The Aryavarta Chronicles Kurukshetra: Book 3

by Krishna Udayasankar

  35

  IT WAS NEARING DUSK WHEN PARTHA BURST INTO THE TENT where Govinda lay. He shook the still-sleeping man awake. ‘You have to see this, Govinda. Come, let me help you up.’

  Too dazed to reply or refuse, Govinda let Partha raise him to his feet. He realized that the tent was nearly empty – Dharma had been allowed to leave, as had some of the other injured men he had seen. It was, he knew, a good sign, but try as he might he felt no excitement, just a sense of foreboding and doom. He hobbled out of the tent, blindly letting Partha lead him to the waiting chariot rig. Their ultimate destination was not too far away.

  Govinda forced himself to concentrate on the scene that awaited them. Dharma, still wan and heavily bandaged, was in excited conversation with his brothers. All the surviving commanders and men had gathered there too, and a sense of joy filled the air.

  ‘What…?’ he asked, wincing as he got off the rig. He noticed an ashen Panchali standing to one side.

  ‘What…?’ Govinda repeated.

  ‘Govinda!’ Bhim roared with joy and came up to embrace him. ‘I was waiting for you, Govinda. Come, see what I’ve done. See how your promise begins to come true. Come, Govinda. Panchali, you too.’ He took one of their hands in each of his and led them to the near edge of the battlefield where a huge figure lay bloody and mangled beyond recognition.

  Govinda fought back the desire to retch at the sight. Warhardened as he was, this was unlike anything he had seen, even in the past seventeen days. The dead man, if the mass of flesh could be called a man, had been torn apart from limb to limb. With a shock, Govinda realized that much of it might have happened while life had still run through the now-dead warrior. He turned to Panchali, but she stood as she was, her eyes staring ahead, empty.

  Bhim let out a savage cackle and picked up a dismembered arm. ‘You see this, Panchali? Once this belonged to Dussasan. He touched you with this hand, didn’t he? See what became of it.’ Bhim stamped down on the mutilated corpse. ‘It’s done, Panchali. You’re avenged! He lusted for you, didn’t he? Now his loins are dust. He called you a whore, didn’t he? See, I’ve ripped out his tongue. How many nights I’ve cried for you, Panchali, for what happened to you. Now, it’s done. Like I did with the General, I crushed Dussasan with my bare hands. For you, Panchali. For you!’

  Only then did Govinda realize that Bhim was covered in blood and flesh. He wore Dussasan’s entrails around his neck, like a garland. His lips, his mouth, were stained red.

  With a feral howl, Bhim bent down, scooping up Dussasan’s blood in his large palms. ‘He touched your hair, didn’t he, Panchali? He dragged you into the assembly hall at Hastina by your hair…’ He smeared the blood over the trembling Panchali’s head, wetting her hair, letting it soak into the dark curls.

  ‘See, Panchali…’ Bhim let the warm redness drip from his palms onto hers. ‘This is the blood of the man who tormented you… Drink it, smear it on yourself in victory, use it to colour your lips and cheeks or to paint your feet…Do what you will! You’re avenged, Panchali.’

  Laughing like a madman, Bhim wiped his hands in her hair once again. Chest heaving, his breath coming in snorts, he paced around like a raging bull letting out a spontanous cheer. Govinda felt a sudden fire in the pit of his stomach. His eyes blurred, he looked around.

  Dharma, proud, pleased, his eyes holding the satisfaction of vengeance as well as envy at knowing it was not his alone. Partha shedding tears of joy, and the twins staring at Panchali with reverence and awe. Around them, the others – Yuyudhana moving to bow to the Empress as she stood, once more, bloodstained and defiant in the midst of kings. Next to him, Pradymna, Yudhamanyu and Uttamaujas laying their swords on the ground, pledging their allegiance and service. Shikandin and Dhrstyadymn beaming with pride and affection.

  All Govinda could do was watch. And when he found his voice, there was but one word he could speak, a word that stood for all that he thought and felt, ‘Panchali…’

  She turned to him, slow and lifeless. ‘Look at me, Govinda. I am death.’ Blood covered Panchali; it filled her, fell from her fingertips. In nothing less than irony, it stained her robes. ‘Look at me. I am death; I am this blood, these ravaged lands, and this wanton destruction.’ She crumpled visibly, the strength in her eyes failed as she let the hatred, revulsion and despair press in on her. She knew the war was not because of her; no, she was hardly as important as that. But, she was the death that reigned over it all. ‘I am death, Govinda,’ she repeated, raising her bloody palms up to him. ‘I am death.’

