The Rise of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  ‘If that is so, Bhishma,’ she said, spitting out his name, ‘if it is true that the gold you have taken from me has no value, give it back to me. Why have you spent twenty years stealing something that has no value?’

  He averted her eyes, and said in frustration: ‘It is valuable because everyone thinks it is so. And now Hastinapur has become wealthy only because all the other kingdoms accept that gold is wealth. But why does it have to be so, my lady? We use it for nothing. We make coins out of it, and we hoard it in our vaults.’ He shook his head, even as his eyes bored into her. ‘That is not wealth.’

  At once she felt a great weariness come over her. ‘I do not have the strength to argue with you on matters such as these, my lord,’ she said. ‘I know what you will do if I marry the prince of Hastinapur. You will first take over the mine, and you will only pay Gandhar a pittance for using it.’

  ‘But even if you do not marry the prince of Hastinapur, my lady, you will still give us all the gold that we need.’

  ‘But the mine belongs to us!’ She realized she was on her feet too, though she did not remember having stood up. ‘We shall mine more gold than we give you, and slowly we will build our wealth back to where it was.’

  ‘It will take you generations.’

  ‘Generations of freedom, yes.’

  ‘You call having to give tribute every month to Hastinapur freedom?’

  ‘It is better than to give you the mine itself, sir, and you know that too.’ His face was inscrutable, though, and when he shook his head she saw in him the same expression his father had so often used while talking to her. A wave of resentment lashed inside her, and she had to use all her restraint from picking up the cutting knife and hurling it at him.

  ‘If you want to mine more than you do now,’ he said, ‘you have to rely more on Hastinapur for your food and clothes and furniture. You will be deeper in captivity if you do not accept my offer, my lady.’

  ‘We shall take our chances.’

  ‘But if you do become Hastinapur’s queen, my lady,’ he said, bowing to her for the first time since his arrival, ‘the very earth you touch with your feet shall become golden. Gandhar and Kuru will be friends, and together they shall become the strongest ruling force in North Country. We can unite all of North Country, my lady, all of it!’ When she did not reply, he took a step closer to her. ‘You have heard of the legendary king Rama, have you not? In his time, all our kingdoms were one, and all the people in the land were happy. Should we not create that kingdom here again?’

  She wavered, caught in the maze of his words. But he was just bluffing, she thought. If he had wanted Gandhar to be friends with Hastinapur, he would never have stolen their gold. He wanted to be friends, perhaps, but he also wanted Hastinapur to be ahead of Gandhar, and that she could not allow. All of this – his whole charade – was not about uniting North Country; it was about spreading the rule of Hastinapur to all of North Country.

  ‘It is Gandhar and its future that interests me, Prince Bhishma,’ she said coldly. ‘Uniting all of North Country will not happen till the end of time.’

  ‘It is in our hands now,’ he said, his voice tinged with desperation. ‘It is in your hands.’

  ‘I do not want it!’ she cried. ‘All I want is for Gandhar to be prosperous, and all I know, sir, is that you have stolen our wealth! We shall do all in our power to get it back from you, and I promise you, that we shall not stoop to your level.’

  For a full minute he did not speak. Gandhari heard her breath slow down, and her fingers uncoiled, leaving marks at the ends of her palm. ‘Is that your final answer?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded, and went down on one knee. ‘Then I shall take your leave, my lady, and I shall await your tribute.’ Without waiting for her to speak, he got up, turned and marched out of the room. For a long time after he had left, the sound of his footsteps rang in her ear.

  Chyavatana’s moustache looked as though it had grown a little from the night of the meeting, though at the same time the impossibility of it struck her. It was probably just that he had begun the day by drenching it in oil and combing it with his ivory comb. She did not know for sure if he owned an ivory comb, but he probably did; Chyavatana was precisely the kind of man who would own – and every day use – an ivory comb.

  As Shakuni and he came walking in and took their seats, Gandhari saw a sprinkling of black hair on her brother’s chin. Between the two of them, a stranger would think of Chyavatana as the king and Shakuni as the henchman. She had always thought that; her brother did not have the appearance of a king. Indeed, if God were to cast him in a play, he would fit very well the role of a wicked, scheming minister with a sinister laugh.

