by Kavita Kane
‘Who was that man you sent?’ she asked tremulously, her voice now shaking more with fury than fear.
‘His name is Vyas. He is a rishi,’ Satyavati said tersely. ‘And your brother-in-law.’
Both the girls gave a start, staring at her in open disbelief.
‘I had him before I married King Shantanu,’ she said, her face as wooden as her voice. ‘I, too, was once in a situation like you girls are in now, but I think I handled it better than you!’ She felt a spark of renewed anger. ‘Could you not have been more accommodating, considering you are a princess who knows the royal demands from a queen?’ she said, her voice sharpening as she glared balefully at Ambika.
Ambika did not miss the reprimand in the older woman’s voice. She bristled, recovering her breath and spirit. ‘That is because we are pampered princesses, as you rightly pointed out,’ she said maliciously. ‘If we were tough, like fisherwomen, I accede we would have taken it well.’
Satyavati’s eyes narrowed at the girl’s impertinence. ‘You act like a wilting touch-me-not!’ she snapped. ‘When, for seven years, you enjoyed a royal wanton romp with my son!’
Ambika stiffened, coming to her feet with a lunge, her face white with unconcealed fury, her lips drawn in an angry retort.
‘Stop it, please!’ interrupted a breathless Ambalika. She turned a petrified face to her mother-in-law. ‘Please, I can’t do this. . . !’ she gulped.
Satyavati turned to her fiercely. ‘Don’t you dare spoil things further! You girls were told to do this one thing; I don’t want the situation getting worse! You do it right this time, unlike your spoilt, selfish sister!’
Watching the colour drain from the girl’s face, Satyavati stopped herself. She knew she was being harsh, but Vyas’s warning words had left her anxious and high-strung.
‘Your daughter-in-law shut her eyes at the sight of me, Ma,’ he had said after her persistent questioning.
‘She is young, a princess, sheltered in her upbringing,’ she had defended, annoyed that Ambika had fumbled.
Vyas had nodded gravely. ‘Yes, and I am not the most attractive man to be with,’ he had smiled wryly. ‘Especially in my present state.’
She gave him a quick, cursory glance. His hair was matted, his dark skin swarthy and dry from his wanderings in the sun, his hard hands looked calloused, the nails dirty, as were his feet.
‘Have a bath before you go to Ambalika tonight,’ she advised shortly.
‘I need more than a bath, Ma. I am worse than an animal in a jungle. The princess was revolted as I had predicted . . . how do you expect a good end to this bad beginning? I had told you that it would be better if we had waited and postponed this . . . er, task.’
His warning ringing in her ears and the cold fright in Ambalika’s eyes brought Satyavati to her senses. She had to reassure this girl; if the stronger-minded Ambika had been revolted, her timid sister would surely faint at the very sight of Vyas.
Satyavati forced a light smile and gently patted the girl’s hands. ‘I am sorry, but I am worried,’ she said softly. ‘Vyas, like his father, is not an ordinary man. He is a famed rishi, and to be with him is said to be an honour. Don’t waste your chance, dear; your child will be great if you allow it to so happen.’
Ambalika stared back at her, her eyes questioning, but she smiled wanly, nodding. ‘Like yours was?’ she whispered knowingly.
‘Yes,’ replied Satyavati. ‘You, too, will have a child as famous as him. Just bear with me—and him—for one night, please!’
Ambika felt a flash of jealousy sear through her and thought again of the child she might have. He will be the heir, not Ambalika’s, however much she impresses that ugly man. I will give Hastinapur the heir mother-in-law so desperately wants.
‘And what if it is a girl?’ said Ambika, her smile spiteful.
‘She would be heir, too,’ replied Satyavati calmly. ‘First she, then her husband, and then her children will rule Hastinapur.’
‘That man is awful, whatever you may say,’ sulked Ambika petulantly, lifting her shoulders, knowing her words would frighten her sister further. ‘He smells, he is bristly, filthy, rough and fiery, I couldn’t bear the mad intensity in his eyes, and. . .’
Satyavati caught the flare of fear in Ambalika’s eyes.
