‘He was so much of a man, mother, that his seed did not need a fertile soil.’ That silenced Soudamini and all others in the palace. Perhaps in many ways it broke Soudamini’s heart. The world had finally taken away her daughter and replaced her with a son.
Amba was born ten moons later and when she was twelve years old, Hiranyavarni told her everything about her father. She had a right to know. Amba accepted the truth fearlessly like Satya-kama.
‘Why did you name me Amba?’ she once asked her mother.
‘It was the one name your father uttered more than mine,’ replied Hiranyavarni honestly.
Mother and daughter spent hours talking about Shikhandi. What kind of a husband was he? What kind of a father would he have been? Was he actually Amba? A woman reborn? Or his father’s son? His memories were that of a woman. His heart was a woman’s. His head, a woman’s. But for the Yaksha’s appendage, there was nothing manly in his being. ‘Once I saw him staring at me as I prepared myself for a yagna and adorned myself in bridal finery. I saw regret in his eyes. And envy. I think he regretted being denied his femininity,’ said Hiranyavarni.
‘What was he to you, mother?’
‘What do you mean?
‘Did you love my father?
‘Yes.’
‘As a man or as a woman?’
‘A woman. Always,’ said Hiranyavarni, without a moment’s hesitation. But that was not exactly right. She loved Shikhandi, the person, to whom she had been gifted by her father in the presence of Agni, the fire-god. The person who stood by her as husband when the world condemned her for being a wicked wife. The person had managed to acquire a body of a man but was at heart always a woman.
‘But I think my father was a man, mother,’ Amba said.
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Hiranyavarni.
‘Is it not true that a child gets flesh and blood from the mother and bones and nerves from the father?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have both. If I was the child of two women then I would surely have been a ball of blood-soaked flesh. My father was no woman, mother. He was a man.’
Hiranyavarni was impressed by her daughter’s logic.
News of Amba’s intelligence spread, reaching even the Rishis of the Angirasa order who decided to travel to Panchala and put it to the test. ‘Are you Shikhandi’s daughter or the Yaksha’s daughter? Of which seed are you fruit?’ they asked the young princess.
Amba replied, ‘The plough belongs to my father. The field belongs to my father. I am my father’s child. And my father is Shikhandi.’ Then her face fell. ‘Perhaps that is why no one wants to marry me. Who would want to marry a girl whose father was once a woman?’
‘Fear not, my child,’ said the wandering hermits, delighted at the discovery of yet another of God’s surprises. ‘From Prajapati has come the problem. From Prajapati will come the solution.’
procrastination
The rains came on time and left on time, the sixteenth time since the birth of Mandhata, an indicator that all dharma had been upheld in Vallabhi by the Turuvasu kings. Fields and pastures burst into life once again. Rivers were full. Orchards glistened in the golden sunlight. Cows chewed on succulent grass. The gods had to be thanked. And so a yagna was organized.
The Kshatriyas of Vallabhi marked the site for the ceremony by shooting arrows in the four corners and a fifth one in the centre. ‘We have pinned down Vastu,’ they cried. The Shudras then set up the precinct by raising an enclosure using long sheets of matted palm leaves. The Brahmanas used rice flour and traced on the moist ground the image of Vasuki, the serpent king, who rises up during the rains. In its coils they scooped a fire-pit around which bricks were laid out in the shape of an eagle. The Vaishyas provided the butter and grain that would be given to Agni, the fire-god, who would carry the gifts of the king of Vallabhi above the clouds to Indra, the sky-god. Thus would the god who hurls thunderbolts and forces dark rain-bearing clouds to release rain be thanked.
‘Tell your son, tell your son,’ the two ghosts kept nagging Yuvanashva.
‘After the rains,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘After the yagna.’
‘If he has to be king he must learn to face any truth.’
‘My truth is complicated,’ argued Yuvanashva.