  ‘You have brought what I have asked for,’ she said, at once sitting up and holding out her arm.

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ said Chyavatana, and placed two rolls of parchment in her hand. ‘All traded items and commodities of Gandhar in the first parchment, and all traded items and commodities with Hastinapur in the second.’

  She first opened the Hastinapur roll, and it spilled over onto her thigh. Fruits, vegetables, silk, wool, milk – everything she could think of was on it. When she opened the second parchment the list had just two items: rock carvings from Kamboja and red apples from Kasmira.

  She looked at Chyavatana. ‘Just these two kingdoms?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘But small kingdoms surround us, Chyavatana,’ she said. ‘Kekaya, Bahlika, Madra. Why do we not trade with them for all that they produce? I am certain that they will be only too glad to take our gold in return.’

  ‘They will, my lady, and before the battle we did trade with them. But after Hastinapur became our vassal state …’

  ‘Do not use that word, Chyavatana,’ she said, ignoring the smirk that had appeared on Shakuni’s face.

  ‘Ever since we began trading with Hastinapur, we have cut our ties with all the other states.’

  ‘And they have not tried to resume trade with us?’

  Chyavatana ran his fingertips on his moustache. ‘We believe that Hastinapur may have put a stop to their efforts, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Hastinapur? What right have they to dictate whom we can trade with?’

  ‘I have spoken to some – friends – in Madra, Your Highness, and they have told me that Bhishma had come to their kingdom and asked for the hand of their princess in marriage into the house of Hastinapur.’

  Gandhari raised her eyebrow. She knew what Bhishma would call this – an attempt to unify North Country under one flag. She just called it dirty statecraft. ‘And why would the people of Madra heed his words?’

  Chyavatana tightened his lips and said grimly, ‘He is believed to have agreed to pay them a certain amount of gold every month, my lady.’

  ‘Our gold?’

  ‘It appears so.’

  This was Bhishma’s noble plan to unite North Country, then, to steal from one and feed another. A portion of Gandhar’s tribute would no doubt be used to keep Madra from trading with Gandhar, and her mouth quivered with anger at the thought. But there could be other kingdoms to go to; there must be at least a few that Hastinapur had not touched.

  ‘So we leave Madra then,’ she said. ‘There will be a few that will still trade with us.’

  ‘There is Aswaka to the North, my lady, but they have attacked us a few times in the past. It may not be prudent to let them know that we are weak and in need of support.’

  ‘Not Aswaka, no,’ she said, remembering the two great sieges of the mines that had happened during her father’s reign. ‘There is a rice-growing kingdom further southward along the banks of River Sindhu. I forget the name.’

  ‘Amvastha?’ said Chyavatana.

  ‘That too,’ said Gandhari. ‘But further southward, there is another kingdom – I think it is called Sivi.’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Who rules that land now?’

  ‘They call him Mitratithi, and they f
ight with the image of a crescent moon upon their banner.’

  Gandhari inclined her head. ‘Send messengers to him and ask if they would be willing to trade their rice with us for our gold.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘And if they say no, offer them double the price.’

  ‘And Amvastha too, my lady?’ said Chyavatana. ‘A friend of mine speaks highly of the pots in that kingdom.’

  ‘Then we shall buy them. Send riders this very night with messages for the kings of these two lands. And we shall try and awaken trade with Madra; the linen that comes out of that state is worth its weight in gold.’

  ‘I shall see to that, my lady.’

  Gandhari leaned forward and set both parchments on the table in front of her. ‘Look, Chyavatana,’ she said, ‘I know not how we shall do this, and how quickly, but we must begin reducing the amount we trade with Hastinapur. If we pay more gold in the process, so be it, but we must shake free of their shackles. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘Whether they are small kingdoms, big, ruled by kings or princes, independent or vassals, we shall ask them all, and at the same time, we are going to put a shovel and a spade into the hands of every able-bodied man in Gandhar, and lead him to the mines.’

  Chyavatana seemed to be troubled by that. ‘But, my lady, we must … we will have to tell them why.’

  ‘Then we shall and we will tell them the truth – Gandhar is training an army to take on the might of Hastinapur, and we need the help of all men in the land.’

