The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  I had expected the sight to be something like looking through a telescope, but I was mistaken. True, I saw distant scenes as clearly as though they were happening a few arm's lengths away from me—but that was the least of it. For instance: I saw silver-haired Bheeshma in the forefront of the Kaurava army, seated in his silver chariot. A golden palm tree waved on his banner. He was exhorting his troops, telling them that the gates of heaven had opened wide today to let in all that would die on the battlefield. His face was filled with vigor and a strange gaiety, and his words rang with such conviction that I believed him. But as I watched his face, it shifted and wavered, like an image drawn on water. I felt his tiredness in my own body. His heart was so heavy, I wondered that he had the strength to even draw breath. I realized then that the sight allowed me to penetrate the masks of men and look into their core, and I was at once elated and terrified. I looked up at the sky, hoping for a sign that what Bheeshma said was true, but it shone above me a blank and comfortless blue.

  If war forced even a great soul such as Bheeshma to dissemble, what hope was there for the rest of us?

  I saw Duryodhan pacing under his banner, a serpent in a field of gold. “Kill Sikhandi first,” he instructed his generals. “No one else can destroy Bheeshma. And as long as Bheeshma leads us, we're invincible!” Under his gold crown, his face was thinner, his eyes like lighted coals as he stared at the Pandava host. But the harsh line of his lips softened as he turned toward the warriors who had positioned themselves around him. “I will not forget your loyalty,” he said to them, touching one and then the other on the shoulder. They smiled back at him. I was shocked to feel love rising from them, shimmering like heat from a summer pavement, their willingness to die at his command. He beckoned a messenger close, detached a jewel from his headdress. “Give this to Bhanumati. Tell her I'll come to her as soon as I can.” Then his eyes darkened, searching the field. “Where is Karna?” he asked. “One of you, go, tell him Duryodhan calls. Today more than ever I need my friend beside me.”

  Even in the trance, my breath grew uneven, my hands trembled with anticipation. But before I could see Karna, the vision pulled me toward the Pandava army. How puny it seemed in comparison! Yudhisthir stood at its center, under the white umbrella that signified kingship. His face was pale and drawn; in his heart he still didn't want this war. Nor did he want so many thousands to die for his sake. Next to him, guarded by our staunchest soldiers, stood Sikhandi. Bheem led one flank, Nakul and Sahadev the other. I looked for Dhri. There he was, at the rear of the formation, his bronze and silver chariot rolling through the ranks as he gave commands to various officials. My sons rode behind him on chargers.

  With a start I realized that every single person I cared for in the world was gathered on this field. How many of them would walk off it when the war ended in eighteen days?

  Now my eyes were caught by a strange movement at the edge of the field. Arjun's golden chariot sped past the boundary of our army into the no-man's-land. Why would he go there now, while the war hung imminent above our heads? Was he not supposed to be at the head of the army to lead the attack? I could see Krishna guiding his six white horses. How skillfully he controlled them, with the smallest flick of his wrist. With his whip, he pointed out the scions of the Kaurava army, men my husband knew as well as he knew himself. And then Arjun dropped his beloved Gandiva, hid his face in his hands, and wept.

  Much has been written about Arjun's grief at this eleventh hour and what Krishna said in response to shake him out of immobility. Vyasa knew it first, dreaming it before it happened. They say he chanted it to Ganesha, god of beginnings, who penned it down. (Was it him I'd glimpsed under the banyan with his pendulous elephant head?) Others took up Krishna's words and translated them into many languages and meters. Some gave it elaborate names, but most merely called it The Song. It wouldn't surprise me if poets and philosophers continue to write about it until the world dissolves on the day of pralaya.

  No one—including Arjun himself—had anticipated that the bravest of the Pandavas would be paralyzed by guilt on seeing the kinsmen he'd have to kill in order to achieve victory. He was a practical man. All this time, he'd been the most impatient, the one most eager to test his skills. Who could have imagined that he would be so shaken by the thought of the devastated world we'd have to inhabit after the war had killed or maimed millions? But unless they are masters of evasion, all who begin a war must at some point face these emotions. Over the next few days, each of my other husbands would bitterly regret their part in the battle and wish it undone. But by then we would all know this: war is like an avalanche. Once begun, it cannot cease until it has wreaked all the destruction it is capable of.

