The one thing she could not get her mind away from, even amid all this, was Bhishma.
Every now and then, she would either be on her way to the orchard or in the middle of a meal or at the well drawing water, and something would come over her suddenly and she would sit down and weep. At nights she would go down to the bank of the Yamuna, some three or four miles away, and sit there watching the ferry come and go, people stepping out, stopping for a moment to look at her, then passing on their way. She would sometimes lie down on the sand and look up at the moon floating by, and she would hug herself and think of her father in Kasi. Sage Parashurama had said that if you thought of someone with all your heart, you would make them think of you. She would hear her father’s voice in the river’s waves, and she would wonder if he ever thought of her.
Today Sage Parashurama had summoned her to his hut immediately after the morning prayer, which was one of the reasons for her good mood. She had not spoken to him in the last one week or so, and if he wanted to speak, it must be because he would tell her how he was going to show her a way out of her pain.
She walked back from the hut and stood by the door. She removed the stick holding her hair together and shook her head, letting her tresses fall over her shoulders. As she fingered the stick in her hand, her mind went back to Bhishma in the palace of Hastinapur, and Ambika and Ambalika seated on the throne. Her lips tightened. She snapped the twig in two.
When she entered, she had to twist her nose against the pungent smell of burning incense. From somewhere deep within the cloud of smoke, she heard Parashurama’s voice.
‘Come, my child,’ he said.
From memory she went in the direction of the platform on which he generally sat, and lowered herself onto her knees first, then folded her legs under her and came to rest on the back of her heels.
‘You look well, my child,’ said he. ‘Better than I thought you would after a month of being a priestess.’
‘I am getting used to it, my lord,’ she replied.
‘It does not bode well for a priestess to leave her hair open, my dear.’
‘I beg your pardon, your grace. I lost my pinning stick this morning. I will make one for myself after the midday meal.’
Even from such a short distance he was visible only as a grey shadow, and his voice seemed to come at her from a deep, cool well. She saw the dim outline of his jaw, his long beard, his hair gathered together into a ball over his head. He looked a lot like the keeper of time himself.
‘I did not summon you here to speak of your hair, though,’ he said. ‘I think it is time we spoke about Devavrata.’
A lump appeared instantly within her throat. ‘Do you bear bad news of him?’
‘No, dear,’ said Parashurama, in a smiling voice. ‘I wanted to know if you still wished to take revenge on him.’
‘That is the very reason I still draw breath, my lord,’ said Amba.
For a few moments the High Sage did not speak. All Amba saw were floating wisps of white smoke and a blurred image of a man’s face drawn in hazy black lines. She could well have been speaking to a statue.
‘Amba,’ he said finally, ‘you think of me as your father, do you not?’
‘My lord.’
‘Then shall I advise you on something, with your good at heart?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Let it go, my child.’
Amba raised her head. ‘My lord?’
‘Let it go,’ he said. ‘Your thoughts of vengeance and anger are your own. You have a choice to kill them, and to live a happy life.’
‘I do not want to kill these thoughts, your grace,’ she said, not raising her voice, matching the hollow tone of her master’s. ‘I have lived with them for so long now that they have become part of me. Killing them would mean killing a part of myself.’
‘A bad part of yourself. You are merely severing a deceased limb, and by doing so you save the rest of your body.’
‘My lord–’
‘You must trust me, my child. Your anger will one day burn you to ashes. Your vengeance will one day turn to you and ask for your life.’
‘If it takes Bhishma’s life, I will gladly give up mine, your grace.’
Parashurama smiled. ‘This is not about Devavrata, child. No matter what happens to Devavrata, even if you were to hack him into pieces and throw him into the Great River, the fires that burn within you shall not die. Anger has taken much from me, my child, and it has given me nothing in return. I do not wish the same for you.’
‘Bhishma has robbed me of my life, my lord,’ said Amba, blinking away tears. ‘How can I not punish someone who has taken everything from me?’
