The Curse of Gandhari Page 2

  It was so unlike her to lose control over her speech, but suddenly Gandhari blurted out: ‘I am not ready to die.’

  She immediately felt foolish. The protest of it surprised her. She had never protested before, not when she had been married to the blind king, not when her sons committed perfidy after perfidy, not when her sons had died, not when they had exiled themselves to the forest. It felt almost illicit to protest such a small thing now, the passing of her life when it had already become so dried and hollow, a dead leaf simply waiting to fall off the branch.

  ‘Gandhari, what is left for us to see in this world? We who will never see our son be king? We who will never see our children again?’ Dhritarashthra’s hands groped for her face, her hands, for comfort; to take, not to give. He had never learned how to be blind gracefully, to mask his disability, and his movements were clumsy and feeble.

  Gandhari thought she heard a snicker, or was it the rustling of the leaves, the rush of the river? Then Kunti said: ‘I have no fear or worries. Krishna is my refuge. He will protect me here and hereafter.’

  Gandhari imagined the self-satisfied smile on her sister-in-law’s face. It was so like Kunti to make a contest out of this, out of being the one to die the most virtuously. They always had been rivals after all.

  Gandhari knew, too, that Kunti had purposely brought up the name of Krishna, the name Gandhari most dreaded.

  Well, she was not dead yet.

  ‘Sister,’ Gandhari said sweetly, ‘I’m surprised that you want to die so early. You begged your nephew to send you unending pains and sorrows the last time you saw him. Have you had enough already?’ She emphasized the word ‘nephew’, knowing how Kunti hated hearing Krishna referred to in mere human terms. Krishna was a god, no doubt, but there were still those who puzzled over his ancestry, his status as a divine king and a true avatar of Vishnu. For some, he was just an exalted politician, a brilliant ruler and diplomat, a wily player in the game of thrones who had masterfully made his way from a cowherd to powerful king through his wit and charisma.

  The hermit excused himself with a murmur and hurried away, probably desperate to escape the type of squabbling he had become a celibate to avoid.

  Kunti’s prayer to Krishna had already become famous across Bharat. The last time they had met, as Krishna was taking her leave after the war had ended, Kunti had requested the strangest of boons. She had begged him for an unending string of sorrows, because it was only in times of sorrow that the devas, the divine beings, could be remembered; it was only in sorrow that humans could remember to pray. And so, Kunti had asked for a lifetime of sorrow to bring her closer to Krishna.

  You and me, sister, we’ve already seen enough to remember the devas for a hundred lifetimes. What was the need to pray for more? Gandhari thought.

  Kunti replied, ‘Sister, do not worry for me. If the devas wish to test me further, then through tribulation I shall remember them and them alone. If I am to die, may I die with Hari’s name on my lips.’

  She paused: ‘I know the source of your bitter words and I shall not be goaded. You are worried for your own fate. Well, it is not too late to seek refuge with the devas. It is not too late to ask for Krishna’s mercy.’

  Sanjaya had long ago assumed the role of mediator between Kunti and Gandhari in the face of Dhritarashthra’s passivity. He intervened, ‘The queen has undergone the most rigorous of penances. Even the devas bow to her chastity as a wife. She has accumulated the merits of the three worlds due to her devotion to the king.’

  Gandhari hid a smile. Sanjaya could not know how it riled Kunti, a widow, to be reminded of Gandhari’s devotion to her husband, a virtue Kunti could no longer accumulate.

  Kunti’s voice was as corrosive as the iron wedding-bangle that adorned Gandhari’s wrist. ‘What penance can protect a queen who has cursed a deva, Sanjaya? Who can say what kind of afterlife awaits she who cursed Krishna?’

  Dhritarashthra murmured weakly in protest but said nothing.

  Gandhari retorted, ‘Perhaps the same afterlife that awaits the mother who abandoned and renounced her own firstborn son.’

  She heard the indrawn breaths and gasps of shock from the young students who had been eavesdropping. Of course, they would be shocked and scandalized. They had probably heard the rumours – the Kurus were famous by then, the royal family whose feud had killed millions in the Great War – these young ones must have heard about Kunti’s first son, Karna, whom she had abandoned at birth as he was born out of wedlock.

