The Rise of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  He threw his head back and laughed, the first time Devaki saw him do so in years. He turned his back to them and walked out of the room, muttering to himself. As he passed the door, he clicked his fingers twice, and Devaki saw armed guards march into the room and stand in a single file along the wall, waiting for her with their heads bowed.

  TWO

  Sweat trickled down Pritha’s brow, though the breeze flowing along the Yamuna was cold enough to make her teeth chatter. For the first time in her life, that evening when she had seen eye to eye with Kamsa, she had come face to face with real, mortal fear. That smile underneath his moustache had never left his face, and yet his eyes had bored into her and left her a hollow wreck. If Devaki had not come to her rescue and asked for her freedom, only the gods knew what he would have done with her. If he had planned to just kill her, it would not have been so bad, but one always heard stories of kings doing ‘things’ to princesses and queens from other kingdoms.

  The boat heaved up and down once, and Pritha lost balance and fell back on the ledge. Mathura’s two guards stood on either side of her. Though they spoke to her only in deferential tones and bowed whenever she looked in their direction, she was not under any illusion as to what their instructions must have been. ‘If she misbehaves,’ she could hear Kamsa telling them, ‘cut her up and feed her to the river.’

  She thought of what would happen now to Devaki and Vasudev. By now Kamsa would have had his men throw them into a dungeon with their hands and legs in chains. Perhaps he would treat them well, with waiting-women and such. He seemed to look after his father with a lot of love, though Pritha thought he would not think a second time before cutting off his father’s head if he ever tried to escape. The same terms would probably be laid out for Devaki and Vasudeva too.

  They came to the edge of the woods that marked the entrance to Shurasena, and the boatman turned the boat around so that it would align itself with the contour of the bank, grating against it and coming to a stop.

  With the arrival of familiar shores, Pritha relaxed a little bit, although she began to feel a bit cold. The events of that afternoon would certainly lead to war, she thought. Shurasena would not just sit back and watch her king being held prisoner in such a manner. If Shurasena and Kunti were to join forces, they would surely crush a tiny kingdom like Mathura. She felt calmer now. I shall come back for you, brother, she thought. I shall come back for you with an army by my side, and then we shall see how Kamsa will touch so much as a hair on your head.

  The first guard returned and gestured to them that all was clear. Pritha got up, and taking the guard’s hand, sat down on the boat’s hull and descended into the water. After she stepped on the wet sand, the guard, who had been holding her shoes, dropped them in front of her. She did not ask him to lean down and hold them up to her feet. The guards walked ahead of her and waited, whispering to each other a word every now and then. It seemed like it was now their turn to be scared and nervous, as though they were accompanied not by a maiden but by a snarling hungry wolf.

  As they reached the gates of the city, the blue-armoured soldiers of Shurasena peered at them. One of them called out: ‘Who goes there, by the name of the king?’

  One of the guards with Pritha said, ‘We come from the land of Mathura. We escort the princess of Kunti back from her brother’s marriage.’

  ‘Aye, let me see your seal,’ said the guard, and when Kunti stepped out into the light and removed her hood, he knelt down and took her hand in both of his. ‘I beg your forgiveness, Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘but how is it that you come here on foot?’ He turned a hard glance at the guards. ‘Did the king of Mathura not think it proper to send the maiden on a palanquin?’

  The guards looked at one another. Then one of them said, ‘We have a message for the king of Shurasena from Kamsa, the king of Mathura.’

  The palace guard got to his feet and escorted her toward the gate. Then, facing the guards from Mathura with a raised spear, he said, ‘You shall not pass without stating the reason for which you need His Majesty’s audience.’

  The guards thought again, but only for a moment. ‘Very well, then,’ said the speaker, ‘your king is held prisoner in the royal prison of Mathura.’

  The spear slipped to the ground, and four other blue-clad soldiers came running to the gate to flank the first man. The guards that escorted her did not flinch, nor did they raise their weapons. Their faces were deadpan. One of them extracted a roll of parchment from his inner robe and extended it toward the group of soldiers. ‘If you open the gates, we shall come and speak to your king.’