  Govinda grabbed her hands, bending his head over them. Panchali gasped and tried to pull back, as the blood on her hands stained his face. He did not let go. Kissing her hands, he declared, reverential, ‘Yes, Panchali; you are death. You are death, and I am life.’ He laughed and held Panchali’s hands tight in his as she wept for all that had happened, for those who had died, and all that had been lost. At that moment, he could have sworn that the Universe was, in its own strange way, finally in balance.

  Govinda did not remember when they left there, or how he was brought back to his tent. He was vaguely aware of Dhaumya’s disapproval at his expedition to the battlefield, but the Acharya’s stream of complaints against Partha and Bhim as he changed his blood-soaked bandages sounded far away. Govinda felt neither pain nor succour at the scholar’s attentions; his thoughts were at the wonderful intersection where past and present came together to form reality. A drugged sleep took him again, but the smell of lotuses that lay on his skin did not fade.

  36

  WHEN GOVINDA STIRRED AGAIN, HE WAS GLAD TO FEEL BETTER than he had since…he frowned, unable to clearly recollect recent events. Vague, disturbing images floated through his head, enough to make him want to go back into the dreamless state that had passed for sleep. He turned as he felt a strong touch and looked up to see a relieved Balabadra.

  ‘I shouldn’t have left you alone, little one,’ Balabadra said, running his large hand over Govinda’s wound. ‘It is a terrible burden that you’ve borne these past days…’

  ‘It’s over, Agraja,’ Govinda said.

  ‘Yes.’ Balabadra was solemn. His eyes held great sadness at the carnage that had taken place.

  Govinda sat up, trying to recall when he had come back to the tent. He asked his brother, ‘Is it dark already?’

  ‘Yes. Well past midnight.’

  ‘And the battle?’

  ‘It’s over. Hardly five hundred horses, fifty elephants and four thousand men remain, both sides put together.’

  ‘Was there more battle? How did Partha…?’

  ‘Pradymna drove him. Made some dramatic statement about following in his father’s footsteps, I believe.’

  ‘So that’s it, then? And Syoddhan? Shakuni?

  ‘Shakuni died at Sadev’s hands. Syoddhan is still alive, along with Kritavarman, Kripa and Asvattama. Syoddhan’s younger brother Sudarsa was also alive, but mortally hurt… he won’t live through the night. Devala has escaped, but I suppose that should not come as a shock to any of us. Loyalty was never all that important to him. And before he left he ransacked the library at Hastina, burning whatever was in there. Vidur wasn’t able to save anything, Govinda. But I still do not understand how the Firstborn let it happen. Suka…’

  ‘Sanjaya…’ Govinda interrupted. ‘Where is Sanjaya?’

  ‘Sanjaya has been captured. Yuyudhana took him alive. He awaits your instructions…’

  Govinda said, ‘I need to talk to Sanjaya. Perhaps, since the battle is over, I’ll kill him myself. Yes, I’d enjoy that,’ he finished with an unusual hint of rage.

  ‘It’s a punishment he would well deserve, my son,’ an old, feeble voice added.

  Recognizing the voice, Govinda made to sit up straight out of respect, but the old man shuffled forward to make him lie down. Krishna Dwaipayana, former Vyasa of the Firstborn, seated himself next to the injured man’s tress. ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Govinda,’ he confessed. ‘I don’t know where t
o begin. A part of me wants to embrace you, while another part of me wants to curse you for all that you’ve done. Tell me, what should I do?’

  ‘What you’ve always done, Acharya. That which you think is in the best interests of Aryavarta.’

  ‘Then you understand what I’ve done; why I did so…?’

  ‘I do. I also know that Aryavarta, this earth and all of existence, these are beyond our little judgements of right and wrong. All we can hope to do is remain true to ourselves.’

  Dwaipayana said, ‘Then you’ll also understand when I say that this isn’t over between you and I?’