Her voice dripped ice when she said, ‘Ambika, don’t scare her further. It is a calm, strong mind of a queen that is needed now, not the selfishness of a pampered princess!’ She turned to Ambalika and took her trembling hands in hers. ‘Listen, dear, I know it’s hard, but try not to think of the worst. See it differently; not as a duty, not as coercion, not as a victim, but a victory—that you will be able to have a baby. By going to Vyas, and not Virya, you are still the mother of your child, the creator of progeny, new hope to this family. See it as a power, a choice, to have a child. It is not the man who is important, dear, it is you, the woman, who has the power to create a new life. Would you not like to have a child, a child to love?’
Ambalika nodded wistfully, the tears slowly drying on her pale cheeks.
Satyavati saw to it that she remained with Ambalika the rest of the day, so Ambika would have no opportunity to frighten or influence her younger sister further. It was only when she knew Vyas was about to knock on the door of her daughter-in-law that she left her to him.
‘Do not shut your eyes,’ she reminded her in a warning murmur.
It would be another long night. Satyavati shut the door of her own chamber and went to her bed. She sat on it, her hands balled into fists, gripped tightly between her knees. She listened to the faint sounds that came through the panels of Ambika’s door. Finally, as these sounds became more out of control, she got to her feet. She stood, hesitating. There was no way to stop what she had started. She heard Ambalika stifle a cry and that decided her: she was doing the right thing. She sat motionless in the hot night, while she listened to the high-pitched silence of the stillness, her face frozen, staring blankly out of the window towards the silver river glistening in the moonlit night. It was an interminable wait, but finally she heard her son leave Ambalika’s chamber. She wanted to rush out and meet him, but she would have to wait a little longer; at least until the first light of the morning.
‘How was it?’ she urgently asked her younger daughter-in-law at the crack of daybreak.
‘I did not close my eyes,’ Ambalika replied meekly.
Satyavati heaved a brief sigh of relief. Her words had knocked sense into the girl. She smiled gloriously; it would be all right. She just had to wait another nine months. . .
New Hope
It was a warm, winter morning. Vibha handed her the angavastra and the news that Ambika was in labour. Satyavati felt her heart race, then contract. The time had come. Hastinapur would have its heir. She could not hide the blinding joy that assailed her. She dressed hastily, almost fainting with anticipation, and hurried to Ambika’s chamber.
In the heavily curtained room, she found a doctor, a midwife, and Parishrami, the efficient, pretty maid of Ambika. There was a smell of kapur and herbs in the room. She had scarcely crossed the threshold when, from the adjoining room, Satyavati heard a low, plaintive moan.
‘Queen Ambalika, too, is in labour,’ informed Parishrami.
‘You attend to her; I shall see to Ambika,’ she ordered.
The cry of the newborn broke the tumult in her mind. The baby was here! The heir had been born. The infant’s wail carried with it a breath of fresh hope and memories of what had been: Shantanu and her, the evening of Dev’s oath, her wedding, Chitrangad and Virya being born, the drifting rains as Chitrangad lay lifeless, the fire in Amba’s eyes as she cursed Bhishm, that cold morning sky, and Bhishm’s despair as he cried over the cold body of Virya.
Satyavati blinked. All was over. Now it was another beginning. She rushed to see Ambika, feeling as though she were the father of the child. Ambika was lying down, drowsy and pale, her hair drenched with sweat. She had a look of childlike helplessness—not her usu
al cold indifference. She appeared not to have heard Satyavati come in, or perhaps did not pay attention. She continued to look towards the large baby that the nurse was holding, as she waited for him to be placed in her arms.
The nurse was white-faced, and Satyavati immediately realized something was horribly amiss.
When the baby was given to Ambika, her face contorted with pain. She gazed up at the carved ceiling, as though wondering what was happening to her. There was a look of loathing on her face.
‘It is horrible!’ she whispered. ‘He is blind!’
Satyavati froze; she was dumbstruck. Her shocked eyes moved from Ambika, to the maid, down to the swaddled baby. She could not speak, cold with fear, her eyes blinded by sudden tears. Her heart was beating erratically as she sank to her knees, her arms open to embrace the swaddled baby.