The yagna began. Melodious hymns filled the air. Fire crackled in the pit. A plume of smoke rose up connecting earth and the autumn sky. Yuvanashva watched the fire blaze. ‘What truth should I tell my son? It escapes my tongue. Defies the structure of language.’ He raised the ladle to pour the butter into the fire-pit and thought, ‘I have created life outside me. I have also created life inside me. I am the ladle that pours the butter. I am the pit that receives it. I am the sky and the earth. I am seed and soil. Man and woman. Or perhaps neither. A creature suspended in between, neither here or there? Unfit to be a Raja, unfit to be a Yajamana. Will Agni accept my offering? Will Indra turn it away?’
‘Svaha,’ he said as he poured the offering. ‘Svaha,’ he said again. Each time the fire-god accepted the offering, so did the sky-god, as they had for sixteen years.
But Yuvanashva’s discomfort remained. What was the truth that the Devas accepted? Was it the truth that Vallabhi ignored or the truth that Vallabhi preferred? Was he Mandhata’s father or mother? He needed clear answers. All he got was silence. A silent earth. A silent sky. Silent rivers and silent orchards. The hills were silent. The palace was silent. Bards were silent. Even Vipula was silent.
For sixteen years, the world saw a picture of domestic bliss in the palace of Vallabhi: a king busy in the mahasabha upholding varna-ashrama-dharma, his widowed mother meditating in the room that was once her audience chamber, his three wives sitting richly dressed beside him during pujas and yagnas, and his two sons living in the inner quarters with their mothers and studying in the hermitage outside the city with their teacher.
Mandhata was for everyone the first son of the first queen. It did not matter to the servants who helped Simantini bathe that she had a flat stomach and firm breasts with signs of neither pregnancy nor lactation. They found a good reason for it. ‘Asanga is a great physician. Almost a magician who can restore a mother’s virginity,’ they said. If one pointed out the stretch marks on Pulomi’s once beautiful body, shapeless and loose after the birth of Jayanta, they would say, ‘The women of Vanga respond differently to the potions.’
The ghosts of Sumedha and Somvati were the only ones who challenged this apparition of order. ‘Vallabhi deludes itself. But below, behind and beyond, sits Prajapati, witnessing it all, the lies of its king and the rot of the royal soul.’
‘Give me time. I need time to prepare him for the truth.’
Yuvanashva looked across the fire at Mandhata who sat with his brother and teacher and other students of the hermitage. The boy was a stranger to him. He had never ever been given time alone with the boy, to know him, and to let himself be known. He did not know what his son’s dreams were, what he desired and what he feared. Ever since he was taken into the women’s quarters, the queens had done everything in their power to keep them apart. Shilavati had warned them, ‘Motherhood is a disease when it springs in a man’s body, like kingship is in a woman’s. Let us both be cured of it.’ And so, Shilavati never opined on matters of state, no matter how grave the situation. And the queens saw to it that their husband was never alone with Mandhata, lest he wanted to indulge his maternal instincts.
For Mandhata, Yuvanashva was a distant father, who was more interested in Vallabhi than in his children. They met only for a few hours on ceremonial occasions when the princes were paraded on elephants and chariots and palanquins as proof of the king’s virility. He had spent the first seven years of his life with his mothers, and the next nine years with his teacher. Soon he would be with his wife, then with his duties, with only formal knowledge of his father.
‘Let us at least go on a hunt together. I need to spend some time with my son. He must know who I am,’ Yuvanashva had once requested Simantini.
The next time she had said. ‘Not this fortnight, it is not auspicious. There has been a lunar eclipse.’
Then she had said, ‘He is ill. A slight fever. Let him get better.’
It would be months before Yuvanashva would get the courage to ask again. As king, he could enforce his will. But each time he had done so, he had lost someone. First Shilavati. Then Pulomi. He did not want to lose Simantini. So he focused on kingship and hoped this separation could cure him of his intense craving to be mother.
In her capacity as first wife and chief queen, Simantini sat to the left of Yuvanashva during the yagna and joined him in thanking Indra. The other two queens sat behind. All three were dressed in dark green saris with a garland of fragrant green herbs round their neck. This was ritually prescribed for the queens had to reflect the condition of the earth, green after the rains.
Simantini’s glance fell upon her husband’s left thigh. The dhoti was wet with sweat, almost transparent. She could see the long gash. The scar of childbirth that the world knew as the hunting accident where the great boar plunged its tusk.