  The guard looked at Kunti, and she nodded at him. The gates slowly swung open.

  THREE

  Pritha stood in front of her foster father with her head lowered and hands clasped in front of her. Kuntibhoja had acquired name all over Kunti as a kind and loving king, but inside the palace walls, more so in matters concerning his daughter, he was a tyrant.

  ‘This does not become of you, Pritha,’ he said gruffly, marching up and down the room. ‘I warned you, did I not, that you may not go to Mathura on your own? If only you had taken some of our men with you–’

  ‘Permit me to interrupt, father, but our men would have changed nothing. The lord of Mathura would have imprisoned them too, along with brother Vasudev.’

  Kuntibhoja twirled his green cape in an expression of contempt. ‘The men of Kunti are not weasels like those from Shurasena.’

  ‘Father!’

  ‘Enough, I have heard enough. From now on you shall be within the palace walls until I find you a husband …’

  ‘But father,’ said Pritha, raising her head, ‘what about brother Vasudev and his lady Devaki? Are we not going to their aid?’

  ‘Hmph,’ he said, and upon approaching her he removed his crown and placed it on the table nearby. ‘Do you know, Pritha, how able Mathura is at defending herself?’

  ‘But father, we can take the help of Shurasena. I have spoken to the king there this very morning, and they wish to lay siege to Mathura and rescue their prince.’

  ‘Ha, Shurasena, you say! The kingdom to which we, the people of Kunti, provide men to fight. Do you mean the same kingdom, dear girl?’

  ‘That same kingdom gave you a daughter when you most wanted one, my king,’ said Pritha. ‘And they give us enough bulls to till our fields every year so that our people live in prosperity.’

  ‘Our prosperity,’ said Kuntibhoja, ‘comes from not fighting unless we have to, my girl. Do you know when we last fought a war? It was before my grandfather’s time.’

  ‘But sire, must we not rescue the king of Shurasena?’

  ‘Must we? Perhaps you can tell me then, how I shall convince my men to lay down their lives for a prince that they have never seen.’

  Pritha thought of Vasudev. Gentle, meek Vasudev, who had only married Devaki on the behest of his father and the request of the king of Mathura. Now he was in prison in an unknown country, and here his very kin were debating with one another whether he should be rescued. Her lips quivered with fury, and when she spoke her voice trembled. ‘Your very own cousin’s son has been captured unlawfully, cruelly, and you sit here in your palace telling me why you cannot fight to bring him home. Is that not a blight upon your race, my king? Is this how you wish to be remembered, as a king who would do nothing to save his very own nephew? Tomorrow if one such event were to befall you, would you like me to sit here, in your place, and wonder if there was any good in rescuing you?’

  Kuntibhoja looked up at his daughter for a moment, listening. Then he said, ‘Do not speak out of your turn, girl. These are not matters a maiden need concern herself with. Go to your chambers and begin your music lessons. Your teacher Susharma has been asking after you.’

  ‘I do not wish to learn music!’ said Pritha. ‘I want you to fight Mathura and save our kinsman!’

  ‘You do not decide such matters,’ said Kuntibhoja in irritation. ‘I have given you too much love, it appears, my lady, and n
ow you have dared to look me in the eye and told me how I am to govern my state?’

  ‘Father,’ pleaded Pritha, touching him on the arm. ‘Please do not sit idle.When good people like you do nothing in the face of evil, it only grows bigger, and one day it will take us all.’

  ‘Do not quote the scriptures to me, Pritha. Enough trouble has come thanks to your being in Mathura all this while. Now you shall learn to be a real maiden. You are sixteen, and I regret to say that you have no makings whatsoever of a lady.’

  Pritha let go of him and took two steps backward. ‘Sometimes, I wish you had never adopted me,’ she said. ‘If it were my own father, I dare say he would have loved me more. Would you have said such harsh things about me if I were your own? I think not!’