  Shakuni looked up at her when he heard her words, and his eyes gleamed with excitement. As a child his favourite game after the rains was to run up the oak tree and lie in wait for the snails to venture out, and then kill them by stamping on them. He would have the same glint in his eyes as he had crushed them with his feet, and when Gandhari asked his father if his love for destruction would one day turn on him, he had laughed and said that every man was born with the urge to raze.

  ‘So do we reopen the barracks?’ he asked.

  Gandhari nodded. ‘Yes, and we shall open two archery ranges by the western wall and begin training archers immediately.’ She turned to Chyavatana. ‘You shall send the messengers out this very night, and you shall come back here to my chamber to report to me after they have left.’

  Chyavatana bowed. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

  SEVEN

  GANDHARI SPEAKS

  I do not remember well enough that night on which Chyavatana sent out the messengers; for it is true what they say: as you get closer to your death, you begin to see more and more clearly all that is truly important in life, and all that is not. I remember the young girl who once lived in Gandhar and thought that wealth and prosperity was all that there was to life, and that no price was high enough to pay to achieve them, but I no longer see myself in her. It is as if I see her in my mind flitting from one moment to the next, prodded by some unseen, unknowable force, always restless, always wanting, always worrying.

  That girl has grown into full womanhood and become a queen, and her sons have become kings. But she did not stop worrying. Even after she has acquired all the wealth and prosperity that she once craved, even after she had had her vengeance upon the dynasty that had buried the glory of Gandhar in the dust, even after the Great War had come and gone and left North Country an empty shell, she kept wishing, ever edgy, ever filled with grief.

  I do not recognize this woman, though she has grown older and become what I am today. Now I have none of the things that I wished for. Nobody remembers Gandhar or her glory now, and in a few moons even the tale of Hastinapur may get dissolved in the waters of the Great River. My sons are all dead. Bhishma is dead. I stood by him when he breathed his last, and I took his hand to kiss it. He smiled at me and nodded, as though to say everything was well and as it should be, and though I did not understand why, I smiled and nodded back. The young princess of Gandhar would have kicked his head and spat on his face, and she would have blamed him for the Great War and the end of the age of kings. The young prince of Hastinapur, Bhishma, would have perhaps called me a harlot for carrying my tale of vengeance to this bitter end.

  But we were no longer young that day. We saw in each other’s eyes the weariness of a long life, a life in which you will see everything and everyone you love leave you, without a goodbye or a promise to meet again. We saw in each journey the utter loneliness that is life on Earth; he, once the most fearsome warrior of his age now on a bed of arrows, attended to by his grandchildren, his dearest people, his staunchest enemies. And I, once the princess of Gandhar, then the queen of Hastinapur, now mother to a hundred dead sons.

  I know not if the Great War could have been averted if I had said yes to Bhishma’s first offer of marriage. When he was alive, I never asked him if he truly believed that he could unite North Country or if it was just a ploy to trap a naive young maiden. After his death I have found many an occasion to ask him that, but he does not reply. I only hear the murmur of the Great River pass quietly by, and I know he has heard me, but I also know that he would rather not speak of it at all.

  The seeds of discord had already been sown by the time he had come to Gandhar on his first visit, so perhaps it would all have happened just as it did. Perhaps I would have pursued my revenge with the same passion, and perhaps that tale would have ended in the same way, with me holding his hand on the bed of arrows and watching his eyes close as the western sky went grey. In the old days travellers from the North had a saying that all roads in North Country led to Hastinapur. Perhaps the same could be said of this tale, too. No matter which thread you pick up and which winding path you follow, your journey will end on the battlefield in Kurkshetra.

  So I shall not think of whether I could have done something to avert the Great War, for who is to say that the war was not written into all of our fates? Bhishma would disagree, of course, and he would say that any event that took the lives of so many people was a bad event, but I hear sages now already speaking of the war as a cleansing. When the minds of men become corrupt, perhaps there is something hidden deep within Mother Nature that rebels and says, ‘Enough!’