‘Lies, lies.’ she heard the tamarind tree shout from the corner room.
The priestesses of Bahugami who often tormented her in her dreams said, ‘If you are really the mother, then show us the milk in your breasts and the tear of your skin.’
Clinging tenaciously to Mandhata, Simantini would retort, ‘How dare you judge me, you who can be no woman’s husband! My lie keeps my husband on the throne.’
‘You lie for your husband? Really?’ asked the tamarind tree.
Simantini stared into the fire-pit. The wood crackled and the grains cast in by Yuvanashva popped up and rose into the air. The goddesses of the earth mocked her, but the gods of the sky did not frown.
Sitting behind, a now plump Pulomi watched the sweat trickle down her husband’s back. She felt warm. It was not the sun or the fire. It was not fatigue either. It was the sight of her husband’s naked back, his broad shoulders tapering to his narrow waist, his muscles, taut as the day of their wedding, sweat glistening against his skin. Like gold. He still aroused her. But she refused to let him touch her.
‘Forgive my son,’ Shilavati had begged.
‘I cannot,’ Pulomi admitted. ‘I just can’t. My head cannot convince my heart. My body yearns for his touch. But as soon as I see his face, the memory of that day returns and I cannot. He can take me by force but I will not go to him willingly.’
In the initial months, shortly after the birth of his two sons and his rejection by his two wives, Yuvanashva had sought Keshini’s company. He wanted someone to talk to, someone who would listen to him, someone who knew the truth, someone who could revive memories of innocent days. Who better than Keshini with her dolls and dice and the game of hide-and-seek? But Keshini was not the cherubic chattering child she once was. She was a silent woman, haunted by memories of the two boys of Tarini-pur condemned to death by her husband. Often she would be seen going to the royal cattle shed, feeding the cows and weeping. She regretted telling Simantini about the Brahmana woman without the toe-ring. Maybe then they would not have been caught. They would still be alive and the yagna would have been completed without any disruption. She would have been a mother.
Every time Yuvanashva came to Keshini, she insisted they have intercourse. He had given children to his other wives. She wanted one too. Yuvanashva grew tired of her pleading eyes. He stopped coming. A desperate Keshini turned to Asanga; she finally understood what the doctor’s eyes were always trying to say. When he came to her, he found her in bed, with a tambula in her hand. He lowered his eyes and turned away. He refused to be reduced to a seed provider for the woman he loved.
One day, Keshini realized she was eating her meals all alone, with only the tinkling of her gold bangles for company. Tears rolled down her eyes. ‘There was a time, they all came to play with me. They ate in my kitchen and they rested in my courtyard. Now, if it was not for these rituals, would anyone even remember me?’ she wondered. She felt she was a broken pot who did not deserve to wear a green sari.
Only Jayanta noticed Keshini’s unloved face. Only he felt Simantini’s anxiety and Pulomi’s shame. He saw his elder brother unable to fathom the turmoil of silent emotions that shaped their childhood. He saw his father’s eyes desperately searching for Mandhata every time he passed the women’s courtyard. He remembered the lullabies he sang at night in the corridors outside just loud enough to be heard by Mandhata inside.
So intense was Yuvanashva’s affection for Mandhata that he completely ignored Jayanta. But Jayanta never begrudged his father. Whenever he saw the king, he would rush out and hug him. ‘Why must you do that? Can’t you see he prefers your elder brother?’ his mother would say. In response, Jayanta would say nothing. He would hug his mother too and soothe her rage.
As the Ritwiks sang the final hymns, it struck Vipula, who sat directly in front of the king during the ceremony, how different the two sons of Yuvanashva were. Mandhata: dispassionate, measured, calculating. A king. Jayanta: full of life, cheerful, emotional, sensitive. A friend. Mandhata always did the right things; Jayanta always did things that brought joy. Yama and Kama. Reborn in Vallabhi. One from within Yuvanashva’s body. One from without.
