The Rise of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  She had laughed at the spiralling twig as it travelled toward its target. She had laughed as it hit him and a look of pain arose on his face. But the next moment she had seen his arms wave, and his legs release the branch. He had tried to cling on, but his fingers had slipped on the tufts of moss that coated the bark. When he had known he was falling, he had shouted to help. She had stood there, watching him drop with a thud and a groan, not on the grassy side of the tree but among the rocks.

  She could see the tree now, set against the blue night sky. Whenever she recalled what happened that afternoon, her ankles ached, and they did now too. That day she had turned and run as fast as she could all the way to the palace, and when the guards asked her what had happened she had mutely pointed at the tree.As the men picked up their spears and rushed away from her, she had fled into the palace, not stopping until she had crawled under her bed and lain on her side, crumpled up into a ball. Only then had she realized that her ankles felt as though needles were being driven through them.

  Today, she felt that same old pain. She dragged the chair toward her so that she could sit. Just when her breath returned to normal, a girl entered her chamber and announced that her ministers sought her audience.

  The four of them entered and took their seats. Gandhari walked away from the window and took the central throne, motioning them to come closer so that she could see them better. Adbudha, her mining minister, moved to the edge of his seat and spoke first. ‘I have paid the mines a visit just today, Your Majesty, as per your command yesterday, and I have seen to its operations myself.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We have mined seven hundred and eighty eight tulas of gold this year.’ He had little black eyes that retreated deep within their sockets when he spoke. He looked around him derisively. ‘It is not, as it was suggested yesterday, any more than it was the year before. In fact, last year, we mined upwards of eight hundred tulas.’

  Gandhari turned to the mighty figure of Chyavatana, who was in the process of tending to the curls in his moustache. ‘Did you hear that, Chyavatana?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Eight hundred tulas last year, was it, Adbudha?’

  Adbudha nodded angrily. Gandhari could feel for him. The other three had hounded him as a pack during the last hearing, and they had all forced him on a long ride to the mines just to verify what he had said all along – that the mines had produced the same amount of gold this year as they had in the last.

  While Chyavatana pondered in silence, Gandhari gestured at Adbudha for the parchment in his hand. Glancing through it, she saw that he was right; unless, of course, Adbudha had pocketed some of the gold himself.

  ‘However is that possible?’ asked Chyavatana, bringing out a parchment of his own from inside his pink silk tunic. ‘The prices at our schools have risen, and so have the prices at our mendicants.’

  ‘It is because,’ said Devapi, her treasurer, ‘our citizens are now richer than they were last year, Chyavatana.’ He turned to Gandhari. ‘Your Majesty, the honourable minister of schools and mendicants does not believe that Gandhar can get richer, therefore he is always surprised when he sees that she has.’

  ‘But … that cannot be so,’ said Chyavatana, frowning at his open parchment.

  ‘All our citizens are today richer than they were last year, my lady,’ said Devapi, bowing. ‘Last year, each citizen in your country owned seven hundred coins, but today that number has risen to nine hundred. It means, Your Majesty, that the prosperity in your city is rising.’

  ‘May I ask how?’ said Gandhari.

  ‘Through the wealth of our miners, my lady,’ said Devapi. ‘We pay our miners well to bring gold out of the ground, and that wealth travels down to the merchants, the water carriers, the maidservants and tailors. Wages to our miners has also gone up from last year. So everyone in the kingdom is richer.’

  Gandhari looked toward the quietest of her ministers, Harayana, who sat in one of the farther chairs, brooding to himself. ‘How goes trade, Harayana?’ she asked, and he started, as though she had woken him up from a deep sleep. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, sitting up and clearing his throat. ‘We are trading more and more with Hastinapur, my lady, and that agrees with what Devapi has said. Your people are richer, therefore they are buying more.’

  ‘And the tributes?’

  ‘The tributes keep arriving as they should, Your Majesty.’

  ‘If they are to stop at any time, Harayana, you ought to tell me. Hastinapur shall pay the tributes of war for two hundred years from now, and though it is but a small amount when set against the wealth of our kingdom, they must not know that, for then they will cease viewing us as their masters.’

