The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Dhritarashtra obeyed Krishna, but something broke in him as he touched my husbands' heads with the tips of his reluctant fingers. Perhaps the knowledge that until his death he would have to eat Pandava salt was too much for him. From that day on, he spoke little and gave up all kingly luxuries. He ate only once each day and slept on the bare floor, and though Yudhisthir entreated him many times to take his place as king in Hastinapur, he never again entered the sabha to sit on the throne he had so coveted.

  And Gandhari? She was wiser than her husband. She knew that her sons had brought about their own downfall. But even wisdom is no match for a mother's pain. When Yudhisthir touched her feet, her rage manifested as fire, burning his fingernails black. And when Krishna snatched him away, she poured that rage on him.

  “You were the mastermind behind my sons' destruction. Because of that, your own clan will destroy itself in the span of a single day. On that day, your women will weep just as the women of Hastinapur are weeping now. Then you'll know how I feel.”

  I stared at her in shock, but Krishna said, with his usual equanimity, “All things must end some day. How can the house of the Yadus be an exception?” Then his voice grew stern. “But tell me, aren't you responsible for this war, too? Who indulged Duryodhan when he was a boy, instead of punishing him for the things he did to his cousins? Who couldn't bear to banish Sakuni—because he was your brother—from the palace even though he was an evil influence on Duryodhan?”

  Gandhari bowed her head.

  Krishna continued more gently, “Duryodhan broke his word again and again. He took from his cousins through trickery what was justly theirs—and then, after they'd fulfilled all the conditions he'd placed on them, refused to return it. You know this yourself. Isn't that why, when Duryodhan asked for your blessing just before he went to Kurukshetra, you didn't say, ‘May you win’?”

  Gandhari was weeping. Krishna put his arm around her shaking shoulders. “Instead you said, ‘May righteousness prevail.’ I know it was difficult for a mother to pronounce those words. But you did the right thing. Now that your words have come to pass, how can you hate those who were merely the instruments of universal law, which ultimately must restore that which was out of balance?”

  She turned to him then, sobbing against his chest. “Forgive me! That terrible curse—I want to call it back!”

  “There's nothing to forgive,” Krishna said as he led her to her tent. “Whatever you pronounced—even that was part of the law.”

  But what I remember most clearly are Krishna's words to the blind king when he insisted on cremating his dead by himself: You call them mine, and you call the others theirs. For shame! Hasn't this been the cause of your troubles ever since the fatherless sons of Pandu arrived at Hastinapur? If you'd seen them all as yours to love, this war would never have occurred.

  Wasn't it the cause of my troubles, too? Of every trouble in this world?

  We'd thought that the day was done with its surprises, but it had kept hidden in its recesses one final secret. As the Pandavas stood holding lighted brands, ready to begin the cremation of our children, Kunti came to them. Her eyes were bleak. Her voice held a quiet and terrible resolve.

  “Wait,” she said. “You must begin the ceremony by paying respect to your eldest brother.” And as they stared in amazement and growing shock, she told them—though it was a lifetime too late— the truth about Karna.

  39

  After the war, the cremations. After the cremations, the remains given to the Ganga. It was there by the river, the last sift of ash and grit pouring from his fingers, that Yudhisthir fell into his depression. For thirteen years his life had been directed to this moment like an arrow released from the bow of a master archer. But when the arrow has shattered the target, what is left for it to do?

  Though we all entreated him, Yudhisthir would not leave the riverbank and come to Hastinapur for his coronation. For weeks he sat staring at the devastated land where nothing would grow, thinking of the millions whose death-anguish had poisoned the air. But most of all he brooded on Karna, his own brother whom he'd hated for so long.

  I stayed with him during those weeks, for I was afraid to leave him alone. Each day we'd discuss the same things, over and over, as though his mind were stuck in a rut too deep for it to climb out of.