  When I watched Krishna advise Arjun, consoling him, teaching him how to be successful not only on this battlefield but beyond it, I almost didn't recognize the amusing, carefree man I'd known since my girlhood. Where had he learned so many philosophies? When had he made their wisdom his own?

  I faithfully repeated the points he made to the other women when I joined them at night. The pleasures that arise from sense-objects are bound to end, and thus they are only sources of pain. Don't get attached to them. And: When a man reaches a state where honor and dishonor are alike to him, then he is considered supreme. Strive to gain such a state. Uttara was too distracted by her own concerns to pay much attention, but Kunti and Subhadra listened carefully and nodded in understanding. I couldn't imagine such a man of wisdom, however, far less aspire to be like him. I didn't know how to live without attachment or feel the same way toward honor and dishonor. Perhaps only when one possessed a greater treasure could one let go of this world. Krishna hinted that such a treasure was inside me—Weapons cannot harm it; fire cannot burn it; it is eternal, still and blissful—but the words, slippery as stones that have been left underwater a long time, slid from my fingers even as I tried to examine them. Wisdom that isn't distilled in our own crucible can't help us. Thus, though my mouth parroted Krishna's words, my will swung between remorse and revenge, and my heart wouldn't stop stinging.

  But one thing Krishna said struck me directly. When Arjun asked why man found himself driven to wrongdoing in spite of good intentions, Krishna replied, Because of anger and desire, our two direst enemies. How well I knew them, my longtime companions—no, my masters—and their offspring, revenge! And how faithful they were! When I sought to rid myself of them, they clung to me most tenaciously.

  I couldn't claim, as Arjun did after hearing Krishna's discourse, that my delusions had vanished. But I learned to watch myself. And if I wasn't able to bar anger, or her insidious cousin, irritation, from my heart, at least some of the time I bit back the sharp comments that I'd prided myself on dispensing so freely all these years.

  One part of Krishna's conversation with Arjun I was unable to report. Arjun spoke of it later, though his disjointed words didn't make much sense. He said Krishna had appeared to him in the form of God.

  “His eyes were the sun and moon and fire,” he added. “In his body there were mountains and oceans, and the deep darkness of space beyond the stars. All our enemies—and many of our friends— fell into his gigantic mouth and were crushed to death.” He shuddered. “It was terrible—and beautiful beyond description. Did you not see it?”

  I shook my head. “I only saw a great flash of light, as though a divine astra had been discharged. It blinded me. I thought the end of the world had come.”

  “It was the end of the world—the world as I knew it,” Arjun said. “Now the meaning of everything is different—our lives, our deaths, what we do in between.” He stared into the distance and didn't say any more, but the sorrow was gone from his face.

  I, too, said nothing, but I was deeply hurt. Why hadn't Krishna, whom I believed to be my dear friend and protector, allowed me to see his cosmic form? Ever since the war began, he'd had little to do with me. I understood that: he was preoccupied with larger events. But this was a slight too huge to ignore. I decided I, too, would h
ave nothing to do with him until I received proof of his caring.

  I decided this, but it didn't lessen the sting in my heart. I couldn't stop myself from wondering, over and over, why he considered Arjun more fitting to receive this vision. What crucial ingredient did I lack that the mystery of the universe should forever elude me?

  What else did the sight bring?

  My father locked in battle with Drona, both their faces rigid with old hatred. In between striking deathly blows at each other, they both remembered fragments from their shared past: days at the hermitage, sharing lessons and food, a hunt where they'd got lost in the forest together, the tears they had shed at parting. Bheem roaring as he killed Duryodhan's brothers. When the bloodlust receded from his mind, it was filled with remorse at fratricide, for no matter how he excused himself, he knew that the same blood ran in their veins. Ghatotkacha, bellowing with rage, all gentleness melted from his face, as he used his rakshasa magic to grow to gigantic proportions. When he crushed enemy soldiers under his feet as they fled in terror, his conscience cried, Is this glory? I saw Sikhandi, grown more androgynous by the moment, discharge arrow after arrow toward Bheeshma, swearing in frustration when none of them could reach him. One part of his mind was relieved that he hadn't yet committed the heinous act of killing Bharat's greatest warrior. Arjun's chariot cut through the field like a meteor, burning everything in its path—but he took care to avoid his grandfather and his teacher, not ready to kill them yet.