  Men will return, and among them kings will rise, and they will once again rule over kingdoms. But they will study this tale of the Great War, and perhaps it will keep their hearts from blackening. I shall be long gone by then, though, and that is a good thing, for I belong to an age which has ended. But before I go, I must tell you my tale; if it does not teach you what you must do, it will, I think, teach you what you must not.

  In the first few weeks after Chyavatana sent out the messengers, I remember being happy, for the kings of Madra, Sivi and Amvastha said that they would be willing to trade with Gandhar. We set up routes that we thought Hastinapur would not know of, and we began buying rice from Sivi, pottery from Amvastha, and linen from Madra. A few months passed without event, and during that time we took on more miners and produced enough gold to leave us with a modest amount after having paid our tribute.

  But as trade picked up with the three other kingdoms, it dropped with Hastinapur, and how I thought that would be acceptable to them, I do not know. Our caravans began disappearing, and our traders began to get killed – by ‘bandits’, they said. Madra stopped trading with us after she lost one complete caravan with thirty donkeys and forty merchants. Amvastha and Sivi carried on for a while, but soon they would stop too. We did everything we could to protect our route, but the bandits would always know the whereabouts of our caravans, and would always strike when they were unprotected.

  So in about six months, all our trade routes vanished, and I received a message from Bhishma on behalf of Hastinapur. It said that it would be a waste of Gandhar’s time to try and revive dead trade routes. Why did they need a new route with Hastinapur right at their call? Hastinapur would provide all that Gandhar needed and more, and if Gandhar did not like it – well, Gandhar would have to learn to like it. As a footnote, it also said that the offer of marri
age was still open.

  Gandhar’s future lay torn in front of my eyes that moment, and I thought, perhaps, it was time for me to consider Bhishma’s proposal; after all, I would be the queen, and Gandhar would still prosper, enen if under Hastinapur’s shadow. Perhaps some time in the distant future, one of Shakuni’s descendants would muster up the courage required to wrest the mines back into Gandhar’s hands. I had done everything I could to save my city. It was time, I thought, to give in.

  But then, a man came from the Eastern Mountains, bearing a pendant of gold around his neck, and changed everything.

  EIGHT

  Gandhari did not feel part of the festivities. All around her, even in the palace, was frenzied activity; her maids washed the walls and the floor with soapy water four times a day. The granite idol of Brahma that stood in the far corner of the chamber had been cleaned with a tiny brush, and now one of her chamberlains was decking the four heads with vermillion and turmeric. She dared not look out of the window, for she knew that even now, just minutes before sunset, she would find heat waves scurry up the flat surfaces of the rocks.

  Her eyesight had deteriorated in the last few months. She extended her arms and tried to look at her fingernails. All she saw were white oval blobs. She could make out the cuticle from the nail, but she could not tell if they were dirty or clean. Only when she folded her arms back did they come into view. She was now past her eighteenth year, and in two more Shakuni’s kingmaking time would arrive. No king had come to ask for her hand, which was strange indeed, because Gandhar had the mines. Even if they had, she could not leave Shakuni alone on the throne; he would be picked apart by Bhishma and the other vultures.

  It did sometimes prick her that maidens much younger than her in the palace went about carrying bellies as big as they. Shikha, one of her waiting-women who cleaned and replaced the candles every day, had begun to retire to her room a bit too often, complaining of headache or a swimming stomach. She had been in the palace for nine of her fourteen years, and just the previous year she had been given in marriage to the gardener’s son. Until she got with child, Shikha had been a tiny slip of a girl, hardly ever speaking and always keeping her chin pressed against her chest. But now she had a light about her face, and Gandhari had once or twice heard her singing to herself in the corridor after the sun had gone down and the candles had all been put out. Shikha laughed more, carried her head higher, and stopped to caress her belly once every few minutes.Gandhari’s father had often said that her suitors would come on horses from far and wide, that she would choose the most valiant prince of them all and have a hundred sons with him. He had said that on her sixteenth birthday the town of Gandhar would celebrate her groom-choosing; it would have been three years ago, had it all gone as they had once thought it would. Now was a different time in a different world, it seemed to Gandhari; not necessarily bad, she thought, reflecting upon her pale yellow fingernails and brown knuckles, but different. Even after all this, after Shakuni ascends the throne, perhaps her valiant prince would come on horseback.