‘No one can take everything that you have,’ said Parashurama. ‘Today you have much to be thankful for, do you not?’
‘I? What do I have for which to be thankful, my lord?’ Amba’s voice finally snapped, rising a pitch higher. ‘I have lost everything that was mine – my father, my sisters, my lovers, a right to be queen of Hastinapur – and you say I have to be thankful for it? Pray tell me a few things that I must be thankful for, your grace.’
‘Your mistake is to think that all those things were part of you, Amba. Your father, your sisters, your lovers, your servants – these were all things that you had, things that existed outside of you. You thought – and still think – that all those things made you what you were, but it is not so. It is when we lose everything we have that we truly find ourselves, my child.’ He paused for a moment. ‘In your last one month, did you not get a glimpse of who you really were?’
Amba thought of the girl who drew water from the well and chanted verses to herself. She thought of the doe that frequented the hermitage and ate the apples that she left at the fence. She thought of the squirrels that picked out nuts and grains from her house, and stood up on their hind legs while scurrying here and there to look up at her, as if to say thank you. She thought of the girl who tied her own hair, who boiled her own rice, who grew her own vegetables, who slept on the hard floor, who sat by the sages at night and listened to their discourses.
But then she thought of the girl who went to the Yamuna alone and wept, who broke her pinning twig into two out of rage for a man in a far-off land.
‘No,’ she said resolutely. ‘What I need to quench my thirst, your grace, is not empty words that serve no purpose. I will only see happiness the day Bhishma’s head rolls in the dust.’
Almost to himself, Parashurama said, ‘Perhaps one month is not enough.’
‘You promised me a way out of my pain, your grace,’ said Amba, her tone now accusing him. ‘But it has been a month and you have done nothing.’
‘I have been trying to show you a way out, my child, but you refuse to see it.’
‘Your way out is for me to forget my vengeance? Did I need to come all the way inside the woods to this hermitage to be told that, your grace?’
Parashurama sighed. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he said. ‘When I was as young as you, I scoffed at my father for having asked me to forget my rage. And today I look back and see how right he was. But perhaps that is the folly of age, of youth. We run after all the wrong things, and we refuse to see what is important even when someone points them out to us.’
Amba lowered her head and said nothing.
Parashurama got to his feet. At two waves of his hand, as though by magic, the air in the room cleared and sharpened. Amba, on her knees, looked up at him and saw his face set in cold, hard stone. Not even the loose strands of hair on his scalp and chin appeared to move. A raised staff in his left hand, he opened the palm of his right to bless her. She bent to the ground, her hands laid out in front of her, each one touching one of his feet.
‘I gave you my word that I will guide you out of your pain,’ he said gravely. ‘Over the last month I tried to show you my path, but your path may be different, and it ought to be so. Each of us has to walk our paths alone.’ He controlled his faltering voice. ‘If you insist on walking your path, I sh
all help you do so.’
‘I thank you, my lord,’ said Amba.
‘I shall go to speak with Devavrata,’ said Parashurama, taking her by her shoulders and rousing her up to her feet. ‘I shall ask him to right all the wrongs he has done to you.’
Amba said, ‘I will come with you!’
‘No, I know what Devavrata’s reply will be. I may have to fight him to extract your vengeance for you, my lady. It will not be safe for you to be present.’
‘But my lord,’ said Amba, ‘I wish to see your victory. I wish to see his fall. I wish to laugh in his face.’
Parashurama smiled kindly at her. ‘You do not know yet what a great warrior he is, my girl. He may be more skilled at arms than I am. After all, I have not touched a weapon besides my axe in a long while. Do not take my victory for granted, though I assure you that it will take all his might to defeat me.’
