The Rise of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  Shakuni’s mouth settled into a grump. ‘Then what is to be done?’

  Gandhari sighed. ‘Nothing. For all that we have lost, we still have one thing that is very precious. The people of Gandhar believe that their gold is in the vaults. As long as that belief stands, brother, they shall not come for their gold. They will hold their copper coins and think that they hold gold – for them, one copper coin equals to one in gold.’

  ‘I find your suggestion preposterous, dear sister!’ said Shakuni.‘They have looted all the gold out of our kingdom and you propose to do nothing?’

  ‘At least for now. The vault-keepers will report to the king of Hastinapur presently that we have come and seen the vaults. Very soon, the king of Hastinapur will know that we know our gold is no longer with us. I think he will pay us a visit, then.’

  ‘A visit?’ said Shakuni, his voice quivering in fury. ‘And are we to receive him as a guest?’

  ‘Indeed. What choice do we have?’ Gandhari sat back and crossed her legs. She picked up a sliced apple from her plate and bit into it, looking up at the painted figures on the ceiling. ‘How strange it is to know, Shakuni,’ she said wonderingly. ‘Yesterday we were the wealthiest Kingdom in North Country, and Hastinapur was but a vassal. Nothing has changed from yesterday to today, except our knowledge of the truth.’ She chewed on the piece fully, and swallowed it. ‘Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. In one day we have become Hastinapur’s slaves.’

  When Gandhari first saw Bhishma, she admitted to herself a tiny jolt of surprise. She had heard tales regarding the foremost warrior of North Country, and she had expected him to be burly with arms the size of tree trunks, but here was a man who would – if his beard were shaved and if he were decked suitably – pass for a woman. The only marks of combat he wore were on his wrists in the form of pink straight lines. She recalled that Hastinapur was the land of archers who could shoot of either foot and either arm with equal skill. This man, they said, wielded the mace and hurled the spear too, but she could not picture him with those weapons. He had a small face and an easy, boyish smile. He walked lightly upon the carpet of rose petals that had been spread for him, and every few seconds he would brush off the white jasmines that would get stuck in his hair. He wore his hair long, right down to his shoulders. Gandhari suddenly realized that this man was almost thirty years older than she was, and yet he looked to be no more than a youth of twenty one.

  She had asked the waiting-women to lead him straight to her chambers after he had freshened up, for the things she wished to speak to him had no place in an open court. She had Shakuni with her, of course, standing by her side, welcoming him, and on his side stood Chyavatana with his arms crossed in front of his mountain-like chest.

  When Bhishma sat down in his seat, he bowed to Gandhari, and she found herself smiling and returning his bow. After all four of them were seated, she clapped her hands, emptying the room of attendants. ‘I trust you have eaten well, my lord,’ she said. ‘I have asked for goats from the mountains to be brought down just for your feasting.’

  He nodded, with a hint of a smile upon his lips. ‘I did, indeed, like it very much, Your Highness. I have brought from Hastinapur some very fine gold and jewels.’ His eyes danced to Shakuni and back. ‘I am given to believe that the town of Gandhar could use some gold.’

  She was shaken out of her admiration of him, and she was reminded of the true purpose of his visit. Her nostrils bristled, and her teeth dug into her lips. ‘Why, sir, you certainly are generous to give back part of what you have stolen. Is that the pact of honour these days among thieves?’

  He shrugged, and in one swift motion of his hands, untied the cloak and set it aside. She saw that his shoulders were stiff and lean, the shoulders of an archer. ‘All of us are thieves, my lady. You steal gold from the bosom of Mother Earth, and we stole it from you.’

  Beside her, Shakuni began to rise from his seat, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword, but she looked at Chyavatana, and he laid a heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder. What had Shakuni thought, that Bhishma would come and repent for having stolen their gold? Of course he would crow, like victors did and should. One day, on the day of her victory over him and his city, she would crow too. Not today, though.