  ‘Yes, Your Highness,’ said Harayana.

  Gandhari turned to Adbudha and said, ‘So if we have produced the same amount of gold as last year and we have bought more goods from Hastinapur, do we not need more miners for this year?’

  ‘We do, my lady, but where shall I get them?’

  ‘Harayana, let us close the barracks at the western end of the city and send all the footmen in training to the mines for a year.’

  Harayana looked up from his parchment and nodded sleepily.

  ‘And because our citizens are richer, let us increase the levy to the appropriate amount, and please be certain that you remind them that this levy shall only be used to better their lives.’

  Devapi bowed. ‘So I shall, my lady.’

  ‘And Chyavatana,’ said Gandhari, turning to the man-mountain to her left, ‘you are concerned with the rise in prices of schools and mendicants.’

  ‘Yes, my lady, it is most puzzling, is it not? If people are getting richer …’

  ‘Let us announce with immediate effect that all families which have children going to schools will be given two copper coins every moon; and for every man, woman and child in the kingdom, let us begin a mendicant’s gift of three copper coins every moon. Will that help?’

  Chyavatana began to smile, then said, ‘Hmm.’ He tapped at his parchment with his hand. ‘We gave them these gifts last year, my lady, and yet…’

  ‘Then surely we have not done enough,’ she said. ‘We must do all that we can so that there is no sickness or illiteracy in the land of Gandhar.’

  Chyavatana sighed, and made a note with his carver. ‘I shall do what you say.’

  She could see that the man was not convinced by her, and she found herself growing angry at that thought. Chyavatana was one of Shakuni’s staunch followers, and therefore never did – or even said – anything important. Shakuni’s pet complaint this whole year had been that Gandhar was losing her prosperity, and even more laughably, he had said that Hastinapur was now richer than Gandhar – that city which had been laid to waste by Gandhar forty years ago in the Battle of Kamyaka.

  Once or twice her father had warned her that Shakuni was intelligent and saw things that other men did not; he had asked her to always heed his counsel, but when he spoke utter nonsense so often, it was not easy to take him seriously.

  Neither had she any patience with his stooges. She looked at Chyavatana leave the room last, behind all the others, and as soon as the door closed behind him, she clapped her hands, bringing forth two frightened waiting-women.

  ‘Tell the prince to come here at once,’ she told them.

  TWO

  When Shakuni came into the room, Gandhari averted her gaze away toward the window. She had a lurking feeling that the boy overdid his limp when he knew she was watching. What had happened all those years ago should not affect her now, she knew, but it did and she could not help it. That Shakuni knew this made it worse.

  He came around to stand in front of her, hands on hips. He was again wearing that ridiculous purple cape that he thought gave him, in his words, a certain royal air. He had always been a small boy for his age, and he had not added significantly to his height during his mature years. Even now, when they stood shoulder to shoulder, he was not taller than her by any more than an inch or two.
And that shortened left leg did not help, for it gave him the look of a hunchback.

  She looked up at him. He was grinning down at her as usual, with one edge of his mouth raised right up to his cheek. ‘I have heard that you have shut down one of the barracks, sister,’ he said. His voice dripped with honey, and his eyes bore a peaceful, loving gaze, but Gandhari knew by his tomato-red ears that he was fuming inside. Like all men Shakuni took great pride in military prowess, though he could not shoot an arrow without the use of a raised foot-rest. How was Gandhar going to accept such a man as king? It was to the great misfortune of her people that after being ruled by a queen who could not fight, they would be burdened by a king who could neither fight nor rule.

  ‘I did, Shakuni, yes,’ said Gandhari. ‘Let me ask my girl to take your cape from you.’

  ‘I shall keep it,’ said Shakuni, and gripped the handle of his sword. She had never seen him fight with a sword, but he liked to carry the weapon on him at all times, sheathed in a red scabbard with hand-painted round silver lines. ‘I shall keep it, for I shall not be here long, sister. I do not think we have very much to say to each other.’

  ‘No, Shakuni, we do not.’ Then she remembered her promise to herself to be patient with him, and sighed. ‘Shakuni, brother, one day you shall rule this land. You will not do well if you hate Hastinapur so much. Will you not listen to me?’