  “How delighted I was when he fell!” Yudhisthir said. “In my selfish glee I ignored the fact that on that very day he'd spared my life—and before that, the lives of Bheem, Nakul, and Sahadev. Why didn't I guess? Why didn't any of us guess? We rushed to view his corpse. We laughed and shouted our congratulations to Arjun, even though we knew he'd killed him unfairly. Ah, the terrible sin of that fratricide will fall on me, not Arjun, for he only did what I wanted him to!”

  My own regrets resurfaced as he spoke. If only I'd told him what I knew earlier, how much heartache I could have prevented him now! But I couldn't afford to wallow in remorse. I needed to help Yudhisthir. In all our years of marriage, I'd never seen him so dejected—no, not even when I was insulted in Duryodhan's court.

  I ignored the sting of that thought and said, “You acted from ignorance, not malice.”

  But he refused to listen. He held me by the shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh, his gaunt mouth working. “How could my mother, so wise in everything else, have kept such a matter secret? How can I trust her again?”

  There was a time when I'd have gained a certain pleasure from hearing him speak thus of the woman who, more than any of the other wives, had been my rival. But even the thought of such pettiness was distasteful to me now. A knot had unraveled in my heart when I saw Kunti at Karna's funeral. She looked so worn, so ashamed, so beaten down. Besides, guilt flooded me at Yudhisthir's words. I, too, had kept the same secret that his mother had. How furious might he be with me if he discovered this?

  I said, “It's not for you to judge your mother's actions. Who among us can know how terrified she must have felt when Karna was born?”

  But Yudhisthir had sunk once again into grief and didn't hear me.

  Anxious at his continued apathy, my other husbands and I took him to visit Bheeshma. Perhaps, we thought, a philosophical discussion with the grandfather would cheer him. We knew how Yudhisthir loved such things. The dying Bheeshma put aside his own pains to teach him the art of kingship: A ruler should know how to conceal his own weaknesses. He should choose his servants carefully. He

  must cause dissensions among the noblemen in his enemy's kingdom. He should be forgiving, but not excessively so, for then men of evil heart would take advantage of him. His innermost thoughts must be concealed even from his nearest ones. Yudhisthir listened respectfully enough, but even Bheeshma could not shake off his numb despair.

  Finally Krishna took him to task. He pointed out that while Yudhisthir was indulging himself with melancholy, bandits were terrorizing his helpless subjects at the edges of the unraveling Kuru kingdom. Ah, Krishna! He'd appealed to the one thing Yudhisthir couldn't shake off: his duty. He allowed himself to be led back to the city and crowned, though he took no pleasure in it.

  I didn't blame him. It was hard for anyone to find pleasure at Hastinapur. The palace, which in Duryodhan's day had been filled with a frantic, garish energy, had turned dank and funereal. The few retainers that were left—perhaps in deference to the old king and queen—wore mourning and walked with a hushed step. I ordered them to dress in coronation clothing. They obeyed me fearfully, the festive attire hanging askew on their bodies. How I missed Dhai Ma then! Her raucous curses would have jolted them into action. I made my own servants pull down the heavy, dust-filled drapes and throw open the windows. I called my women to comb out my long-tangled hair and rub perfume into it. Still, all around I smelled, inexplicably, funeral incense. As I breathed it, I felt as though I was sinking into the morass of depression that had claimed Yudhisthir. The night before the coronation, I stood at my window, unable to sleep. It saddened me to think that this was the place where I would be living out the res
t of my life. What I had said to Bheeshma a long time ago as a new bride still held true: it would never be home to me.

  On the day of the coronation, my greatest challenge was to enter the throne room again. At its threshold my footsteps faltered, sweat sprouted in my armpits, my breath grew uneven. I had to use all my willpower to step into the room that had been the scene of my greatest humiliation. The task must have been harder still for my husbands. Their memories were worse than mine. To see a loved one in pain is more wrenching than to bear that pain yourself. The war had taught me this. However, we knew we had no choice. The throne of the Kurus had sat in that sabha for generations. We couldn't move it, not at this time, when we needed the help of tradition to stabilize a foundering kingdom.