  They would have heard the stories but perhaps not expected it to be true, at least not expected it to be hurled in Kunti’s face like a weapon. These young untested boys would not match the sordid story with that virtuous woman who served the king and queen respectfully and silently, whose face had turned into stoic stone.

  What did these boys know after all? What did they know of the hardness of our world? Who were they to be scandalized by Kunti or me? thought Gandhari.

  What would these boys say if they knew Krishna’s last words to Gandhari, after she had lamented the death of her sons, after she had wept and wailed and beat her chest, after she had cursed him to witness the destruction of his own clan and die an inglorious death, after Krishna accepted that curse with a smile, that she had no reason to mourn, that princesses like her gave birth to sons for the purpose of being slaughtered?

  Kunti left in a huff and Sanjaya followed her with a sigh, leaving Dhritarashthra and Gandhari together alone. The young acolytes of the ashram ran off to their morning studies and yoga practices. He turned to her and implored, ‘Let it go, woman, let it go at least now, now that the end is coming.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Her voice was smooth and controlled.

  ‘All your bitterness. Against Kunti, against me. A man can never be content if his wife is unhappy. Your unhappiness has been the curse of me for all these years. How long will you hound me with your hate? Even into the afterlife? Let it go, woman! Your resentment, your spite, has been a shadow over the family ever since we were married. How long will you punish me? How can I go to the heavens when your displeasure is so strong?’

  ‘You are being ridiculous. I am not angry. I am not unhappy.’ Her voice grew harder, as she tried to convince herself.

  He scrabbled the ground at her feet with his hands, trying to make a place to bow his head at her feet, to prostrate before her in supplication. She felt his tears fall on her toe. ‘Please, Gandhari, I beg you.’ His voice was trembling and wet. ‘I beg you, please, forgive me. Please let go of your anger, now, before it is too late. Or else I will be cursed in the afterlife as I have been on earth. Please let me go.’

  She drew her feet away, refusing his pleas, and left him. It was unbecoming for a husband to bow to his wife. Always he had been so insipid, so weak. It came back to her now, the initial disgust, the contempt, the shock, the fury, the disbelief that she would be married off to this pathetic failure of a man. It sprang back at her now, when it was definitely too late – those suppressed wonderings of what her life could have been without him.

  Gandhara, Then

  The journey from Gandhara to Hastinapur had taken weeks in a caravan across rivers and through dense forest. It was a slow, cumbersome journey with her full entourage of counsellors, maids and her childhood ayah, Ayla, who had come to nurse her eventual babies. Subala, her father, had added three more maids to the entourage when Gandhari had chosen to blindfold herself.

  It had all started with Bhishma’s surprise visit to Gandhara. The only visitors to Gandhara tended to be barbarian invaders from the Western steppes, hoping to raid the wealthy kingdoms of Bharat. Gandhara was one of the most remote kingdoms in the northwest corner of Bharat and a constant site of battle with foreign marauders, seeking to make it past the border kingdom to the wealthy territories of the mainland ripe for plunder. And now one of Bharat’s most revered and feared rulers was at their doorstep. King Subala posted spies everywhere in his territory, ever on guard. Thus, they lear
ned of Bhishma’s impending arrival a few days before he actually appeared.

  Other than when Gandhara was at war, Pushkalavati, the capital of the kingdom, was a sleepy frontier town. The court lacked bards, musicians, dancers or even astrologers to keep them entertained. Instead, the royal family played dice, wagering each other with apples gathered from their vast orchards. The king would hold forth discussions on war strategy and the history of heroic battles fought in the past. His one hundred sons were usually not interested and instead congregated in the horse stables to drink fermented grain alcohol. Gandhari, his only daughter, listened, enraptured, at the feet of his throne, and citizens thronged from all over to learn from the wise king.

  Bhishma’s visit jolted everyone into action. Gandhari’s mother took charge of whitewashing the palace walls, faded and dull from the onslaught of dust in the summer and snows in the winter. She hung freshly embroidered tapestries in the audience hall and had the wooden walls of the palace freshly polished. Goats were herded and killed, and herbs snipped from the royal gardens to make meals fit to match the sumptuous fare of the mainland courts.