  Bhishma’s eyes followed Shakuni’s arm, but his pose of relaxation did not change. He wore tough leather footwear that was black with dust from the rocks. When he shook his feet, it dropped onto the floor and powdered the rose petals. He bent toward her, his elbow resting on the armrest and his hand covering his mouth. ‘I have come here not to fight, my lady, I am certain you know that.’ He glanced about himself. ‘I am not dressed for combat.’

  ‘I would like nothing better than to have you killed, my lord,’ she said, and saw his left eyebrow jump up, even as a smile spread on his lips. ‘But I know that you hold all the strings today, and I must dance as you ask me to.’

  ‘That is indeed true, but it need not be that way, my lady. I have come here not to fight you or to make you dance, but to ask for your hand in marriage to the royal house of Hastinapur.’

  She began to laugh, because she was certain that Bhishma was jesting. But when his face remained calm, she stopped herself and turned to look at Shakuni. His face was twisted into the same knot of confusion. ‘Did I hear you right, sire?’ she said at length.

  ‘You did, my lady, yes,’ said Bhishma. ‘I do not believe in fighting, because it kills people and it helps no one. We have looted your wealth without your knowledge, but you will admit that we have done so without harming a single person’s life in Gandhar.’

  ‘You have stolen the wealth of five generations in twenty years, my lord.’

  ‘And if you agree to become queen of Hastinapur, that wealth shall be neither yours nor mine, but ours.’

  ‘You have quite a cheek on you, sire, if I may say so, for first taking all that is ours and now asking for my hand – for the hand of the queen of Gandhar – in return.’

  ‘Not in return,’ said Bhishma. ‘I shall not return your gold, but I shall take no more from it after you come to our house.’

  She sat up in her seat. ‘Does that strike you as a fair trade?’

  Bhishma smiled and shrugged. ‘There is no such thing as a fair trade, my lady. The battle of Kamyaka was not fair for the people of Hastinapur either.’

  ‘But it was you who came to our gates, you who cast the first stone.’

  ‘And we who lost the most men and the most wealth. It is not fair that we have to work for our gold, Your Highness, whereas you could dig it out of the ground and use it as money. Our milkmen, our merchants, our carpenters and weavers have to work to be paid in gold, and yet your men do nothing to get their share of gold. Is that fair?’

  ‘We were blessed with the mines,’ said Gandhari. ‘You were not.’

  ‘So you were. You were blessed with a mine, you did not earn it. And whatever you have not earned, can be stolen. Our scriptures say that, do they not?’

  For one moment, Gandhari considered calling for the guards and ordering them to pin this man with spears. Oh, how sweet it would be to smack that smile off his face! How delightful it would be to stare into that angelic face after all life had been sucked out of it. She realized her hands were wound tight together, and her knuckles had gone pink with the marks of her fingertips. She counted up to five, and her anger withdrew, a little.

  ‘I shall not argue with you about whether you are right or wrong,’ she said. ‘What matters is only that it is done, and what was once our gold is now yours.’

  ‘That is so, yes,’ he said, never once letting his gaze waver.

  ‘I only ask you what you will do if I reject your offer of marriage.’

  He looked away in the direction of the window, lips pursed, and then turned to her. ‘I wish you do not, madam, for the good of Gandhar.’

  ‘What are your terms if I do?’

  ‘If you do not wish to be queen of Hastinapur, then I demand that the city
of Gandhar pay Hastinapur four hundred and fifty tulas of gold every year as tribute from here on.’ Shakuni got up to his feet and took two steps toward Bhishma, who considered him with a weary eye. ‘Sit down, Prince.You do not wish to fight me.’ Then, turning to Gandhari, he said, ‘We shall make that five hundred tulas, just so you remember to teach your little brother how to behave.’

  ‘And if I say no to that?’ she asked tonelessly, though she knew what the answer would be.

  Bhishma leaned back in his seat and laughed, his blue eyes lighting up. ‘The only thing keeping Gandhar from revolt and unrest, my lady, is the belief of her people that her vaults are full of gold. But belief – it is such a weak string, is it not? So easy to cut.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  ‘Indeed you do,’ he replied, and then his expression softened. ‘It does not have to be this way, my lady. Let us not fight. Let us bury our past and move forward, together.’