  ‘It is not my hatred that is hard to understand, sister, but your love for them.’

  ‘Love?’ She picked up the edge of her garment and got up, so that she could look down at him. ‘They are a mere vassal state, and they give us tribute every full moon. Why should I love them?’

  ‘A vassal state, sister?’ asked Shakuni, clucking in disbelief. ‘You perhaps have gone to sleep these last three years, and you refuse to wake up even though I yell in your ear every day. A vassal state! Hastinapur is the strongest kingdom in North Country now, my lady, and you only need to open your eyes to see it.’

  ‘The second strongest, perhaps,’ said Gandhari. ‘Do you not remember how our army routed theirs in the battle by the forest?’

  ‘That was forty years ago, sister,’ he said at length, in a whisper. ‘Our good father was but a boy then, and he fought in that battle. I dare say even the old people of Gandhar would have forgotten about it now.’

  ‘What if they have? The tributes for that war still keep arriving every moon.’

  ‘They do, they do,’ said he, nodding. ‘But do you not see what has happened to Gandhar in these forty years, my lady?’

  ‘Oh, Shakuni, I have heard this tale before!’

  ‘You have, and yet you do not understand! If you did, you would not close down another barrack while Hastinapur keeps adding to her army of elephants.’

  ‘We have enough footmen to ward off any attack.’

  Shakuni laughed, with a malice that alarmed her. In her mind she went over the details of Gandhar’s army as reported to her the day before by the general. Eighty-four war elephants, one hundred and seventy cavalrymen, seventy-five footmen and fifty archers. All were in prime fighting condition, eager for the call of battle. Shakuni began to nod at her, as though he could see right into that place of her brain where she was checking off the numbers.

  ‘I know the numbers too, my dear sister,’ he said, bowing. ‘But in the last two years we have closed down six stables and three barracks. We have an army, yes, but do we have the power to produce units at a swift pace when there is battle?’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Shakuni,’ she said, ‘who is doing battle with us now?’

  ‘One of my men has just arrived from Hastinapur, my lady,’ he said, ‘and he has brought with him records of their military might. Perhaps you should look at them.’

  ‘Perhaps I will. But do not forget that Hastinapur’s gold comes from our mines, and if we stop our mines, then they will be powerless.’

  ‘And our vaults, you suppose, are overflowing with gold?’

  ‘Well, they are.’

  ‘When have you last seen your gold, my lady?’

  Gandhari paused for a moment, then said, ‘I have seen the records from the head vault-keeper just today.’

  ‘Records?’ asked Shakuni innocently. ‘Were these records made of gold, sister?’ When she did not answer, he continued, ‘Forty years ago, when Gandhar and Hastinapur did battle on the edge of Kamyaka, sister, theirs was a poor country. They produced food, but every kingdom in North Country produced enough food. They lost to us, and they began to pay tribute to us – in fruit, grain, linen, brick, thatch and labourers.’

  ‘Why do you tell me all this, Shakuni? I know it all.’

  ‘Then why do you not ask yourself, my lady, how such a poor settlement became the foremost kingdom of the land in thirty years?’

  ‘They say Shantanu made a farmer out of every man, and tilled every yard of his kingdom.’

  ‘Ah, if that were true, where did their army come from? They have been fighting Panchala for their stone quarries now for years. What do they pay their soldiers in, I wonder. In food grain? In pulses?’

  ‘They say that Bhishma is at the head of their army, he of the invincible armour.’

  Shakuni bent his head and smiled again. ‘Sister, Bhishma is but a man, no matter how invincible. He cannot take on the whole might of Panchala, certainly not alone.’

  ‘They say he is the son of the gods,’ said Gandhari.

  ‘Even the gods are not that powerful, my lady,’ said Shakuni. ‘But consider this, if you will, for a second. What if – if – Hastinapur has been stealing our gold?’

  Gandhari’s breath stopped, and for a frantic moment, her eyes flew to the window, through which she could see the comforting orange smudges that stood in two rows leading away to the mines. ‘Stealing our gold!’ she said, with more bravado than she felt. ‘But our mines are extremely well protected.We have walls, we have towers!’