He was handsome and huge, with a prominent nose and a pointed chin. His eyes were not shut, but open; he was staring at her with accusing, opaque-white eyes. Her breath caught in her throat and burst out into a sob. No!
‘He is your heir, Ma!’ Ambika muttered softly. ‘A blind heir, a blind king!’ she cried bitterly, burying her face in a pillow.
For Satyavati, that one statement crystallized the great truth. The heir of Hastinapur was blind!
Satyavati stumbled into her own chamber and sank to the floor in stunned disbelief. Her dreams crumpled before her eyes like leaves scorched by the sun’s heat. She felt like she was in a tossing boat with no command over Fate or Future. Was Fate laughing at her? There never had been any affinity between them: she had been either running away from it or trying to chase it away. She was no more to Fate than a cobweb to be flicked away, hanging precariously, to be torn away by the wind. She stared fixedly at the great river looping the palace: Was Ganga taunting her for all that Satyavati had taken away from her son, and everything that she was losing, over and over again. The sun had sunk over it, enveloping everything in a blanket of darkness, the stars sparkling overhead, but it was all an indifferent, incomprehensible tangle she could not unravel.
That is how Bhishm found her in the early hours of dawn—sitting on a low chair, huddled up, her face hidden in her hands, her long, unbrushed hair falling around her. It was an impression of exquisite anguish, and the last traces of any animosity he had for her left him; his heart ached. And as he looked at her, it occurred to him that, all these years, he had played and was still playing a strange, symbiotic part in the life of this woman; and that it was beyond his power to alter it. He knew now that he wanted to live only for her and Hastinapur. He had not seen her for days together since their disagreement, she had been avoiding him, and he knew why: she always pushed him away when she was most hurt. And he had hurt her. Ironically, the colder and harder her face grew, and the more distant she became, the nearer she was to him, and the more intensely and painfully he felt their kinship. Never mind her light, careless tone; never mind her silent, cold treatment; never mind the ruthlessness she displayed to safeguard her vulnerability.
Bhishm stood there a little while, then went away, without letting her know that a boy had been born to Ambalika as well—as pale as a ghost, as white with fright as his mother had been when he had been conceived.
When Satyavati came to know from a sombre Vibha of the second son and his unusual ivory pallor, she said, wearily, ‘I need Vyas again. Tell Bhishm to send for him.’
Vyas, when he arrived, found his mother inconsolable and more stubborn.
‘Both the infant princes are not healthy enough to be the heirs. One is blind and the other is an albino! Vyas, what did you give me?’ she cried.
‘The queens were not prepared, nor was it the right time,’ he responded gravely. ‘I tried to warn you that coercion always leads to undesired results.’
Her mind was a white flame of vicious fury. ‘What fools these girls are!’
A thought struck her, which she voiced immediately to her son. ‘In niyog, is not the man allowed a maximum of three times in his lifetime to be appointed in such a way?’
Vyas nodded, knowing what his mother was insinuating. ‘It was to avoid misuse, Ma. Now you are being avaricious for heirs,’ he warned softly.
‘Not avaricious, simply cautious,’ she returned imperiously. ‘The third one should be perfectly healthy! Three princes for this vast kingdom which Bhishm and I have expanded over the years.’
‘It was always his, Ma, and it still is,’ he gave her a strange smile. ‘You would not have to commit such impropriety had it been otherwise.’
She was beyond rebuke or reason.
‘I want you to use your third chance, too,’ she said bluntly, her eyes desperately appealing to him.
‘And if I refuse?’
‘You cannot refuse your mother,’ she argued.
‘You refused me, Ma,’ he said, his voice hard.
‘Never your existence!’ she broke in. ‘I need you, Son!’
He sighed. ‘I shall do this last favour for you for the good deed of you having given birth to me; no more, no less! I leave tomorrow.’
Having barely managed to convince her reluctant son, Satyavati knew it would be another uphill task to convince Ambika to acquiesce.
‘Again?’ Ambika gave a small scream of horror. ‘But why? You already have your heir, Ma.’ She handed the month-old Dhritrashtra to Satyavati, who immediately stopped crying at the familiar and firm touch of his grandmother, and gave her a toothless grin.