  Once again Krishna—who else!—came to our rescue. From his own palace he sent us cooks and gardeners, musicians and dancers, even his favorite elephant for Yudhisthir to ride in the royal procession. On coronation day, he brought the entire Yadu clan—and they, not knowing the doom that hung over them, cheered us with their simple pleasure in good food and fine wine, their feckless antics. Without them, we couldn't have borne the empty seats that stretched on both sides of the throne, seats that—out of respect or guilt—Yudhisthir would leave unfilled. On the right, Bheeshma's; on the left, Drona's; in the raised alcove, the ornate throne specially carved for Duryodhan; next to his, severe in its simplicity, the chair Karna had once used.

  Hastinapur after the war was largely a city of women, widows who had never dreamed that the survival of their families would depend on them. The poorer ones were used to working, but now that they were without male protection, they found themselves exploited. Affluent women, pampered and sheltered until now, were the easiest victims. Men would appear from nowhere claiming to be relatives and take control of the family fortunes. The women became unpaid servants. Sometimes they were turned out. They were too afraid—even if they'd known how—to apply to the king for justice. I'd see them on the roadside, often with children in their arms, begging. There were others that I didn't see, but I heard of the street corners they frequented at night, selling the only thing left to them.

  It was a terrible situation—and it saved me.

  I knew how it felt to be helpless and hopeless. Hadn't I been almost stripped of my clothing and my honor in this very city? Hadn't I been abducted in the forest and attacked in Virat's court when men thought I was without protection? Didn't I, even now, mourn my blood-clan—dead, every one of them? And if I wasn't careful, might I not turn into one of these women—empty-eyed, capable only of churning through futile memories?

  It was time I shook off my self-pity and did something. I resolved to form a separate court, a place where women could speak their sorrows to other women.

  At an earlier, more arrogant time I'd have tried to do it by myself, but now I asked Kunti and Gandhari for their aid. They acquiesced; together we approached Yudhisthir. A chamber was set up in the women's palace with thrones placed on the dais for the dowagers. Subhadra and I sat below. I invited Uttara, too, to help us. I had expected her to refuse, for she was in the late months of an unwieldy pregnancy, but to my surprise, she agreed. Often she was the most perceptive one, seeing directly into the heart of a problem. Perhaps it was from these sessions that the unborn Pariksit, alert within his mother's womb, learned his judicial clarity, so that in time he would be compared to Rama, that most impartial of kings.

  Only Bhanumati declined to join us. She returned to her father's kingdom, and who could fault her? With the death of Duryodhan (and Karna, said a voice in my head), what was left for her in this palace that had always made her feel like an outsider? On the day she left, as she climbed into her chariot dressed in white, her forehead bare, her arms stripped of the jingling bangles she had once so delighted in, she raised her head for a moment to send me a look of smoldering hate. At that, guilt—never too far away—speared my heart. How the war had changed the naïve girl she'd been, eager to please, happy with the littlest things! For the sake of that girl—and the man we had both loved silently, though perhaps in different ways—I prayed that she would find a measure of peace in the home of her childhood.

  The court by itself wasn't enough to help the women. Yudhisthir had given us permission, but that was all he could afford to let us have. The coffers of Hastinapur had been depleted by the Great War. But unless we had the power to enforce our rulings, who would obey them?

  We were at a loss until Uttara came to us—it was just a few days before Pariksit's birth—followed by two maids carrying a chest. With a start we recognized its ornate carvings—it contained her wedding jewelry. She threw open the lid and said, “I have no use for this anymore. Use it to help those who are more unfortunate than I.”

  The sale of that jewelry allowed us to hire scribes to interpret the law and a queen's guard to carry out our judgments. By itself, it might not have been enough, but Uttara's action galvanized us all. We scrounged around, collecting our own jewelry and palace furnishings that weren't essential. Kunti surprised me by donating artifacts she'd held on to all these years, things that had belonged to Pandu. All this allowed us to set up the destitute in homes of their own and buy merchandise to start businesses for them. In time the women's market became a flourishing center of trade in the city, for the new proprietors took pride in their goods and were canny but fair in their dealings. We trained those who showed interest in learning to become tutors for girls and young boys. And even in the later years of Pariksit's reign when the world had passed into the Fourth Age of Man and Kali the dark spirit had gripped the world in his claws, Hastinapur remained one of the few cities where women could go about their daily lives without harassment.

