘We had no intention of putting him in harm’s way.’

  ‘Then…how?’

  ‘Jayadrath. Shikandin tried, but…’

  Govinda looked at Shikandin for the first time since he had walked into the tent. Bloody and torn, Shikandin had yet to see to his own wounds or cast off his armour.

  Partha, however, was not comforted by the explanation. His rage at the enemy, at his friends, at the whole world spilt forth in his words: ‘I swear by the gods, by the honour of my forefathers, that monster Jayadrath shall die before the sun sets on tomorrow! Let those who live a thousand years hence remember the day of the eclipse as the day of ill portents. Let this be the black day when Partha had his vengeance! I swear by my son’s immortal soul, if his killer lives at the end of tomorrow’s battle I shall burn myself on his funeral pyre!’

  An awed silence followed Partha’s declaration. Bhim and the twins traded uncertain glances, not at their brother’s oath but at the pride and moral satisfaction that flickered across Dharma’s face.

  Govinda turned to Partha, his eyes red, anger clear in the bulging veins on his forehead. ‘You pathetic, miserable, fool!’ he hissed.

  Partha was stunned. He made to speak, but Govinda rose to his feet, his voice a raging growl, ‘How you can be so damned stupid? You self-obsessed, vain excuse of a man…you’ve just destroyed us all! All Dron has to do is keep Jayadrath alive tomorrow and victory is his!’

  ‘Yabha!’ Partha was shouting. ‘How can you? How can think of victory and defeat at a time like this, you selfish bastard?’

  ‘Because this boy died for your godforsaken victory, that’s why!’ Govinda’s voice thundered through the tent and beyond, stunning everyone who heard it. Then they all saw the anguish in his eyes.

  At that, Partha’s strength failed and, falling to his knees, he buried his head in his hands and wept. One by one, everyone in the tent clustered around Govinda, wailing and bemoaning their loss. Subadra clutched at his leg as if she were drowning. Pradymna stood close by, silent and ashen-faced and, as the news spread through the camp, even the bravest and boldest of soldiers cried out in mourning. Govinda clenched his jaw and said nothing as their collective grief poured down on him, letting it wash over him without flinching. Panchali alone remained where she had been, as she had been. She did not cry.

  Abhimanyu was not the only dead soldier from their army, but Govinda and the others had neither time nor men to spare to protect their numerous dead from scavengers or to see to their cremation, for a host of tasks remained: A count to be taken of the living and plans made for the next day’s battle. Those injured and dying had to be brought back to camp and made comfortable, while those with a chance of survival needed tending to by the medics. Neither Partha nor his brothers were in any position to discharge their daily responsibilities, and all arrangements, mundane and otherwise, fell to Shikandin, Govinda and Yuyudhana. Dhrstyadymn left, as usual, to check on the weapons and the men.

  It was well past midnight and all was quiet by the time a tired, aching Govinda returned to where Abhimanyu lay. He found Uttara sitting alone by the dead warrior’s side. She was calm, her hand placed on Abhimanyu’s chest as though he were asleep. Govinda felt an unbearable bolt of agony shoot through him. He longed to grieve, truly grieve for Uttara’s sake.

  A voice intruded on his dark thoughts. ‘I’ll take care of her,’ Dhaumya said and went over to Uttara. He helped the young princess to her feet and proceeded to lead her away. Govinda’s shoulders slumped and he felt sick to the stomach. Uttara, he realized, still did not believe that her husband was dead. He quailed to think what would happen when she emerged from her traumatised daze.

  Finally, he was alone with his Abhimanyu. The boy he had loved as a son. As Panchali’s son, as the future for which they had been willing to give up their happiness.

  With a heavy heart, Govinda set about preparing for Abhimanyu’s funeral. Somehow, he wrested off the hacked armour and picked the shards out of the mangled flesh underneath. He bandaged up the boy’s crushed chest, swathing him with linen till nothing could be seen of the disfigured torso. Then he pulled away the cloth that covered Abhimanyu’s face.