Satyavati looked at him with forlorn fondness, ruffling his curly hair.
‘He is blind, dear, and that most likely disqualifies him from becoming king.’
‘No!’ said Ambika vehemently. ‘Never! Pandu might be just a day younger, but my son is still the older son and I am the older queen! Dhritrashtra will be king!’ she swore, and Satyavati noticed the stubborn line of her mouth.
Ambika had already made him king, and Satyavati felt a sudden unpleasant knotting of her stomach. It was the same expression of words, the same mad ambition she had when her sons were born. . . She would have to quickly talk Ambika out of her growing obsession, or it would be too late.
‘Exactly, you are the older queen. That is why I came to you and not Ambalika,’ said Satyavati shrewdly. ‘You shut your eyes the first time; maybe this time we can have a healthy child?’
She saw Ambika hesitate.
‘Or should I go to Ambalika? She might agree and be the mother of two sons, one of them most likely to be crowned king, rather than a blind one!’ she thrust the knife cruelly into Ambika’s fluttering heart. She would ensure she got a healthy heir for Hastinapur.
‘I’ll do it!’ muttered Ambika. ‘What a paradox it is . . . this war of the scions—the virile is a celibate, the impotent was made king, and the widows are made to supply heirs from a stranger-son of the queen mother!’
The small smile of triumph slipped from Satyavati’s face. Her eyes widened in shock: Ambika’s irreverent words uttered in an undertone, shouted aloud the story of the dynasty.
The moment he touched her, he knew the woman in his arms was not Ambika. It was dark, and she had cleverly lit just one oil lamp in the chamber. It was the same chamber, but not the same woman. She was veiled, hiding her face, but she could not hide from him the fact that she was not who she was supposed to be. . .
She pulled him down to her, as the other two women never had; she kissed him with a fervour that inflamed him, an uncontrollable fire that he was eagerly consumed in; she led him to a world of ecstasy that he did not know existed, and with a thick cry of surrender, he collapsed on the soft swell of her heaving breasts. Exhausted in his sweet bliss, he felt her getting up, still a dark silhouette of desire, and slipping away in the darkness. He stared after her. Who was she?
Vyas could not let go of her, of each and every moment she had lain with him. He could not meet his mother’s eye when he said shortly, ‘It was not with your daughter-in-law that I spent the night.’
Satyavati was speechless, as she assimilated h
is words and what they portended.
‘Then who was it?’ she whispered, bewildered. She received a shake of her son’s matted head as a reply.
‘Wait!’ she pleaded. ‘There’s been some misunderstanding, Vyas. If not Ambika, I shall convince Ambalika. Please spend tonight with her,’ she implored, and noticed the stern look on her son’s face. ‘Give Ambalika a second chance!’
Vyas shook his head coldly. ‘It can’t be.’
‘Give Hastinapur another chance, Vyas!’ she cried.
‘Ma, I am a rishi, and I shouldn’t be here,’ he said, controlling his rising anger. ‘I agreed to do this only for you. And I have done what you asked me to—thrice. The law permits niyog only three times. Besides, I am soon to marry the daughter of Rishi Jabaali. I can’t do this to Pinjala, to us,’ he said, his voice firm. ‘My work here is done, Ma!’
Satyavati barely registered him bowing and touching her feet before taking leave. Her heart contracted painfully. She stared at him with inert eyes, drained of hope, as she watched him walk away from the room, down the corridor, out from the palace, away from Hastinapur forever. She wanted to stop him, but the words stuck in her throat. Would she ever see him again?
She did not know how long she stood there. Then she recalled that he had left behind some unanswered questions. And only one person would have the answers—Ambika.
One look at her, and Satyavati recognized her expression of fearful defiance. The tightness of her mouth, and her glittering eyes told her at once that she had lied to her.
‘I could not go through it again,’ she stated firmly, before Satyavati could say anything. ‘I refuse to be a pawn in your games, Mother, and not for the second time, at least! I have a son now; I have given you the heir you wanted.’