  Kuntibhoja’s face softened. ‘Pritha–’

  ‘Enough, father,’ said Pritha. ‘I have heard enough for one day. I shall be in my chambers. You can tell Susharma that I have returned. He can give me all the training in music that he wants while my brother and kinswoman rot in the prison of Mathura.’ With that she turned, and shaking off her father’s fumbling arm that tried to stop her, she stormed off the room. At the doorway the attendants bowed, and one small man in a white turban and red upper garment jogged up to the king and bowed. As Pritha left the room behind, she heard, only in passing, a few words behind her.

  ‘What is it, Kanishka,’ her father was saying.

  ‘Sage Durvasa has come to court, my lord king,’ said the little man. ‘And he has asked for an audience with you.’

  ‘Saaa,’ said Susharma. Pritha tilted her head and looked at the way his mouth dripped with betel juice. ‘Now repeat after me, Princess,’ he said, pulling the brass bowl toward him so that he can discharge another long string of orange liquid into it. Then he cleared his throat. ‘It must come from the base of the neck here, Princess, here.’ He pointed to his neck, and it made a little clucking sound, like a bird had been swallowed. ‘Now you do it.’

  ‘Saaa,’ said Pritha.

  ‘No, no, no, no,’ said Susharma, waving his hands over his head. ‘You are singing it from the top of your neck, Princess, from the top, here. But what you must do is to sing from the bottom, here. Now try again.’

  Pritha tried again. Susharma again said, ‘No, no, no, no.’

  ‘I am tired, master,’ said Pritha. ‘Can we not resume our lesson tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, no, we have already fallen behind by so much, Princess, ever since you left for Magadha.’

  ‘Mathura. I went because my kinsman was getting married.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Susharma, folding another betel leaf into his mouth. ‘If you do not learn to sing by the time you get married, the noble king of Kunti will behead me, my lady. So please, for my sake, sing from the bottom of your neck, here.’

  ‘What do you know of Sage Durvasa, master?’ asked Kunti, turning a lock of her hair in her finger.

  ‘Sage Durvasa? Hmm, I have heard of him, I have, in the ballads that they sing about him on the street. But the tales are tall, I think, woven so that the balladeers will have something to eat.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘They say he was born of the rage of the Destroyer himself, and he is said to always have a curse upon his lips, ready to fling at people who happen to be in his way.’ Susharma paused to explore the inside of his mouth with his tongue. ‘You must sing, my lady. Repeat after me. Saaa.’

  ‘Sage Durvasa has come to Kunti this morning. Did you know?’

  ‘Saaa?’

  Pritha nodded. ‘I was with my father and I overheard the attendant announce his visit. What do you think he is after?’

  Susharma closed his eyes and frowned in effort, counting something with his fingers. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is not midsummer or midwinter, so this is not the usual time when we get visited by sages. If he had to forego his prayers and come here, I wonder if he does not have something set on his mind.’

  Pritha sat back in her seat, cross-legged. The arrival of Durvasa had set about a little thought in her mind, one which had begun to buzz all morning after she had returned to her chambers. She had herself heard tales of Durvasa’s mad rage, of how he had once cursed Indra, the king of the gods himself, so that the ocean of milk had to be churned and the nectar of immortality extracted from it. Then there was that tale that began the Bharata race itself, whose descendants now ruled over Hastinapur with such an iron fist, of how he placed a curse on Shakuntala that she would be forgotten by her husband. And then there was that little fable about the man they called Rama, and how sage Durvasa caused the death of the great king’s brother.

  All these tales Pritha had heard before, in the numerous plays that artisans and singers staged on Kunti’s streets every night. Kunti was the city of the arts – there were more singers and poets in Kunti alone than in all the other Great Kingdoms combined. It was sad that it was so, because Kunti had been blessed by untold quantities of land, and if only her people stopped lazing and began to till their lands, it could feed all of North Country two times over. But they would not, Pritha knew, as long as they could rely on Shurasena for their foodgrains, which the shore kingdom paid in return for Kunti’s spearmen.

  ‘Princess,’ said Susharma, leaning forward, his mouth once again orange. ‘Will you please sing, or else the king will behead me!’