  ‘Hai, Rudra!’ The sight was enough to make him exclaim and turn away. The right side of Abhimanyu’s face, his eye, his ear were gone. All that remained was a red mass of flesh and pieces of bone, with nothing more than a few clumps of matted, curly hair to suggest that this had once been a handsome human being. Govinda turned back, resolute, and continued his preparations. He bandaged Abhimanyu’s head, covering it completely, and ran another piece of linen across his face. He then wiped the blood off Abhimanyu’s neck and hands and sat back, fists clenched and chest heaving.

  Just when Govinda thought he could take it no more, he felt a comforting touch on his back. Shikandin and Yuyudhana were there. Behind them, his eyes red from weeping but jaw set in a stern expression, was Yudhamanyu. He leant, for support, on an equally grim Uttamaujas. Working together, the five men carried Abhimanyu’s limp form to the far corner of the campsite, where thousands of pyres had been lit over the past twelve days. A few still crackled on in an inappropriately merry blaze, while the rest were but piles of gray ash that marked the end of the end.

  The five men moved slowly, readying Abhimanyu’s bier log by log, each man piling wood on to the final form as though letting go of a memory or hope. Finally, they placed the dead warrior’s body on the woodstack, but made no move to light it – that task would be Partha’s after the next day’s battle. Govinda muttered words of prayer the others could not catch and turned away. He stared at the blue-black sky, searching for solace in the stars. Yudhamanyu let out a moan as his loss hit him once again. In an unexpected show of emotion he turned to Shikandin, resting his forehead on his father’s shoulder. Uttamaujas laid a consoling hand on his brother’s back as Yuyudhana looked from one of his companions to the other, trying his best to remain strong for them all. At length, he called them gently to take the ritual plunge in the nearby river before heading back.

  As the five men entered their camp, Pradymna and Dhrstyadymn came up
to meet them, prompting Govinda to speak. ‘Pradymna,’ he instructed, ‘bring me the rest of my weapons. I have only my sword.’

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Yes, I mean my astra-weapons. Don’t pretend to be shocked; you’ve always known that I’ve owned many. Also, tell Daruka to be ready. I may need a charioteer of my own.’

  ‘But…’ Yuyudhana began.

  ‘Jayadrath will die tomorrow. If Partha fails to kill him, I’ll do it. I’ll break my promise if I have to; dishonour is not new to me. I can’t let Partha die… I owe him a great debt, one that I will willingly pay with my life, my honour, whatever is mine to give… If Partha hadn’t spoken up that day, after the dice game, if he hadn’t gone against Dharma’s authority… I can’t bear to imagine what could have happened to Panchali. For that I owe Partha my life and my soul.’

  Yuyudhana swallowed hard and nodded while Shikandin grit his teeth at the memory of those bitter events. Dhrstyadymn opened his mouth to speak, but found he had nothing to say.

  ‘Besides,’ Govinda continued, ‘without Partha, this war is lost anyway. Our men have long believed that he is invincible, that he alone can decimate the enemy. They fight because he fights. His despair this evening has already weakened them as much as Abhimanyu’s death has. They know Acharya Dron is a trained Firewright and over these two days he has proved himself a splendid Commander. Our armies already consider tomorrow’s battle to be lost, and if we lose Partha as well they will surrender – Dharma first of all. Do you see him facing Dron, Asvattama, Syoddhan or Vasusena? Let’s not forget Kritavarman fights for them too.’

  Dhrstyadymn grabbed Govinda’s hand. ‘Let’s finish this ourselves, Govinda. Damn these spineless Kurus and their farce of a war! Between you and Shikandin, you can kill off every rabid dog in that pack. If there’s anyone left, Yudhamanyu, Uttamaujas, Pradymna and I can clean up. Let’s do this, Govinda! For Abhimanyu! For Panchali!’