  ‘On my dead body!’ said Shakuni, his hand still on the hilt of his sword, though he did not advance past the steps toward their guest.

  Gandhari said, ‘We shall pay the tribute you ask for, but I shall not become the queen of Hastinapur.’

  Bhishma smiled and got to his feet. He clapped his hands to summon the attendants at the gate. When they came to him, he pointed to his cloak and they scampered to pick it up. ‘If you show me to my chambers,’ he said to the girls, ‘I shall retire for the night.’

  SIX

  Gandhari buried her head in her pillow and wept. The attendants had drawn the insect screens on the windows, so the moonlight threw a chequered shadow on the wall. The silk curtains danced in the dry breeze that blew from across the mines. Darkness had descended upon the whole city, but in the distant northern corner, fires still burned at the entrance to the mines, and if she cocked her ears, she thought she could hear the thumps of spade against rock. She had never gone inside the mines; her father had said it was too dangerous for a maiden. Shakuni had been all but ten when he first visited the mines. She still remembered the envy with which she had burnt that day.

  The mines meant everything to Gandhar. When they were first discovered – during her grandfather’s reign – the first thing that the king had done was to order walls and towers to be erected all around them so that they could not be taken. The outer wall surrounding the city had been extended to encircle them, and every year from then to now, a few towers would be added to the cluster of defensive structures. Twice in the last seventy years had kingdoms from the north – Aswaka and Bahlika – come with catapults, but each time Gandhar’s army had been strong enough to drive them away.

  Even today, Gandhar’s shrunken military strength would quite easily ward off any direct attacks on the mine. Even Hastinapur would not succeed in taking it, if she tried. They would have known that, of course. Why else would Bhishma ask for a tribute if he thought he could take the city? She did not believe in his righteous sermons about war, but she had to believe that Hastinapur could ill afford an all-out war at this time. It was much easier to hold the reins in his hand and demand tribute after tribute from them every month, threatening to let loose social unrest if she refused to comply.

  She tried to narrow her eyes so that the brown smudges on the ceiling would become sharper. When her eyes began to hurt, she gave up with a sigh. What would Gandhar do with a blind queen and a lame king? Even with his limp, Shakuni compensated with quickness of mind. What had she done? If she had heeded his words, would they not have uncovered all this dirt much earlier? Her father had warned her on his deathbed that ruling a kingdom was not the job of a maiden. Marriage, valiant sons, beautiful daughters, managing the running of a household – that was what maidens did and must wish to do, not hold council with ministers and govern the state.

  The offer of marriage had surprised her. Now that all of Gandhar’s wealth belonged to Hastinapur, she had no doubt that Bhishma’s kingdom was the foremost in North Country, perhaps even ahead of Panchala. So it would not be all bad if she accepted the proposal; she would then be queen, and her sons would rule the fertile lands between the two great rivers. Her father would have approved if she had said yes; it would have secured Gandhar’s future too; if she married into the royal family of the Kurus, they would not think of destroying her maternal home.

  Why had she said no, then? Yes, it was partly the anger at the realization that the thief had now become the master, but there had been something else too. While Gandhar’s safety would be assured, it would never again achieve supremacy among the kingdoms of North Country. Gandhar would forever be second to Hastinapur if she said yes, for Bhishma would take over the mines and leave Gandhar just enough to keep her alive. It would assure Hastinapur of generations of untold wealth, whereas Gandhar would need to be content with being secure.

  But Gandhar had not yet lost all. They still had the mines and they were nowhere near empty, so if more miners could be employed from among the populace, they could mine more gold than they did now, and in spite of the tribute that they had to pay Hastinapur, they would still have enough left over. Perhaps over a few years they could amass enough gold to put Gandhar back on the path to wealth again.

  That would mean pulling out men from the farms, from the cowsheds, from the looms, and from anywhere they could think of, and that would make all the other industries suffer. That would make them lean a bit more on Hastinapur, which would not do. What Gandhar needed was to move away from Hastinapur in trade, and yet produce enough gold to get wealthy after having paid the tribute. Right now, Gandhar depended on Hastinapur for everything – from milk and fruits to furniture. Bhishma had been right; what did Gandhar have for herself right now, apart from the mines?