  40

  This is the nature of sorrow: often it fades with time, but once in a while it remains lodged below the surface of things, a stubborn thorn beneath a fingernail, making itself felt every time you brush against it. (How well I knew this, for random events would startle me into the memory of a pair of ancient eyes.) In Yudhisthir's case, the thorn moved deeper into him with time, festering as it went. At court he was just and compassionate. In the royal apartments, he was kind and undemanding. But he brooded incessantly on the many lives that had been destroyed because of what he considered his ambition. Even after Hastinapur grew back into a prosperous city where people flocked to live, much as they had once done in Indra Prastha, we never saw him smile.

  It took the birth of Pariksit to change that.

  The day Uttara went into labor was a stormy one. Kunti said the sky wept because it knew how hard the world was to a fatherless child, and when the labor continued for many hours, she added that perhaps the baby knew this, too, and that is why it was reluctant to be born.

  I bit my lips to keep in an angry retort at such negative words, but Yudhisthir said, “Mother, you are wrong! As long as I have breath in my body, this child will never feel the lack of a father.” He shocked everyone by entering the labor hut, a place traditionally barred to men. He laid his hand on Uttara's forehead as one might with a daughter and called out Pariksit's name (for Krishna had already decided what it was to be). Was it in response to his yearning that the baby came soon after? Even before he'd been cleansed in a ritual bath, Yudhisthir took him in his arms and kissed his head. As I watched the look on his face—tender, reprieved—I realized that I would no longer have to worry about him.

  My other husbands, too, showered Pariksit with the frustrated fatherly love pent up in their hearts. Preoccupied with their troubled destiny, they'd had little opportunity to spend time with their own children. When they finally thought they would get to enjoy their company as young men, our sons were snatched from them. They swore not to let that happen again. But more than that, perhaps, they treasured Pariksit because we had so nearly lost him.

  From the time Pariksit was in swaddling clothes, my husbands spent hours planning his education. They were determined to mold him into the perfect king, the one in whose hands they could leave H
astinapur without worry, the one who would redeem their sins with his goodness. As soon as he could stand, Bheem began to teach him the first moves of wrestling; Arjun had an infant-sized bow designed for him; Nakul sat him on his favorite horse and walked him around the courtyard; Sahadev taught him how to speak to animals; and Yudhisthir told him stories about the lives of saints. For his naming ceremony, they invited all the important sages and gave away more wealth than they could afford. They begged Vyasa to officiate at the ceremony and then pestered him to tell the child's future until he admitted to them that Pariksit would be a powerful and virtuous king.

  But before he left, Vyasa drew me aside. “Watch the boy's temper,” he said. “It'll get him in trouble if he isn't careful.”

  My mouth went dry. “What do you mean?”

  Vyasa shrugged. “Just what I said: the boy's temper might be his downfall.”

  A pounding began inside my head. Here was history, repeating itself once again. But this time I wouldn't let Vyasa's riddles ruin Pariksit's life. I grabbed his arm, though I knew it was most inappropriate for a woman to touch a sage. “Speak clearly for once.”

  Looking at my face Vyasa must have seen I wasn't going to let go until he satisfied me. “Very well,” he said. “There will come a day, a sweltering summer day not too many years after you are gone, when Pariksit—still a young man—will go on a hunt. Separated from his men, he'll get lost in the forest. He'll be hungrier and thirstier than he'd ever been in his life. That's when he will stumble into Sage Samik's ashram and see the sage sitting at the entrance to his hut. He'll ask for water. But the sage will be too deep in meditation to hear him. Thinking the sage was slighting him, Pariksit will be furious. He'll find a dead snake nearby and throw it around the sage's neck and depart.