He looked at the clear sky above, the three queens and their two sons below. A kingdom where the rains came on time. A kingdom where all subjects functioned according to their station in society and submitted to their stage in life. A kingdom where there was order, stability, peace and prosperity, where life was predictable, free of accidents and surprises. Was this not how it was supposed to be? Why then did the king, his friend, always look so unhappy?
‘My rule is based on a lie,’ Yuvanashva complained.
‘An untold truth is not a lie,’ Vipula told his friend.
‘It is time for the boy to learn the truth if he must be king.’
‘A king must be like Shiva, withhold some truths in his throat like the poison, Halahal, churned from the ocean of milk. Only then as Vishnu, can he distribute the nectar of order, Amrita, also churned from the ocean of milk, to all his people.’
‘My throat burns. I want to spit it out.’
‘Don’t! Every civilization needs its delusion.’
Denied access to Mandhata, Yuvanashva indulged his parental instincts with the two Pisachas. Together the ghosts and he heard stories and argued over dharma.
The ghosts always behaved as husband and wife, laughing and flirting with each other, sharing the burden of existence, discovering in each other’s hearts the meaning of life. The ghost of Somvati would sit at the feet of the ghost of Sumedha. They would chew imaginary tambula and rock on an imaginary swing. As he got used to their behaviour, Yuvanashva found their interactions endearing. They reminded him of how things were between him and his wives before the birth of his two sons, before the burning of the two boys.
Sometimes, in frustration, the ghosts would demand justice, ‘You killed us but spare yourself and your son. Why?’
‘Because we do not threaten the façade of order,’ Yuvanashva would clarify. ‘Had you two stayed men and friends, you would have been spared too.’
‘Hypocrite,’ the ghosts would snarl.
‘May you never know the joy of being called mother,’ they cursed him.
When Mandhata refused to attend Amba’s swayamvara, the two Pisachas told Yuvanashva, ‘In rejecting Amba he has rejected you, father. Do you realize that? It is one thing not to talk about you, but it is another to disrespect you.’
‘My son does not disrespect me,’ said Yuvanashva.
‘Your son respects his father. But you are not his father. You are his mother. He who finds Shikhandi’s daughter an unfit bride will surely find you an unfit mother.’
‘No, he will not,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘I have faith in my son. Vipula tells me the boy gives the most appropriate replies to the riddles of the sixty-four Yog
inis. He has all the signs of a Chakra-varti. I am sure he will find a way to accommodate my truth within the framework of dharma.’
‘Before he can accommodate your truth, he must first face it,’ said the ghosts, holding the king’s hands and leading him to his throne in the maha-sabha, ‘So send for him and present before him your riddle.’
revelation
The sixty-four Yoginis had sixty-four riddles that could make a man a Chakra-varti. Yuvanashva had only three that he hoped would make him his son’s mother.
‘But will he give me the answers I want to hear?’ wondered Yuvanashva, ‘What if he does not? Will I still love him? Is a mother’s love unconditional?’ Burdened by fears and doubts, he sent for Mandhata.
The message was formal, ‘The king would like the presence of the prince in the maha-sabha to solve a riddle,’ leaving Simantini no choice but to let Mandhata go.
Mandhata entered the maha-sabha and found his father all alone on the throne. There was no guard around, no bard, no minister, not even a servant. Sunlight streamed in through the open courtyard. The royal banner fluttered proudly. Except for the chattering of a few pigeons, the room was silent. So different from the days when his father gave audience to the people and settled disputes.
Yuvanashva did not wear any crown. He held no bow. He struggled hard to appear less king and more parent.
A tiger-skin rug had been spread out before the throne. ‘Come sit here,’ Yuvanashva said, his face lighting up at the sight of his son. Mandhata sat down cross-legged, facing his father, his back straight, as students are supposed to sit when they receive instruction. Yuvanashva yearned to hug his son but he restrained himself. He wondered how he should begin when suddenly a question rolled of his tongue, ‘Is Ileshwar Mahadev a god or a goddess today?’
Yuvanashva had not planned to ask this question. Wherefrom had it come? Propelled by Yama, no doubt, to initiate this conversation which was very much due. Or perhaps by Kama, for this conversation was very much desired.
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