  ‘Time is the most inevitable, the most powerful of all forces. It does not depend on you and me, on our little roles in the larger scheme of things, to find its way, to fulfill itself. If not you then someone else; if not here then somewhere else. The Universe goes on. But, for now, yes, it’s not over between you and I…’

  ‘Then you’ll also understand if just this once I ask you to explain a few things to me rather than me attempting to convince you?’

  Govinda shrugged.

  Dwaipayana asked, ‘Tell me from the beginning. There is no denying you helped bring the Firewright order down, you hastened their fall. Why did you do it? Your relationship with the Wrights was more than just that of teacher and student… wasn’t it? Then why? Why set Aryavarta on the path of glory only to then destroy the realm with this war? If there is anything I have learnt about you in these years, Govinda, it is that you are not a power-hungry man. But if that is not the explanation for your actions, then what is?’

  Govinda said, ‘Reason, compassion…or simply because it had to be done. Aryavarta’s soul was prisoner to its own systems. We had surrendered to a third power, for we had crafted a way of life that had grown larger, stronger than us…’

  ‘And so you wanted to destroy it?

  ‘Yes. But I did so with no sense of heroism. What Aryavarta is today, what we all are, is the product of Time, the inevitable turning of the wheels of its fast chariot. What I have built, someone else will destroy and so it will go on.’

  ‘Then it is all in vain?’

  ‘No, Acharya! Some things don’t change. Love doesn’t change. Compassion and humanity don’t change. Our search for something larger, for the Divine, doesn’t change.’

  ‘And what does love have to do with matters of state?’ Dwaipayana scoffed. ‘Is love and compassion enough to quell greed and ambition? What you speak of is a way of life the gods long for. It’s far beyond our reach as humans. The same corruption and lust for power will guide us in the future, as you claim it does now.’

  ‘Yes, it will. And then another Vyasa will rise, as will another Secret Keeper, and another cowherd, though we may call them by different names.’

  Dwaipayana said, ‘What you propose is…unnatural. We need Divine Order; we need destiny. How can we leave righteousness and justice to the care of flawed, ridiculously imperfect human beings? We do so at the risk of doom!

  ‘Doom?’ Govinda laughed. ‘Yes, I once believed that we were doomed. I thought the only hope was to overcome human frailty and become creatures of dispassion and reason. Yet, the greatest mystery, the greatest wonder of creation is that we are capable of both relentless reason and boundless love… It is not about what we are, but what we can become. That is why the ancients once said that perhaps the Primordial Creator knows the answers, or perhaps even he knows them not. Where you see the unknown and call it nothingness, I see our limitless potential. I see Vasudeva Narayana, asleep on the Endless Ocean. He will wake, and that is how we transform and go on, from age to age…’

  ‘You do your teacher great credit, my son,’ Dwaipayana admitted. ‘You make me wish that the honour had been mine…’

  ‘But it is, Acharya, in more ways that you know. I say this without malice or spite…’

  ‘If that’s the case, will you forgive this old man if he calls you a fool, Govinda?’

  ‘But of course, and I wouldn’t expect you to say otherwise. Your world is a different world. Your world is one where love is requited, and sacrifice has meaning. My world, the world around us now and that of the future is a place where love and justice both fail, and we have no choice but to accept it in the name of destiny. All action and all compassion is in vain. Tell me, what about this way of life is worth saving?

  Dwaipayana said, ‘It is sacrilege to question divinity. It is also as irrelevant as it is irreverent. You are an aberration, and aberrations are doomed to fail. They must fail; embraced and stifled by the very flow of things that you try to subvert.’

  ‘Your faith in the system is overwhelming. And it proves my point,’ Govinda said.

  ‘It also affirms that when we are done philosophizing and exchanging pithy words, I will still smite you down in a way you cannot imagine. It is a trade you made, remember? I gave you the present, but in exchange for the future. It is for me to now choose what tale will be told, and I assure you that neither my kin nor I shall come out the worse for it.’

  Govinda shook his head. ‘This story began generations before you or I were born. Bharata, the first of Aryavarta’s Emperors, was as much of Angirasa blood as he was of Varuni descent…’

  ‘Indeed, the line of nobility has been contaminated time again by heretics and the ignoble.’