The air in the room was clear now even as fog had begun to collect outside. The sage went to the corner by the fireplace and fiddled with a cloth bundle. When he came back, in his palm he held a brown stick with gum oozing out of its sides. He handed it to her and said, ‘You shall sit here in this room while I am gone, and you shall light a fire by the window. You shall feed this stick to the fire, inch by inch, until it is all consumed, and while you do it, you shall chant a verse that I have written down in the parchment here. If you have lived your last month as a true priestess, you shall be able to see me fight your enemy.’
Amba bowed and took the stick in both her hands. She touched it to her eyes and said, ‘Thank you, your grace.’
He raised his hand again to bless her. ‘I must make haste now. Today is four days away from the day of the no-moon. I shall take my axe, and I shall stop by on the bank of the Yamuna. All my weapons are atop a fig tree there. I shall collect them, and I shall make for Hastinapur to plead your cause to Devavrata.’
‘I wish I could come with you, my lord,’ said Amba.
‘You shall, if you make the fire on the morning of Amavaasya, and if you keep a clear mind as you feed it.’ He took a step back from her. ‘Now I must go.’
Amba bowed and closed her eyes. She waited for his touch on her forehead, but when it did not come after a full minute she opened her eyes to see that she was alone in the room. She had heard no footsteps. The outside fog was now beginning to creep into the hut through the window. The cloth bundle from which the sage had produced the gum stick was no longer in its corner. Amba walked out to the front door and looked in the direction of the fence. Everything looked as it always had – the chatter of squirrels, the screeching of monkeys, the rustling movement of lizards under fallen leaves, and the gentle sounds of sages as they went about their daily chores.
There was just one thing missing: Parashurama’s axe that used to lean against the door.
NINE
Amba sat in front of the heap of firewood and joined her hands in reverence. She had heard many a tale about how sages and gods saw events that happen in different places and different times. They always began, she guessed, by praying to the dead firewood, for without its will no fire would burn, and without a fire no magic could happen. She chanted no verses because she had not yet learnt the methods of fire worship, but she willed the Goddess with all her heart to keep the fire from dying.
‘Mother,’ she thought, ‘keep the fire alive for as long as I need to see, and see to it that the sage vanquishes my foe.’
She rubbed the flint stones over a fist of dry hay, and when she saw smoke rise, she blew over it gently through a sooty pipe. She had never made fire before this; she had never been the first to wake at the hermitage, and whenever she had needed fire, all she had had to do was step out and hold a piece of parchment to the altar in the courtyard. But the sages had been adamant about this: she had to create fire on her own when she performed the Mystery of the Sight.
The first few times, the smoke in the hay fizzled out as though someone had sprinkled water upon it. The last few days had been cloudy, so she had been unable to dry the hay adequately. She thought how ironic it would be if she were unable to watch the battle between the sage and the king because she could not start a fire. Elsewhere, the two warriors must be getting into their armours just about now, and she imagined them in their respective chariots: Bhishma’s drawn by black horses that looked grotesque and diseased; Parashurama’s by white ones with silvery wings and angelic faces.
She drew a particularly large spark from the flint, and as it struck the hay it gave birth to a tiny, steady flame. Amba put her pipe aside and fed it with handfuls of straw dipped in oil, and within a minute the flame grew sharp, hungry tongues that licked and spread.
Amba picked up the mass of burning hay with her hands with care and dropped it on the firewood. The flame seemed to die upon touching the wood, but a black smoke rose into the air in a thin line. Amba blew upon it till the whole room filled with it and made her cough, but she kept at it until she spotted a weak, orange glow emerge from underneath the wood. Now she poured oil and ghee upon it, strengthening it till it began to devour the wood and shrivel it into a black, lifeless mass.
She did not realize she had begun to mouth the incantation without her knowledge, and as soon as she sat down she began to see shapes in the swirling grey smoke. She thought she saw a bearded man on horseback with a spear in hand, and though she first thought it was Bhishma, the smoke thinned to reveal Jarutha. All about him were armed warriors chasing peasants and workmen. ‘Do not kill anyone,’ said Jarutha, and his voice echoed in her ear, as though he were speaking from inside a cave. ‘Drive them out, and we shall set up our outpost here to guard against setbacks.’