  Shakuni wagged a finger at her with closed eyes. ‘Not at the mines, sister, not at the mines.’

  ‘Do you mean the treasury, then?’

  ‘No, not the treasury either. But your people, my lady, do they have the same amount of gold that they did thirty years ago?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her courage returning. ‘Of course, they do.’

  ‘But they do not hold it with themselves, do they?’

  ‘No, they do not. They keep it in our vaults.’

  ‘Our vaults, my lady? Who runs the vaults?’

  ‘The traders.’

  ‘And where do the traders come from?’

  Gandhari did not say the word out loud, but she knew that most of them came from Hastinapur. But that did not matter, she thought resolutely, for they lived in Gandhar, had families in Gandhar. Their children drank the milk of Gandhar’s cows, they tilled Gandhar land, and they paid the king of Gandhar his due every year. How did it matter if they belonged to Hastinapur? They offered the wealthy people of Gandhar a way to protect their gold, and for that the people happily paid them what they deserved.

  Now Shakuni had asked the question whether anyone had seen the gold. But then no one but she had seen the gold in the king’s treasury, either; that did not mean that it did not exist. He was wrong, of course, she thought, watching his grotesquely bent body and wincing as another pang of guilt shot through her. But he had told the story in such a persuasive manner; how, indeed, did Hastinapur become so wealthy in such a short time? How had they come to be so feared? How had they built an army of such strength that king after king had begun to aspire to be allied to them?

  Shakuni was probably wrong, but it would not hurt to check the vaults. She saw a smile spread on her brother’s face, and she knew that he knew he had made her think. If Gandhar was destined to survive in his hands, she had no doubt that it would be only on the strength of his mind.

  ‘Summon the vault-keeper tomorrow,’ she said.

  The vault-keeper came skipping into her room, wearing a white turban that was almost as big as his head. He had a book tucke
d under his arm, and all his fingers had rings of either gold or silver. He stood a few feet away from her chair, hands joined and back bent so low that she could see the black spot on the back of the man’s neck.

  ‘Enough, Satyapala,’ she said. ‘Take your seat.’

  ‘I have brought with me all the books that I have shown you yesterday, my lady,’ said Satyapala, in his deep, rich voice. ‘I shall go over the numbers with you once again.’

  Gandhari did not stop him.

  ‘The wealth of your citizens has increased this year, Your Highness. If last year, your average citizen was worth four hundred copper coins each, this year he is worth six hundred copper coins each.’

  Gandhari said, ‘And each copper coin has a gold coin in your vault, does it not?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Satyapala, ‘yes, yes. The tributes from Hastinapur are making your citizens truly wealthy, my lady. I often wish that I were born in Gandhar, that I had not had to see the years of poverty that I had seen in Hastinapur.’

  ‘That reminds me, Satyapala,’ said Gandari, ‘why did you leave Hastinapur and come to Gandhar?’

  ‘Ah, Your Majesty, what shall I say of the tales that visitors to Gandhar told us back in Hastinapur? Fruit bearers, grain traders, merchants, all of them would come to Gandhar and they would be bound by its spell. “How does one go to Gandhar and live there forever?” I ask them, and they tell me that I ought to become a vault-keeper.’

  ‘So you were not a vault-keeper when you were in Hastinapur?’

  Satyapala shook his head. ‘No, my lady, I was but a fisherman.’ His face grew suddenly sad. ‘Even though Her Majesty Satyavati has done all she could for our settlements, we are still looked at with scowls back there. Not like here, where people respect us, Your Highness.’

  Gandhari recalled the first time her father had told her about the treaty between Hastinapur and Gandhar: Hastinapur would provide everything that Gandhar needed, and the price would be set by Gandhar. After trade had continued for ten years or so, the vault-keepers had come, some of them fishermen like Satyapala, some blacksmiths, and they fashioned large boxes of iron in which the gold could be kept safe from thieves. They issued a copper coin for each gold coin in storage, and soon, the people of Gandhar began to exchange copper coins with one another. All trade with Hastinapur, though, remained in gold because traders from Hastinapur did not accept copper.