  Thus the war went on, the physical battle outside matching the conflicts within each warrior. And yet this did not mitigate the carnage. I saw the death throes of the innocent and the guilty, and both were equally terrible. In only a few hours, the ground turned red as though the skies had rained blood. What would happen by the end of the eighteen days? I watched the pendulum of victory sway back and forth, one hour toward the Kauravas, the next toward the Pandavas, and with each swing, I searched for—and failed to find— Karna, whose heart I most yearned to read.

  In the night I learned the reason for his absence. Before the war began, Bheeshma told Duryodhan that he would command the Kaurava forces only if Karna stayed off the battlefield. (Was this because of the long animosity between them? Or was it as my husbands thought—that Bheeshma was trying to protect them? Or was there a different reason, related to the dream I'd had?) Knowing Bheeshma to be the more experienced warrior, Karna had acceded for the sake of his friend—but with great anger, for this was the war he'd been preparing to fight all his life. Now he waited in his tent for Bheeshma to win—or die. My vision could not travel there, but my imagination made up for this lack. In it he paced up and down, his back ramrod straight, his weapons lying ready on the ascetic's pallet where he slept. His ears were tuned to every sound of war; his whole being chafed with impatience.

  I imagined Duryodhan coming to him at the end of the day to discuss strategy and to vent his frustration with Bheeshma, for he sensed that though Bheeshma's promise yoked him to the throne of Hastinapur, in his heart the grandfather favored the Pandavas. Karna hid his own agitation to calm him, agreeing as he'd always done— the one friend Duryodhan could lean on. In case Bheeshma failed, Karna assured him, he would certainly kill Arjun. Didn't he possess Indra's Shakti, that invincible weapon? Once Arjun was gone, the Pandavas would be nothing. Why, Duryodhan could finish them off himself in a day or two!

  But after Duryodhan left, greatly cheered by such talk, Karna sank onto his pallet and put his hands over his face. When he removed them—why should I imagine this?—his fingers were wet with tears.

  34

  The grandfather was proving to be a problem. We'd known all along what a hardened warrior he was, and what a strategist. But my husbands were taken aback by the energy with which he plowed into the Pandava army, killing thousands single-handedly. He also created troop formations that were almost impossible to penetrate: the crane with outspread wings, the intricate sea serpent, the layered mandala. Deep down they had believed (as did Duryodhan) that he loved them too much to truly harm them. Hadn't he announced, in open court, that he'd do his best to bring Duryodhan victory, but he would not kill the Pandavas, because they were his grandsons, too?

  “He can't talk to us directly because of his vow,” Sahadev the strategist said. “So he's sending us a coded message. Circumstances, he's saying, have placed us on opposing sides, but even while I'm fighting you, I'll aid you.”

  “Of course!” Arjun said. “Wasn't that what our uncle Salya told us after Duryodhan tricked him into joining his forces? He thinks he's won, but two can play at this game. When Karna comes to the battlefield, I'll volunteer to be his charioteer, and I'll use my words to sow discouragement in his heart.“

  Only Yudhisthir shook his head, unconvinced.

  “The grandfather is made of a different metal,” he said.

  He was right. The promise Bheeshma had given in his youth— that he'd guard the throne of Hastinapur against all invaders—was carved into his heart at least as deep as any love that subsequently entered it. And when (following a slew of triumphs by Arjun) Duryodhan accused him of partiality to the Pandavas, he demonstrated this by fighting so fiercely that our soldiers whispered that he was Yama the death-bringer come to earth. Even the bravest of them broke formation and fled when they saw his silver chariot approaching—but that didn't save them from destruction. (Already the rules of righteous war were breaking down.) Each day, faced with Bheeshma's wrath, our forces dwindled. Each night our camp was mired in despondence as my husbands faced a fact they hadn't considered: the legends had spoken true; Bheeshma was invincible. He wouldn't kill them, no. But he didn't have to. Once he destroyed enough of their army, their defeat was inevitable.