  Others speculated in fear and excitement. Bhishma was a living legend. He was the son of Ganga, a river goddess, and the late king of Hastinapur, Shantanu. The devas themselves taught him the rules of governance and warfare, ethics and justice. He was one of the most valiant princes the world had ever seen, a fearless fighter and conqueror, as famous for his stern righteousness as his mettle in battle.

  The court was flooded with whispers, whether Bhishma had come for battle, to invade and conquer their kingdoms, or had come to hire soldiers from their forces. Gandhara’s soldiers were venerated as some of the fiercest soldiers in the realm. They reaped wealth as mercenaries in between Gandhara’s wars. Or, had he come to bear some dire warnings or other ill tidings, perhaps that Gandhara was on the brink of being attacked?

  Subala took Gandhari aside. ‘Madhu, my daughter, what do you make of all this?’ Madhu, literally honey, was his pet name for her.

  She tilted her head carefully, considering. Her mother had taught her to be deliberate in all her movements. Economy of movement expressed regal upbringing. She replied with confident succinctness: ‘He has not come here for war.’ She jabbed at the air to make her point. They were in the audience hall, even though there was no one else there. Subala liked to have Gandhari take the seat of one of the ministers, to practice statecraft with him. ‘The kingdom of the Kurus is already stretched too thin. And ever since his nephew Vichitravirya passed away, Bhishma has had to spend more and more time at home, governing alongside the regent queen, his mother.’

  ‘Stepmother,’ corrected Subala softly.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ How could she have forgotten one of the most salacious pieces of gossip to have come out of Bharat in generations, although it had happened well before her time.

  ‘Not just to rule, daughter, but also to raise — how many princes, Madhu?’ Subala slipped into calling her by her pet name when nobody else was around. His wife thought a princess should always be addressed by her proper name. She was from a prestigious mainland kingdom, married off to Subala in exchange for a military alliance to bolster the dwindling treasury of her father’s kingdom. She had been trying very hard to elevate the standard of etiquette at this backwater court, including by persistently nagging her husband and daughter to become more civilized.

  Gandhari racked her memory. She practiced for hours with her private tutor, memorizing the lineages, boundaries and intersecting dynasties of the dozens of kingdoms that comprised Bharat. The Kurus, with Bhishma as their scion, were particularly confusing. ‘Three?’ Before her father could shake his head, she corrected herself. ‘No! Two princes.’ The third brother was born of a maidservant and was therefore ineligible to be prince.

  ‘And what do we know of the current princes?’

  ‘One is weak, the other blind.’

  ‘And who is the crown prince?’

  ‘The weak one – Pandu.’ His pallor caused concern among the kingdom, but it was still deemed better than a blind king. And thus, it was Pandu who was the crown prince.

  Subala nodded, pleased. ‘Bhishma has raised them well. Despite their … infirmities, it looks like they may be competent enough to govern. But that is not enough to guarantee them a good reign. Madhu, what else is needed?’

  She averted her eyes shyly with a small smile. ‘A strong bride.’ One who could produce a strong heir to the throne that has proved so slippery.

  Subala smiled at her slyly, with a wink.

  That night, Gandhari went to bed, blushing. She inventoried all she had heard about Pandu. Her father taught her that information was the most valuable currency that they had. They were not invited to the typical tournaments and swayamvaras, where women chose their husbands based on feats of strength. They missed out on those royal congregations where they could gather gossip and size each other up through tournaments, assessing princes by their individual prowess at archery, mace play and the show of force they brought with them. Spies were their substitute for direct observation.

  Pandu was supposed to be handsome and skilled at fighting. He was pale and though physically strong, there was a fatal weakness in him. No one quite knew what it was. Yet another secretive mystery of the Kurus. It was as if, say, one pushed him too hard, he might shatter into a thousand pieces. This is what they heard.

  Gandhari imagined being the wife of Pandu and ruling as the Queen of Hastinapur. She felt a rush of affection for the crown prince, tenderness for the precarious position in which he found himself. He was the only chance of the Kuru line surviving after the last king had died, childless.