  ‘Susharma,’ said Pritha, dispensing with respect. ‘I shall give you two diamonds from this necklace.’ She pointed to her neck. ‘I brought it here from Mathura. You know, I am certain, how good diamonds are in Mathura.’

  Susharma’s languid eyes travelled down to her neck, to where she was pointing. He nodded.

  ‘All I shall ask of you is that you leave me in peace, and if my father were to ask you how my lessons have been going, you shall say words to keep him happy. All I ask of you is that my father will not come to me again and tell me that you have gone to him with a complaint. Will two diamonds suffice for that?’

  Susharma nodded again.

  ‘You can trade them for a farm that will keep your family free of hunger for all their lives, Susharma,’ said Pritha, and at the lack of interest that she saw in Susharma’s eyes at that idea, she shrugged morosely. Young men in Kunti either became singers, poets or soldiers. Each house had acres and acres of land attached to it, and yet it did not occur to anyone in the kingdom that they could produce food from it. She sighed and said, ‘You could do what you wish with them, of course. They are your diamonds.’

  She waved him out of the room with a promise that she would have the diamonds ready for him the next day, and after he had left, she got back to thinking about Sage Durvasa. If the tales about him were even remotely true, it meant two things: that he was a man slaved by anger, yes, but also that he was a man of great power. They said that the sages who disappeared into the mountains to the north for six moons of the year went past a rock gate to the abode of the gods, and that they sat upon the ocean of milk looking at the Protector laying on his side upon the snake that went around the universe. If Durvasa drew power from there, it meant that she could use that power to launch an attack on Mathura.

  Or perhaps an open attack was not necessary. If Durvasa agreed to help her, they would need to wage no war, kill no people. They could devise a way by which her brother and sister could be rescued, and Kamsa would not even know. He would not chase after them if they managed to escape Mathura; from her father’s words it appeared that Mathura’s safety lay in the fact that it was surrounded by well protected waters. Draw him out of his walled city and Kamsa was no more than a fangless serpent.

  But now only one question remained. Would Durvasa help her? At once she cursed her plain appearance; how she wished that she could sway her hips this way and that and whisper into the sage’s ear so that he would do her bidding. She had heard that sages came down to earth to fulfil their baser urges for half a year, after having denied themselves for seasons at a time. She got up and walked to the mirror. She grimaced at what she saw. She would someday take
a knife and carve that nose into shape, she thought, and turned around to inspect her profile.

  A knock was heard on the door, and Agnayi bounded in.

  FOUR

  ‘How does the wife of the fire god,’ said Pritha, without looking at the direction of the visitor, but smiling all the same into the mirror. ‘I am surprised he has not burnt you yet with his passion.’

  ‘Oh, do stop, Princess,’ said Agnayi as she marched up to the mirror and held Pritha in both her hands. ‘I have not seen you for moons and moons, and yet I see you in all my dreams.’

  Pritha coloured. She pushed away the other girl’s hands and said, ‘I have only been away a month, Agnayi, not long enough for you to narrate forlorn love poems.’

  ‘Ah, Princess, would that I be a man so I could carry you to this bed right now and make love to you. You look lovelier than the first dewdrops of winter.’ Agnayi held Pritha’s cheeks in her hands, and leaned forward to kiss her nose.

  ‘If someone were to hear you,’ said Pritha, ‘they would think you were getting paid in gold to praise me to the skies!’ Her gaze floundered to the mirror for a moment.

  ‘But it is true, Princess,’ said Agnayi. ‘Any man in North Country would be lucky to have you by his side.’ She took Pritha’s hands in hers, and their fingers entwined. Pritha returned the pressure of Agnayi’s palm. ‘Such soft hands,’ the girl murmured with her eyes closed, and Pritha gave a short, disbelieving laugh.

  ‘We continue on this path for a little longer, and there shall be scandal at court,’ said Pritha, allowing her hands to relax. ‘You will be the ruin of me, girl!’

  ‘The court today is too busy to hear the words of young maidens in love, Your Highness. So if you let me, I will wave the attendants away, and we can draw the curtains over the windows and dull the lamps just a little bit…’