  The ninth day—when, according to Vyasa, the war had reached its mid mark—was the worst. On this day there was a great battle between Arjun and Bheeshma. But Arjun's heart was not in it. In spite of all that Krishna had said to him, he couldn't forget his childhood memories. He couldn't bear to hurt the man who had held him in his arms and comforted him through his childhood sorrows. Bheeshma, however, didn't have such qualms. He shot arrow after harassing arrow at Arjun until he bled. In between, with maddening nonchalance, he sent out astras that destroyed entire phalanxes. Finally an enraged Krishna, convinced that our army was about to perish, leaped from the chariot and, discus in hand, rushed at Bheeshma.

  The grandfather dropped his weapons and knelt before him. On his face was a look I could only interpret as hope.

  “And have you come to set me free finally, Govinda?” he asked. “Have I paid sufficiently for my theft?”

  Krishna raised his discus, but Arjun, recalling his friend's vow not to fight, held on to him with all his strength.

  “You must not break your word for my sake! That would be a terrible sin!” he cried. “Tomorrow I'll face Bheeshma as a true kshatriya faces his enemy—focused on the moment, with no memories of the past to disable him and no fear of future regrets. I swear it!”

  Krishna stared at him almost as though he didn't know who he was. Then, very slowly, he lowered his weapon. When he spoke, it was to Bheeshma. “O Vasu, by your own act you bound yourself. Therefore you alone can set yourself free.”

  What, I asked Arjun later, did Bheeshma mean by theft? I couldn't imagine the scrupulous old patriarch taking anything that didn't belong to him. Why did Krishna call him by that strange name, Vasu? And what act was he talking about?

  Arjun shrugged. The elders were always referring to mysterious events from the past that were important only to themselves. And as for Krishna, it would take an entire lifetime to figure out even a fraction of his comments. Surely I knew that!

  But I couldn't let go so easily. It wasn't merely because of what Yudhisthir termed the insidious curiosity of womankind. Stories were important. Even when I was a child, I'd realized that they had to be understood and preserved for the future, so that we didn't make the same mistakes over and over. I held my questions in my mind, waiting for the right circu
mstance. That opportunity would arrive sooner than I expected.

  Late that night, at Krishna's urging, the Pandavas went bareheaded to Bheeshma's tent. They touched the grandfather's feet and asked him how he could be killed. And he—with compassion and some relief—told them what to do.

  So it was that Sikhandi was stationed in the front of Arjun's chariot, his unbound hair blowing in the wind. He challenged Bheeshma to battle, and Bheeshma laid down his bow, saying, Amba, you know I will not fight you. He did not take up his weapons again, even when a weeping Arjun shot arrow after arrow that went through him, and Sikhandi, also weeping, covered his face in his hands.

  Much has been sung of how Bheeshma fell on his bed of arrows. On that day the war came to a standstill while both armies mourned side by side. Bheeshma asked for a support for his head, but when Duryodhan brought him silken pillows he rejected them. Only Arjun knew what he wanted: he shot three arrows into the ground for his grandfather to rest his head, and at that, even through his pain, Bheeshma smiled.

  Bheeshma did not die for a long while. Not until the auspicious time when the sun began his northern journey would he choose to let go of his body—and that, too, only after discharging his final duty: teaching Yudhisthir the rules of kingship that Duryodhan had refused to learn from him. Meanwhile, news of the war was brought to him every day, and warriors from both sides came to ask his advice. Flocks of swans flew over him, crying in melodious voices. Men whispered that they were celestial beings in disguise, bringing messages from heaven. At night, too, Bheeshma received visitors. They came to him each alone, wrapped in cloaks of secrecy, to tell him things that could not be spoken in the company of others.