  ‘Don’t worry, my sweet prince,’ she whispered into the starry sky where the thirty-three million devas would hear her. ‘I will protect you and keep you safe with my life.’

  So, this is what a vow of celibacy does to a man.

  Gandhari watched Bhishma as he approached the palace from afar across the undulating valleys bordering River Panjkora. Everyone in Bharat by now knew the story of Bhishma’s vow. In old age, Bhishma’s father, the king Shantanu, had fallen in love with a fisherwoman. The fisherwoman’s father refused to marry her to Shantanu without the guarantee that their sons, and not Bhishma, would inherit the throne. To assuage him, Bhishma not only renounced the throne but vowed lifelong celibacy so there would never be a rival to the throne. That was when he became known as Bhishma, the one who had made a terrible vow. Conches had sounded from the heavens and the gods showered flowers of blessings upon him.

  A vow like that changed a man. Gandhari observed how tautly he held himself, like a finely strung bow. His shoulder-length blunt cut hair had started to silver. Yet he was still broad in chest, his muscles roughly hewn. His face at one time would have been smooth, softly etched like the son of the river nymph and a besotted king that he was. The austerity of his vow had engraved deep lines bracketing his lips and slashes above his low-set, perpetually frowning eyebrows.

  Gandhari shivered at his form riding towards the palace, reins tightly gripped in his powerful hands. He was a man cruel to himself in penance if not to others.

  Last night, Subala had gathered together his various ministers and counsellors to confer about Bhishma’s visit. They were refreshing their intelligence about Bhishma. Gandhari was concealed in the darkness of the back of the chamber to learn from their deliberations. When the others were expressing admiration over Bhishma’s vow and sacrifice, Subala had demurred: ‘Can a prince afford to put the emotional yearnings of his father above the security of the lineage and the continuation of the dynasty? What if Satyavati had turned out to be barren?’

  The others had fallen silent.

  Subala had stared directly at the back of the audience chamber, where Gandhari was concealed. ‘This is why one must carefully choose one’s vows, to contemplate the consequences, not just for one’s self but for the family, the kingdom and the nation.’

  Gandhari chafed at her fa
ther’s cynicism. The tales of all their devas and heroes were full of glorious vows. She loved the tales of Rama, his vow to remain banished in the forest before claiming back his crown, his vow to never wed another woman after Sita, the vow of fasting undertaken by Parvati to win Shiva as her husband. A vow, a sacrifice, could alter the course of destiny.

  Her maid, Ayla, gently pulled her back from the window where she was watching Bhishma’s approach. ‘Come, princess, it is time to come downstairs. He is almost here.’

  After Bhishma arrived at court, Gandhari’s mother was fastidious that all the etiquette and protocols be scrupulously followed. His feet were bathed in milk, scented water and flowers; he was offered the customary food and drinks; he and Subala exchanged the customary questions about the wellbeing of their respective kingdoms and subjects.

  It was awkward between Subala and Bhishma, as was often the case between two men who had heard much about each other but never met. There were long pauses in between the stilted conversation, and Subala’s one hundred sons grew restless and fidgeted in their cushioned seats on the floor.

  Bhishma smiled at the sight of them. ‘How fortunate you are, king, to have so many healthy sons.’ He turned his head to give a kind smile to Gandhari, seated demurely next to her mother. She wore a pale orange sari, deliberately suggestive of bridal red. Her hair was braided with combs formed of ivory coloured shells and encrusted with small orange gemstones. ‘And, of course, a lovely daughter. One hundred and one children! You are truly fortunate!’

  Subala laughed: ‘One good child outweighs one hundred (and one) brats.’

  Bhishma smiled politely, then became solemn. He set down the silver tumbler of fruit wine. ‘Subala, it has taken me weeks to get here. And I must return back to Hastinapur tomorrow. We had better get to the business at hand. There is something of utmost importance I wish to discuss with you.’

  Subala inclined his head. ‘Of course, although we regret you are leaving so early. We would have liked to enjoy your company for a longer time. Please proceed.’