  ‘Have you tried explaining that to Sanjaya? He has tales of his own.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dwaipayana sighed. ‘I should have realized that it would be difficult for him to understand…’

  The conversation ebbed as the scholar stared into the distance. The bustle and clanging that had been the war was now absent. Occasionally, a bird or two chirped or the wind whistled through the tentpoles. But that was all. The war was over. Only silence remained.

  Dwaipayana closed his eyes, and with effort began, ‘My mother… Satya… I sometimes wonder if my father knew that she was a Firewright, after all. He may have thought it was the ultimate triumph, that a Firewright should bear the child of a Firstborn scholar. Or maybe he didn’t care. My mother was a woman of honour. She wanted the Wrights destroyed, just as my father did. There was no denying that…’

  ‘Didn’t you ask her why?’

  ‘Why she turned against her own? Of course I knew why…’

  ‘Then you understand why I…?’

  ‘No, Govinda; I said I knew why. When Princess Satya, as she was then, realized that the terrible weapons that the Wrights made in ones and twos could, with some change, be made in huge numbers, she was right to fear for the future. That is what binds us, Govinda; that is what binds the three of us: that we saw the huge danger that awaited Aryavarta. Who knows, one day you may learn to see from my point of view after all…’

  ‘No, Acharya. The bond exists, but not quite as you think. You believe in controlling power. I believe in tempering it with compassion. Your solution, unlike your mother’s, would have been to raze not just the Wrights but also the people of Matsya to the ground so as to punish them for daring to tamper with Divine Order. The Princess, on the other hand, sought to remove the source of the problem. She turned against her own and, with your father, hoped to destroy the Wrights completely.’

  ‘And you, Govinda? Or will you now pretend that you’re a preserver, a creature of mercy?’

  ‘I too hope to destroy power. I hope to shatter it, wherever it’s concentrated. No, let me restate that: Time, the Greatest Destroyer of all will shatter power wherever it’s concentrated. You and I, we are both merely the instruments of Time…’

  Dwaipayana hissed through clenched teeth, ‘Look around you! This is not the consequence of mere instruments. You are either a god or a demon, for no one else can be so flippant with destiny and divinity.’

  ‘I don’t know what Divinity is,’ Govinda admitted, ‘but I do know that it’s worth searching for, just as I know that it can only be found within. And that is the immutable truth, irrespective of the legends that we clothe it in.’

  ‘Each one of us a god?’ Dwaipayana aske
d, contemptuous.

  ‘You can put it that way if you wish, but I don’t like that idea. You see, you believe in superiority, inferiority, in hierarchies. My words sound heretic to you, because you think I elevate myself to the level of the gods. I, on the other hand, believe in oneness. There is no superiority or inferiority when all you have is one being…’

  ‘I can understand why everyone adores you, Govinda. Even your blasphemy has a charm of its own, but it is blasphemy all the same. There may be limits to reason, but not to Truth, which is why we need gods; we need to know that there is something beyond us.’

  ‘We need to know there’s something beyond us, yes; but we also need that something to be alive, vital, full of potential and benevolence. It cannot be some immutable order, however divine. It cannot be destiny.’

  Dwaipayana studied Govinda. The warrior was trying hard to do justice to the debate, but weariness was catching up with him. The old scholar said, ‘This war between you and me was no less than the war that raged on in the fields outside. Well fought!’

  ‘Thank you, Acharya.’

  Dwaipayana thought for a while, and then said, ‘Will you do something for me, Govinda; something for an old man who has given his life in service to these lands?’

  ‘I am at your disposal, Acharya.’

  ‘Spare Sanjaya.’ He hesitated and added, ‘In the name of the one who is now Secret Keeper, I ask you this. He would not, I know, deny me this request. I ask you to show me the same favour.’

  Govinda could not hide his astonishment. Nor, he realized, did he want to. He felt lighter all of a sudden, as though he no longer carried the burden of a secret alone. And then, as he saw how heavy the truth weighed on the old Dwaipayana, his release gave way to pity. He understood why the scholar had fought to defend his point of view, tried so hard to explain the reasoning behind his actions. Dwaipayana’s defeat was now complete and, the old man knew it. ‘How…?’ he asked.

  ‘He told me,’ Dwaipayana said. ‘He told me about it all. What better place to hide the Secret Keeper of the Firewrights – and not just any Secret Keeper, but the one on whom all hopes of the future rested – than nestled in the heart of the Firstborn Order? Was it your idea?’