Amba felt her hold on her mind ebb with each passing moment. Vacantly, she remembered Drupad’s words which referred to a stone quarry up in north Panchala, which the Kurus had captured and were using to make weapons. Around Jarutha she now saw the dead bodies of four or five men who had deep stab wounds on their backs. Jarutha’s horse kicked one of them in passing and turned him over, and Amba saw that the hard, handsome face was littered with red sword cuts.
Her nostrils twitched and her eyes watered due to the smoke, but she stared up at the apparition, fumbling with her hand to find the block of rubber wood that the sage had given her. She broke off a piece of it and tossed it into the fire, giving rise to a fresh ball of smoke that dissolved into the shape above her and sharpened it. Now Amba could see the crags in the rock surrounding Jarutha, and she could see the grimness in which his features were set – far removed from the easy, smiling countenance that he had sported with her.
Touching his beard, he surveyed the terrain around him.
Amba remembered the words of admonishment that Parashurama had used with Jarutha, that he did not like being used, and at the time she had wondered what he had meant, but now she saw: Hastinapur’s rock quarries could be safely ransacked if Bhishma could be distracted, and Drupad had used Parashurama – through her – for the purpose. Despite what he had said, he must have spies in Hastinapur that told him that Bhishma had left for a battle, so he had sent Jarutha up north to take back their rocks and cripple Hastinapur’s weapon factories.
She saw twenty or thirty villagers now surround Jarutha, and at his command they began to dig the ground and lay the foundations for a defensive structure. From within the shadows many more men emerged and set to work, while Jarutha and his men stood guard. A dozen or so archers positioned themselves behind the working men, their quivers brimming with arrows.
Amba wondered vaguely where Bhishma must be, and at once the shapes in the smoke dissolved and arose again to reveal a large circular clearing in a dense forest, at the either end of which stood a chariot, one drawn by white horses as in her vision, and one drawn by black. In the former she saw the sturdy figure of the sage, clad in saffron and with lines of sandal paste on his forehead. In his left hand he held a bow fashioned out of crude wood.
He looked out at the other end of the clearing, where at the wheel of
his chariot stood Bhishma. His face had not changed from the last time she had seen him – she had ceased being surprised about that – but in stature he seemed to have grown. His frame was still wiry, much like that of the sage he was facing, but he seemed to have acquired this air of resplendence about him. Amba had heard that gods, when they descended upon Earth, appeared to mortal eyes as though a light shone forth from behind them. Bhishma looked the same. His eyes too seemed to have turned into a darker shade of blue.
‘I do not wish to fight you, High Sage,’ he said, and Amba felt the voice had become softer since she had heard him last. ‘I pray to you; let us not allow the matter of a woman come between us. Let us put our differences aside and part as friends.’
‘The time for words is behind us now, Devavrata. I have told you what I wanted. You have said you cannot do my bidding. Is that still your answer?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Bhishma. ‘I have taken a vow that I shall never touch a woman, and I must abide by it.’
Parashurama grunted in disapproval. ‘Then you can certainly take the maiden and give her shelter in your city. She lives as a priestess at my hermitage; no place for a maiden used to the comforts of palace life.’
‘I shall be only too happy to give her shelter in Hastinapur, my lord.’ Bhishma picked up his bow, wore his quiver around his shoulder, and ascended his chariot. ‘But doing so shall put her life in danger. The people of Hastinapur believe that their king would not have died but for her, and if they see her living amongst them, I am afraid they will name her a witch and stone her to death.’
‘Ah,’ said Parashurama, ‘if you desire to have her in your city, you can. You are the champion of your city’s throne, and if you said one word in support of Amba, your people would accept her. But you do not.’
‘I cannot but bow down to the will of the people, my lord,’ said Bhishma.
The Rise of Hastinapur Page 7