  Her eyes went back to the brown figures on the ceiling that looked like bubbles mounted on each other. Back when she used to be a child, the images had been sharp; from memory she knew that there was an archer aiming at a cavalryman who held a lance in his raised arm. They had neither eyes nor ears, these figures, and often as a child her father would tell her that archers represented the bad men of Hastinapur while the cavalrymen stood for the noble warriors of Gandhar. The archers from the plains, fighting on foot, could never hope to oust an armoured man mounted upon a horse or an elephant, her father had said, and for that reason Hastinapur would never take Gandhar.

  Her eyes welled up. Hastinapur had taken Gandhar, and they had done so without shooting an arrow.

  Gandhari woke up in the morning in better spirits. She had had a dream that had left a pleasant sensation in her mind, and all through her bath and breakfast, she hummed to herself songs that her father used to put her to bed with during the old summer nights while servant girls stood on either side of her bed, fanning her with bird feathers.

  She was almost done with breakfast when her waiting-girl came and announced the arrival of Bhishma.That surprised her – she had assumed that the prince would find a suitable time today to make a silent exit. Dabbing her mouth with linen, she waved at the girl to let him in. As she waited, a distant part of her cried out in hope that he would leave Gandhar alone. She would not even ask for the robbed gold if that were to happen, she realized suddenly; so desperate had she become.

  She did not bother to stand when he arrived, in a white upper garment with his quiver of arrows fastened behind his right shoulder. Though these archers were proficient with both hands, they had a preference, clearly. She gave him a nod to take his seat, and he shook his head at her with a smile.

  ‘I shall not stay long, Your Highness,’ he said. ‘I have a long day of riding ahead of me, and I must leave if I am to reach Hastinapur by nightfall.’

  She took no pains to hide her distaste. ‘I woke up today hoping that you had already left, my lord. What is it that brings you here?’

  He hesitated. ‘I … I could not but help think our council yesterday ended on a bad note, my lady. The presence of your brother, Prince Shakuni, did not help, if I may say so.’

  ‘I do not recall Shakun
i saying or doing anything yesterday that I did not approve of, sir, so I am afraid I do not quite know what you mean.’

  ‘Perhaps it was me, then,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Perhaps I have been uncivil in my manner yesterday. The ride here was not smooth, and it was very long; perhaps we should have waited till this morning before we spoke.’

  Gandhari said, ‘If you still have the same offer for me, sir, my answer is still no.’

  ‘Do think of it, Your Majesty. I know what you must think of me, but what I have done is no different to fighting. What I have engaged you in is a war of the mind, and you have lost. If all wars could be fought this way, without shedding any blood, would your citizens not be happy indeed?’

  Her voice became angry without her knowledge. Her eyes smarted, and her fists closed into tiny balls. ‘Do you not have shame, sir, for being born a Kshatriya and speaking of battles of the mind? If Hastinapur had waged war on Gandhar and if they had won our gold from us, I would have gladly given myself to you. But you play games of intrigue and deceit, and you seek to drape them as virtuous deeds. I shall not agree to them.’

  Bhishma frowned, lowered his whispery voice even further. ‘Of what use is a virtuous war when it kills thousands of people, my lady? And these games of intrigue and deceit, as you call them, have not shed a single drop of blood. I have taken your gold, yes, but you are welcome to try and take it back from me again.’

  ‘If I ever do, I shall come with an army and raze Hastinapur to the ground,’ Gandhari replied. Bhishma smiled at this, and it drove her mad with fury.

  ‘Do not think I cannot, sir,’ she said.‘I need not remind you of what happened during the battle of Kamyaka. Gandhar’s men are filled with valour, and if I call them to lay down their lives for their land, they will not say no.’

  ‘But why must anyone give their lives, my lady?’ said Bhishma, springing up to his feet. ‘Your biggest wealth is not the gold that I have stolen from you, Your Highness, it is the lives of your citizens. The gold that I took from you has no value; only human life has value. Do you not understand?’